CHINA SUNTECH SHINES

Suntech profit tops Street view; shares jump; Q4 EPS 27 cents vs Wall Street view 12 cents
Matt Daily (w/Antonita Madonna Devotta, John Wallace and Derek Caney), March 4, 2010 (Reuters)

"Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, China's biggest solar panel maker, posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by higher gross margins as prices for silicon wafers and processing costs declined, sending its shares higher.

"The solar industry is emerging from a tough 2009, when prices for modules that turn sunlight into electricity fell by more than 40 percent as a glut of supplies and difficult financial markets slowed growth for renewable energy sources…Suntech, the largest maker of polysilicon-based solar modules, said its sales rose, helped by strong demand in Germany ahead of the planned solar subsidy cuts there…"

Global PV market history and forecast. (click to enlarge)

"Unlike some of its competitors, Suntech widened its consolidated gross margins in the quarter…as it cut manufacturing costs and the price it paid for the polysilicon used in the wafers it put into its photovoltaic modules…For the fourth quarter, the company posted net income of $49.9 million…compared with a loss of $109 million…a year earlier. Revenue rose 41 percent to $583.6 million…Analysts, on average, were looking for…revenue of $468.3 million…

"Fears that demand in Germany, the world's largest solar market, will fall sharply in the second half of the year have prompted fears across the industry that prices for modules will decline dramatically."

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"While Suntech expects the average selling prices (ASPs) for its modules to drop by 10 percent to 15 percent in the first quarter because of weakness in the euro versus the U.S. dollar, it does not see a large dropoff in prices coming after Germany's subsidy cuts…Suntech expects shipments to rise 5 percent to 10 percent in the first quarter from the fourth quarter.

"Suntech aims to ship more than 1.25 gigawatts of photovoltaic products this year, a jump of nearly 80 percent from the 704 megawatts shipped in 2009, as it raises its production capacity to 1.4 GW by the middle of the year…Like other solar companies, Suntech is betting that growing demand in Italy, the United States and Japan will help offset the likely drop in Germany, although analysts are wary of those expecatations…Suntech shares, which were down 18 percent this year…rose nearly 5.7 percent to $14.46…"