First Solar achieved US$544 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2014, a 4.7% increase over a year prior but a 43% fall from the previous quarter. Such wild swings in revenue are typical for First Solar, as the solar project business tends to be highly uneven from quarter to quarter.
The company also reported a 0.03% operating margin, and managed a net profit of only $4.5 million, First Solar's worst result in years. Both the sequential fall in revenue and the low margins may be the result of project delays, which deferred some earnings into later in 2014.
However, these mediocre financial results were overshadowed by the company's news that it had produced a 21.0% efficient PV cell, a new world record not only for its cadmium telluride technology but all single-junction thin film solar.
Additionally, First Solar reported that it increased the average efficiency 0.5% on its production lines to 14.0% during the second quarter, the company's largest increase in one quarter to date. During the quarter the company rolled out its Series 3 Black modules and back-contact technology on a fleet-wide basis.
Overall, First Solar's capacity utilization fell sequentially to 80%, with the company producing 447 MW of PV modules. First Solar did not offer manufacturing cost estimates this quarter, but has built its leading market position in part on low-cost manufacturing.
Popular content
The company also did not provide much detail on its solar projects during a quarterly earnings call, but says that it has booked 812 MW-DC of new projects since the first quarter of 2014. This brings First Solar to 1.22 GW-DC of projects booked this year.
Additionally, First Solar has been expanding in the operations and maintenance space, and the acquisition of Skytron Energy has essentially doubled the company's portfolio of monitored assets.
For the assets that it owns First Solar says that it is still considering a yieldco structure, but has yet to make a commitment either way. Fellow solar developers SunEdison and Abengoa have both formed yieldcos, but SunPower has not.
First Solar has maintained its guidance of $3.7-4.0 billion over the full year 2014, at a 7-9% operating margin. The company expects to produce 1.8-1.9 GW of PV modules during the year.
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.