Italy's FIMER acquires ABB's photovoltaic inverter division, earning $470 million? Becomes the world's seventh largest

How can you take over other companies' business without paying any money? This kind of good thing has indeed happened. Next, I will introduce a photovoltaic inverter acquisition case.

In July 2019, ABB announced for the first time that it would sell its photovoltaic inverter business to Italy's Fimer. ABB will pay FIMER $430 million for related warranty and after-sales services, and another $40 million for separation costs. This transaction will allow Fimer's photovoltaic inverter sales in 2020 to exceed 7GW, ranking seventh in the world.

ABB is a leading manufacturer in the field of power and automation technology. It is a Fortune 500 company with its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland. With operations in more than 100 countries and a total of more than 130,000 employees worldwide, ABB is well-known in the industry. ABB entered the photovoltaic industry before 2010 and has a complete industrial layout from EPC, inverters, and electrical systems. In 2013, it acquired Power One, a US company with declining performance, for US$1 billion. Since then, due to various reasons, its market share and profits have continued to decline, and it finally sold its photovoltaic inverter business as a whole in 2019.

FIMER was founded in 1942 and has entered the photovoltaic inverter market since 1983. Its main business consists of two parts: photovoltaic inverter business and electric vehicle charging pile business. It has more than 1,100 employees worldwide, and its products are distributed in more than 100 countries around the world. It has 3 R&D centers and 3 production bases. According to its official website, its photovoltaic products mainly include string photovoltaic inverters, centralized photovoltaic inverters, and inverter-transformer integrated solutions.

String photovoltaic inverters include single-phase inverters, three-phase inverters and single-phase hybrid energy storage machines. Single-phase inverters range from 3 to 8Kw, three-phase inverters range from 10kW to 175kW, and there are new 1500V three-phase inverters. The maximum grid-connected power output of the energy storage machine is 5000W. String inverters are available in both European and American standards. Centralized inverters include 2MW, 5MW and 1500V centralized inverters. Inverter-boost integrated machines include string inverter-boost type and centralized inverter-boost type. Their charging pile business includes DC piles and AC piles, which will not be introduced in detail.

Judging from the acquisition of the Italian FIMER business, I think European and American companies have been going downhill in the field of photovoltaic inverters. The company still retains 3 R&D centers and 3 production centers. I guess they are the original companies of Power One, ABB and FIMER. There are quite a lot of problems here. The three places are in different countries and the distance is very far. Communication is a serious problem. I remember that R&D and production were separated by a building, and we were too lazy to run, let alone separated by several countries. At the same time, the integration of the three parts is also a serious problem. There are huge differences in culture, system, products, management, etc. When ABB acquired Power One, it spent a lot of money and time but it has not been integrated well. How can a relatively weak FIMER integrate with the strong ABB business department?

Under the strong competition from Chinese manufacturers, Siemens, Bosch, Schneider, Emerson, ABB, KACO, Danfoss and other once glorious European and American photovoltaic inverter players have now withdrawn from the group in batches. It took less than 10 years for them to go from having an absolute advantage to the current decline. Therefore, we must learn from this and must not be proud or complacent. We must persist in reform and opening up and cooperate with the world. I heard about the "great changes unseen in a century" before, but I didn't feel much at the time. Now I can really feel it from the profound changes in photovoltaic and electronic grade polysilicon materials, photovoltaic modules, photovoltaic inverters and other very niche fields.