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Time of India
06-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
India sees a future making solar panels for itself, and maybe the world
China, the world's clean-energy juggernaut, faces a rival next door. And one of its top customers, no less. India, a big buyer of Chinese solar panels and electric vehicle batteries, is using a raft of government incentives to make more green gear at home. It is driven not just by the need to satisfy the galloping energy demands of its 1.4 billion people, but also to cash in on other countries that want to China-proof their energy supply chains, not least the United States. India remains a tiny and tardy entrant. Last year, it produced about 80 gigawatts of solar modules, while China produced more than 10 times that. India is still tied to coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. Coal is its largest source of electricity, and India plans to mine for more of it. But India is aggressively trying to take advantage of a global energy transition and a backlash against Chinese dominance of new energy technologies. Hoping to spur a clean energy manufacturing boom, the government is offering lucrative subsidies for locally produced solar cells and batteries, and it is restricting foreign products in its biggest renewable-energy projects. To cash in on government contracts to install rooftop solar for 27 million households by the end of this decade, for instance, companies must make the panels at home. For New Delhi, there are social, economic and geopolitical imperatives. China is its most formidable rival -- the two countries have in the past gone to war over border disputes -- so India's quest to build solar, wind and EV factories is partly designed to secure its energy supply chain. At the same time, India wants to create good-paying manufacturing jobs. Still, India confronts a problem facing many other countries: Either buy renewable energy technologies as cheaply as possible from China, or spend more to make the goods at home. "Strategically, to ensure we have energy independence, we need to have manufacturing capacity," said Sudeep Jain, additional secretary in India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. "Currently, yes, there is a cost arbitrage." The problem is that China commands the building blocks of renewable energy goods. More than 90 per cent of the polysilicon that goes into solar panels is in Chinese control. So, even as India rapidly expands its production of solar panels, it still imports most of the cells that go into the panels, mainly from Chinese companies. And Indian companies that make solar cells typically import silicon wafers mainly from China. India has a tiny battery industry, and it has proved difficult, for a host of reasons, to scale up. Two Indian companies making EV batteries, Reliance Industries and Ola Electric, recently missed production targets they had promised to hit in exchange for government subsidies. It doesn't help that China dominates the processing of key battery minerals such as lithium. China has "first mover's advantage," said Amit Paithankar, CEO of Waaree Energies , the country's largest maker of solar panels. "It's about us being proactive, and being a part of the solution in diversifying the supply chain for India, for the U.S. and for the world." Borrowing China ideas India is lifting from the Chinese playbook in at least one way. It is counting on its enormous domestic demand. India's wind and solar capacity has nearly doubled in the past five years, according to the research firm Ember, making it the world's third-largest generator of electricity from renewable sources, after China and the United States. It plans to incorporate 500 gigawatts of non-fossil-fuel sources into its electricity grid by 2030. The government has put in place both carrots and sticks to encourage production. For the past several years, there were subsidies for locally produced solar panels. Those are now being discontinued, but new subsidies are kicking in next year for locally produced solar cells that go into panels, as well as for battery cells. Domestic demand isn't the only driver. Last year, more than half of India's solar modules ended up on American soil. Now, the wild card for India's export dreams is the tariff chaos sown by President Donald Trump. The latest Trump administration duties on goods imported from India are far lower (27 per cent ) than new duties on Chinese goods (145 per cent ) and on those from Southeast Asia (up to 3,500 per cent ), where Chinese companies have set up shop. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to cultivate warm relations with Trump, and officials from the two countries say they hope to negotiate a bilateral trade deal this month. "Whatever the United States is going to import, we may still be the most competitive to supply it," Jain said. Wanted: More good jobs The global energy transition potentially brings India something it badly needs: factory jobs. Two of 3 Indians are younger than 35. A majority of people still work in agriculture. And manufacturing as a share of the national economy is still barely 13 per cent , a bit lower than it was a decade ago. The southern state of Tamil Nadu has been among the most forceful in attracting new factories, including in the clean-energy sector. Wind-blade makers arrived nearly a decade ago, followed by solar-panel makers and EV companies. Tamil Nadu offered ready land and government subsidies. The state