Major PV energy provider (PVEP) SunPower reported strong fourth quarter 2014 and full-year financial results.
SunPower reported fourth quarter GAAP revenue of US$1,164.2 million, up from US$662.7 million in the previous quarter.
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Total GAAP revenue for 2014 was US$3.027 billion, up from US$2.507 billion in 2013.
“In EMEA, we saw volume increases and stable pricing in our distributed generation business and we are close to completing the restructuring of our European DG business aimed at improving profitability,” said Tom Werner, SunPower president and CEO. “In power plants, our strong position in France continues to yield promising momentum and solid bookings. In South Africa, construction of our 86MWac Prieska project remains on plan as we ramp our 160MW South African panel manufacturing facility to support our large-scale project efforts in this region.
“We remain very positive on Asia Pacific. Our high efficiency panel technology with industry leading quality and reliability has allowed us to maintain a leading position in the Japanese rooftop market. In China, we are seeing significant traction through our manufacturing and project development joint ventures. With 250MW of expected installations in 2015 and a pipeline of more than 4GW, these two joint ventures uniquely position SunPower to participate meaningfully in the world's largest solar power market,” added Werner.
Capacity constrained
SunPower will remain capacity constrained again throughout 2015. Production reached 1,233MW, while capacity was 1,300MW in 2014.
Production capacity is only increasing by 140MW in 2015, with 25MW being added at Fab 2, 75MW at Fab 3 and 40MW at Fab4, which was said to be on track to start production mid-year.
The latest Maxeon solar cell technology is also being migrated to Fab 2 from Fab 4 in 2015, though further details were not provided in the earnings call.