Goldman Sachs: LONGi narrows third-quarter loss as premium BC module sales improve gross margin

Where did third-quarter results outperform?

In the third quarter of 2026, LONGi posted a net loss of approximately 1 billion yuan, narrowing 42% quarter on quarter and 23% year on year. The loss was smaller than Goldman Sachs’ previous forecast of 3 billion yuan and the Visible Alpha market consensus of 2 billion yuan.
Revenue was 16.8 billion yuan, up 6% quarter on quarter and down 7% year on year, broadly in line with Goldman Sachs’ expectations. Module shipments rose 8% quarter on quarter to 18.68 gigawatts. The outperformance came mainly from margins: overall gross margin rose 3 percentage points quarter on quarter to 6%, exceeding Goldman Sachs’ forecast and the market consensus by 14 and 9 percentage points, respectively.

Third-quarter BC module shipments were 12 gigawatts, up 7% quarter on quarter and accounting for approximately 65% of total module shipments, reaching the company’s full-year 2026 target. The company said BC module gross margin in the third quarter increased by 6.27 percentage points from the first half of 2026 because of a higher share of sales in the premium overseas distributed-generation market, where selling price premiums are higher.
Infolink data show that distributed-generation BC module prices in the European Union were approximately 40% higher than BC module prices in China and 50%–60% higher than TOPCon module prices. On this basis, Goldman Sachs estimates that premium BC products’ share of the company’s total shipments rose from 35% in the second quarter to 45% in the third quarter.
Besides the change in sales mix, Goldman Sachs attributed the improvement in overall gross margin to continued cost reductions from the low-silver AMC technology and broadly stable upstream costs.

Goldman Sachs raised its 2026 net profit forecast by 39% and its 2027–2030 forecasts by an average of 4%, citing a higher share of sales in the premium overseas distributed-generation market and an improved revenue and margin outlook. Its model’s earnings-per-share forecasts show losses of 0.75 yuan and 0.33 yuan in 2026 and 2027, respectively, followed by a profit of 0.04 yuan in 2028.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its Buy rating and raised its 12-month target price from 13.6 yuan to 15.4 yuan. The bank believes BC modules’ gross margin is approximately 10 percentage points higher than that of mainstream TOPCon modules, helping support the return on equity of the company’s module business at the midpoint of the industry cycle.
Constraints on this view include a greater-than-expected rebound in polysilicon and glass prices, slower adoption of cost-reduction technologies, and slower-than-expected development of the BC business; these factors could weaken the improvement in margins.