The major four silicon manufacturers has made stunning performance in 2022, with revenue and net profit attributable to the parent company increasing by more than three digits.
At the end of 2022, with the release of production capacity and the improvement of supply and demand relations, silicon material price begun to go downward, so as relevant enterprises’ revenue, reflecting on the first quarter reports recently disclosed.
TW Solar
The company still ranks first in terms of revenue and net profit attributable to its parent company, achieving CNY 33.25 billion yuan and CNY 8.6 billion yuan respectively. For the growth, the company mainly attributed to the expansion of business scale and the increase in production and sales of high-purity crystalline silicon, cells, and modules in its first quarter report.
In 2022, only silicon and chemical businesses supported the rapid growth of its profit, with a gross profit margin of 75.13%. With the decline in silicon material prices, profit growth is bound to decrease, but the module business will help TW Solar continue to maintain growth.
In the first quarter, the company’s module shipment volume reached 3 GW, and the annual shipment volume is expected to reach 35 GW, ranking among the top five domestically.
GCL Technology
GCL Technology, which is fully committed to granular silicon, is expected to achieve a revenue of CNY 11.19 billion yuan and a net profit attributable to the parent company of CNY 4.09 billion yuan in the first quarter. The shipment volume of polysilicon (including internal sales) was approximately 46,870 tons. Among them, about 30,000 tons of granular silicon, and the rest are silicon rod.
In terms of cost, the production cost of granular silicon for the Xuzhou project is approximately 40.15 yuan/kg; The production cost of granular silicon in the Leshan project is approximately 46.19 yuan/kg, both of which are at the leading level in the industry.
Xinte Energy
In the first quarter of 2021 and 2022, the company has doubled revenue, and the net profit attributable to the parent company increased by more than three times and nine times respectively. In the first quarter of this year, it achieved a revenue of 10.087 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50.29%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 3.467 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.16%, with a significant slowdown in growth.
According to the 2022 annual report, its annual silicon material production capacity has reached 200,000 tons, with a sales volume of 106,700 tons. In the first half of this year, the production capacity will reach 300,000 tons, and sales are expected to further increase. However, under the influence of the decline in silicon material prices, profit growth has been lower than revenue growth.
Daqo Energy, which went public in 2021, faced a “crisis” in the first quarter of 2023. It achieved a revenue of 4.856 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 40.26%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 2.911 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 32.49%.
Unlike the other three, in the first quarter, Daqo not only saw a decline in the average selling price of silicon materials, but also saw a decrease in sales from 38800 tons in the same period last year to 25300 tons, a decrease of 34.9%, resulting in a year-on-year decline in its revenue and net profit attributable to its parent company.
The sluggish sales have also led to a significant increase in its inventory, with a cumulative inventory of over ten thousand tons.
In response, Daqo plans to increase its sales efforts and plans to increase shipments to 61,000 tons in the second quarter, reducing inventory levels to around 5,000 tons.
