Yingli Green Energy Q1 Loss Widens, Revenue Up

(RTTNews) - Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd (YGE), a supplier of vertically integrated photovoltaic module, Friday said its loss for the first quarter widened from the prior year, despite a rise in revenues, as costs increased. The stock gained close to 3 percent in pre-market activity, as shipments of photovoltaic modules increased significantly.

Liansheng Miao, Chairman and CEO, said, "We are pleased to see that shipments of PV modules in the first quarter of 2015 increased by over 19.6% year over year, marking a historically high record of first quarter growth for the Company. This record growth was highlighted by, among others, robust demand from Japan and emerging markets such as Southeast Asia and Latin America."

Net loss attributable to the company widened to 363.2 million yuan or $58.6 million, from 341.8 million yuan in the first quarter of 2014.

Loss per ADS was 2 yuan or $0.32, compared to a loss of 2.18 yuan per share in the previous year.

On an adjusted basis, loss per ordinary share and per ADS was 1.94 yuan or $0.31 in the first quarter of 2015.

On average, five analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a loss of $0.24 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Total net revenues rose to 2.91 billion yuan or $468.7 million from 2.69 billion yuan reported last year. Analysts expected revenues of $454.60 million for the quarter.

Sales of PV modules generated 2.68 billion yuan, up from 2.54 billion yuan in the previous year.

Sales of PV systems increased to 62.51 million yuan from 23.96 million yuan.

Total photovoltaic or PV module shipments increased to 754.2 MW from 630.8 MW in the first quarter of 2014, and exceeded the company's guidance.

Total cost of revenues increased to 2.49 billion yuan from 2.27 billion yuan, amid increased costs fro both PV modules sales and PV systems sales.

Looking ahead to the second quarter, the company expects its PV module shipments to be in the estimated range of 720MW to 750MW, of which 40MW to 60MW of PV modules will be shipped to the company's downstream PV projects.

For the year, Yingli Green expects its total PV module shipments to be approximately 3.6GW, of which 400-600MW of PV modules will be shipped to the company's own downstream PV projects.

YGE closed down 0.9 percent on Thursday at $1.06, and added 2.8 percent in pre-market activity.