【Company Research】Suzhou Maxwell Technologies (300751 CH) – Leading screen printing equipment maker penetrating into HJT cell production equipment

Maxwell is a market leader in manufacturing screen printing equipment for solar cells and has been expanding into providing complete production line for HJT cells. Key positives include 1) encouraging progress on HJT development; 2) solid backlog to secure earnings growth in FY21E-22E; and 3) strong pricing power to protect margin.

• Company background. Founded in 2010, Maxwell is a leading solar cell equipment supplier specializing in offering screen printing equipment with a dominant market share of over 70%. The Company has also expanded its product offerings to HJT cell production equipment, OLED production equipment and laser equipment. During FY14-FY19, Maxwell has achieved 122%/368% revenue/net profit CAGR on back of strong downstream solar cell capacity expansion.

• Achieving localization of complete HJT cell production lines. Since its first delivery of HJT screen printing equipment in 1H19, Maxwell has made progress in HJT and won several tenders of HJT cell equipment procurement from major cell makers in 2020 (e.g. Anhui Xuancheng Huasheng, Canadian Solar [CSIQ, NR], Tongwei [600438 CH, NR]) (see more details in Fig. 3-4). Through purchase agreement with its 30%-holding affiliate Jiangsu Qiweixing, which cooperates with Japanese company Y.A.C. and manufactures cleaning and texturing equipment for HJT cells, Maxwell is now able to offer complete production line for manufacturing HJT cells. Among the 1.85GW HJT cell capacity inviting for equipment procurement tender in 2H20, Maxwell stated it won 61% of total amount. The Company will deliver equipment for Huasheng’s and CSIQ’s HJT cell fabs after CNY, and expects to see Huasheng’s cell efficiency data coming out in May-Jun 2021. For Tongwei’s 1GW HJT cell fab, the equipment will be delivered in May-Jun 2021, and data may be seen by the end of 2021. The Company expects tender for equipment procurement of 10-15GW HJT cell capacity in 2021.

• Competitive strength in HJT equipment: increasing throughput, reducing silver paste consumption and offering software service. It becomes industry consensus that HJT cells should achieve at least 25% conversion efficiency in order to have better cost efficiency over PERC. To achieve this, Maxwell will further increase the throughput of its equipment to help reduce per GW CAPEX. The throughput of Maxwell’s PECVD equipment for HJT cells has increased from 5,000 pcs/hr in 2019 to 8,000 pcs/hr in 2020, while per GW CAPEX was down from <RMB 600mn to <RMB 500mn. The Company targets to launch new generation with 10,000 pcs/hr throughput and further lower per GW CAPEX to RMB 400mn in 2021. Maxwell also makes efforts in reducing silver paste consumption in HJT cells, through the introduction of silver coated copper particles in screen printing process and the launch of proprietary welding machines for thinner busbars and fingers, which together aim to make HJT silver consumption similar to that in PERC. In addition, Maxwell will provide clients who purchase a complete production line with their proprietary software system. The system could track each wafer’s data throughout the whole production line, which will help cell makers to improve their production process, reducing no. of staffs on production line and most importantly, enhance clients’ loyalty.