Canadian Solar Misses Estimates by a Mile (CSIQ, SPWR, AAPL)

Bad news from the solar PV makers is as common as dirt these days. It’s the good news that’s hard to find. Canadian Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: CSIQ), which despite its name is a Chinese company, reported a much larger than expected loss this morning, so the surprise was just more bad news. Some good news, at least for SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ: SPWR), came yesterday with the announcement that it would provide the solar panels for a new data center being built by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) in North Carolina.

Canadian Solar was expected to post an EPS loss of -$0.36 on revenue of $485 million in its fourth quarter. The reported EPS loss came in at a whopping -$1.39 on revenue of $474 million.

This is what the company had to say about the current quarter and the current year:

For the first quarter of 2012, shipments are expected to be in the range of approximately 340 MW to 350 MW, with gross margin expected to be between 5% and 8%. Despite the challenging global financing environment, which continues to result in customer demand uncertainty for the whole year 2012, the Company expects to ship approximately 1,800 MW to 2,000 MW of solar products.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Canadian Solar shipped 436 megawatts at a gross margin of 8.7%. For the full fiscal year, the company shipped 1,323 megawatts at a gross margin of 9.6%.

For 2012, the company is expecting to ship fewer panels at lower margins. The question is how long can Canadian operate with expectations like this. The answer is, as long the Chinese government lets it.