Trina Solar Beats, Fails To Please (TSL)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Trina Solar Limited (NYSE: TSL) has just posted its quarterly earnings report.  The solar player posted net revenues increased to $120.7 million, up 183.6% year-over-year and 19.0% sequentially; while net income was $12.9 million and earnings per fully-diluted ADS was $0.51.  First call estimates were $0.48 EPS on $116.9 million in revenues.  Gross margin was 25.8% and Operating margin was 16.7%.  Solar module shipments were 29.49 MW, up 180.3% from 10.52 MW in the Q1-2007 and up 23.3% Q4-2007.

In the second Quarter the company expects to ship between 43 MW and 45 MW of PV modules and has revenues in the range of $169 million to $177 million with gross margin between 23% and 25% and estimates operating margin to be between 13.5% to 15%.  First Call’s revenues expectations are $168 million.

For fiscal-2008 it sees revenues in a range of $770 million to $808 million, with PV module shipments between 200 MW to 210 MW, with gross margin between 23% and 25% and believes operating margin between 15% to 17%.  First Call revenue expectations for the year are projected to be $756.46 million.

As of March 31, 2008, the Company had $38.2 million in cash and cash equivalents, which excludes the Company’s restricted cash balance of $126.0 million.  Trina has also noted that it has now secured approximately 95% of its estimated silicon feedstock requirements for 2008.

Trina Solar closed at $49.63 yesterday ahead of earnings, and and shares are indicated down almost $3.00 in very early pre-market trading.  Wall Street may be focusing on those gross margin numbers, or it may have just wanted to see much more compared to forward estimates.

Jon C. Ogg
June 6, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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