SolarWorld Q1/2016 Results

German PV module, cell and wafer manufacture SolarWorld confirmed its preliminary first quarter results that it shared earlier this month for its final Q1/2016 financials (see SolarWorld Q1/2016).

Shipment improvement on YoY basis
The total shipments for SolarWorld came in at 341 MW, leading to 62% increased shipments from 210 MW in Q1/2015. This was the largest volume that the company has ever achieved in a first quarter. Modules and kits shipments went up 65% YoY to 334 MW, while wafers and cells came down to 7 MW from 8 MW last year, a decrease of 12.5%.

Regional contribution to total revenue
It improved its revenues for the reporting quarter to €212.6 million, up by over 42% from the first quarter of 2015, but a drop of 8.2% sequentially. The US continued to be its strongest market contributing €109.2 million, making up 51.3% of the total revenue, followed by rest of Europe at €56.4 million and Germany at €28.8 million. The large scale orders for projects in the US and France helped improve the shipment. Overall, the foreign quota of revenue dropped to 86.4%, as compared to 91.2% in the year before.

EBITDA for the quarter was €2.1 million, which is down 28% from €2.9 million in Q1/2015, while EBIT went down to €-9.7 million from €-8 million, an increase of 13.7%.

Going forward, it reiterated its earlier 2016 guidance of generating up to €1 billion in revenue, improving its EBITDA, adding that EBIT 'should be positive', coming to a low double-digit million range.