Profit on horizon for Yingli Green

By Lyu Chang (China Daily) Updated: 2014-06-19 07:10

A logo of Yingli Solar is seen on a wall inside the company, in Baoding, Hebei province, May 5, 2014.

Yingli Solar plans to increase its shipment volumes to about 4 gigawatts of installed solar panels in 2014, an increase of 27 percent over the previous year. At the same time, it is moving toward so-called distributed solar, which includes rooftop panels and other small installations.

Miao said that his company is adopting a downstream strategy to a renewable energy solutions provider with a 1-gigawatt downstream project pipeline across China.

"Based on the ongoing projects, we expect to develop approximately 400 megawatts to 600 mW of PV projects by the end of 2014," he said.

Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economic Research at Xiamen University, echoed Miao's optimism. "In today's solar industry, a more mature market enables price stability and steadily growing demand, so the solar growth is virtually of great potential," he said.

Market analyst group NPD Solarbuzz predicts that global demand will reach 49 gigawatts in 2014 with installations expected grow by more than 25 percent.

Finlay Colville, vice-president of NPD Solarbuzz, said the first quarter of this year will be the strongest with end-market demand hitting record levels, which was driven by "leading module suppliers and project developers that returned to profitability during 2013".

But investors still shied away as Yingli Solar has not yet swung back to profit as its peers such as Trina Solar did for the past quarter. The company's first-quarter net loss dropped to 341.8 million yuan ($54.87 million) from 611.8 million yuan, a year earlier.