Yingli Reduces Guidance, but Will Lead in Shipments for Q2

The small 2% drop can be translated as 11MW, which means that the business might post shipments of around 604MW for Q2 2012

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Yingli Green Energy Hold. Co. Ltd (NYSE: YGE) has released a preannouncement for its financial results for the second quarter of the current year ending 30^th June. The company has revised down its increase in shipment expectations. It now believes that it will increase its shipments by 13% - 14% from the first quarter of 2012, as opposed to the 15% announced earlier. The small 2% drop can be translated as 11MW, which means that the business might post shipments of around 604MW for Q2 2012. Furthermore, gross profit margins expectations have also been reduced from “middle to high single digit percentage” to “a middle single digit percentage.” The company says that it will report a foreign exchange loss of between $28M and $30M due to a fall in the value of the Euro against RMB.

Yingli’s chairman and CEO Mr. Liansheng Miao believes that increasing competition in the industry and continuous reduction in panel prices were the primary reasons behind the downward revision. He said, “In the second quarter, the PV industry continued to face tremendous challenges as competition intensified. However, we managed to reach our guidance for both module shipment volumes and gross margin."

Yingli Green has been one of the better performing Tier 1 Chinese solar panel manufacturers in the current testing times. Earlier this year, in March, Lux Research report ranked Yingli Green as the third-best global module manufacturer for 2011. Then in May, the business boasted a record module shipment increase of 44.4% for Q1 2012 over Q4 2011, and with about $500M earned in revenues, it surpassed the world’s biggest module manufacturer and its primary competitor, Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. (NYSE: STP), by approximately $90M. This was further confirmed in July when Digitimes revealed Yingli Green as the top Chinese panel maker for Q1 2012.

The company has further announced that it will release the unaudited Q2 2012 results on 29^th August before the opening of U.S. markets. A live conference call and webcast on the report is also scheduled for the same day at 08:00 EDT.

On 6^th July, Yingli announced the opening of its new regional office in Australia. The business had also established a regional subsidiary, Yingli Green Energy Australia Pty. Ltd. Then on July 23^rd, we reported that ReneSola Ltd (NYSE: SOL), one of Yingli’s Chinese rivals, announced a 5.95MW module sale to Australian-based Solargain. Today, ReneSola announced another sale agreement of its high performance monocrystalline solar panels to Australian-based True Value Solar (TVS). The latter is one of the leading solar power companies in Australia and claims to be the country’s “largest solar specialist.”

According to the agreement, ReneSola will supply 8MWs of its modules to TVS by the end of August, taking its 2012 Australian shipment numbers to an impressive 45MW.  The company’s CEO Mr. Xianshou Li has said, “Our business continues to grow in Australia, where our year-to-date shipments now top 45 MW and brand awareness of our products, particularly our Virtus line, continues to improve."