Chinese solar panel manufacturer JinkoSolar announced its unaudited financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020 earlier today. It was another successful quarter, but not without its challenges.
The company reports shipment of solar modules during the quarter reached 5,117MW – up 53.8% year over year – and total revenue of USD $1.29 billion, up 17.2% year-over year.
“JinkoSolar delivered solid results for the quarter with total revenue, total solar module shipments and gross margin all within our guidance range,” said CEO Kangpin Chen.
Looking to this quarter, the company expects total solar module shipments to be in the range of 5.5 GW to 6.0 GW. For the full year 2020, JinkoSolar estimates total solar module shipments to be in the range of 18.5 GW to 19 GW. That would be a big jump on 2019 when Jinko shipped 14.3 GW, making it the top solar panel manufacturer for global shipments last year by quite a margin.
Total revenue for the final quarter of this year is expected to be in the range of US$1 .31 billion to US$1.43 billion.
JinkoSolar Production Capacity
As at September 30, 2020 , the company’s in-house annual production capacities were:
- Mono wafer: 20GW
- Multi wafer: 3.5GW
- Cell: 11GW (10.2GW for PERC and 800MW for N-type cells)
- Module: 25GW
JinkoSolar, which has 9 production facilities globally, says it expects its annual solar panel production capacity to reach 30 GW by the end of this year.
Jinko Tussles With Materials Shortages
Q3 wasn’t all smooth sailing – Mr. Chen noted a shortage of raw materials that increased production costs.
While not mentioning the materials in the announcement1, one of them would likely have been polysilicon. One of world’s largest producers of polysilicon, GCL Poly, shuttered a major production facility in China in July after a series of explosions occurred at the plant – and there was also a small fire at a Daqo polysilicon plant the same month. The knock-on effects pushed polysilicon prices up from below USD $7/kg (spot price) to around $12.50/kg, but the situation appears to be improving.
Another challenge module manufacturers have been facing is a shortage of glass for solar panels. Reuters recently reported solar glass prices have doubled in six months, and the shortage of solar glass is expected to persist through the first half of 2021.
Mr. Chen stated the company is expecting significant increase in demand next year and the raw materials bottleneck in the third and fourth quarter this year should gradually improve.
Mr. Chen said among the strategies used to address shortages, JinkoSolar’s R&D team “identified and applied substitute materials to help ease supply chain volatility.” Again, no further detail was provided in the announcement. He also noted the impact of US dollar fluctuations and higher logistics and transportation costs during the quarter.
Jinko panels have sold well in Australia given their reliability and performance to this point and comparatively low pricing. JinkoSolar panel reviews here on SolarQuotes have generally been favourable and the company is currently listed on SQ’s trusted solar brands chart.
Footnotes
- But brought up in the earnings call – transcript here ↩
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If Jinko’s 2020 production was used in Australian solar farms it would generate more energy than Victoria’s entire brown coal fleet. And that’s assuming the brown coal power stations don’t break down. The output profile would be different, though.