Longi – The New Goliath of the Solar Industry

Longi continues to hit the ball out of the solar park even as other firms fail

Longi has become one of the most successful companies in the cutthroat solar market, where rapidly changing industry and technology trends can bankrupt even the largest companies in a few short years. The history of the solar industry is marked by numerous billion dollar failures and there is a massive graveyard of failed companies. Suntech, Solyndra, Q-Cells, Solarworld, Yingli, LDK Solar, etc. There is an endless number of companies that have failed with a few notable successes.

Longi has become highly successful by championing the monocrystalline silicon technology which used to be on the edge of the multicrystalline market. Longi has massively brought down the costs of mono technology by not only building huge scales but also investing heavily in R&D. After starting out on wafers, the company is rapidly expanding the solar cell and modules part of the business. Even as most companies including those from China saw huge losses in 2018, Longi continued to sharply increase its revenues and profits. The company is not stopping its huge expansion plans which will make it a dominant player in the downstream parts of the supply chain. The company increased its sales by more than 34% to > $3 billion even as others saw their sales shrink due to a sharp fall in solar panel prices due to the curtailment of the Chinese government subsidies.

Longi already has a huge 28 GW of wafer capacity in place which will increase to 38 GW by 2019 and 50 GW by end 2020. This will make it the owner of a capacity that could supply 50% of the global market for solar panels based on 2018 market size. Along with wafers, the company will also build out a huge 15 GW of cell and 25 GW of module capacity making it by far the biggest solar module maker as well. Unlike other companies, Longi’s debt position remains moderate, as the company is generating large cash flows from its business.  The company is continuously improving its technology, capacity and financial strength. If Longi continues its exponential growth pace over the coming three years, it will leave the other companies in the dust and make it the new Goliath of the solar industry which will have no comparable peers in terms of scale, reach and technology.