Were you surprised by the news on Monday of ABBs acquisition of Power-One?
It wasnt completely unexpected, but I probably wouldnt have named Power-One or ABB, or linked those two companies. Certainly weve been saying for a long time that we expected one of those industrial manufacturers to aggressively enter this market. Certainly acquisition is a pretty sensible way to do so. Power-One makes a lot of sense for ABB, it compliments them pretty well. So it wasnt a surprise, but I hadnt actually named those two companies as the next pair.
Why do you say that Power-One suits ABB so well?
ABB has a lot of expertise in large industrial inverters and thats where theyve begun to make some progress in the market. Power-One, although it does have some large inverters, has a pretty complete portfolio of three-phase and single-phase inverters. Really the combination of Power-Ones expertise, on those products, with ABBs expertise, in the larger products, combined with ABBs international footprint, in terms of sales, servicing and manufacturing operations, and its financial strength and reputation really creates a pretty strong offering.
The appearance of Power-One in the photovoltaic market and its growth and progress up the inverter rankings has been impressive. What do you attribute its success to?
Its important to note that Power-One entered the photovoltaic market with an acquisition itself. They bought an Italian inverter called Magnetek, about five years ago. From there they had a very strong hold on the Italian market, which quickly grew to become the second largest photovoltaic market in the world at that time. And Power-Ones market share in Italy was pretty significant, they were the number one supplier there by quite a long way.
At the same time, Power-One was pretty successful in setting up manufacturing outside of Europe and penetrating the markets as well. They were pretty strong in Germany and other European markets, as well as Asia and North America.
Looking at the financial strength of Power-One, with cash reserves in excess of US$200 million, do you think the price ABB paid for Power-One is about right?
Certainly Power-Ones financial situation was fairly strong, ABB is a very strong industrial company. It seems to make sense without going very deep into the numbers. My first impression was that given the share price ($6.35/share) ABB paid, it does seem high, but Im sure ABB has thought long and hard about the acquisition and its certainly not a decision thats been taken overnight.
ABB CEO Joe Hogan, in announcing the news, spoke about the risks posed by the acquisition. There are risks in any deal, but what in particular do you think he was talking about?
I would say its the photovoltaic market in general. There are risks involved in any move in the photovoltaic market. Weve seen rapid changes in the market environment occur almost overnight, caused by something as simple as one political opinion. Things like that can really rock the whole photovoltaic industry. When you observe the collapse of the Czech and Italian markets in 2010, that set a decline of photovoltaic module prices going that lasted two years and weve seen prices decline almost by 60%.
Those challenges havent gone away for the photovoltaic industry yet. We have seen the industry become more diverse and it is becoming more stable and more and more countries account for a more significant proportion of the market. However, the photovoltaic market remains a very volatile environment. While we have seen some consolidation, it remains a highly competitive environment. So ABBs move is by no means a guaranteed winning move.
How much strength do you think the ABB brand will now bring Power-Ones offerings?
I do think that without a doubt the combination of the two companies is stronger than the two companies were before. ABBs brand recognition and strength is key to that. Power-One has a fantastic set of products, ABB has a great set of products for one particular market segment. Theres no massive change in market share: ABBs was only 1%, so there wont be a major change in rankings. But its a very compelling offering when you combine the expertise of both companies and the product portfolio they now have.
To use a word that is thrown around all over the place in the photovoltaic industry, the bankability of ABB on paper is incredibly strong possibly the strongest in the photovoltaic industry. (ABB ended 2012 with $8.5 billion in cash, equivalents, marketable securities and short-term investments; it has $10 billion in short and long term debt. The company generated full-year revenues of $39.9 billion, which earned a $2.8 billion net profit last year.)
What are the next steps for the companies now and where do you see them being placed in the future?
Its going to take ABB and Power-One some time to figure out their strategy, their combined portfolio and how the company moves, going forward. They will obviously want to sort that out as soon as possible, to ensure there isnt uncertainty with their customers and to ensure they dont lose any momentum because of this.
Ultimately I see them taking their new product portfolio and leveraging ABBs strength in new and emerging markets, such as South America, India and Japan where ABB already has sales, marketing, servicing, manufacturing for all its other product lines. So I see the new firms aggressively entering these markets. The global footprint of ABB is a huge strength to the two companies, ABB will be massively well placed to serve those emerging markets.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.