Daqo New Energy Corp. (NYSE:DQ) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Xiang Xu: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Some of the production has dropped by 50%. The average of the average of the production is 78% so this is a very good figure. But the demand for this season is of course also the demand of Europe and the US but of course there is also the demand of China. It should be said that the price of the main building is declining so everyone is still looking forward to it. There are about 20 projects and the main building has some of the projects. China’s demand is still there. The price of the oil industry is falling. So we are still looking at the 20-gallon market. The price of the oil industry is falling. But we should talk about the end of the year soon. I think China’s market will have some new changes.

The current statistics show 20 billion, but I think 200 billion. But I think China’s market will be over 200 billion next year. Including the so-called desert and wind power, China has new policies. Desert power is a big growth. Including lemon juice, there is a big problem. Because overall, China is still lacking. The copper industry is not good. Not compared to the gold industry? Not compared to the gold industry, of course, there is no advantage. Because this is a copper industry, it can’t do anything when it’s in trouble. So now it’s a problem. Because he asked the question, he is an expert, so he is right. Some companies are lacking, so it’s a problem. So that’s it. Yeah. So for this quarter, we’ve seen that wafers has some inventory due to seasonality reasons.

So, for instance, our downstream players, our customers like Zhonghuan TCL [indiscernible] from what we’ve known that their utilization rate has dropped to 50%, but overall for wafer, the utilization rate is still around 78%. And because module price has kept falling down, we’ve seen that there should be around 20 gigawatts of inventory by year-end and also at the beginning of the year, but there should be some new changes going forward into next year. And we forecast that China should be able to reach and even exceed 200 gigawatts next year because there’s some new policies launched in Xinjiang, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, et cetera. And regarding the question on our competitors, those who don’t have any competitive advantage would have no edge in this market given the low price.

And yes, they would have some struggles.

Ming Yang: So, I think shutdown, including [indiscernible] shutdown and idling of some capacity is actually a likely situation for non-competitive players within the industry.

Xiang Xu: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] For players in our industry, cost and quality are the two primary — the key factors in gaining an edge in this competitive landscape. And as a company, we have the lowest cost and they’re high quality, so we believe that we can sustain our position in the market.

Gordon Johnson: Thanks again, guys.

Ming Yang: Great. Thank you. And we’ll take our last question if there’s one more.

Operator: Thank you. The next and final question will be from Frank Fan of Nomura. Please go ahead.

Frank Fan: Thanks, Mr. Xu and Mr. Yang, for taking my question. I think this question has been addressed in the second quarter earnings. I just want to reconfirm that we do not consider any privatization plan in this year and also in the next year, right? And the second question is, are the voting rights of shares hold by management is equal to those voting rights hold by minority common shareholders? Thank you.

Unidentified Company Representative: Sorry, Frank, can you repeat the second question?

Frank Fan: Yeah. My second question is about voting rights. Shares hold by management, all the Board members, I wonder if the voting rights is similar at one-to-one ratio to those shares hold by minority public shareholders. Thank you.

Xiang Xu: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] We don’t have any plans in terms of privatization at this point, but we will see how the market evolves. But as of now, we don’t have any plans in terms of privatization this year and in the coming years.