Trina Solar Limited's CEO Discusses Q2 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

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Trina Solar Limited (TSL)

Q2 2011 Earnings Conference Call

August 23, 2011 08:00 ET

Executives

Thomas Young – Senior Director, Investor Relations

Jifan Gao – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Terry Wang – Chief Financial Officer

Mark Kingsley – Chief Commercial Officer

Gary Yu – Senior Vice President, Operations

Analysts

Rob Stone – Cowen and Company

Ming Chu – Jefferies

Dan Ries – Collins Stewart

Kelly Dougherty – Macquarie

Sanjay Shrestha – Lazard Capital Markets

Vishal Shah – Deutsche Bank

Tim Arcuri – Citi

Lu Yeung – UBS Securities

Amy Song – Goldman Sachs

Aaron Chew – Maxim Group

Gordon Johnson – Axiom Capital Management

Presentation

Operator

Good morning everyone. My name is Sarah and I will be the conference operator today. At this time, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Trina Solar Second Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) Thank you.

I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Senior Director, Investor Relations, Thomas Young. You may begin your conference.

Thomas Young – Senior Director, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good day to all and welcome to Trina Solar’s second quarter 2011 earnings conference call. This is Thomas Young, Trina Solar’s Senior Director of Investor Relations. With us today are Trina Solar’s Chairman and CEO, Jifan Gao; Chief Financial Officer, Terry Wang; Chief Commercial Officer, Mark Kingsley; and Senior Vice President, Operations, Gary Yu.

Before I turn the call over to Mr. Gao, may I remind our listeners that in this call, management’s prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements which are subject to the risks and uncertainties, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Therefore, the company claims the protection of the Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements that is contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, and therefore, we refer you to a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In addition, any projections as to the company’s future performance represent management’s best estimates as of today, August 23, 2011. Trina Solar assumes no obligation to update these projections in the future as market conditions change. For those of you unable to listen to the entire call at this time, a recording will be available via webcast for 90 days at the Investor Relations section of Trina Solar site at www.trinasolar.com.

With that, it’s my pleasure to turn the call over to Trina Solar’s Chairman and CEO, Mr. Jifan Gao.

Jifan Gao – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Thomas and thank you everyone for joining us today. Amidst continued demand environmental challenges, our shipments grew by more than 20% and we achieved record shipment volume of 396 megawatts in the second quarter of 2011. Although module prices declined significantly since beginning of this year and impacted our margins, we remained positive and focused on executing our strategic strategies to ensure that sustainable growth and the success of Trina Solar. With that, we believe we are well-positioned to benefit from better second half of 2011.

In the second quarter, our sales were to some extent expanded in the market of financing and higher inventory due to the Italian solar subspace changes in earlier May. However, we experienced shipment increase due to our increased sales to Germany and U.S. We believe this reflects the trends of our leading brands, quality, and the performance of our products, and a localized service, we’ve consistently delivered to our customers.

We have goals to improve total system performance, reliability, and the cost structures. We carry on to progress strongly in earlier of technology innovation to further differentiate our brand and product offering. We received confirmation from Solar Institute of Singapore. Our module sales achieved record 18.8%. We are proud to announce that our multi-crystalline module has just been recently confirmed by TUV to achieve the maximum power output of 270 watts.

We also announced our partnership with Australia National University to develop higher efficiency n-type of mono cells with efficiency of 20%, and whereas the launch of our innovative just mounting solutions to reduce overall system cost. We keep on expanding our customer base across different regions including China. We expect to announce our supply agreement with Huanghe Hydropower for two ground-mounted solar project in China for a total of 30 megawatts of modules. We’ve announced the China’s solar feed-in-tariff updates, which expected to see strong growth and opportunities to increasing our domestic shipments as market expands.

Lastly, we expect to performing significantly better in the second half of 2011 as we continue to execute our cost reduction go-to-market, significant improvement in order pipeline from our diverse customer mix from distributors to commercial and utility segment across Europe, North America, and the rest of world, development opportunities in promising markets such as Japan, Australia, India, and Middle East for the rest of 2011 and beyond.

With that, I would now like to turn the call to our CFO, Terry Wang, to share our second quarter 2011 financial results. Terry?

Terry Wang – Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Mr. Gao, and welcome to everyone today. I would like to present an overview of our financial results for the second quarter of 2011 followed by our third quarter guidance.

Regardless of the macro challenges facing the industry, we deliver a relatively sound quarter with sequential increase in shipments of approximately 24% despite our more than anticipated decline in module ASPs experienced in the first half of 2011. We are confident that we have the financial strength, ability to continue our long-term future, and growth of our business.

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