Sunshine Power en el cuarto trimestre del año pasado experimentó una caída tanto en ingresos como en beneficios netos en un solo trimestre

China Financial News March 31 (Reporters Liu Mengran) Due to headwinds such as a decline in revenue in the photovoltaic industry and a drop in gross margin in the energy storage business, Sunlight Power (300274.SZ), a leading company in the photo-storage sector that has maintained high growth in performance in recent years, saw its net profit last year rise by only slightly more than 20% year-on-year. The company plans to distribute cash dividends of 6.90 yuan for every 10 shares to all shareholders in 2025.

The company released an announcement this evening. Last year, the company achieved operating revenue of 89.184 billion yuan, up 14.55%; net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 13.461 billion yuan, up 21.97%.

By quarter, in Q4 last year, the company recorded operating revenue of 22.782 billion yuan and net profit attributable to the parent company of 1.58 billion yuan, with year-on-year declines of 18.37% and 54.02%, respectively. This is the first time since Q4 2021 that the company has seen both single-quarter revenue and net profit decline at the same time.

By business segment, as a dual-business leader spanning photovoltaic inverters and energy storage systems, last year the company’s energy storage business generated revenue of 37.287 billion yuan, with its share further increasing to 41.81%; photovoltaic industry revenue was 44.550 billion yuan, accounting for 49.95%. In 2025, the company’s photovoltaic inverter shipments were 143GW, a slight decrease versus the previous year (147GW); global energy storage system shipments were 43GWh, up 53% year-on-year.

However, the company’s gross margin for products has diverged. The financial report shows that last year the company’s product gross margin was 31.83%, up 1.89% year-on-year. The company said this was mainly due to factors including brand premium, product innovation, and scale effects. Of these, power electronic conversion equipment such as photovoltaic inverters had a gross margin of 34.66% last year, up 3.76 percentage points year-on-year; while the energy storage systems’ gross margin was 36.49%, down 0.2 percentage points year-on-year. In addition, the gross margin on power station investments was 14.50%, down 4.9 percentage points year-on-year.

Regarding the decline in energy storage gross margin, industry insiders told China Financial News reporters that although Sunlight Power still has advantages in high-gross-margin overseas markets, most of the company’s cell sourcing is from external procurement, so costs are significantly affected by upstream price changes.

Public information shows that in the third quarter of last year, the price of lithium carbonate rebounded in a V-shaped reversal, driving a significant increase in cell costs. An executive from a cell company told China Financial News reporters that typically, for every 10,000 yuan/ton increase in lithium carbonate, the corresponding cell cost increases by roughly 0.006 yuan/Wh. In early August last year, the lithium carbonate price started at about 77,000 yuan/ton, and by the end of December it broke through the 120,000 yuan/ton mark, with a cumulative increase of more than 50%. Considering changes in material prices such as electrolyte and lithium hexafluorophosphate, the theoretical cell cost increase exceeded 0.04 yuan/Wh.

It should be noted that while performance has remained in rapid high growth, Sunlight Power’s inventory scale has also stayed at a relatively high level. As of December 31, 2025, in the company’s consolidated financial statements, the book value of inventories was 28.749 billion yuan, inventory impairment provisions were 1.494 billion yuan, and the carrying value was 27.255 billion yuan.

According to the latest disclosed announcement, the company recorded a total of about 2.185 billion yuan in provisions for credit impairment losses and asset impairment losses last year. Among them, the items with asset impairment provisions mainly include fixed assets, contract assets, inventories, and contract fulfillment costs, totaling 1.383 billion yuan in asset impairment provisions, as well as 802 million yuan in credit impairment provisions.