Revenues at Chinese solar company Trina Solar were $816.9m in the first quarter of 2016, a decrease of 15% on the previous quarter but up more than 46% on the same period last year.
Total shipments were over 1.4GW, down from almost 1.8GW in the last three months of 2015 but an increase on the 1.03GW in the first quarter of 2015.
Trina said the decrease in revenues and shipments was primarily due to “seasonality”, while the year-over-year increase was due to growth in China, USA and India.
Gross profit was $139.7m, compared with $183.3m in the fourth quarter of 2015 and $100.3m in the first quarter of 2015.
The company said the fall was mainly due to lower average selling prices as a result of price decline in almost all major markets and lower downstream revenues that have relatively high margins compared to the upstream module business.
Trina Solar chairman and chief executive officer Jifan Gao said: “During the quarter we continued expanding our overseas manufacturing capacity in select markets to meet global demand, especially from the US and Europe.
“In the first quarter, we acquired a cell factory in the Netherlands and also brought our facility in Thailand online as scheduled.”
Image: Trina Solar
