Liu Hanyuan, chairman of the board of directors of Tongwei Group, said in CCTV's "Dialogue" program in October last year that (in 2024) it will be Tongwei (600438. SH) has suffered its first loss in 23 years since its listing on the A-share market and its first loss in 42 years since its establishment. Late today, Tongwei Co., Ltd. released a performance forecast after the "boots landed", and the company expects a net loss of about 7 billion to 7.5 billion yuan in 2024. In the same period of the previous year (2023), the company's attributable net profit was 13.574 billion yuan.

Tongwei is a leader in polysilicon and photovoltaic cells, and its module shipments are among the top five in the industry. Among the reasons for the loss, the company said that in 2024, the company will carry out a series of reforms and optimizations in the severe market environment where the main manufacturing links of the photovoltaic industry are showing a phased imbalance between supply and demand.

However, under the impact of the sharp decline in the market price of each link of the photovoltaic industry chain, or even the impact of continuing to be lower than the industry's cash cost, and the impact of the impairment and scrapping of long-term assets of about 1 billion yuan throughout the year, the company still recorded a loss for the whole year although it maintained a net inflow of operating cash flow.

In the first three quarters of 2024, the company's attributable net profit was -3.973 billion yuan. Based on this calculation, the company's Q4 loss was 3.027 billion to 3.527 billion yuan. This is the company's fifth consecutive quarter of net profit loss since the fourth quarter of 2023.

After experiencing the "highlight moment" in 2022, PV polysilicon has entered a downward range since 2023 due to the continuous release of new production capacity, and polysilicon prices have been in a state of trough and bottom for a long time.

On the same day, another leading polysilicon company, Daqo Energy (688303. SH) also released a performance forecast, expecting a net loss of 2.6 billion to 3.1 billion yuan in 2024. In 2024, the mismatch between supply and demand in the domestic polysilicon market will intensify, product prices will continue to fall, and even fall below the industry's cash costs, and the overall gross profit and profitability of the industry will drop significantly.

Daqo Energy said that the company's financial position remained stable and its cash reserves were abundant, laying a solid foundation for resisting cyclical fluctuations in the industry. However, as a core player in the industry, the company directly suffered from the erosion pressure of falling prices on profitability, and its performance decreased significantly compared with the same period last year.

It is worth mentioning that in late December last year, the two polysilicon companies announced at the same time that they would gradually start the phased production reduction and maintenance of some high-purity polysilicon production lines, and said that the production reduction would help reduce the operating loss of the high-purity crystalline silicon business.

After the "self-discipline" production reduction of leading companies, polysilicon prices have risen for many weeks. According to the news of the Silicon Industry Branch this week, the average transaction price of N-type re-feeding materials was 41,700 yuan/ton, up 0.48% month-on-month, and the average transaction price of N-type granular silicon was 39,000 yuan/ton, up 0.52% month-on-month.

According to agency statistics, polysilicon companies have little inventory pressure at this stage, and the sales pressure of polysilicon companies has been greatly alleviated after the load reduction of production, and it is hoped that the downstream raw material inventory can be gradually reduced by reducing shipments and the price of polysilicon industry can be restored to a reasonable level.