Monthly Archives: May 2012

Tom Konrad CFA Unenchanted April After a great January, the last three months have not been kind to clean energy stocks.  While my model portfolios are still in positive territory (+5.4% and +0.9% for the unhedged and hedged portfolios, respectively), and are above my clean energy benchmark (The Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy ETF, -3.4%), they have again fallen behind my broader market index, the Russell 2000 (+7.3%.)  Gone with the Wind trailer, public domain Gone With the Wind April saw the chances of...

David Gold Katherine Connors, Miss Iowa USA 2010 throws the ceremonial first pitch.  Source: Cathy T, via Wikimedia Commons You landed your first pitch at a venture capitalist’s (VC) office. You’ve practiced the pitch and have your laptop fired up to deliver. So, like a sprinter at the sound of the gunshot, you dive in hard and heavy to make sure you get through the deck. After all, you might only have one chance to excite them with your company’s story. Inevitably, with all the questions...

John Petersen The hardest part of blogging about the energy storage and vehicle electrification sectors is coping with ideologues who are so enthralled with their myopic EV dreams that they can't see the industrial metal nightmares that make those dreams impossible at relevant scale in the real world. They whimper, whine and complain about the obscene prices charged by diabolical oil companies and gush over how safe, quiet, clean and secure life will be when plug-in cars with immense battery packs are common as wildflowers in an alpine meadow and getting cheaper every day. The fly in...

Jeff Siegel and Tom Konrad April 30: Orion Energy Systems (OESX) Triples Stock Buyback TK: Sometimes microcap stocks fall just because no one is paying attention.  The directors of Orion Energy Systems (AMEX:OESX) clearly think their company is one such. Orion is an energy management company with a focus on high efficiency lighting systems and alternative energy system integration in commercial buildings.  The company is profitable, with a trailing Price/Earnings ratio of 18, a Price/Sales ratio of 0.5, and sold at less than half of book value ($4.05) when the market closed on Friday...

Jennifer Runyon On the heels of Brightsource Energy's announcement last month that it was canceling its plans to go public, SolarCity on Monday announced that it plans to conduct a registered initial public offering (IPO) of its common stock. The IPO will begin after the Securities and Exchange Commission completes the review process that SolarCity initiated on April 26. No further information about the IPO such as when and at what price shares will be available is available at this time. SolarCity has been in the residential solar PV leasing space since 2006 and...

Dyadic International's (PINK:DYAI) technology looks like the real deal.  Does that make Dyadic a good investment? Dyadic International (PINK:DYAI) announced yesterday that Abengoa (MCE:ABG, PINK:ABGOY) has expanded its exclusive license agreement for a payment of $5.5 million. History I last wrote about Dyadic back in October 2009, when I called it "A Stock to Avoid," based on the facts that the company was not then publishing financial statements, was unprofitable and had insufficient reserves when it had last published financials, had had a dispute with the SEC over security law violations, and I...

Jim Lane IPOs are struggling, all across cleantech – and the biofuels IPO queue is long and tiring. Why Kiwano countries may be in your future. And, what is a Kiwano country, anyway? So, amidst all the legislative and policy hoopla last week for advanced biofuels, including winning funding for an energy title in the US Senate’s Farm Bill and the release of the US Bioeconomy strategy, Enerkem’s IPO skidded to a halt and was withdrawn. Sure, it was very early stage – their first commercial wasn’t complete, the company wasn’t producing much in the way of revenue,...