Leading monocrystalline wafer producer and ‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member LONGi Green Energy Technology (LONGi Group) has guided for a trebling of net profit increase for the first quarter of 2020, up 210% compared to the prior year period.

LONGi Group said that preliminary calculations put net profit attributable to shareholders in the range of RMB 1.65 billion to RMB 1.95 billion (US$233.25 million to US$275.67 million), compared to US$86.41 million recorded in Q1 2019.

The potential surge in net profit increase was said to be related to the expansion of production capacity, with higher uptake in demand for large-size mono wafers, while capacity and demand increased for its high-efficiency PV modules.

The larger production scale also meant production costs were lowered, boost profitability, according to the company.

However, given the well documented COVID-19 impact on PV manufacturing and exports from China in the first quarter of 2020, LONGi Group said it had negated most of the impact through a number of measures.

The company noted that it adopted a wide range of COVID-19 prevention and control strategies at all of its manufacturing plants with the aim of fully guaranteeing the health and safety of employees.

The company had recently noted that it had zero COVID-19 cases while running operations at high utilisation rates in Q1.

LONGi also noted that it had instigated programs to fully guarantee the logistics delivery capacity and keep the trade channels open, while strengthening timely communication with customers in China and overseas to ensure timely delivery of orders in hand.