Text: Alpha Factory

A number of leading enterprises have raised prices, bringing some spring to the photovoltaic winter.

On February 25, JinkoSolar (688223.SH, JKS. US) announced that the price of TOPCon 182mm bifacial modules increased by RMB 0.02/W, Trina Solar (688599.SH) modules increased by RMB 0.01-0.03/W, and LONGi Green Energy (601012.SH) increased by RMB 0.03-0.05/W.

Today, the average module price has reached RMB 0.69. Industry insiders expect that the price of TOPCon 182mm bifacial modules from major manufacturers will soon exceed RMB 0.7/W.

However, according to the author's understanding, the price increase is not due to the reversal of photovoltaic supply and demand. Driven by the policy of "Deepening the Market-oriented Reform of New Energy Feed-in Tariffs and Promoting the High-quality Development of New Energy", which will be implemented on June 1, the "rush to install" has risen, forcing downstream distributed system installation enterprises to stock up in advance.

In addition, the deeper reason is that the large factories that "lost money" last year tried their best to avoid losing cash flow and had to huddle together to keep warm. The previous fiery "price war" has come to an end for the time being.

It is worth noting that before the big manufacturers who rushed to raise prices this time, JA Solar Technology had made two "first moves".

This month, JA Solar (002459.SZ) raised prices twice. On February 8, the price of 182mm (600WP) modules increased by RMB 0.01/W to RMB 0.66/W. On February 18, its 182mm power modules rose again by 0.02-0.03 yuan/watt to 0.68-0.69 yuan/watt, with a cumulative increase of 0.03-0.04 yuan/watt.

This may indicate that JA Solar is more profit-oriented than other major manufacturers and tries its best to protect its precarious cash flow.

The "family background" bottomed out

The

price increase is one of the major measures taken by JA Solar after its "internal rectification" at the end of last year.

According to industry insiders, the main purpose of this "internal rectification" is to promote the advantages and eliminate the disadvantages and sort out the business line.

Previously, JA Solar's corporate culture was known for its "humanization", and when major factories were reducing costs and increasing efficiency by "slimming", it was rare to hear about JA Solar's layoffs.

It is understood that this is related to the simple and generous "local complex" of Chairman Jin Baofang. The spirit of collectivism, which shares weal and woe and does not abandon or give up, is the cultural background of JA Solar.

However, the flip side of "sharing weal and woe" is that the organization is bloated, people are superficial, and the division of rights and responsibilities is not clear. A person close to JA Solar told me that "leaders work more than employees" at JA Solar. Some people even pointed out that JA Solar's "big pot rice" has obvious characteristics.

Therefore, this "internal rectification" is equivalent to a baptism of thought in JA Solar's management. At present, there is a consensus within JA Solar that the top priority is to go global and quickly conquer overseas markets.

On November 21 last year, JA Solar signed a memorandum of understanding with Egypt and the UAE's Global South Utilities to set up two solar factories, with an estimated total investment of US$210 million.

A month later, on December 19, JA Solar planned to implement a project with an annual output of 6GW of high-efficiency solar cells and 3GW of high-power solar modules in Oman, with an estimated total investment of 3.96 billion yuan.

In addition, JA Solar also plans to build a 2GW module factory in Texas, USA, which will cost about 3.5 billion yuan.

"If you don't go to sea, you will be out", JA Solar's strategy to solve the "involution of life and death" is very clear.

However, it costs money to build factories and production capacity. In addition to the Oman project, JA Solar will need to contribute to the above-mentioned projects.

Before a series of overseas plans, JA Solar's "family base" has gradually bottomed out.

In order to survive the winter, JA Solar applied for a credit line from banks to increase to 72 billion yuan in the first half of 2024, that is, an additional 25 billion yuan of borrowing. Among them, more than 60% are long-term loans of 3-5 years.

According to the plan at that time, if the capital expenditure showed a downward trend, and after further reducing costs and expenses, JA Solar should be able to survive this cycle smoothly.

But in the second half of last year, the tragedy of the photovoltaic battle was beyond imagination.

According to JA Solar's annual report, the non-net profit deducted in 2024 will be a loss of 4.86 billion yuan to 4.16 billion yuan. It is estimated that JA Solar lost 4 billion yuan to 4.7 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, which greatly exceeded the market consensus expectation of a loss of 190 million yuan.

Today's JA Solar can't afford to continue to leverage. From the beginning of last year to the end of the third quarter, its debt-to-asset ratio increased from 64.35% to 72.15%. The total debt is as high as 83.903 billion yuan.

Although there is still a credit line of 36 billion yuan available, it may be difficult to support it if it continues to lose money or make large capital expenditures.

As a result, on February 21 this year, JA Solar announced that it planned to list on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Raising funds in the form of equity may bring lower cost funds to JA Solar.

Source: Alpha Factory GREEN

Original title: Photovoltaic price rises are rising, and JA Solar, which is in the "healing period", unexpectedly took the lead