TSL: Yes i've read what Bronte said. His research here didn't impress me, they even backed off their fraud allegations.
The fact is, pretty much all these solar companies have been investing in capacity expansion and sometimes that causes negative cashflow for awhile. 2012 will be highly positive cashflow though.
Survival is assured for the simple reason that they ARE in the bottom quartile of cost in their industry. Around 12GW can produce at TSL's cost basis when demand is 20GW+ (Projected 21GW demand for 2012 by Goldman Sachs, but could go higher with all these ASP reductions). For there to be a problem in this coming year, demand would need to fall of a complete cliff -- Just not going to happen given everything currently in the pipeline including the new China FIT policy, which YGE and TSL will benefit the most from.
So low-cost production simply cannot satisfy demand, thus those low-cost producers will still have nice gross-margin percentages. Net margins will certainly come down from 2010 levels going forward, no question about that -- At least until we start seeing some of the non-tier1 producers get out of the business and supply come down.
TSL has by far the strongest balance sheet of all the Chinese solars, their net debt/equity ratio is fantastic. You will see companies like JKS fall off into bankruptcy before you start seeing TSL be stressed -- Which would once again reduce incoming supply.
-Fernando
