LOS ANGELES, Jan 12 (Reuters) - JA Solar Holdings Co Ltd expects demand for solar power parts to rebound in 2010, a company executive said on Tuesday.
Global demand could reach as much as 9 gigawatts, said Ming Yang, JA Solar's vice president of business development, at a conference hosted by Needham & Co in New York that was monitored by webcast.
'That market should grow at about a 30 percent per year clip over the next two to three years,' Yang said.
It takes about two mid-sized coal-fired plants to generate 1 gigawatt of electricity.
Demand for solar power products has picked up after a difficult 2009, when the global credit crisis dried up financing for new projects and panel prices plummeted.
JA Solar, one of the sector's lowest-cost producers of the silicon cells that help convert sunlight into electricity, and other Chinese solar players such as Trina Solar Ltd have seized on rising demand, turning their low cost structures into sales. Several plan to boost production capacity in 2010.
Yang said he expects pricing for solar cells to drop by a 'low single-digit' percentage in the first quarter of 2010.
The executive said JA Solar's sales increasingly go outside of China. The proportion could exceed 30 percent in 2010, and even reach 50 percent by the end of the year, he noted.
JA Solar closed down 5.5 percent at $6.35 on Nasdaq on Tuesday. The stock hit a new 12-month high of $6.95 in January and has climbed more than 250 percent from a 12-month low in March 2009.
(Reporting by Laura Isensee; Editing by Carol Bishopric and Richard Chang) Keywords: JASOLAR/ (laura.isensee@thomsonreuters.com; Los Angeles Bureau +213 955 6736) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
Global demand could reach as much as 9 gigawatts, said Ming Yang, JA Solar's vice president of business development, at a conference hosted by Needham & Co in New York that was monitored by webcast.
'That market should grow at about a 30 percent per year clip over the next two to three years,' Yang said.
It takes about two mid-sized coal-fired plants to generate 1 gigawatt of electricity.
Demand for solar power products has picked up after a difficult 2009, when the global credit crisis dried up financing for new projects and panel prices plummeted.
JA Solar, one of the sector's lowest-cost producers of the silicon cells that help convert sunlight into electricity, and other Chinese solar players such as Trina Solar Ltd have seized on rising demand, turning their low cost structures into sales. Several plan to boost production capacity in 2010.
Yang said he expects pricing for solar cells to drop by a 'low single-digit' percentage in the first quarter of 2010.
The executive said JA Solar's sales increasingly go outside of China. The proportion could exceed 30 percent in 2010, and even reach 50 percent by the end of the year, he noted.
JA Solar closed down 5.5 percent at $6.35 on Nasdaq on Tuesday. The stock hit a new 12-month high of $6.95 in January and has climbed more than 250 percent from a 12-month low in March 2009.
(Reporting by Laura Isensee; Editing by Carol Bishopric and Richard Chang) Keywords: JASOLAR/ (laura.isensee@thomsonreuters.com; Los Angeles Bureau +213 955 6736) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.