supported pensions and housing for workers. "These are all schemes we came up with, peering into the future, looking at how the world is going," the state's industry minister, T.R.B. Rajaa, said in an interview. "Energy is everything. Energy security must be localised." Perhaps most important, Tamil Nadu, with a long record of women's education, offered an army of female workers with college degrees. Which is how 26-year-old Amala K. came to chase her dreams at the Tata Power solar panel factory on the outskirts of a small town, Tirunelveli, near India's southern tip. (Like most people in the region, she uses her father's initial as a surname.) About 2,000 women like her run the machines around the clock at this factory. Every day, starting at dawn, they move in and out by the busload. Dark-blue uniforms. Backpacks. Sandals that are traded for steel-toe factory shoes. The factory floor is largely automated. Human workers are there to make sure that robot arms are working properly, to solder a junction box or pick up broken shards of wafers that have slipped in between cracks. The sun was shining bright and hot by 7 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, as Amala boarded a company bus after her all-night shift. The bus pulled out of the parking lot, drove past banana orchards, and weaved through a river of honking cars and motorcycles. Some of the women nodded off. A few scrolled through their phones. Amala leaned against the window. For her, the job was partly a way to defer the inevitable arranged marriage. "If I stayed home, I'd be married by now," she said. Between workshifts, she was preparing to take an exam to become a physics professor. Varsha A.R., 26, sitting one row up, had to persuade her mother to let her take this job. Her mother worried about Varsha living two hours away from home, in a workers dorm. So, Varsha brought her there and introduced her to other workers. "I explained that this is an opportunity for my life and my career," Varsha said. The job meant different things to different female workers. Some said they were saving to buy gold jewelry for their weddings. Others said they were saving to go to graduate school. A few said they liked being able to buy gifts for their nieces and nephews -- or buy themselves an ice cream when they wanted. Varsha and Amala stepped off the bus and walked down a narrow lane to their dorm, two workers in an energy industry all but unknown in their parents' time. Each year, at least 7 million young Indians like them enter the labor market, according to the International Labor Organisation. India's efforts to expand its clean-energy business is a key test of the country's efforts to deliver the skilled jobs that a new generation of Indians has come to expect. The solar panels they help make in Tirunelveli furnish Tata Power's 4-gigawatt solar farm on the other side of the country, in the northwestern desert of Rajasthan. The wafers still come from China, as do many of the glass panels on which they are affixed. The risks of relying on Chinese suppliers became abundantly clear during the coronavirus epidemic, Tata Power CEO Praveer Sinha recalled. Shipments were disrupted. There were unexpected price swings. "It's very important you have a supply chain that's not vulnerable to two or three countries," he said. At the time, during President Joe Biden's term, the United States agreed. The U.S. International Development Finance Corp., a government lender, supported the Tata project with a $425 million loan, with the goal of "diversifying global supply chains." First Solar, a U.S. company, set up shop near the state capital, Chennai, also with financing from the U.S. government. Vikram Solar, which makes solar modules near Chennai, is set to build 1 gigawatt of battery storage. In an industrial park farther west in Tamil Nadu, Indian electric scooter company Ola is getting ready to produce its own battery cells. At the moment, like most makers of electric cars and scooters in India, a majority of battery cells come from China. Selling to America The question for renewable energy companies now is whether they focus on the Indian market or push to sell Indian-made goods abroad. Until recently, an export strategy was enormously profitable for Waaree. It made most of its money last year exporting its Indian-made solar panels to the United States. Lured by tax breaks offered by the Biden administration, Waaree invested $1 billion in a solar-panel plant in Houston. Other companies' exports surged, too. Between 2022 and 2024, the export of Indian solar modules grew "exponentially" by 23 times, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a research group. So spectacular was the growth that the group concluded that India could potentially replace Southeast Asian countries as the leading supplier of solar photovoltaics to the United States. Then Trump took office. Solar's future in the United States became far more uncertain. Waaree stocks slumped. The company intends to continue to make solar panels for Americans, Paithankar said. In the end, whether Indian companies can muscle in on the renewable energy supply chain depends less on India and more on the geopolitical trade-offs that every government will have to make. "Whether we can become an alternative to China depends on what other countries do," said Sumant Sinha, CEO of ReNew Power, which builds solar and wind equipment for the Indian domestic market. "If everyone says, 'I'm going to buy cheap,' then China will come out dominating."
