Zhu Gongsan: Has no intention of participating in photovoltaic mergers and acquisitions, and GCL Technology is no longer a solar materials company

Ask AI · How will GCL Technology’s diversified transformation rely on its technological reserves?

“First of all, on behalf of management, I would like to apologize to all investors and all shareholders.” At the GCL Technology (03800.HK) 2025 annual performance briefing held on March 31, GCL Group Chairman Zhu Gongshan, GCL Technology’s Board Chairman and Co-CEO, apologized twice: “The stock price has fallen too low. We are more anxious than everyone else. We are working so hard, but the stock price has now fallen back to pre-liberation levels, and we are also very distressed. Please believe that I and the management team will continue to work hard, immediately adjust our strategy, and leverage the technological capabilities we have built up over so many years.”

On the evening of March 30, among a group of leading solar-grade silicon material companies, GCL Technology was the first to disclose last year’s performance. According to the annual report, the company’s revenue last year was 14.425 billion yuan, down 4.5% year on year; net profit attributable to shareholders was -2.868 billion yuan, with the loss narrowing by 39.6%; gross profit turned positive, reaching 1.336 billion yuan; the corresponding gross profit margin rose from -16.6% in the same period of the previous year to 9.3%; and core profit indicator earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) turned positive.

The Paper (Thepaper.cn) noted that the company’s losses mainly came from its photovoltaic materials business. A relevant person in charge of GCL Technology told The Paper that the selling price of granular silicon products rose rapidly as the industry rebounded, and operating cash flow remained stable. The company’s performance during the period was still affected by policy-related factors; because national subsidies were delayed in being issued, the accounts receivable and asset impairment provisions for its power-station business were of a relatively large scale.

In terms of lowering the cost of granular silicon, the financial report shows that in 2025, GCL Technology’s average cash manufacturing cost for granular silicon (including R&D) was 25.12 yuan per kilogram, down 25.1% from 2024; the average external sales price for granular silicon excluding VAT was approximately 35.4 yuan per kilogram. Of this, in the fourth quarter of 2025, the average cash manufacturing cost for granular silicon had already dropped to 24.03 yuan per kilogram, while the selling price reached 48.49 yuan per kilogram.

That means that, in an industry-wide environment of deep losses, based on last year’s average selling price of 35.4 yuan per kilogram, the per-unit loss for granular silicon is only 1 to 2 yuan. At the performance briefing, Lan Tianshi, Executive Director and Co-CEO of GCL Technology, said that in 2025, the market share of granular silicon was close to 23%, “Next, we hope to promote cheaper and more competitive silicon-carbon anodes to meet the needs of future solid-state batteries and frontier technologies such as black phosphorus batteries.”

“Please do not value GCL Technology as a solar materials company anymore.” At the performance briefing, Zhu Gongshan emphasized that in the future, the company’s businesses will cover granular silicon, perovskite, cathode and anode materials: “The East may not be bright, but the West will be bright. We will no longer follow a single-industry path.”

When asked about the clearing out of the photovoltaic industry and merger and restructuring, Zhu Gongshan stated clearly that GCL would not participate in this round of photovoltaic restructuring. “As the industry has progressed to where it is today, M&A restructuring is definitely correct and inevitable. No matter how others reorganize or do things, GCL will no longer seek expansion across the entire photovoltaic materials field.”

In its annual report, GCL Technology announced the launch of its “Space Three-Step Strategy”: in 2026, deepen deep-space endurance testing; in 2027-2028, achieve mass production of space-specific components; and strive to become the “standard power supply” for Chinese spacecraft.

GCL’s perovskite business relies on GCL Photovoltaics, and currently has approximately 500MW of production capacity. Lan Tianshi said that GCL Photovoltaics is exploring cooperation with crystalline silicon manufacturers to jointly develop crystalline silicon–perovskite tandem modules and to plan for space application scenarios.

At the meeting, Fan Bin, Chairman of GCL Photovoltaics, said that the company’s initial plan was 2GW, and 1GW has already been put into commercial production for perovskite capacity, with the company’s full-year shipment target expected to be at the 100MW level. He also admitted that, for a long time, the platform technology for perovskite development has been focused on ground applications, and there are many new challenges for space applications—such as a wider range of hot and cold cycles in the space environment. The temperature variation faced by perovskite products expands from -40℃ to 85℃ to -90℃ to 110℃, which places higher requirements on material formulations, encapsulation processes, and expansion coefficients. The goal is to achieve a lifespan of more than 5 years for perovskite used in space environments. “From a timeline perspective, we should have the first launch as early as July this year, and we hope to achieve 2-3 launches within this year.”

Zhu Gongshan disclosed that GCL Photovoltaics expects to list in Hong Kong within the year, and that current progress is relatively smooth. The perovskite overseas expansion strategy has a high degree of certainty. After GCL Photovoltaics completes its IPO fundraising, it plans to go to the United States to build a 500MW production line, and it has basically reached consensus with its partners.