Building A Billion-Dollar Solar Company: Canadian Solar CEO Shawn Qu (Part 5)

Sramana: To enter the German market you had to develop a different solar panel. How did that affect your manufacturing process?

Shawn Qu: The principles remain the same, and the quality of the system remained the same. By 2004 we were a tier 1 supplier for Volkswagen and had been certified to the automotive supplier’s quality standard, which is TS-16949. Even today we are the only solar company that is TS-16949 certified. That certification required full quality systems and manufacturing control systems be used in our factory.

That being said, a large panel is different from a small panel. There are some process and equipment changes that were made, but those changes were manageable for our company to make. The core manufacturing principles remained the same.

Sramana: How did your business progress in 2005?

Shawn Qu: At that time we did not have a CFO, we had only a controller. I thought since we had reached $10 million in revenue in such a short amount of time that we should think about venture capital financing and that we should find a CFO so we could prepare for an IPO.

By the end of 2005, we finished our VC financing. We raised $13 million from two VCs. One VC was based in Hong Kong and the other was based in Japan. Both have offices in China and were looking for high-tech Chinese companies to invest in. The VC industry was already strong in China, so if you have good technologies then you will find prospects.

Sramana: I think it helps when you have $10 million in revenue and a strong customer base.

Shawn Qu: Yes, it certainly does. In 2004 we did $10 million in revenue. In 2005 we did $18 million in revenue. In 2006 we had $28 million in revenue. The growth rate of our company and our prospects were pretty clear, so in 2006 we kick-started our IPO process. In November 2006 we went public on the NASDAQ. At the time we went public we still had less than 1% of the worldwide market share. Since then we have doubled or tripled every year. Last year we did $1.1 billion in revenue and we became one of the top six largest solar module manufacturers in the world. In 2006 our annual delivery was less than 15 megawatts. In 2010 it was more than 800 megawatts. We have been steadily increasing our market share.

Sramana: How has the business evolved from 2006 to 2010? The German market was very strong in the mid-2000s. What other markets developed for you?

Shawn Qu: Solar began to spread to all the key economic markets in the world. Japan was a very strong market that we entered in 2009. Italy was a strong market in 2009 and 2010. France introduced tariff relief for solar as well, and the U.K. adopted a renewable energy policy a couple of years ago as well. The province of Ontario passed a renewable energy law in 2009. Solar has truly become a worldwide market. In 2010 we sold our product in more than 30 countries around the world, of which 10 are our core market.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Building A Billion-Dollar Solar Company: Canadian Solar CEO Shawn Qu
1 2 3 4 5 6 7