Shriveling Yingli Fends Off Bond Holders
Doug Young Bottom line: Yingli is likely to get sold or announce a major government-led restructuring, which could include bankruptcy, before a new round of 1.4 billion yuan in bonds comes due next month. In what looks like a case of deja vu, fast-shrinking solar panel maker Yingli (NYSE: YGE) is in the headlines again as it looks set to default on 1.4 billion yuan ($220 million) worth of bonds set to come due next month. The default would be Yingli’s second within a year, after it failed to pay off part of another big bond that matured last...
SolarCity Rooftop Solar Lease Securitization Advances
by Sean Kidney US firm SolarCity (SCTY) announced last week that it was seeking to make a private placement of a $54.4 million, 13 year bond backed by cash flows from rooftop solar leases. SolarCity is the second-largest U.S. solar company by market capitalization. Lead manager Credit Suisse (CS) has been working on this deal for some time now, which will now only be eligible to be sold to big, qualified investors. It’s been a race this year between them and a US bank to get the first solar rooftop loan securitization our the door. Looks like...
Two Mega-Deals Illustrate China’s Massive Solar Building Plans
Doug Young A couple of year-end announcements from solar majors Trina (NYSE: TSL) and ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) are pointing to a coming flood of new orders for the entire solar panel sector next year, fueled by huge new demand from their home China market. I fully expect we’ll see a steady stream of similar announcements throughout next year and even into 2015, providing a flow of good news for rebounding solar stocks after a 3-year sector downturn. But amid the bright news, potential downside lurks in the risk that payments...
Solar Stocks Bask In Hawaiian “Aloha”
By Jeff Siegel I’ve been all over the world, and without a doubt, there is no place more beautiful than Hawaii, particularly the island of Kauai. The weather, the ocean, the rain forests, the food - it just doesn’t get any better. Although if state lawmakers get their way, there could soon be a cherry on top for renewable energy supporters. As recently reported in Greentech Media … Lawmakers in Hawaii passed legislation last week (in a 74-2 vote) requiring the state to generate 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy resources by 2045. If HB 623...
US Solar Manufacturing Announcements: The Real And The Hype
by Paula Mints
In 2018, the US market for PV deployment is estimated at ~12-GWp. As the US does not have sufficient domestic cell manufacturing capacity to meet its demand, most of the 12-GWp will be met by imports of cells or, modules. Following the implementation of cell/module tariffs there were, as expected, new capacity announcements in the US, primarily for module assembly. If all the current announcements came true it would add an additional 4.2-GWp of module assembly and 1.7-GWp of cell manufacturing (thin film and crystalline) capacity to the US. First Solar (FSLR) is responsible for 1.3-GWp of the new module assembly and...
Price Pressure Will Squeeze Solar Inverter Revenues
James Montgomery SMA Solar inverter photo by Claus Ableiter In a new report, IHS says worldwide solar inverter unit shipments will rise 7 percent this year, but PV inverter revenues are heading the opposite way, a 9 percent decline this year to $6.4 billion, worse than the firm's earlier prediction of a 5 percent drop. (2014 will see a 9 percent rebound in revenues back to around $7.0 billion, while shipments will surge 19 percent to more than 41 GW.) That's because overall inverter prices are sinking fast, sliding to...
First Solar’s Surprising Strategy Switch
by Paula Mints CdTe and crystalline manufacturer and project developer First Solar (FSLR) announced positive results for Q1 as well as a switch in strategy emphasis from deployment to module sales. Honestly, revenues, positive net income and other financial metrics matter less in this case than the company’s strategy switch to module sales. Downward price pressure and margin compression along with continued aggressive pricing from China makes this move confusing. Cost leadership is mutable in the PV industry and it is difficult to imagine that First Solar will have an advantage in this regard for long. ...
Trade Wars Send Chinese Solar Companies Offshore
Doug Young Bottom line: A new wave of overseas investment by Chinese solar panel makers should ease western complaints of unfair state-support and provide a more solid foundation for the sector’s longer-term development. Solar panel makers migrate overseas As a settlement to avoid anti-dumping tariffs for Chinese solar panels exported to Europe showed signs of unraveling last week, a new report emerged that showed a more positive trend for a sector that has become the subject of nonstop trade wars over the last 4 years. That newer trend has seen...
