Suntech Power Holdings Co. (NYSE: STP) announced fourth-quarter results on Thursday that were better than expected, beating the street and sending shares up nearly 6 percent in premarket movement.
The solar energy company reported fourth-quarter earnings of $49.9 million or 27 cents per share, 16 cents better than the analyst estimate of 11 cents per share. In the same quarter last year the company showed loss of $109.1 million or 69 cents per share.
Revenue for the company in the quarter rose 23.4 percent to $583.6 million, widely better than the $468.25 expected by the street.
“We outperformed our guidance with the highest quarterly shipments volume in Suntech history and continued to extend our market share,” said Dr. Zhengrong Shi, Suntech’s Chairman and CEO. “In addition, continued progress on our cost reduction initiatives enabled us to considerably improve profitability during the quarter.”
Suntech expects to increase shipments by 5 percent to 10 percent in the first quarter compared to the previous quarter, while forecasting a total shipment of more than 1.25GW of photovoltaic products in the full-year 2010.
The company is also continues to targets expansion to 1.4 GW of PV cell and module production capacity by the end of the first half of 2010, of which 450MW will be Pluto-enabled.
Capital expenditures for the company are expected to total $200 million in 2010.
