To all LONGi Colleagues:
The past Spring Festival holiday can be unforgettable for everyone. At this critical time for the whole country, unified as one, to fight against the novel coronavirus outbreak, LONGi Group ushered in its 20th anniversary. In China, it was an old tradition that young people would be crowned at the age of 20 to recognize his or her adulthood. For LONGi Group, turning 20 means adulthood as well, and this unexpected incident is more like a test of maturity for LONGi as a "grown-up".Since the beginning of the epidemic outbreak, we have been working hard to protect the well-being of every colleague, while maintaining the stability of the company's daily operation and production. We convey confidence to all LONGi staff to give everyone a sense of security. Thankfully, as of now, no one out of LONGi's over 30,000 employees was infected. Here, we appreciate the cooperation from all of our colleagues, especially those who have been working to prevent and control the epidemic throughout the Spring Festival holiday. At the moment, all staff of the group headquarter, business units and factories are gradually returning to work. Production and operation will be back on track very soon. Gladly we have stood this test!
In the face of the novel coronavirus outbreak, we have also seen numerous medical staff stepping forward with courage, who are building the protective shields for the society with their "flesh and blood". LONGi always believes that the fundamental value of an enterprise lies in creating a better environment with humanism. To do so, we have also expressed our loving care and support to the medical staff at the forefront of the epidemic prevention and control work as early as we can.
2020 is the 20th year since the founding of LONGi Group. From the early-year exploration since the company's inception, LONGi Group has shifted its main business focus to "contributing clean energy to mankind" by promoting the development of the photovoltaic industry. We are happy to see that, with the joint efforts of LONGi colleagues and partners within the industry, the global photovoltaic LCOE has reduced rapidly. Solar power has become the cheapest and cleanest source of electricity in many countries and regions. This is our outstanding contribution to the industry and even to mankind. We, all of LONGi people, shall be proud of our achievements.
At this new starting point of history, we can see that the global energy system is undergoing some fundamental changes: electrification of energy consumption and cleanliness of power production. This trend of change will be further strengthened. The global photovoltaic industry will continue to maintain good development momentum. We firmly believe that LONGi and the whole photovoltaic industry will usher in a brighter future with a great prospect. In this regard, we are supposed to be well prepared for the upcoming decade.
We should keep faith in the industry. With the increasing market demand for efficient and clean energy, we firmly believe that the global demand for monocrystalline products will continue to grow significantly. For LONGi, this is strategic opportunities with great significance. We will try our best to seize the opportunities, rationally extend production capacity, to achieve rapid, while sustained, growth. We would continuously increase LONGi's global market share, and promote the reform of the global energy sector.
We should continue to value innovation. Innovation is in the NDA of LONGi. In the past 20 years, all our achievements cannot be done without technological innovation. In the new decade, while facing a more diverse photovoltaic market, we must maintain a heavy investment in R&D. On the one hand, we must provide the soil to cultivate technological innovation: improve innovation mechanism, and ignite the passion for it. On the other hand, we must have a more diverse perspective on innovation: not only we shall support application-based R&D, but also support the forward- looking technologies, fundamental technologies, and core equipment technologies. We shall form solid capacity on a more independent approach to R&D and innovation. Most importantly, we should further leverage the industry synergy with supply chain partners, pay attention to industry trends, build a coordinated innovation platform, and effectively integrate innovation resources and opportunities in all aspects of the industry. We should have in-depth cooperation with our supply chain partners, form a collaborative "win-win" innovation mechanism, integrate and create an ecosystem for the supply chain, and promote the technological advancement and industry upgrade.
We should maintain our corporate culture and shared value. In the past 20 years, it is because of our corporate culture and shared value that bring all LONGi people together to move forward. LONGi's corporate culture highlights "reliable, value-added and delighted", which means we hope every colleague can become a reliable person, do reliable things, produce reliable products, offer reliable services, create more value for clients, improve him/herself during work, make clients delighted and, meanwhile, be happy for his/herself. As we embark a new journey, our team will for sure keep growing bigger and stronger. This requires us to strengthen the guiding role of our corporate culture and values. We should keep our work style of efficient information exchange and pragmatic coordination and collaboration. We should create an atmosphere that people can express themselves freely, and establish a mechanism for internal information sharing to keep colleagues from all related business units updated. We should also promote the company's efficient operation through well- coordinated cooperation between teams.
We should continue to improve LONGi's management professionals. LONGi Group strongly believes in long-termism and we believe that future competition must be the competition for talented professionals, especially management talents. Therefore, we have long been advocating the philosophy of "stimulating vitality by empowering managers on capability-building and decision- making". Looking into the future, all our managers must continue to deeply understand the importance of "empowerment". We will innovate the current mechanism and business models to encourage our colleagues to transform from executors to managers and transform from the managers to taking strong ownership of work. We will build LONGi's long-term leading core competitiveness by creating a culture that respects high performance based on both internal and external benchmarks, as well as keeping the team motivated with a proactive attitude on learning.
Today is LONGi's 20th birthday. Maybe we have never thought that we would welcome the beginning of the new decade in this way, but we are not afraid. In the past two decades, we have been tested by one and another difficult situations, and grown into the LONGi Group that all people see today. The reason why we become what we are today is that we always believe that we can bring more value to the world in the future. At this moment of special significance to LONGi, we hope that all LONGi people will continue to firmly believe in it, that when the haze is gone, the sun will once again enlighten the ground!
Zhong Baoshen
Chairman of LONGi
February 14, 2020