EmailJA Solar (JASO $0.89 +0.04) reported a first quarter loss of $0.20 per share, $0.04 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus of ($0.16), while revenues fell approxmately 56% year/year to $254.4 million versus the $235.11 million consensus. For the second quarter the comnapny expects total cell and module shipments to be between 420 MW and 440 MW. The company's full year guidance of 1.8 GW to 2 GW remains unchanged. "Despite the seasonal impact of the Chinese New Year holiday, we achieved shipments of 366 MW in the first quarter, above the high end of our previous guidance. Through prudent balance sheet management, we recorded positive operating cash flow of RMB 114.8 million. With industry-wide overcapacity continuing, we nevertheless recorded positive gross margin and positive EBITDA.
This enabled us to maintain a relatively healthy balance sheet -- one of the strongest in the industry -- which gives customers and financial institutions confidence in JA Solar as a long-term partner... Demand for our cells and modules remains strong. In Germany and Italy, sales in the first quarter were above our expectations. In both markets we see a trend towards rooftop installations, to which JA Solar's high-efficiency product offerings are ideally suited... While we are disappointed by the U.S. Department of Commerce's preliminary decision on anti-dumping duties last month, since last year we have worked to ensure that JA Solar is relatively insulated from the impact of this ruling. The majority of our products sold in the U.S. market in the first quarter contained cells produced by our partners outside of mainland China. Therefore, our exposure to potential government tariffs is relatively small and we believe that JA Solar is significantly less exposed than our peers. We estimate that less than 10 MW of the products we shipped to the U.S. in Q1 will be subject to tariffs if the provisional ruling is ratified, and we have recorded a related provision of approximately $2.9 million in the first quarter."
