Sunday, September 16, 2012

Annus horribilis for Wind turbine manufacturers II (Indian, American and Chinese manufacturers)

As Chicken Little (Zach Braff), a piece of sky seems to be falling for wind industry.In my last post, a review of H1 results for European wind OEMs was provided. In this second post, I will deal with all the rest: main Indian, American and Chinese manufacturers.

Suzlon (SUZL.NS)

India’s Suzlon Energy Ltd is the world’s fifth-largest wind turbine maker. Suzlon whose huge borrowings for expansion started to hurt, said it had redeemed its $360 million of foreign currency convertible bonds through various instruments. Also Indian manufacturer is looking to cut 20% manpower costs by end-2012. The delay in raising funds for repayment had worried investors, causing an erosion of more than a fifth of Suzlon’s market value in the last three months.

Suzlon said it used $300 million in new loans and the balance was met through internal accruals and the sale of windfarm assets.

Kenersys

Kenersys specialises in turbines for low to medium wind speeds, and currently offers 2MW, 2.4MW and 2.5MW products. Lately it has been reported by Reuters that Kenersys’ Indian owner –Kalyani- is looking to sell a $300 million stake in the firm to potentially decrease both its own holdings in the firm at those of private equity firm First Reserve.

GE Wind

General Electric (GE) turbine sales fall 37% in Q2 2012 as well, compared with the same quarter in 2011.

Clipper Windpower

United Technologies Corp said on Tuesday it has sold its Clipper Windpower unit to Platinum Equity. United Tech bought a minority stake in Clipper in early 2010, intending to slowly explore the then-fast-growing wind market. But Clipper ran into liquidity problems later that year and United Tech wound up buying the rest of the company, reasoning that was a safer bet than lending money to a firm that had well-financed competitors including General Electric Co, Siemens AG.

Mingyang

The leading Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Mingyang suffered a CNY 27.5 million ($4.3 million) loss in Q2 of this year, compared to a profit of CNY 74.6 million in the same period of 2011.

Sinovel

Sinovel saw its net profits down 96.3% from the same period of last year, to the value of 24.7 million yuan ($3.9 million), in the first half of this year attributed to falling sales prices and reduced sales revenues. Furthermore China’s intensified grid-access management and stricter project approval policy have reduced both the number of wind farms being built and their speed of construction. This has increased price competition and significantly cut sales revenues. In the first six months of 2012, Sinovel had 3.086 billion yuan ($485.7 million) operating revenues, down 42.04% on the same period last year. Sinovel said it had raised overseas sales to the value of 281 million yuan, occupying 9% of the total sales, compared with less than 1% in the first half of 2011.

Goldwind

Goldwind earned -in the first half of 2012- 3.199 billion yuan ($503 million) from the sale of wind turbines and components, down 37.09% year on year with net profits falling by 83%, when compared to the same period last year. Post-tax profits were just 72.1 million yuan ($11.3 million). This was largely due a change in government policy last year that slowed the commissioning of projects in China. Goldwind also attributed the poor performance to ferocious market competition, which reduced the sale prices of wind turbines. Among them, the gross profits of 1.5MW turbines were 10.8% and for 2.5MW turbines amounted to 7.2%.

Though the firm is focusing in operating costs reduction that dropped 29.9% year on year, the rate of decline was smaller than that of the gross revenues, and this led to a big fall in gross profits.

On the contrary, solar seems to be one step ahead the Gartner cycle -if this can be applicable to B2B-, particularly on the slope of enlightenment.

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