A statement on the SolarWorld website read, "The management is of the opinion that serious adjustments on the debt side are necessary, in particular with regard to the bonds and the assignable bank loans."
Business newswire Bloomberg has estimated that the Bonn-based manufacturer has 400 million (US$538m) of bonds and loans maturing in 2016 with a further 400 million due to be repaid a year later.
According to Reuters, SolarWorld chief executive Frank Asbeck said holders of bonds set to mature in July 2016 and January 2017 would be hardest hit.
The Reuters report goes on state Asbeck's view that debt negotiations could take "weeks and months", and that more redundancies would be required at the group, on top of the 250 announced last year.
The company reported at the end of September that its debt-to-equity ratio had more than doubled from September 2011 to 218, totalling net debts of 805.2 million. Reuters reports that the company had 1 billion in debts as of September 2012.
The statement from SolarWorld said the management is confident of "a predominant degree of probability" of being able to restructure the company's debts.
Yesterday's announcement caused a morning rout on SolarWorld's shares which lost as much as 33% of their value in early trading before a slight recovery and saw fellow German solar manufacturers SMA Solar Technology AG and Centrosolar Group AG also suffer falls.
SolarWorld is due to announce its full year results on March 21.
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.