China's three largest listed solar manufacturers, Longi Green Energy Technology, Tongwei and JA Solar Technology, lost a combined 15.1 billion yuan ($2.2 billion) in the first nine months of 2026, according to their quarterly filings as the industry's long-running overcapacity kept a lid on prices.

All three reported wider year-to-date losses and lower sales than a year earlier. For investors in Asia, the numbers matter beyond the Shanghai and Shenzhen boards: Chinese factories set the global price of solar equipment, and their losses feed directly into what developers from Indonesia to Australia pay for panels. The filings also show that the deepest part of the slump may have passed for two of the three, with third-quarter losses smaller than in the spring.

Longi, Tongwei and JA Solar: the numbers

Tongwei, a polysilicon and cell producer, posted the largest loss. Its net loss attributable to shareholders for January through September widened to 6.76 billion yuan, its filing showed, compared with about 5.27 billion yuan a year earlier, according to pv magazine. Revenue fell 9.69% to 58.34 billion yuan. Third-quarter revenue was nearly flat on the year at 23.98 billion yuan, and the quarterly loss narrowed to 1.64 billion yuan from 2.68 billion yuan in the second quarter.

The balance sheet shows the cost of the downturn. Tongwei's shareholders' equity fell 17.35% from the end of 2025 to 32.14 billion yuan, and total assets shrank 7.52% to 173.65 billion yuan. Operating cash flow for the nine months was still positive at 2.02 billion yuan, though down 28.35%.

Longi lost 4.71 billion yuan in the nine months, up from 3.40 billion yuan a year earlier, pv magazine reported. Revenue dropped 13.85% to 43.86 billion yuan. In the third quarter alone, revenue fell 7.08% to 16.82 billion yuan and the company lost 1.03 billion yuan, a smaller deficit than in the second quarter.

JA Solar reported a nine-month loss of 3.64 billion yuan, against a restated 3.56 billion yuan a year earlier, on revenue that fell 23.62% to 28.11 billion yuan. Unlike its two peers, it did not show a clear improvement in the third quarter: it lost 974 million yuan, roughly in line with the same period of 2025, while quarterly revenue dropped 17.74% to 10.62 billion yuan.

Where the bright spots are

Volumes are holding up even as prices fall. JA Solar told investors on Oct. 30 that cell and module shipments reached 13.97 gigawatts in the third quarter, up about 35% from the second, according to pv magazine. Overseas markets took 60.92% of its module shipments in the first nine months, a reminder of how much Chinese makers now rely on exports as domestic installations slow. Capital Times reported earlier that China's new solar installations fell 54% this year.

Longi's bet on back-contact (BC) cells is the clearest product story. The company shipped 48.61 gigawatts of modules in the nine months, including 31.64 gigawatts of BC modules, up 118.58% from a year earlier and more than 65% of the total, pv magazine reported. Gross margin on BC modules improved by 6.27 percentage points from the first half, the report said. The higher-efficiency panels sell at a premium, which helps explain why Longi's losses are narrowing faster than its revenue is shrinking.

Cheaper power keeps the pressure on

The demand side is not giving manufacturers much relief. On Nov. 3, the Guangdong Power Exchange Center published the results of its 2026 renewable energy auction, selecting 58,962 distributed solar projects at a mechanism price of 0.300 yuan per kilowatt-hour, according to pv magazine. That was 16.7% below the 0.360 yuan set in the previous round. The price applies for 12 years, and the volume covered rose about 59% to 7.934 terawatt-hours.

Those auction prices set the revenue developers can count on for more than a decade. Lower guaranteed tariffs leave developers with less room to pay for equipment, which in turn limits how far manufacturers can raise module prices.

For investors, the third-quarter filings point to a sector that has slowed its losses but not stopped them. Tongwei's quarterly loss has shrunk by about 39% from the second quarter, while JA Solar's has not moved. Their full-year reports will show whether premium cells such as Longi's BC line can bring them back toward break-even. The Guangdong auction results were open for public review until Nov. 9.