Yingli Green Energy on Wednesday posted a second-quarter net loss of CNY 285.2 million ($46 million), narrowing its deficit by 11% year on year, while revenue inched just 1% to CNY 3.4 billion ($549.5 million).
The Chinese company's total PV module shipments increased some 41% from the first quarter to 887.9 MW, which included 71.8 MW shipments to the company's own downstream power plants in China.
Citing current market and operating conditions, estimated production capacity and forecasted customer demand, however, Yingli lowered its projected module shipment target for the year from between 4 GW and 4.2 GW to 3.6 GW and 3.8 GW — nevertheless still an increase of between 11.3% and 17.5% over last year.
Yingli Chairman and CEO Liansheng Miao said the results were in line with the group's previous guidance, adding that he was pleased with the overall gross margin of 15.6%.
Miao stressed that Yingli was focused on returning to net profitability by improving its operating efficiency, reducing manufacturing costs and optimizing its geographical footprints.
Yingli reduced its second-quarter operating loss CNY 129.2 million a year ago to CNY 85.9 million ($13.9 million).
"In the second quarter, we saw increased demand for Yingli Solar modules from our key markets, such as China, Japan, United Kingdom and other new emerging markets," he said.
In particular, Yinglis shipments to new emerging markets in the second quarter increased by approximately 18% quarter on quarter while its customer base doubled compared with the second quarter of 2013, Miao said, adding that shipments to Japan in the first half of 2014 exceeded its total shipments to the country in 2013.
The company developed a combined 155 MW of downstream projects in the first half of the year, some of which are under construction and expected to be further developed with partners such as China National Nuclear Corporation, Shanghai Sailing Capital Investment Fund and Datong Coal Mine Group Co., Ltd. In the third quarter, the company expects to start construction of a total of 168 MW of downstream projects across China.
Miao added that the group saw large potential for distributed generation in Chinas domestic market in the second half of 2014, but added that growth in demand was slower than expected in the first half of the year.
China's National Energy Administration has called for a strengthening of supportive polices for distributed PV projects and announced the goal of achieving at least 13 GW of grid-connected PV capacity this year. "We expect that the demand for PV modules in China market will accelerate in the second half of 2014," Miao said.
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.
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.