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Business Standard
23-04-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Waaree Energies jumps 9% in trade; here's why the stock is in demand today
Waaree Energies share price: Shares of Waaree Energies gained 9.3 per cent in trade, logging an intraday high at Rs 2,855 on the BSE. The buying on the counter came after the company posted strong Q4FY25 results. At 10:02 AM, Waaree Energies shares were trading 8.99 per cent higher at Rs 2,846.6 per share on the BSE. In comparison, the BSE Sensex was up 0.61 per cent at 80,077.42. The market capitalisation of the company stood at Rs 81,775.16 crore. The 52-week high of the stock was at Rs 3,740.75 per share and 52-week low of the stock was at Rs 1,808.65 per share. Waaree Energies Q4 results The company on Tuesday, after market hours, reported a 34 per cent rise in its net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2025, to Rs 618.91 crore as compared to Rs 461.52 crore a year ago. Its consolidated revenue increased 36 per cent year-ono-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 4,003.93 crore as compared to Rs 2,935.84 crore a year ago. The Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amotisation (Ebitda) for Q4 stood at Rs 1,059.57 crore as against Rs 489.94 crore a year ago, up 116.27 per cent Y-o-Y. In its investor presentation, the company's management said it projects robust Y-oY growth in Ebitda in FY26 on the back of strong demand realisation and operational excellence. Furthermore, the management's Ebitda outlook for FY26 stands at Rs 5,500 crore to Rs 6,000 crore. 'FY25 marks a pivotal inflection point in Waaree's journey- a year where our strategy, scale, and execution converged to deliver industry-leading Ebitda performance of Rs 3,123.20 crore. This performance underscores the strength of our execution capabilities and the quality of order book, with centred focus on margins, " said Amit Paithankar, whole time director & CEO, Waaree Energies. ALSO READ | He added: Our 1.6 GW module manufacturing facility is operational in Brookshire, Texas, USA. This reinforces our commitment to the American market and underlines our local-for-local manufacturing philosophy. Our strategy of local manufacturing and supply chain management will help us navigate through the changing policy environment. About Waaree Energies Established in 1990, Waaree Energies is India's leading renewable energy company, accelerating the global energy transition. Headquartered in Mumbai, it operates manufacturing facilities with an installed capacity of ~15 GW for solar PV modules and 5.4 GW for solar cells.
Business Standard
23-04-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Waaree Energies spurts after Q4 PAT soars 34% YoY to Rs 619 cr
Waaree Energies jumped 8.21% to Rs 2,826.35 after the company reported 34.10% surge in consolidated net profit to Rs 618.91 crore in Q4 FY25 as against Rs 461.52 crore posted in Q4 FY24. Revenue from operations climbed 36.38% year on year (YoY) to Rs 4,003.93 crore in the quarter ended 31 March 2025. Total income was at Rs 4,140.92 crore in the March 2025 quarter, registering a growth of 37.68% YoY. Profit before exceptional items and tax was at Rs 849.48 crore in Q4 FY25, registering growth of 131.85% from Rs 366.38 crore recorded in Q4 FY24. The company reported an exceptional loss of Rs 4.02 crore during the quarter. The companys EBITDA soared by 116.27% to Rs 1,059.57 crore during the quarter from Rs 489.94 crore recorded in same quarter last year. EBITDA margin improved to 25.59% in Q4 FY25 as against 16.29% recorded in the same quarter last year. Production was 2.06 GW in Q4 FY25, reflecting a 52.59% growth compared to 1.35 GW in Q4 FY24, a result of strong operational focus, the company stated. As of 31 March 2024, the companys order book stands at 25 GW and the order book value stands at around Rs 47,000 crore. On a full-year basis, the companys consolidated net profit soared 50.93% to Rs 1,867.39 crore on 26.73% increase in total income to Rs 14,444.50 crore in FY25 over FY24. Amit Paithankar, whole time director & CEO, Waaree Energies, said, FY25 marks a pivotal inflection point in Waarees journey- a year where our strategy, scale, and execution converged to deliver industry-leading EBITDA performance of Rs. 3,123.20 crore. This performance underscores the strength of our execution