The annual loss of photovoltaic leader LONGi Green Energy (601012.SH) reached more than 8 billion yuan.

On the evening of January 16, LONGi Green Energy announced that according to the preliminary calculation of the financial department, it is expected that the net loss attributable to shareholders of listed companies in 2024 will be 8.2 billion to 8.8 billion yuan, and the net loss after deducting non-recurring gains and losses will be 8.3 billion to 8.9 billion yuan.

This is the first annual loss for LONGi since 2013. In the first few years of the high price of the photovoltaic industry chain, LONGi Green Energy, as an integrated leader, has repeatedly achieved record high net profit margins. In 2022, LONGi's net profit reached 14.812 billion yuan, and in 2023, its net profit will drop slightly to 10.751 billion yuan.

According to the calculation of the interface news reporter, in the five years from 2019 to 2023, LONGi Green Energy earned a total of 48.481 billion yuan.

In terms of single-quarter losses, in the first three quarters of last year, LONGi Green Energy lost 2.35 billion yuan, 2.893 billion yuan, and 1.261 billion yuan respectively. Based on this calculation, the company expects a loss of 1.695 billion to 2.295 billion yuan in the fourth quarter.

LONGi Green Energy said in the announcement that due to the intensification of competition in the industry, the company's output of BC second-generation products accounted for a very low proportion, the prices and gross profit margins of PERC and TOPCon products continued to decline, the operating capacity utilization rate was limited, the technology iteration led to an increase in asset impairment provisions, and the investment income of polysilicon companies with equity participation incurred losses, resulting in periodic losses in operating performance.

PERC is a traditional photovoltaic technology, and BC and TOPCon are a new generation of photovoltaic technology.

"In 2024, the new installed capacity of global photovoltaics will continue to grow, but the imbalance between supply and demand in the industry is prominent." LONGi Green Energy thinks.

At the same time, the company mentioned that in the production capacity clearance and rapid technology iteration cycle, its BC second-generation technology and forward-looking research and development have made continuous breakthroughs, the conditions for the large-scale development of BC technology are mature, and the advantageous production capacity in the United States has been put into production and achieved profitability.

However, Jiemian News noticed that in the second half of last year, LONGi Green Energy executives mentioned on many public occasions that the mass production of BC products was less than expected.

At the third-quarter results briefing, Zhong Baoshen, chairman of LONGi Green Energy, said that on the one hand, in the first three quarters of this year, LONGi Green Energy's shipments to the U.S. market were 1.6 GW, which was far behind the previous and had a poor share in the high-profit U.S. market. On the other hand, the initial mass production of the first-generation BC module products encountered delivery difficulties and unsmooth mass production, and the production problem was solved in September last year, but the subsequent problems such as mismatch between production and sales time occurred, and the company's inventory impairment greatly affected the performance.

LONGi Green Energy was listed in 2012 and has since grown into a leading wafer and module manufacturer in China. From 2020 to 2022, LONGi ranked first in the world in terms of modules for three consecutive years.

However, due to the lack of selection of the current mainstream TOPCon technology in the market and the impairment of large-scale production capacity assets, the development pace of LONGi Green Energy has slowed down much in the past two years.

Zhong Baoshen mentioned earlier that the company's shipments in the second half of 2024 will be significantly higher than the first half of the year.

However, in industry body PV-Tech's 2024 global module shipment forecast, LONGi fell to fourth, behind JinkoSolar (688223.SH), Trina Solar (68859.SH) and JA Solar (002459.SZ). In 2023, LONGi Green Energy will also rank second.

In October last year, LONGi Green Energy released the Hi-MO X10 distributed module product based on HPBC second-generation battery technology. Zhong Baoshen said that LONGi Green Energy is accelerating the pace of building BC production capacity through various models such as technology licensing and equity cooperation to meet the urgent market demand for BC series products.

LONGi Green Energy's BC products are expected to start ramp-up in 2025, and according to the plan, its HPBC 2.0 production capacity will form about 50 GW by the end of this year.

Zhong Baoshen hopes that by 2026, all of LONGi's production capacity will be migrated to the second generation of BC and even the next generation of products. Combined with the existing production capacity, LONGi's BC production capacity is expected to reach about 100 GW in 2026.

"In 2025, BC products will bring greater help to LONGi's performance. LONGi's '39 days' have passed. Zhong Baoshen previously said.

In addition to LONGi Green Energy, on January 15, the veteran module manufacturer EGing Optoelectronics (600537.SH) also released a performance forecast, expecting its net profit attributable to the parent company to be 1.9 billion to 2.3 billion yuan last year, compared with a profit of 68 million yuan in the same period last year, and a non-net profit loss of 1.89 billion to 2.29 billion yuan, compared with a profit of 91 million yuan in the same period last year.