How the Don Quixote Principle Drives Solar
by Paula Mints Don Quixote by Honore Daumier via Wikimedia Commons For decades the photovoltaic industry has been driven by its beliefs, hopes, the availability of incentives, and what it is willing to ignore in terms of market realities and technological barriers. The apparent achievement of grid parity, even at drastically low margins, was hailed a victory. Continued deployment of multi-megawatt installations in the face of low margins for developers and likely gigawatts of poor quality installations has been regarded as proof of the inevitability of the industry’s success. ...
Yingli’s Downward Spiral
Doug Young Bottom line: Yingli’s downward spiral will continue as customers abandon the company due to its financial weakness. Shares of the stumbling Yingli (NYSE: YGE) are coming under pressure after its latest earnings report. The intense pressure solar panel makers continue to feel as their sector still struggles to recover from a downturn that dates back 4 years due to massive oversupply. Panel prices have rebounded somewhat over the last 2 years and many of the best-run companies have returned to profitability during that time. But intense pressure still remains for less well-run companies like Yingli. ...
China, EU Solar Talks Less Cloudy
Doug Young After a disastrous round of talks last month that broke down almost as soon as they began, China and Europe look set to try again with a new round of negotiations to resolve their dispute over the EU’s claims of unfair state-support for Chinese solar panel makers. Much has changed since the failed round of talks in late May, including a growing number of individual European leaders who want to resolve this dispute through negotiations rather than trade wars. As a result, this new round of negotiations will take place between top-level government officials, an important...
Are Solar PV and Wind Incompatible with Nuclear and IGCC?
Paul Denholm, a Senior Analyst at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), sees an upcoming struggle between renewable sources of electricity such as photovoltaics (PV) and wind with low-carbon baseload alternatives for space on the low carbon grid of the future. These baseload alternatives are nuclear and Internal Gasification Combined Cycle coal plants with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (IGCC w/ CCS, refereed to by advocates as "Clean Coal). This may come as a shock to advocates of the idea that Global Warming is such a big problem that we will need all forms of low carbon electricity, because the...
Canadian Solar Bags Another Module Sale
by Debra Fiakas CFA Last week Canadian Solar (CSIQ: Nasdaq) bagged another solar module supply agreement - this time on the home turf of some of its staunches competitors. Of course, the company has its own manufacturing foothold in China. Canadian Solar is to supply its solar modules to China Three Gorges New Energy Company to a 100 megawatt solar power project in Guazhou County in Gansu Province. The modules shipments will be complete by the end of the December 2013, suggesting all the sales will end up recorded yet in the current fiscal year. ...
MidAmerican, SunPower Begin “Major Construction” at Antelope Valley
James Montgomery Joshua trees in Antelope Valley, CA. Photo by Tom Hilton MidAmerican Solar and SunPower have begun "major construction" at the Antelope Valley Solar Projects (AVSP), two co-located megasolar projects totaling a combined 579 megawatts (AC) generation capacity that MidAmerican bought earlier this year for $2+ billion. Construction work technically began in January with laying groundwork and putting infrastructure in place, such as trailers and supplies. One MW has already been installed at AVSP, and now efforts will ramp up over the coming weeks with more workers...
US Still Net Exporter of Solar to China
by Clean Energy Intel Following the announcement that CIGS solar start-up Solyndra had declared Chapter 11, I published an article suggesting that although this was clearly not good news, the overall solar sector in the US was still in relatively good competitive shape, with a healthy trade surplus with the rest of the world of some $1.9bn. You can read my original article here. Although competition from China is intense, particularly in low-cost module production, the US remains a strong player across the supply chain as a whole - particularly in polysilicon production and the manufacture of the...
Solar Christmas: Coal for LDK, JV for Trina
Doug Young Photo by Tom Konrad I thought I’d get into the Christmas spirit in this first work day after Thanksgiving in the US, so let’s take a look at what solar panel makers LDK (NYSE: LDK) and Trina (NYSE: TSL) are getting in their holiday stockings with the latest company news reports. It seems the struggling LDK won’t be getting much, with word that a Chinese court has added further delays to a case where it is owed $40 million in a business dispute...
