Some 29 million ADS shares of Yingli Green Energy go on sell tomorrow for $11 per share. Goldman Sachs and UBS Investment Bank are among the underwriters for the IPO.

While the LDK Solar IPO earlier this month was slightly disappointing, Yingli has the advantage of being the first "truly integrated Chinese solar power company" to go public, according to Finance Asia. That means greater control over the production process and better profit margins.

With over 1,700 employees, Yingli reported an income of RMB366.9 million (US$47.5 million) on revenues of RMB1.64 billion (US$272.9 million) for calendar year 2006. Q1 revenues were up about 113% and income was up just over 15% in 2007 over the same period in 2006.

Many analysts see the solar power industry as being hampered by an ongoing shortage of the raw silicon needed to make power cells. Yingli is one of a handful of Chinese firms that manages to cope with this shortage by recycling sub-standard silicon wafers discarded by the semiconductor industry. These are turned into silicon ingots, then into wafers, then into panels, and finally into larger power systems. This ability to recycle silicon gives Yingli (and a very few other companies) an advantage in the raw materials area of the solar technology industry.

So as the Yingli IPO becomes available, the question becomes one of whether solar power is a passing fad (like ethanol was a year or so ago) or whether the industry is here to stay. But either way, Yingli should do well as an IPO...