Falling orders drive Meyer Burger to first half loss
Meyer Burger Technology has confirmed falling orders for solar cell equipment in the first half of the year, hit by US tariffs and a surplus of production equipment and leading to a larger loss than this time last year
The solar panel business in China, the largest end customer, was week, and a global surplus in production capacity for multicrystalline wafers, cells and modules was accompanied by supply bottlenecks for high-efficiency monocrystalline panels. As a result cell and module manufacturers often postponed major investment decisions in new technologies.
However the medium and long-term growth outlook for the solar industry has continued to improve as concerns over climate change grow. Solar power is already the most affordable technology in many regions today. After a lull in growth during the last 12 months due to restructuring of funding for China’s solar market, significant double-digit expansion in global installed solar power output is now forecast to return, says Meyer Burger. It sees more than half of this capacity being installed outside China, with a signficant growth in local PV production.
“Against the backdrop of this slump in the market, we focused on implementing our strategic priorities: further developing our leading production solutions for heterojunction (HJT) and SmartWire Connection Technology (SWCT). The first manufacturing line will begin series production soon,” said Hans Brändle, CEO of Meyer Burger.
“We believe the major market interest in our technology will translate into real orders. However, the significant decline and unattractive margins in standard PV business have prompted us to review the originally planned relocation of some of our production to China and to adapt our sales focus. We intend to concentrate our future PV business activities mainly at our largest location, Hohenstein-Ernstthal (Germany).”
Meyer Burger saw incoming orders of CHF 94.0m ($94m), compared to CHF 137.9m in H1 last year. Net sales dropped by almost half to CHF 122.6m compared to CHF 232.3million in H1 2018, adjusted by CHF 193.4 m for the recent sale of its wafer equipment business. Operating income was also down by half at CHF 63.1m (CHF 120.1 million in H1 2018), leading to an overall loss of CHF 4.5m, down from a loss of CHF 4.0m in H1 2018.
Asia remains the most important sales region for Meyer Burger, accounting for 73% of net sales during the first half of 2019 (68% in H1 2018), while Europe accounted for 21% (28% in H1 2018) and the Americas provided approx. 6% (3% in H1 2018).
The company has a strategic deal with Oxfrod PV to supply equipment for its perovskite cells at a productionlant in Germany.
“Meyer Burger will continue to make substantial investments in research and development in order to remain a market leader in the premium segment” said Brändle. “With our focus on developing high-efficiency industrial HJT production solutions, we have achieved record cell efficiency of over 24.7% in commercialized HJT systems. We are already working on a roadmap for HJT cells with even higher levels of efficiency. The collaboration with REC will lead to a quantum lead in the manufacture of HJT / SmartWire modules.”
Related Meyer Burger articles
- COMPANY SEES HALF YEAR LOSS
- OXFORD PV CLOSES $90M ROUND FOR PEROVSKITE SOLAR CELL PRODUCTION
- COMPANY SELLS OFF SWISS WAFER BUSINESS
- FIRST LARGE-SCALE DEAL FOR SMARTWIRE PV EQUIPMENT
- 100 MORE JOBS CUT TO FOCUS ON CHINA
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
