A study on the financial performances of solar cell companies

• Main Authors: Chiang, Anne, 蔣依倩
• Other Authors: Hsieh, Ming Hua
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93042740517975820303

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 國際經營管理碩士班(IMBA) === 97 === The global warming issue becomes more severe in the past decade. In 2007, the former Vice President of United State Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, which exposes the myths and misconceptions regarding global warming, won two Oscars. Al Gore said "It is the most dangerous challenge we've ever faced, but it is also the greatest opportunity we have had to make changes." To solve the problem, actions are taken. One of the most popular topics is the usage of renewable energy. Governments have aggressive investment plans in the renewable energy sector. Especially of those economic stimulus plans, we find that renewable energy investment plays a significant role. Taiwan government also has aggressive investment plans in the renewable energy sector. On April 23, 2009, Executive Yuan of Taiwan approved the proposal “Green Energy Industry Development Plan.” On June 13, 2009, Taiwan’s legislative Yuan passed in final reading a renewable energy bill aimed at spurring clean energy investment and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Solar energy is one of the main streams of renewable energy technology development in Taiwan. Since the technologies applied in the production of solar cells and ICs are quite similar, Taiwan, being the world’s leading contract manufacture of IC, has the comparative advantage to develop the solar energy industry. The aim of this thesis is to provide the solar energy industry and the general investing public in Taiwan the financial performance comparison of worldwide leading solar cell companies, and to provide more insight of their financing strategies and the solvency of each company. About 5 years ago, the solar energy industry in Taiwan started to boom. The high growth trend was the best prove of the situation. However, the financial crisis in 2008 caused a huge change. Companies those don’t have strong financial resources face serious challenges on their cash flow. Their solvency is weak. Most of the companies reported losses on the forth quarter of 2008. It remained the same on the first quarter of 2009. We found that Motech had the best financial performance in the past five years. Though it was not the No.1 in terms of production scale, but its financial performance was very outstanding. Even with conservative debt leverage, it still outperformed. However, we see some opportunities even in downturns. So far the industry is subsidized by governments. Along with the decrease of average sell price of solar energy products, we believe the grid parity will be reached sooner. When it reaches grid parity, the demand will increase dramatically for the following decade. Companies those can survive the financial crisis and economy downturns would be the final winners.