capabilities and the quality of order book, with centred focus on margins. We see encouraging demand trends, which bodes well for future growth. Waaree is focused on both backward and forward integration, reflected in our expansion and investment plans including cell, ingot and wafer manufacturing, battery energy storage system, power infrastructure and inverters. Our 1.6 GW module manufacturing facility is operational in Brookshire, Texas, USA. This reinforces our commitment to the American market and underlines our local-for-local manufacturing philosophy. Our strategy of local manufacturing and supply chain management will help us navigate through the changing policy environment Furthermore, our EBITDA outlook for FY26 stands at Rs 5,500 crore to Rs 6,000 crore. The quality of our order book and execution capabilities will enable us to achieve these numbers. Waaree Energies is the largest manufacturer of solar PV modules in India with the largest aggregate installed capacity of 15 GW for solar PV modules and 5.4GW for solar cells. With presence across India and 25+ countries worldwide, we offer innovative solar solutions, including panel manufacturing, EPC services, project development, and rooftop systems.
Mint
22-04-2025
- Business
- Mint
Waaree Energies share price jumps 5% ahead of Q4 results. Should you buy or sell?
Waaree Energies share price surged as much as 5 per cent in Tuesday's trading session ahead of company's fourth quarter results announcement on April 22. At 9:46 am, Waaree Energies shares were up 5.20 per cent, trading at ₹ 2,571.20 on National Stock Exchange (NSE). Waaree Energies shares have gained over 6.20 per cent in a month and nearly 10.40 per cent in six months. Renewable energy company is all set to announce its financial results for the quarter ending on March 31, 2025. In a an exchange filing, Waaree Energies stated that its Board of Directors will meet on April 22 to review and approve the audited standalone and consolidated financial results for the quarter and year ending March 31, 2025. The company will hold a conference call with analysts and investors at 11 a.m. on April 23 to discuss its fourth-quarter results and FY25 performance. Amit Paithankar (Whole Time Director and CEO), Sonal Shrivastava (Chief Financial Officer), Abhishek Pareek (Group Head - Finance), and Rohit Wade (General Manager - Investor Relations) - will be among the company's spokesperson for the conference. Waaree Energies share price also gained following the US's decision to impose anti-dumping duties on solar equipment imports from four Southeast Asian nations. On Monday, the US imposed new tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports from Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand, following an investigation initiated during former President Joe Biden's administration. The probe was requested by American solar manufacturers. These duties will come on top of the broad tariffs introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump, which have disrupted global supply chains and markets. Known as antidumping and countervailing duties, they are intended to counteract the impact of what the Commerce Department deems unfair subsidies and pricing practices. Sumeet Bagadia, Executive Director at Choice Broking has given a target price of ₹ 2700-2750, with a stop loss of ₹ 2450. Bharat K Gala, COO at Ventura, said, 'The stock started its downfall from 3740 (Nov 2024). Steady continuous downtrend prevailed, and the stock made a low of 1808(April 2025). The stock continuously traded below average From Dec 2024 to March 2025. Recently the stock rallied to 2610 on continuous buying support. As seen in the above charts recently the stock started trading above averages after a long time and all averages have turned upwards. Indicators like KST, Aroon Up Down & ADX suggest Positive Uptrend. Target of 3000-3300 is expected & further addition is suggested at lower support levels (2420-2305 -2115) in case of intermediate fall. Any intermediate fall should be used to buy the stock. The stop loss in the trade should be kept at 2070.' Disclaimer: This story is for educational purposes only. The views and recommendations above are those of individual analysts or broking companies, not Mint. We advise investors to check with certified experts before making any investment decisions. First Published: 22 Apr 2025, 09:38 AM IST
