Touting orderbook visibility of about 80% for 2023, led by overseas orders, leading Chinese solar PV manufacturer JinkoSolar Holding has raised its annual shipment guidance for modules to 70 GW and 75 GW, after having shipped 17.7 GW in Q2/2023, reflecting a sequential increase of 36.2%.
Combined with 13.04 GW modules shipped in Q1/2023 and 17.7 GW in Q2/2023, the company has already shipped over 30.7 GW capacity within initial 6 months of this year (see JinkoSolar Shipped 13 GW+ Solar Modules In Q1/2023).
According to the management, "We are optimistic that the stabilization of prices along the supply chain will stimulate pent-up demand gradually. We raise our module shipment guidance for 2023 to be in the range of 70 to 75 GW."
N-type module shipments in Q2 comprised 10.4 GW, which the group says makes it the 1st module company in the industry to deliver 10 GW of these modules in a single quarter. It also shipped 850 MW of cells and wafers during the reporting quarter, reflecting a sequential increase of 28.5% and an annual jump of 76.7%.
Increase in solar module shipments boosted its revenues for the quarter that amounted to $4.23 billion, having gone up 31.5% QoQ and 72.5% YoY.
Its gross margin of 15.6% dropped from 17.3% from Q1 due to increase in inventory provision, but went up from 14.7% in the previous year owing to decrease in the cost of raw materials.
"We are pleased to report solid growth as we overcame volatility in supply chain prices and end demand thanks to our excellent marketing network, high quality products, and highly effective supply chain management," said JinkoSolar Chairman and CEO Xiande Li. "The low prices of modules also led to a surge in module demand in some overseas markets. We expect production and sales in the PV market to rebound in the second half of 2023."
Betting on n-type technology, JinkoSolar expects these modules to account for close to 60% of the company's total module shipments in 2023. For Q3/2023, it guides for module shipments to grow to between 10 GW and 21 GW.
The management has also offered an upward revision of its manufacturing capacity, now expecting mono wafer, solar cell and module capacity to reach 85 GW, 90 GW and 110 GW, respectively, up from the previous guidance of 75 GW, 75 GW and 90 GW.
JinkoSolar targets its n-type mass production cell efficiency to improve to 25.8% by the end of 2023.
"As we continue to invest in N-type capacity expansion overseas in the second half of 2023, we expect to reach an integrated capacity of over 12 GW overseas by the end of 2023, with the production capacity of N-type accounting for over 75%," it added.
In the US, it expects to set up 1 GW of n-type module production capacity with production starting in September 2023.