Normally, the fourth quarter would be a very busy period for the solar industry. December would see a bit of a slowdown on production, but certainly a high volume of sales would concentrate throughout, with sales generation peaking in November. While the average investor cannot see sale receipts for each company, an alternative exists and it’s offered by Chinese research company Solarzoom. Based on Solarzoom data for module and cells shipments from Mainland China, October saw around 889MW in module shipments. This figure included 394MW of shipments completed by US-listed companies, in addition to 10MW of cells sold internationally. October shipments revealed over 200MW exported by a variety of import/export entities, including very small manufacturers.
Recent Chinese government announcements suggest consolidation efforts in overseas markets, which could improve volumes for large players, and reduce or eliminate inconsequential ones from the export tally. Considering the 24% size of the contribution, this could be quite an opportune condition for large manufacturers.
In November, the total number of shipments was over 1GW and the US-listed companies shipped more than 573MW. While the number shows an increase, some of contributors may need to adjust their quarterly guidance, always a dreadful scenario playing out in the market.
The overall guidance for US-listed companies for Q4 totalled 3.3GW, giving an average per month of 1.1GW. In comparison to October’s number, in general terms this already raised a red flag for the entire peer group. November only added more worry, considering that none of the companies guided 50% of the market in China for deliveries in Q4. Of course, not every company shows the same pattern; this is why the shipment data possess critical value to solar investors, betting on differentiation being present among the peers.
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