Long term positive, but near term risk on tariff cut 

We maintain our positive stance on the Chinese wind farm operators in the long term as we expect growth to remain strong and grid congestion will continue to ease. However, we recognise flip side of growth and improved returns is an increased risk of tariff cut in the near to medium term for new wind farms. Our top pick is Huadian Fuxin. The company has a balanced portfolio which diversifies regulatory risks. 

 

We think growth will remain robust; sceptical on offshore wind 

We expect new capacity additions to be slightly higher at 16GW in 2014 and 17 GW in 2015 compared to the past few years. This should be supported by a newly released 4th batch of wind farm construction approvals. We also think the ongoing improvement in grid conditions and a possibility of tariffs cut net year could spur wind companies to accelerate capacity additions in the near term. We remain sceptical on offshore wind implementation. We forecast China to have 189GW of wind farms connected to the grid by 2020, which is slightly lower than the government’s target of 200GW. 

Utilisation hours should continue to improve… 

We expect utilisation hours to continue improving with ongoing investment by the grid companies and the companies’ diversification plan to invest in non-grid congested areas. This should directly benefit the pre-tax profit and ROE because an improvement in utilisation hours comes with minimal additional costs.