Top customers are in arrears and performance is declining! TCL Zhonghuan Subsidiary Layoffs!

According to foreign media reports, Maxeon Solar Technologies, a subsidiary of TCL Central, said in a statement recently that the company would lay off 15% of its staff worldwide. The reason is that it is affected by the market situation and the default of top customers. He said he expected most of the layoffs to be completed by the end of this year. Maxeon

recently released a preliminary report on its third quarter results. In the third quarter of 2023, the company's revenue will be between $ 224 million and $229 million, with shipments of about 622-632 MW , compared with 807 MW in the second quarter. The company said its performance was affected by lower shipments from the largest distributed generation (DG) customer in the United States and slower industry-wide demand in the global DG market.

CEO "Our largest U.S. DG customer breached payment obligations under our current Master Supply Agreement (MSA), so we suspended shipments at the end of July," Mulligan said. Although this customer made several outstanding payments, now that (the agreement) is nearing expiration, we will continue to tentatively schedule our shipments and work in good faith to resolve certain ongoing MSA violation claims. We don't know how to implement such a solution quickly. Our position is that we have a strict volume and pricing contract.

Although Maxeon did not disclose the identity of its defaulting customers, according to industry speculation, the company may be the SunPower Corp. of Maxeon's former parent company . The contract dispute between the two companies has been going on since at least August. According to the data of

helping TCL Central to develop the European and American markets

, in 2020, Total Solar International split its holding company Sun Power's solar cell and module business outside the United States and Canada to register Maxeon in Singapore, and TCL Zhonghuan invested $298 million in Maxeon, with a shareholding ratio of 28.2. TCL Zhonghuan used 2.

So far, TCL Zhonghuan has become Maxeon's first major shareholder . TCL Central attaches so much importance to Maxeon, which is the manifestation of its ambition to expand overseas markets.

TCL Zhonghuan, as the leading enterprise in the domestic silicon wafer industry, ranked first in the silicon wafer shipment list in the first half of this year with 53 GW shipments. And those who can make the silicon chip leader spend thousands of yuan will not be ordinary people.

It is reported that Maxeon has thousands of patents including IBC and imbrication , and is one of the enterprises with the largest number of imbrication technology installations in the industry, with its business covering Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe and the Americas. The products are distributed all over the world will bring such a strong player under its command, and the benefits to the overseas market of TCL Zhonghuan cannot be simply measured.". With Maxeon's natural advantage in shingled component technology, TCL Central's strategy is to build a high barrier to competition with the help of technology patents. In November

2020, Maxeon filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Atlas subsidiary in Japan , arguing that Atlas used its shingled solar module patents without permission.

In June, Maxeon sued Tongwei subsidiary for Tongwei Solar GmbH infringement.

In addition, with the help of Maxeon, TCL Central can accelerate its European and American market layout at a time when Chinese enterprises are going overseas to build factories and cultivate the European and American markets.

On August 10, Maxeon announced that it would invest $10 to build a large-scale photovoltaic cell and module factory in New Mexico, USA. It said the new plant would exceed the capacity of any existing photovoltaic module company in the United States.