Solar provider ready for Wall Street IPO

By Xie Yu in Shanghai (China Daily) Updated: 2014-04-01 16:05

She said ET Solar was forced into the second direction in 2008, when its former IPO plan halted after the subprime mortgage crisis struck the US financial market, and it subsequently lacked capital to expand capacity.

ET Solar's revenue hit $500 million, and net profit reached $3 million in 2013, at a time when most Chinese solar companies were still losing money. She said 37 percent of the revenue came from solar station development and that the proportion will expand to more than 50 percent in 2014.

Downstream business is expected to constitute 100 percent of the company's revenue by 2018.

She said the company will soon close a round of private financing, with several funds planning to inject $30 million to $35 million.

Ninety percent of ET Solar's power plant projects are based in the overseas market, She said, noting they are cooperating with the UK's pension fund to build a 70 MW-80 MW solar plant this year.

"The biggest risk of the overseas market comes from uncertainty about policy prospects; however, we would like to bear the risk and work strenuously to make the cake bigger, rather than competing for limited room in the upstream manufacturing links," he said.

Although China has become the world's largest solar market, and the government has set an installation target of 14 GW by the year 2014, She remains cautious about the domestic market.

"Downstream business requires large-scale financing, and private companies are dwarfed by State-owned enterprises in this regard," She said. She's opinion was echoed by Li Xiande, chairman of Jinko Solar. Jinko went public in New York in 2010.

"The authority has been working hard to boost China's solar industry by clarifying rules, but there is still room for improvement regarding creating fair competition. State-owned companies are favored by banks in the domestic market, and financing barriers are blocking some good-quality private companies from competing," he said.