JA Solar Q4 beats, gives sunny forecast; shares rise

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Chinese solar panel maker JA Solar Holdings Co Ltd's quarterly profit beat analysts estimates, and the company raised its full-year shipment outlook, sending its shares up 9 percent.

The company also said it expects to achieve solar cell capacity of 1.1 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2010, joining a growing list of Chinese solar players who plan to boost production capacity to cash in on rising demand.

Demand for solar power products has picked up after a difficult 2009, when the global credit crisis dried up financing for new projects and panel prices plummeted.

JA Solar, one of the sector's lower-cost producers of silicon cells that help convert sunlight into electricity, and other Chinese solar players, such as Suntech Power Holdings and Trina Solar, have seized on the demand, parlaying their low cost structures into sales.

"On the balance, a very strong quarter, but the headline has to be that these results underscore the strength of being a Chinese producer with a Chinese cost structure," Simmons & Co analyst Burt Chao said by phone.

"We've had multiple companies report pretty challenged quarters, but as long as you can keep your costs and expenses under control, you can still profit in an environment that is pretty tenuous and shaky."

Earlier on Thursday, solar power systems maker Akeena Solar Inc posted a wider-than-expected fourth-quarter loss, as installations dipped, sending its shares down ten percent.

And on Tuesday, Energy Conversion Devices Inc slumped to its third straight quarterly loss and warned of continuing underutilization.

In contrast, fourth-quarter shipments at JA Solar nearly quadrupled, and it raised its full-year shipments view, which is now expected to exceed 900 megawatt (MW), up almost 13 percent from the high end of its prior view.

JA Solar also said it expects first-quarter shipments of between 215MW to 225MW.

"The company has, in the past, done a very good job of being relatively on the mark with guidance. While I don't think they are being overly conservative, there might be a slight upside to that number...they probably don't want to be aggressive," Chao said.

On a conference call with analysts, JA Solar said it expects average selling prices (ASP) in the first quarter to be relatively flat sequentially, which Chao said was pretty much in line with his estimates.

Fourth-quarter ASP was down 2 percent sequentially.

For the latest fourth-quarter, the company earned 14 cents per American Depositary share (ADS), compared with a net loss of 10 cents per ADS, a year ago.

Revenue rose 66 percent to $238.4 million.

Analysts, on average, were looking for a profit of 11 cents a share, on revenue of $215.4 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

JA Solar shares rose as much as 9 percent to a high of $5.07, before paring some gains to trade up 22 cents at $4.88 Thursday morning on Nasdaq. The stock has so far more than doubled from a March 2009 year-low.

(Reporting by Adveith Nair in Bangalore; Editing by Aradhana Aravindan)