In an institutional research activity in January this year, Wang boxing, chairman of Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) ( Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) . SZ), said that the company would focus on the main photovoltaic industry in 2022.
Previously, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) released the performance forecast for 2021, which shows that the group is expected to lose 3.2 billion yuan to 4 billion yuan in the whole year due to the “Thunderstorm” of private network communication business and the decline of business income of photovoltaic sector.
However, even in the face of such loss pressure, Wang Baixing still pinned his hopes on the photovoltaic business.
“At present, the photovoltaic industry is in the transition period of a new round of technological change. The company seizes the development opportunity of the industry and strives to overtake on the curve.” Wang boxing said in the survey.
On March 23, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) issued an investment announcement. Its wholly-owned subsidiary Suzhou Tenghui Photovoltaic Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Tenghui photovoltaic) signed a cooperation agreement with the people’s Government of Fuping County, Hebei Province and its finance bureau and its subsidiary Fuping Zhongwei new energy Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhongwei new energy) to jointly invest in the construction of a green, low-carbon and new energy industrial base in the next five years.
The 21st Century Business Herald reporter noted that since last year, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) has successively announced a number of project investment announcements. In response to the cash flow problem, the group exclusively responded to the reporter that it is optimizing the capital through measures such as shrinking other businesses, and the target of capital optimization is expected to be 5 billion yuan to 6 billion yuan.
photovoltaic veteran’s “addition and subtraction method”
The above cooperation agreement shows that Tenghui photovoltaic, Fuping County Government and Zhongwei new energy will jointly build Fuping County photovoltaic manufacturing, power generation projects and other industrial chain bases. Specifically, it is planned to invest in the construction of 5GW heterojunction battery and 5GW photovoltaic module manufacturing projects in Fuping County within five years, with a total investment of about 5 billion yuan; It is proposed to invest in the construction of 5GW “photovoltaic + modern agriculture” power generation project, with a total EPC value of about 21 billion yuan.
This is the third investment cooperation agreement announced by Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) this year. Previously, the group has reached cooperation with Shanghai Electric Power Co.Ltd(600021) , Hubei Branch of Huadian Group, and plans to cooperate to complete projects of no less than 1GW and about 500MW respectively during the 14th Five Year Plan period.
Ten years of reincarnation, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) once again stands at the photovoltaic tuyere.
In 2011, Wang Baixing invested 482 million to acquire 51% equity of Jiangsu Tenghui power in cash, officially entering the photovoltaic industry. The following year, China’s photovoltaic industry suffered a setback from the “double anti” incident in Europe and America, and the profitability of the whole industry entered a historical low. However, because Tenghui power is mainly engaged in power station business, it has not been seriously affected.
In 2012, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) handed over a financial report of contrarian growth – during the reporting period, the group’s revenue increased by 31.8%, and the business of photovoltaic modules and power stations reached 26.71%.
In 2015, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) put forward the strategy of “wannong photovoltaic”. The strategy of focusing on “photovoltaic poverty alleviation” once made the group have unlimited scenery.
However, due to the development mode of “advance capital first and then return capital”, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) accumulated debt pressure. After 2018, the group’s capital pressure increased. In 2019, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) began to divest some assets.
Under financial pressure, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) ‘s “photovoltaic dream” has not failed.
The semi annual report of 2021 shows that during the reporting period, the group’s main business still covers two sectors: photovoltaic new energy business and special cable business. Among them, the photovoltaic industry accounted for 48.87% of the operating revenue during the reporting period, and the communication business accounted for 21.74%.
In 2022, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) plans to adjust the business strategy and recover the funds by adjusting the company’s business through the “addition and subtraction method” to make way for photovoltaic.
“The group will optimize funds in four ways: first, continue to ‘subtract’ to optimize the business of special cable sector and recover funds; second, actively promote the collection of funds from poverty alleviation power stations; third, through equity refinancing; in addition, it plans to introduce strategic investors to further improve the company’s financial strength while binding the needs of key downstream customers.” Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that through the above measures, the goal of capital optimization is expected to be 5 billion yuan to 6 billion yuan.
another heterojunction race
At present, the business of Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) photovoltaic sector continues to extend from manufacturing to downstream power stations, including the R & D, production and sales of single-crystal high-efficiency cells and large-size (182mm, 210mm) photovoltaic modules, the construction of roof distributed photovoltaic power stations and centralized photovoltaic power stations, and the overall solution of photovoltaic system.
The 21st Century Business Herald reporter noted that the reason for Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) overweight the proportion of photovoltaic business may be related to its prediction of the future development trend of technology.
“In five years from 2020, the third round of important technological changes in the photovoltaic industry may go through the process of ‘hjt replacing perc’.” Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) pointed out in the 2021 semi annual report. To this end, the group tried to increase its technical layout of batteries and components in the middle and lower reaches.
According to public data, Tenghui photovoltaic, a subsidiary of Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) company, has been continuously laying out n-type technology research in recent years, including hjt and TOPCON fields.
Since this year, the iterative trend of n-type battery technology has been accelerated, and battery technologies with higher conversion efficiency such as TOPCON, hjt and IBC are moving from the laboratory to the industrial chain.
Therefore, in the above cooperation with Fuping County, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) plans to jointly invest in the construction of 5GW heterojunction battery project.
According to the plan, the above heterojunction battery project will be constructed in phase II and phase III, that is, 2gw heterojunction battery will be constructed in June 2023 and 3gw heterojunction battery manufacturing project will be constructed in 2024.
According to the statistics of Jibang new energy, an industry organization, the planned capacity of China’s hjt in 2021 was about 148.2gw, of which the built capacity was 6.35gw. At present, the maximum mass production conversion efficiency of hjt has reached 25.31%.
According to the semi annual report of Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) 2021, by the end of the reporting period, the mass production conversion efficiency of the group’s single crystal back passivation battery had exceeded 23%, and the conversion efficiency of heterojunction battery had exceeded 24.26%. In contrast, the battery conversion efficiency of Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) needs to be further improved.
In fact, as early as 2020, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) announced to break into the heterojunction track.
In March 2020, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) issued the plan for non-public offering of shares in 2020. The plan mentioned that the total amount of funds raised from this non-public offering of shares should not exceed 1.575 billion yuan, which is used to invest in two major projects: new 1GW high-efficiency heterojunction batteries and components with a total investment of 1.2 billion yuan; 1GW high efficiency TOPCON battery and module technical transformation project 1GW high efficiency TOPCON battery and module technical transformation project.
However, in December 2020, Jiangsu Zhongli Group Co.Ltd(002309) announced the termination of the above fixed increase projects. “Since the second half of 2020, the company’s technology R & D center has repeatedly developed breakthroughs in the conversion efficiency of heterojunction batteries. In view of the recent breakthroughs and progress in the mass production and conversion efficiency of TOPCON batteries and heterojunction batteries involved in this fund-raising project, it is expected that there will be no clear results in the competition of technical routes in the short term,” he said
