Tier-1 Chinese solar producer Yingli registered its first quarterly profit in nearly five years in Q1 2016 as the debt-stalked company enjoyed something of a turnaround in its fortunes.
Gross profit for the first three months of the year was RMB 469.3 million ($72.8 million), which represented a significant 90% increase on Q4 2015 (RMB 248.3 million). Gross margin for the quarter hit 20%, up from 11.8% in Q4 2015, with PV module shipments increasing slightly from 504.5 MW in Q4 2015 to 508.1 MW in Q1 2016.
This increase helped to spur revenues to RMB 2,351.1 million ($364.6 million) for the quarter, thanks largely to Yinglis success in increasing its shipments to the higher-cost marketsYinglis success in increasing its shipments to the higher-cost markets of Japan and the U.S. shipments to these two countries accounted for 40% and 14% of total shipments for the quarter.
Yinglis figures also showed that operating income was RMB 186.4 million ($28.9 million) for the quarter, contrasted to an operating loss of RMB 1,120.3 million in Q4 2015.Net income, meanwhile, reached a solid $12.3 million (RMB 79.6 million).
Having reached 15 GW of module shipments globally in the quarter, Yingli Green Energy chairman and CEO Liansheng Miao spoke confidently about the companys robust performance in the first quarter of the year, highlighting the turnaround in fortunes compared to the tail-end of 2015, and underlining the importance to the company of the Japanese, American and Chinese markets.
"We expect strong demand from Japan to continue in 2016 before Japans announced reduction of subsidies for PV becomes effective in April 2017," Miao said. "We also had a solid first quarter in the U.S., with shipment representing approximately 14% of our total shipments, compared to approximately 10% in Q4 2015.
"In China," he added, "we have secured orders of approximately 820 MW by the end of May due to robust demand in the first half of 2016."
The CEO also spoke of Yinglis success in commercializing its bifacial series of monocrystalline modules, which have been installed at a 50 MW solar farm in Datong, Shanxi province under the "Top Runner" program, A focus on "high-end products" will characterize the companys efforts for the remainder of the year, Miao concluded.
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.