Sharp loses the photovoltaic industry

Sharp is known to the market as the “Father of LCD” image, but it is often ignored by the public for its status as a leading solar cell company. However, this is no longer important because Sharp’s glory in the manufacture of PV modules is gradually fading. The local market is also slowly engulfed by Chinese competitors.

Redemption

"One of the world's leading solar energy companies," Sharp (SHARP) has advertised itself on the solar panel page of its global website. Like some clean energy companies, Sharp has painted a beautiful vision on the publicity page, that is, full solar energy. Utilization will change the deterioration of the global environment and so on. However, Sharp is getting far away from this goal.

On February 3, 2015, the Canadian Solar Power Group released a news report that it will acquire Sharp's subsidiary Recurrent Energy for US$265 million (RMB1.656 billion). This company was acquired by Sharp in September 2010, when the purchase amount was 305 million US dollars in cash (about 1.9 billion yuan).

Recurrent Energy is a U.S. photovoltaic project development company with outstanding performance in the solar project development market in North America. Over the past few years, the company has delivered more than 682 megawatts of solar power plant projects. According to public sources, Recurrent Energy already has 2 GW of European and North American PV project reserves when it was acquired by Sharp in 2010.

For this high-quality asset, Sharp's transfer from the original purchase price showed some urgent pressure. Kyodo News reported earlier this year that Sharp's performance in fiscal year 2014 (April 1, 2014 - March 31, 2015) will once again sink into a net loss situation, with a net loss of 20 billion yen (approximately 10.5 percent). Billion ***) around. Therefore, some analysts believe that if the company puts the income generated by the sale of Recurrent Energy subsidiary assets into the 2014 fiscal year profit and loss statement, or will reverse the loss situation, it is Sharp's eagerness to sell Recurrent Energy before the end of March this year.

This performance "Redemption" operation is not the first time for Sharp. On July 11 last year, Sharp announced the transfer of its entire equity interest in the joint venture ESE (Enel Green Power Sharp Solar Energy), which is engaged in the solar power business in Europe, and announced that it will withdraw from the European solar power generation business. At the same time, Sharp also shut down its PV module assembly plants in the United Kingdom and the United States. It hopes to adjust the energy solution division of the company's PV business and optimize its performance.

However, these "redemption" initiatives did not bring much improvement to Sharp. On February 3, 2015, Sharp released the first three quarters of 2014 report (April-December 2014) that the company’s energy solutions division had a loss of US$14 million in the third quarter of the fiscal year.

Past glory

"Japan Photovoltaic Manufacturing Corporation is the earliest awakening in the world, but now it is catching up with late collections and gradually being overtaken." Hong Wei, chief photovoltaic industry researcher of the China Energy Economics Institute, told the new financial reporter.

Sharp's involvement in the solar industry can be traced back to 1959 when the company began to develop solar cells. In the 1970s, Japan's photovoltaic manufacturing industry began to really start. "In terms of photovoltaic manufacturing, the United States started 10 years later in Japan and Germany is 10 years later in the United States," said Hong Wei.

As early as 2003, Sharp began to set up factories to produce photovoltaic modules in the United States and Europe, built the largest solar cell fitting company in the United States around 2004, and installed its own solar panels in skyscrapers in Manchester, England. The curtain wall also invested in the establishment of its own solar energy research institute. In 2006, Sharp expanded its production capacity in the city of Katsuragi, Japan, to 600 MW/year, which was the largest PV module manufacturing base in the world.

Xiao Jian, a researcher of China Investment Advisor New Energy Industry Group, believes that the rise of Japanese PV companies relies on their utmost attention to technology research. According to the “2010-2015 China Solar Photovoltaic Power Industry Investment Analysis and Prospect Forecast Report” released by China Investment Advisor, In 2009, among the top 11 PV patent holders in the world, Japanese companies occupied five seats.

However, Hong Wei believes that having innovative technologies does not mean that it can maintain permanent competitiveness in the industry. In different stages of industrial development, science and technology play different roles. “The current photovoltaic manufacturing industry does not rely solely on technological innovation to promote profit growth, but also through industrial integration, expansion of scale, and control of costs. So Japanese PV companies including Sharp will gradually fade away and give way to competition from China. opponent."

According to Bloomberg New Energy Financial Data, as of the second quarter of 2014, the top six Chinese PV manufacturing companies accounted for 42.1% of the Japanese market, namely JA Solar, Trina Solar, Hanwha Solar, Art Si, Yingli, Yan Hui Energy.

The major reason why Chinese PV companies aggressively entered the Japanese market is that in July 2012, Japan began to implement a renewable energy on-grid tariff subsidy policy of 42 Yen per kilowatt-hour (US$ 0.5), which encourages domestic solar energy investment with a generous subsidy policy to reduce The country’s dependence on nuclear energy, but before this, the Japanese market’s Chinese products are still very small, mainly Japanese products such as Sharp and Kyocera occupy dominant positions.

"The production costs of Japan's photovoltaic manufacturing companies have been very high, coupled with the weakness of the European economy, the changes or cancellation of solar subsidy policies in major European countries, and the sharp decline in solar panel market prices, under the turmoil of "internal and external problems," Sharp's solar business has nearly collapsed," Hong Wei told a new financial reporter.

On Sharp's solar business website, the contents of its memorabilia section were only updated to 2011, and what happened in the next 4 years may be a reality that Sharp does not want to write, but everything is not over yet.