Aside from the unwelcome news of a downward revision of sales and profit figures, the most eye-catching aspect of today's financial update from SMA Solar Technology is the blithe one-line statement everything will be okay again in 2014.
After an extraordinary meeting of the board of the German inverter manufacturer today, the Niestetal-based company announced it would not, after all, break even for 2013, in line with its previous ‘best case scenario' and is instead expecting an 80 million-90 million loss.
The new figure went hand in hand with a 200 million downward revision in forecast sales figures from 900 million-1.3 billion down to to 900 million-1 billion, which at least indicates SMA's worst-case scenario was not overly optimistic.
In an ad hoc company statement announcing the revised figures, SMA blamed a stronger-than-expected decline in European markets as well as the ongoing costs of restructuring Zeversolar, which SMA acquired in March.
The German company acquired a 40 million controlling 72.5% stake in the Jiangsu-based inverter manufacturer as a way into the much more healthy Chinese solar market.
It is perhaps the expectation of a more diverse market going forward that prompted the board to predict sales would return to 1 billion to 1.3 billion next year as the company returns to profitability.
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