As if things weren’t bad enough for Chinese solar firms, two new developments are casting clouds over this already struggling sector, one overseas and one at home. Overseas, foreign media are reporting that new solar cells with record efficiency developed by First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR), one of the last US players still in business following a recent round of bankruptcies, could significantly undermine Chinese rivals. (English article) The second development has seen a smaller US-listed Chinese firm, JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS) apologize for leaking toxic waste into the environment at its China plant, and promise to clean up the mess. (English article) Let’s look at the First Solar development first, as it probably has the biggest implications. First Solar has showcased a new technology that can turn more than 15 percent of the sunlight it captures into electricity, a huge increase over current top rates that now stand at around 11 percent. Presuming it can commercialize the technology quickly, this kind of efficiency should give the company a huge edge over its Chinese rivals like Suntech (NYSE: STP), Trina (NYSE: TSL) and Yingli (NYSE: YGE), which may have to further lower their already anemic prices to attract customers with their less efficient products. Of course the Chinese companies are also working hard to develop their own higher efficiency products, but unless they can bring some to market soon we might even see First Solar tie up with one or two Chinese producers if demand for the new high-efficiency cells is strong enough. As to JinkoSolar, this story highlights China’s growing concerns about its environment and crackdowns on companies that carelessly dispose of their wastes. I suspect that the larger solar makers are more responsible in their waste disposal, but wouldn’t be surprised to see unexplained rising costs on some of their balance sheets in the next year or two as they install more equipment to dispose of their toxic wastes in more environmentally friendly ways.
Bottom line: New high efficiency solar cells from a US firm will further pressure already weak prices at Chinese players, whose costs for treating their toxic wastes are also likely to rise.
Related postings 相关文章:
◙ US Solar Probe: Get Ready for China Bashing 美国太阳能调查：炮轰中国大潮的前奏
The ongoing confidence crisis in the accounting practices of US-listed China stocks continues, with word that China’s securities regulator may be trying to squash the most commonly used route for Chinese firms to list overseas. Media are quoting industry sources saying the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission has submitted a plan to the nation’s Cabinet asking it to shut down the route, known in the industry as use of Variable Interest Entities or VIEs, or at the very least require all companies that use this gray-area road to overseas listings to vet their financials through the Chinese regulator. (
After a couple of years of a low-key approach and not doing much, China’s anti-monopoly regulator is finally getting to work by investigating China Telecom’s (HKEx: 728; NYSE: CHA) dominance in the country’s broadband market. I’ll admit this is an interesting case, and have to applaud the regulator for following up on complaints by names like China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU) and China Tietong that China Telecom unfairly uses its dominant position to keep others out of the market. (
It’s only 3 months since Alibaba split its consumer-oriented Taobao Website into two units, and already it’s starting to hype the more promising of the two, the B2C-focused Taobao Mall, in what’s no doubt the run-up to an IPO that could come as soon as next year. At the same time, Alibaba.com (HKEx: 1688) is continuing with its battle to win back credibility following a scandal earlier this year, in a clear divergence of strategy for these two sister companies that are both part of Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group. Let’s look at Taobao Mall first. The 3-month-old company has held what was probably its first stand-alone press conference, in which it boasted it expects its sales volume to double to 200 billion yuan next year, or about $31 billion, and where it announced a new strategy where it will open its site to other online retailers like Wal-Mart-invested (NYSE: WMT) Yihaodian in addition to traditional retail names like Dell. (Nasdaq: DELL) (
There’s a couple of interesting new hires out there from Chinese tech firms Huawei and Lenovo (HKEx: 992), which are both clearly aimed at boosting their global operations. Whether either will succeed is a different matter, though both look like good ideas to me at first glance. First Huawei, which has hired IBM (NYSE: IBM) as a brand strategy consultant for its push into tablet PCs, smartphones and cloud computing. (
Despite a frosty environment for new initial public offerings, China’s largest brokerage CITIC Securities (Shanghai: 600030) has announced its moving ahead with a planned IPO worth nearly $2 billion, in what looks like a good bet to breathe some new life into an otherwise moribund market. (
ext year, with full commercial service as soon as 2013 if the telecoms regulator agrees. That’s all fine and good for people looking ahead to 2013, but what’s missing here is any update from the talkative Wang on current talks to build an iPhone for China Mobile’s struggling 3G network, based on a problematic technology called TD-SCDMA. Reports have been rife for a while that China Mobile was close to a deal for a 3G iPhone, after it confirmed last year that such talks were taking place. But Wang’s latest silence looks like either he’s learned to keep quiet on sensitive matters, or more likely the 3G iPhone talks have hit a stumbling block, perhaps due to technology issues. If that’s the case, China Mobile and its stagnant bottom line may have to wait a while still for an iPhone that could bring new life to its 3G and 4G businesses.
With all the buzz out there about a looming China Internet bubble, new downwardly revised guidance from Perfect World (Nasdaq: PWRD), one of China’s more innovative and outward looking online game operators, looks like a potentially worrisome warning flag. According to its newly released latest estimate, the company expects to earn around 720 million yuan in revenue for the third quarter, or about $110 million, down by a sizeable 8 percent from its previous forecast given out just 3 weeks ago for about 780 million yuan. (
After several years of near-nonstop hype about the potential of e-commerce in China, notorious China short seller Carson Block and leading e-commerce operator Alibaba Group are both finally waking up to the same reality that much of the talk is vastly exaggerated. In many ways, this reality should come as no surprise to anyone, as even bullish market watchers say that all online sales in China stood at a relatively modest $50 billion last year. So even if they double over the next 2-3 years, we’re still only looking at $100 billion in overall sales by 2015 — a fraction of levels in developed markets like the US and hardly enough to support the huge number of online merchants that have exploded onto the scene in China with billions of dollars in new funding over the last year. According to one media report, Carson Block, who does business through his firm, Muddy Waters, said many Western investors see a small segment of newly wealthy Chinese consumers in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, and mistakenly extrapolate that to the entire nation of 1.3 billion, even though a big majority of those people live on annual incomes of $2,000 or less. (
