Although major companies have not yet disclosed their performance in the first half of the year, a reporter from China Securities Journal found that the current wind power industry continues to recover as a whole, and orders from upstream equipment manufacturers continue to rise. Wind farm operators have suffered from a decline in power generation caused by the reduction in wind power utilization hours, and their performance has been sluggish.

 

Market analysts pointed out that this round of wind power industry recovery is mainly reflected in the launch of bidding for wind power projects in various places, which will firstly help upstream manufacturers to obtain equipment orders. However, due to seasonal factors, the utilization hours of wind farms lead to fluctuations in the power generation of wind farms, which in turn affects the performance of downstream operators. It is expected that with the accelerated construction of wind farms in the second half of the year, the performance of manufacturers will accelerate; downstream operators will also benefit from the increase in wind power utilization hours for the full year.

 

Upstream manufacturers maintain high growth

 

According to the performance forecasts disclosed by major companies in the A-share wind power equipment manufacturing sector, in the first six months of this year, the performance of major domestic wind power manufacturers continued to improve since the third quarter of last year, and the performance of some leading companies showed explosive growth, indicating that wind power manufacturing The bottoming and warming trend of the industry since the second half of last year continued to deepen.

 

Among them, the best performer is Huayi Electric, a wind turbine manufacturer. In the first quarter, the company's net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies increased significantly by more than 10 times year-on-year, and it is expected that the net profit in the first half of the year soared by more than 15% year-on-year. Goldwind predicts that its net profit in the first six months of this year is expected to increase by 250% to 300% year-on-year. In addition, Taisheng Wind Energy and Tianshun Wind Energy, which have performed well in the secondary market since the beginning of this year, both said that their performance in the first half of the year continued to improve, and their net profit is expected to increase by 40% and 10% year-on-year, respectively.

 

Each company attributed the expected increase in performance in the first half of the year to the increase in main business income and the reduction in operating costs. Market analysts believe that the main determinant is the increase in orders received by equipment manufacturers since the second half of last year.

 

According to authoritative market statistics, new wind power tenders in 2013 exceeded 15.5GW, of which about 11GW were tendered for new wind power projects in the first three quarters, and 4.5GW were tendered for new wind power projects in the fourth quarter. Compared with the 8.3GW in 2012, the new wind power tender volume in 2013 has nearly doubled.

 

A senior brokerage researcher analyzed the reporter from China Securities Journal that with the completion of the bidding work last year, the orders won by the equipment company will gradually enter the shipping period, and then roll over into the company's performance income. Goldwind disclosed in the first quarterly report of this year that as of the first quarter, the company had won the bid but had not signed a supply agreement with an order volume of 3,834 MW, while the number of orders in hand reached 8,125.25 MW.

 

In addition, the "health" of the manufacturing industry continues to improve. According to wind statistics, the overall inventory turnover days of the industry in 2013 were 201.62 days, which was more than 30 days shorter than that in 2012. In terms of gross profit margin, a key indicator reflecting corporate profitability, the overall gross profit margin of the industry last year was 21.25%. This is a significant improvement compared to the average gross profit margin level of less than 10% during the low ebb of the industry in the previous two years. The above-mentioned researchers said that the situation of the wind power manufacturing industry in the first half of this year was better than that of last year, and the gross profit margin level will only increase rather than decline.

 

Downstream operators are still in decline

 

Compared with the prosperity of the equipment manufacturing industry, the downstream operation of wind farms is slightly weaker.

 

According to the latest statistics released by the National Energy Administration, in the first half of the year, the new grid-connected capacity of wind power nationwide was 6.32 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 23%; the national wind power abandoned wind power was 7.2 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year decrease of 3.58 billion kilowatt-hours. The rate was 8.5%, a year-on-year decrease of 5.14 percentage points. These data show that the grid-connected situation of domestic wind power projects has continued to improve compared with the past, and the operating losses of operators due to grid-connection problems have continued to decrease.

 

However, it is worth noting that the key industry indicator that affects the performance of wind power operators is the number of available hours of wind power is not optimistic. The above statistics pointed out that in the first half of the year, the average utilization hours of domestic wind power was 979 hours, a year-on-year decrease of 113 hours.

 

This data directly reflects the operating conditions and performance of major wind power operators. Longyuan Power, a leading wind power operator, disclosed that the company’s wind power generation in June this year was 1.39 million MWh, a year-on-year decrease of 12.25%. Compared with 31.44%, there has been a sharp decline. In the first half of the year, Huaneng Renewables generated 5,833,400 MWh of wind power. While the installed capacity increased year-on-year, the power generation decreased by 2%. Datang New Energy's wind power generation in the first half of the year was 5,052,100 MWh, a year-on-year decrease of 9.07%.

 

According to the research report of UBS Securities, the overall profit of the domestic wind farm operation industry in the first half of this year may decline by an average of 6%, and the profit growth of major operators such as Longyuan Power and Huaneng New Energy in the first six months of this year is expected to be year-on-year. It will be basically the same or a slight decline, and companies with stronger cost control will outperform their peers.

 

The industry is expected to share "warm wind"

 

The upstream and downstream are mixed, but the overall investment in the wind power industry has performed well. According to data recently released by the China Electricity Council, in the first half of the year, the investment in the national wind power industry increased by 48.3% year-on-year, while the investment in the entire power industry in the same period decreased compared with last year.

 

The above-mentioned senior brokerage researcher told reporters that a direct effect of the booming investment is to drive the continued increase in the bidding volume in various places. Following the doubling of the domestic wind power bidding volume in 2013, the bidding process for wind farm projects has accelerated in 2014, and the launch of large-scale bidding will drive up orders from upstream manufacturing enterprises. According to incomplete statistics from a reporter from China Securities Journal, 64 bidding announcements involving wind farm projects were published on China Procurement and Bidding Online in the first week of May, doubling compared to the same period in 2011 and 2012.

 

The researcher said that especially the winning orders after the third quarter of last year will enter the centralized supply period this year, which is also the key guarantee for the continued improvement of the performance of major equipment suppliers, and will also boost the high growth of these companies' annual performance this year.

 

Dongfang Electric's net profit in the first quarter is still lower than the same period last year, but the company said that the scale of new orders in the first quarter was 12.9 billion yuan, of which new energy (mainly wind power) accounted for 22%, or 2.838 billion yuan, and these orders will be converted this year. performance for the company.

 

For downstream wind power operators, the above-mentioned researcher said that the main reason for the current reduction in wind power utilization hours is that in addition to the seasonal factors of poor wind power in some regions in the first half of the year, the more prominent cause is that wind power transmission channels are increasingly in short supply, and the industry in the past two years " The disadvantage of “more cars and less roads” has been on the rise, but this situation is expected to improve by the end of this year. The state recently approved a number of "road strips" for UHV transmission lines, most of which are located in the northwest area where wind farms are concentrated. With the accelerated construction of these transmission channels, the number of wind power utilization hours is expected to resume growth. "The country has attached great importance to the development of clean energy this year, and will launch a number of major projects such as wind power, hydropower and coastal nuclear power as a booster for steady economic growth. This will be the long-term driving force for the accelerated development of the clean energy industry represented by wind power. "