Is SunPower (SPWR, $6.09) Moving Towards Bankruptcy?

US headquartered high-efficiency PV module producer, SunPower Corp, issued a "going concern" notice after its dismal Q3 results. This gave rise to speculations over whether the company is slowly advancing towards filing for bankruptcy.

Over the last few quarters, the company has been reporting a continuous decline in its gross margins along with increasing net losses. Since the company's Q3 performance followed two quarters of weakness, market analysts have put forward their opinion that the company could continue to lose money -- with the next two quarters being particularly bad ones.

Once the largest revenue earner for the company, SPWR’s Power Plant business has been discontinued for some time now, largely owing to negative gross margins and the prospects getting worse with each passing day. Amidst such a situation, the company had recently undertaken another round of asset sell-offs and further increased its loan portfolio to avert bankruptcy, due to looming liquidity issues as the company expects to remain loss-making next year also.

Net losses of the company for the first nine months of 2018 have touched $745.3 million. Although it has recently won a contract with Walmart (WMT, $101.34), analysts are asking if it is enough. SunPower, which has already sold some of its key assets, such as yieldco, 8point3 Energy Partners and its microinverter business to Enphase Energy, is still struggling to keep up.