GS 高盛：中国能源行业 深度研究－替代性能源公司研究  47页

October 19, 2007     47页

China: Energy: Alternative Energy

Solar Power: Forget the noise and focus on LT winners

 

Table of contents
Determining long-term winners: STP our top pick; YGE and TSL emerging contenders 2
Suntech Power is our top pick; initiating with a Sell on LDK Solar and Neutral on Trina Solar and JA Solar 4
Growing pains 5
Picking the winners by assessing the drivers of long-term success 6
3Q earnings preview: Strong top line growth but margins to dip 11
Valuation 12
Suntech Power (STP, Buy): Converting solar power into growth 14
LDK Solar (LDK, Sell): Betting the house on upstream 18
Yingli Green Energy (YGE, Neutral): Near-term growth priced in 22
Trina Solar (TSL, Neutral): Capped by supply bottlenecks 26
JA Solar (JASO, Neutral): In transition 30
Solarfun (SOLF, Neutral): Getting back on track 34
Appendix I: Industry Highlights 38
Appendix II: PV solar basics 43
Disclosures 44
EXPECTED NEWS FLOW/EVENTS
DATE EVENT COMMENT
November 2007
YGE, JASO, TSL and SOLF 3Q2007 results
announcements
We expect strong top line growth fueled by robust volumes, but anticipate
flattish gross margins given firm feedstock prices.
November 2007
LDK 3Q2007 results announcement. We expect it will
release an auditing report on its inventory levels.
We expect net earnings to increase 36% qoq driven by a 42% qoq growth in
shipments.
November 15, 2007
STP 3Q2007 results announcement.
We expect net earnings to increase 18% qoq driven by a 20% qoq growth in
shipments.
Source: Company data, Gao Hua Securities Research estimates.
The prices in the body of this report are based on the market close of October 16, 2007.
Determining long-term winners: STP our top pick; YGE and TSL
emerging contenders
We believe that long-term success in China’s solar power industry will be determined by
scaleable distribution, cost efficiency, and financial flexibility and discipline; further, the
ability to smoothly ramp-up capacity and secure polysilicon supplies are necessary to ride
out near-term supply tightness (see Exhibits 1 and 2).
Accordingly, we have developed a matrix of drivers of long-term success to determine
which companies have the highest potential to emerge as world-class competitors in the
solar power space: STP emerges as the most likely to succeed, whereas YGE and TSL are
emerging contenders; SOLF and LDK have substantial room for improvement before they
can be considered first-tier players.