MARLBORO, Mass., Oct. 25 (UPI) -- Marlboro, Mass.-based Evergreen Solar posted a Q3 revenue increase of 227 percent over the third quarter of 2005, the company said Wednesday.
"Third-quarter EverQ revenues exceeded our expectations as we quickly brought the full facility online," Richard Feldt, the company's president and chief executive officer, said via a company statement.
"Gross margin for the third quarter was 15.7 percent, compared with 10.4 percent for the third quarter a year ago and 4.1 percent for the second quarter of 2006. The increase in product gross margin was expected and primarily resulted from the incremental volume in EverQ production and sales," the statement said.
"In the fourth quarter, we will be converting the entire EverQ factory to thin wafer production. We believe the combination of this conversion with other manufacturing enhancements will enable us to improve our silicon productivity to less than six grams per watt by year end," Feldt said.
During the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Evergreen's first production facility -- EverQ-1 -- reached full production capacity, the statement said. The "Q" in the name comes from a partnership with Germany's Q-Cells AG.
Evergreen also broke ground on EverQ-2, and plans to start solar wafer production at that facility by the second quarter of 2007, according to the statement.
