Yingli Green Energy Earnings: An Early Look

Earnings season is winding down, with most companies already having reported their quarterly results. But there are still some companies left to report, and Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE) is about to release its quarterly earnings report. The key to making smart investment decisions with stocks releasing their quarter reports is to anticipate how they'll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you'll be less likely to make an uninformed knee-jerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.

Yingli Green Energy has felt the pain of being in the solar industry lately, but with many of its peers having seen signs of life lately, can the company bounce back? Let's take an early look at what's been happening with Yingli Green Energy over the past quarter and what we're likely to see in its quarterly report on Monday.

Stats on Yingli Green Energy

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Will Yingli Green Energy finally shine?
Analysts haven't been confident in their views on Yingli lately, having widened loss estimates for both the just-ended quarter and full-year 2013 earnings. But the stock has rocketed higher by nearly 40% since late November as investors start to get more enthusiastic about solar energy again.

We've already gotten an idea of what Yingli will report Monday. In a preliminary look at results, the company predicted a 40% jump in shipments compared to its previous quarter. But Yingli, along with fellow Chinese solar companies LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK) and Suntech Power (STP), have huge amounts of debt on their balance sheets, and with substantial financing for Chinese solar companies coming from state-run banks, they're effectively having their businesses subsidized -- yet still can't earn a profit.

The main problem Yingli faces is that it can't stand up to the strategies that its U.S. competitors have taken. SunPower has become the king of high-efficiency panels, while First Solar (FSLR -1.18%) has concentrated on keep installed costs as low as possible. Even those advantages haven't made the companies consistently profitable, as First Solar's weak results earlier this week show, but they at least point to the promise of their surviving the inevitable shakeout in the industry.

In its report, Yingli needs to show investors how it plans to get out of its tailspin to compete on a global playing field. Otherwise, although it may tread water for a while, Yingli's unlikely to be an eventual winner in the solar industry's renaissance.

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