Largest solar wafer and poly maker extends dominance in solar panel manufacturing as well
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GCL Poly which is the world’s largest solar polysilicon and wafer maker with around 70,000 tons of poly and 14 GW of wafer capacity, is extending its dominance into downstream cell and module making as well. The company had last year bought distressed Chaori Solar along with some private investors. GCL is also setting up large cell and module manufacturing capacities in China and planning to set up a plant in India as well.
GCL is already one of the world’s largest solar panel shippers with a 400% growth in solar panel shipments, with 2.5-2.7 GW of shipments in 2015 itself up from 500 MW in 2014. The company is also projecting a capacity of 6 GW in 2016, which would be equal if not greater than the panel capacity of Trina Solar. Note GCL has established sales operation in a number of countries besides its strong relationships in China. GCL is already supplying panels to a large number of big developers in China such as Minsheng, Kong Sun etc.
GCL is one of our top picks in the solar energy space because of the increase in solar wafer prices and the bottoming out of solar polysilicon prices. GCL is already present in the solar development space and now is set to become a giant module players as well. The only concern stems from its Chinese ownership. There have been corporate governance issues, with a number of Chinese companies including solar ones too like Hanergy Thin Film. This keeps the stock prices of GCL in check. The company was planning to sell its wafer operations to an entity owned by its chairman. However, a hue and cry from investors prevented the company form selling its profitable wafer operations. The company also has a large amount of debt (though profitable). Leverage may become a problem if the Chinese economy nosedives further.
According to one of GCL’s previous announcements, the firm saw a net profit of 376 million yuan from January to September, a year-on-year increase of 175.24%. Judging from GCL’s production expectations for the year and current market conditions, it appears promising that GCL will deliver on its commitment to achieve a net profit of 600 million yuan for 2015.