【Tainan/Taiwan – March. 18th, 2019】Today, Board of Directors of Motech resolved the full year 2018 financial results and recorded an asset impairment charge of NTD2,631 million in accordance with IAS 36 Impairment of Assets. This one-time asset impairment charge as a result of the Company’s implementation of organization optimization plans will not have any impacts on our working capitals or cash outflows; instead, through those actions during 2018, we have made a great progress to improve debt structure, reduce operation costs and enhance operational efficiencies across the Company.
In the fourth quarter of 2018, the Company recorded a net loss of NTD2,367 million and total equities decreased to NTD 4,533 million. The decline was mainly due to an one-time asset impairment charge of NTD1,799 million and workforce allocation expenses of NTD219 million. Through all the actions undertaking last year, we have stabilized and reset the core business into solar system market in Taiwan with our high-efficiency Mono PERC solar cell capacities of 250MW and module of 200MW. While in China, we still dedicate to improving production costs on solar cell and module facilities with capacity of 1,200MW and 250MW to meet market trends. In addition, the Company has intended to collect overdue accounts receivable, lowered inventory levels, fully executed the long-term polysilicon supply contract and completed the disposal of facilities in Taiwan and China to drive free cash flow, improve operating leverage as well as reduce financial debt. Moreover, our subsidiary in Maanshan city has fully cooperated with and gotten supports from local authorities to reach the settlement of construction related contract issues. To sum up, a more solid financial statement of Motech will lead to increased flexibility to adopt any strategy shift and position, despite a significant decline in book value.
2019 shall be a good start across the Company, we aim at emphasizing on solar module and system businesses and innovating and developing the most competitive solar products. Since last year, we have expanded our core value into downstream business proactively and supported the Government’s energy transition policy with a series of system projects in Taiwan. Furthermore, we have increased solar module shipments following our strategy shift to solar system business. Our module product is designed with specification suitable for the island climate of Taiwan. The upward momentum shall be delivered in the second quarter of this year. Besides our core business, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and us have worked together to develop a new generation product and aimed at reaching mass production in the second half this year so as to maintain our competitive positon in solar cell industry.