Finance Association, April 24 (Reporter Liu Mengran) Heterojunction battery modules have entered commercial mass production and promotion, driving growth in the performance of photovoltaic “shovels”. This evening, Maiwei Co., Ltd. (300751.SZ), a leader in heterojunction equipment, released a financial report. The company's revenue nearly doubled last year, but net profit increased by only 6%. Notably, the company's overall gross margin fell 7.79 percent last year.

According to financial reports, Maiwei Co., Ltd. achieved revenue of 8.089 billion yuan last year, an increase of 94.99% over the same period last year; achieved net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 914 million yuan, an increase of 6.03% over the same period last year, and achieved gross margin of 30.37%. Regarding the reason for the decline in gross margin, the company said that the main reason is that the gross margin of the company's screen-printing line equipment has declined significantly due to the continued demand for cost reduction from downstream customers, as well as increased competition and phased excess in the photovoltaic market.

Maiwei Co., Ltd.'s main products are solar cell production equipment, and it already has the ability to deliver the entire line of heterojunction equipment. According to agency statistics, the company's market share in the heterojunction equipment industry is about 80%. Financial reports revealed that the company has won bids for several projects, such as Anhui Huasheng, King Kong PV, and India's Reliance Industries, etc., all of which have purchased the company's HJT solar cell line equipment.

The benefits of PV “sellers” are directly related to the commencement of downstream construction, and it is even more difficult for photovoltaics to stand alone under the cold tide. Although heterojunction is one of the mainstream technology routes in the N-type photovoltaic era, there is a clear gap between equipment costs and production costs and TopCon batteries, resulting in mass production speed and demand far less than the latter.

Maiwei Co., Ltd. said that the amount of heterogeneous forming line equipment is gradually increasing, and acceptance is beginning one after another, but due to the effects of production line transformation of heterogeneous forming line equipment in the early stages and manufacturing has not yet had a large-scale effect, etc., the gross margin of heterogeneous forming line equipment has not yet formed effective support for increasing the company's overall gross margin.

It should be noted that heterojunction is continuing to level with TopCon in terms of cost. Ways to achieve this include reducing equipment investment costs, expanding production capacity, and improving conversion efficiency. In terms of process, NBB technology was implemented this year, and there is more room for cost reduction in heterojunction batteries.

According to financial disclosure, in order to further reduce the silver paste consumption of heterojunction batteries and components, the company has developed second-generation mainless gridless technology NBB and string welding equipment. This technology removes all main grid lines of the battery, can reduce silver paste consumption by more than 30%, and forms an effective welding alloy layer during the welding process, which reduces manufacturing costs while improving the power and reliability of the components.

In the first quarter of this year, due to increased sales of solar cell production equipment, the company achieved total revenue of 2,218 billion yuan, an increase of 91.80% over the previous year; net profit to mother was 260 million yuan, an increase of 17.79% over the previous year. However, the net cash flow from the company's operating activities decreased by 97.64% year on year, mainly due to the increase in the company's business volume, which continued to increase procurement volume, and the company's operating cash outflow increased dramatically.