Gener Miao
Analyst · Roth Capital Partners
Thank you, Mr. Chen. We generated strong growth during the quarter and it reinforced our leading position in the industry by achieving 2,794 megawatts of solar modules. Despite the headwinds created by the Chinese government, new policies issued on May 31, we remain confident in our ability to continue generating long-term sustainable growth. First, let's look at our geographic distribution of our module shipments. China came in first and emerging markets came in the second, followed by the Asia-Pacific and the European markets. As our technology improved and the cost continued to fall, our competitive advantage in the global (inaudible) industry will only become more announced. We are confident that global demand will continue to grow this year and in the future. China was our largest market in this quarter. During the first half of the year, approximately 24.5 gigawatts of solar were installed in China, of which about half were DG projects. Our focus during the second half of the year will be on the Top Runner projects and then taking advantage of opportunities in self-contained and the local government supported DG projects. While overall, demand from Chinese market has been affected by the new policies, we are still optimistic about the demand during the second half year, especially as local governments introduce more subsidies and more investment opportunities in self-contained DG projects pop up in the region with high commercial energy costs and good sunshine conditions. With the impact of the new policies, the future divestment of DG projects will transition from subsidy drivers to market drivers. Residential markets will also face a short-term impact, but demand will continue to grow, especially in the regions that benefit from local subsidies. In the U.S. market, began to -- the U.S. market began to recover in the second half of the year where we maintained a leading position in the utility market and are gradually expanding into residential and the commercial markets. A couple of our these long-term contracts will begin shipments in the second half of the year. We will leverage our market-leading business plus the name of our brand expanding customer base, local service team, best recognition and the U.S. production capacity should strengthen our position where -- while maintaining our profit flexibility. Turning to Asia-Pacific region. India's Minister of Finance and Department of Revenue issued a tax announcement on July 30, which imposes a safeguard duty on the solar cells and the modules imported to India. The duty which is 25% for the first year, 20% for the first 6 months of second year and 15% for the next 6 months of second year. This will affect demand from India in the short term, but the size of Indian market is still huge. And in the early June, the Indian government announced that it will increase the 175 gigawatts of 2020 solar install target to 275 gigawatts. We think the impact of the safeguard duties will be limited in the long run. The new projects after the tariffs are announced, the PPA market will be deep enough to absorb the tangible costs, while projects currently in the pipeline might see some delays, and we are also hearing that a large number of projects that have already been auctioned and to be built in 2019 to 2020 could be grand progress, allowing changes to be passed down to PPA offtakers. Therefore, we are still optimistic about the future development of the Indian market and as we will closely watch the situation and monitor the divestments there. European markets are doing well. Great parity has created a lot of demand, with solar becoming even more competitive following the May 31 policies, where solar costs have dropped rapidly. We are very optimistic about the market prospects there and in the second half of the year and in the future. As the emerging market grow in importance competition, there is becoming increasingly intense. Demand there, especially, in Latin America and the Middle East and Africa has been growing swiftly. We remain the leader in terms of market share in a number of Latin American regions and the EMEA regions. We will focus more on long-term cooperation and owners, and contribute to the solar applications there. ASPs during the quarter only decreased slightly when compared with the last quarter. As Mr. Chen has said ASPs declined quickly after May 31, but we will benefit from our ability to rapidly develop and deploy new technologies and the drop in raw material prices. We were confident that those will be able to generate sustainable profits and growth. With the decline in solar costs, the competitiveness of solar energy will continue to improve and a significantly reducing dependence on subsidies. We are prepared to take advantage of our distribution, branding, product and technology to seek future divestment opportunities. We continue to develop our marketing and effective tax (inaudible) promotion capabilities this quarter. In May, our entire portfolio of PV modules passed the Potential Induced Degradation, PID, resistance test under the condition of 85 degrees Celsius, 85% relative humidity, double 85, as required by TÜV Nord’s IEC standards. In May, our P-type monocrystalline cell broke the world record again with efficiency keeping 23.95%. P-type, our 60 pieces versions of P-type monocrystalline modules output set a world record of 371 watt and N-type monocrystalline modules also set another world record 378.6 watt. JinkoSolar's position as the market leader in the industry continues to be recognized. In April, JinkoSolar attended the World Bank's Singapore Infrastructure Finance Summit as the innovating -- invitation from the World Bank, we were the only Chinese enterprise and the only new energy company present. In June, after invitation of Asian Development Bank we attended and delivered a key note presentation at the 2018 Asia Clean Energy Forum. In Q2, we attended 15 trade shows and participated in 78 conferences. We also hosted and supported 6 customer trainings and 87 co-marketing events with key partners across the globe. Our active global marketing events continue to allow us to reach and educate new customers about JinkoSolar's high-quality products and expand our global footprint. With that, I will turn it over to Cao.