Canadian Solar’s profit stood at $126.8m in the third quarter of this year, up from $96.5m in the second quarter but down from $209.3m in the third quarter of 2014.
Gross margin in the third quarter of 2015 was 14.9%, compared to 15.2% in the second quarter of 2015 and 22.9% in the third quarter of 2014.
The company said sequential decrease in gross margin was primarily due to lower margin and lower contribution from the company’s total solutions business partially offset by lower module manufacturing cost.
Revenue was $849.8m in the third quarter of 2015, up 33.5% from the second quarter of 2015 but down 7.1% from the same period last year.
The company said it had total solar module shipments of 1198MW in the third quarter, of which 1150MW were recognized in revenue, compared to 809MW recognized in revenue in the second quarter of 2015 and 770MW recognized in revenue in the third quarter of 2014.
By geography, in the third quarter of 2015, sales to the Americas represented 52.6% of net revenue, sales to Asia represented 41.3%, and sales to Europe and others represented 6.1%, compared with 47.6%, 45.5% and 6.9% respectively, in the second quarter and 71.7%, 20.4%, 7.9% respectively, in the same period last year.
The company is increasing its manufacturing capacity in order to meet expected growth in demand. It will expand its wafer, cell and module capacities to 1GW, 3.4GW and 5.63GW, respectively, by 31 December 2016.
Wafer manufacturing capacity at its Luoyang plant, Henan Province, is expected to reach 1GW by June next year, while cell manufacturing capacity at its Suzhou plant will reach 2GW by the end of the year and 1GW at its Funning plant. In addition, a new 400MW cell manufacturing plant, to be located in south-east Asia, is expected to be commissioned in the second half of 2016.
Module manufacturing capacity expansion by the end of 2016 includes 3GW in Changshu and 1.1GW in Luoyang, while approximately 1.53GW will be at existing and new locations outside China. They include 500MW in Canada, 300MW in Vietnam, 30MW in Indonesia, 300MW in Brazil and 400MW in south-east Asia.
Canadian Solar chairman and chief executive officer Shawn Qu (pictured) said: “This has been a solid quarter as we benefited from strong demand for our modules in the US, Japan, China and India.
“We also made good progress on our energy business, as we expanded our fleet of operating power plants in Japan and in Canada, grew our pipeline of high quality solar projects in Brazil and China, closed the sale of a controlling interest in our 200MW Tranquillity Solar Project in California and secured financing for three of our seven US projects.”
Image: Canadian Solar
