Japanese solar cell and module manufacturer Toyo Solar has posted a 177% year-on-year increase in revenues in the first quarter of this year, following a year in which the company brought online new cell and module manufacturing facilities.
The company’s revenue hit US$142.8 million in the first quarter of this year, well over double that of the first quarter of 2025, and drove earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$48.1 million, more than 20 times that of the EBITDA reported in the first quarter of 2025.
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Toyo Solar said that these strong financial performances were “primarily driven by higher solar cell and solar module sales volumes” in recent quarters. Last year, the company started work at a solar cell processing plant in Ethiopia, the annual nameplate capacity of which was doubled to 4GW, and in the fourth quarter of 2025, the company started production work at a module manufacturing plant in Houston in the US state of Texas. The strong growth in both cell and module production last year are shown in the graph below.
This increase in cell and module production comes as the company shifts its focus to the US; in January, Toyo secured US-sourced polysilicon for use in its manufacturing, and earlier this year, Toyo chief strategy officer Rhone Resch told PV Tech Premium that the company is carrying out a strategy known as ‘Made in America for America’.
Looking ahead, the company’s leadership expects both these strong financial metrics, and this focus on the US, to continue in the months to come.
“Following our strong first-quarter performance, we are reaffirming our full-year 2026 outlook, which reflects our confidence in the sustained US demand for high-efficiency solar solutions,” said Toyo chairman and CEO Takahiko Onozuka.
“We anticipate solar cell shipments to reach between 5.5GW and 5.8GW in 2026, bolstered by our scaled manufacturing capabilities,” he added; this compares to 4.5GW of cells shipped in 2025. “Furthermore, as we deepen our downstream presence, we expect solar module shipments to reach 1GW to 1.3GW this year.”
Involvement in US AD/CVD compliance
However, the company’s shift towards the US has not come without objection; last week, a coalition of US solar manufacturers asked the US Department of Commerce to initiate an inquiry into Toyo Solar and Origin Solar Manufacturing, over concerns that their Ethiopian cell manufacturing facilities, in fact, use Chinese-made cells.
Resch rejected the claims, telling PV Tech that “all solar cells manufactured in Ethiopia use exclusively polysilicon supplied from the US and Malaysia”.
The US manufacturers’ objections, and Toyo’s use of an Ethiopian facility to supply the US solar market, are just the latest parts of the ongoing antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) investigation into the US solar supply chain.
Commerce has already investigated shipments coming to the US from India, Indonesia and Laos, as manufacturers look to establish manufacturing bases outside of China to facilitate sales of cells and modules to the US; the consequence has been Commerce’s investigation of product shipments from a number of countries around the world, now including Ethiopia, which BloombergNEF’s Matthew Hales likened to a game of “whack-a-mole” earlier this year.
