Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
What: Shares of Yingli Green Energy Holding (NYSE: YGE) rose 10% Tuesday after the Chinese solar specialist announced weaker than expected unaudited first-quarter results, but followed up with strong guidance.
So what: Though Yingli Green Energy's quarterly revenue only rose slightly year over year to $432.2 million, its adjusted net loss narrowed by nearly half to $54.5 million, or $0.35 per American depositary share. Even so, analaysts went into the report modeling a net loss of $0.24 per share on sales of $464 million.
Despite the miss, however, Yingli insisted it still expects to reach its full-year 2014 photovoltaic module shipment target of 4 to 4.2 gigawatts, an increase of 23.7% to 29.9% from fiscal 2013.
Now what: Yingli Green Energy CEO Liansheng Miao explained, "Since the beginning of the second quarter, we have seen substantial upside in demand from China as well as emerging markets such as South America, Southeast Asia and Africa, we expect this trend to continue toward the second half of 2014."
Shares don't look particularly cheap trading around 28 times next year's expected earnings, but that's not entirely uncommon for a company on the cusp of achieving sustained profitability. If Yingli does indeed reach its goals by the end of the year, patient long-term investors stand to be handsomely rewarded.
