SMA Solar has forecast financial losses and further restructuring measures in 2025, as it responds to falling sales and a “challenging” market for residential and commercial renewable energy installations.
The German inverter producer said it expects earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) for the current fiscal year to drop to losses of between €30-80 million (US$34.9-93.1 million). It was previously forecasting positive EBITDA of €70-80 million.
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SMA also said its forecast sales would drop “slightly” from between €1,500-1,550 million to between €1,450-1,500 million.
The company said this forecast adjustment would see its assets “affected by additional one-time effects such as inventory devaluations, impairments of capitalised R&D projects and fixed assets like production lines”.
SMA management expects those negative one-time effects to be between €170-220 million.
The company put this change in fortunes down to the “ongoing challenging market environment for the residential, commercial and industrial market segments.”
In its financial report for the first half of 2025, SMA recorded losses of €42.4 million due to weak performance in the residential and commercial and industrial (C&I) markets. At the time, CEO Jürgen Reinert said that slowing growth rates in Germany and “competition and price pressures from Asian suppliers” had affected his company’s performance.
This has combined with market uncertainty in the US and unstable import tariff rates, which the company said had affected its bottom line.
SMA Solar is engaged in restructuring efforts to address these dynamics, which it said include “adjusting and refining the product portfolio as well as the depth of value creation, making greater use of our international locations and delivering a more efficient service strategy.”
It said it hopes to save €100 million in annual costs from the restructuring.
The inverter market at large has suffered from challenging residential and C&I markets. SMA and its Western competitors, like Enphase Energy and SolarEdge, have been sustaining low profits or losses over the last year as demand has waned and market dynamics have shifted. All of the companies have announced restructuring, executive personnel changes or job cuts over the last year and a half.
In November last year, SolarPower Europe called on the EU to support the continent’s inverter producers to prevent an industry collapse similar to the bloc’s solar module manufacturing business.
