Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), the nation’s biggest solar cell maker, posted a net loss of NT$787 million (US$26.83 million), or a net loss per share of NT$1.79, for the last quarter as chronic oversupply and the weak global economy drove down prices and demand.
The company’s results, released in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, were worse than the estimate of a net loss of NT$599 million, or a loss per share of NT$1.37, made by Fubon Securities Investment Services Co (富邦投顧) analyst Daniel Tzeng (曾健銓).
In the first nine months of the year, the Greater Tainan-based company’s net loss was NT$3.995 billion, including an impairment loss of NT$164 million from US wafer silicon subsidiary AE Polysilicon Corp. The figure was bigger than the loss of NT$517.68 million it posted for the same period last year, company data showed.
The global solar power industry is facing lower government subsidies, weak demand and falling prices. On Monday, German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG announced it is to give up its loss-making solar business, while Solyndra of the US won court approval for its bankruptcy plans.
Tzeng said the biggest problem facing the industry was oversupply.
“Most solar companies are still struggling in the morass of losses and we still have not seen major companies reducing their capacity yet, suggesting that the oversupply issue is likely to extend to 2013,” he wrote in a note yesterday.
Motech chief executive Chang Ping-heng (張秉衡) said early this month that order “visibility is very low” in this industry, adding that it had worsened to less than one month from two months since the industrial slump in the first half of last year.
“I do not think there will be a significant change in the fourth quarter. At least, I do not see any sign of a reversal [of current stagnation],” Chang said at the time, adding that the fourth quarter was a slow time for solar-panel installations because of cold weather.
Lately, customers have put orders on hold, awaiting the first ruling of the EU’s anti-dumping investigation into Chinese solar companies and amid an inventory-digestion period, Chang said.
Gloomy prospects reflected on the latest report by market researcher NPD Solarbuzz yesterday.
The report said solar photovoltaic (PV) equipment book-to-ratio fell into negative territory in the last quarter, which has never been seen since the industry began to take off in the mid-2000s.
NPD Solarbuzz said that was a result of order cancellations and push-outs worth US$3 billion.
“Negative book-to-bill metrics suggest that most legacy PV capacity expansion plans have now been canceled. This satisfies one of the first requirements for the PV industry to rebound from its overcapacity-driven downturn phase,” Solarbuzz analyst Ray Lian wrote in the report.
PV equipment spending is expected to decline by more than 66 percent this year, and is expected to remain at pre-2008 levels of US$5 billion next year, NPD Solarbuzz projected.
Equipment spending is not forecast to rebound until at least 2014, the report said.
Additional reporting by Kevin Chen
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
RSS