sunpower corporation

Four-year partnership with Technology Credit Union set to bring financial reprieve to firm, forced by pandemic to idle solar factories worldwide and enact sweeping cost cuts.

The slowdown of the global economy in 2020 is ultimately going to impact the guidance and forecasting offered by all PV manufacturers during the first couple of months of the year, prior to the effects of COVID-19.

Updated: High-performance PV manufacturer SunPower has idled all of its manufacturing plants located in the US, Mexico, France, Malaysia and the Philippines to restrict the financial and operational impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ROTH Capital and Wood Mackenzie analysts have updated their outlooks on COVID-19's potential impacts on the US residential and utility-scale solar markets, respectively.

Having already guided expected GAAP net losses of US$145-195 million for 2020, high-performance PV manufacturer, SunPower is planning to make operating cuts to save around US$50 million, due to ongoing impact of COVID-19 and has withdrawn previous financial guidance for the year.

With the spin-off of most of its solar cell and PV module manufacturing operations to new entity Maxeon Solar Technologies (MXT) expected in Q2 2019, SunPower shed new light on the planned capacity expansions of the new offspring in its fourth quarter earnings call.

Firm forecasts fiscal year 2020 GAAP net losses of US$145-195m despite its return to profitability in a year of record roll-out but also ‘disappointing’ execution challenges.

The US-headquartered high-efficiency solar panel maker is to spin off most of its manufacturing operations into a separate public listed entity, Maxeon Solar, which will include monocrystalline silicon wafer producer, Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor (TZS) as an investor.

Based on analysis of 21 PV manufacturers that were listed on various stock exchanges around the world in 2018, PV Tech can reveal the top 10 R&D spenders.

PV Tech has been covering analysis of R&D expenditures of PV manufacturers for over a decade. This blog anticipates some of the key trends set to be fully revealed in the forthcoming edition of technical journal Photovoltaics International.