Mantra’s Promise of Innovation
by Debra Fiakas CFA How often do we see the crowd rooting for the underdog? You could hear the cheers for Mantra Energy (MVTG: OTC) last week at the Marcum Microcap Conference in New York City. Mantra is a developmental stage company pursuing technologies to harness carbon dioxide for energy. Of course, the company has no revenue and therefore no earnings. Indeed, its technologies are so unique and as yet at such an early stage some might find them almost fanciful. Yet for some investors, a fanciful underdog is even better than another. Mantra sees itself...
Kadant: Will Investors Clean Up With This Bargain Green Stock?
Everybody likes a bargain. Investors really like a good cheap buy. A review of our four alternative energy industries revealed three stocks trading below industry average multiples of forecasted earnings. This is the second article in the series, thee first looked at Ormat (ORA:NYSE). A couple of weeks ago shares of Kadant, Inc. (KAI: NYSE) registered an particularly bullish formation - at least from a technical standpoint. A ‘triple top breakout’ was formed in a point and figure chart, suggesting demand for the stock outpaces supply. Given the new momentum that has developed, the stock could reach...
A Coal Stock…Almost
This morning, I read an article in this week's Economist that summarized well what I've been hearing over the past few weeks: coal is back in fashion with power utilities. As pointed out in the article, on a BTU basis, coal remains the cheapest fuel for thermal generation, an the prospect of high carbon prices is not deterring even European power generators from investing in coal-fired assets. A few months ago, Tom discussed his peak coal portfolio. The long-term perspective is of course critical to keep in mind, and that piece helps putting recent news around...
FuelTech: Pushing on a String of New Orders
by Debra Fiakas CFA Earlier this month Fuel Tech, Inc. (FTEK: Nasdaq) announced the receipt of order for air pollution control systems totaling $2.0 million. The customers are strung out across the U.S., Europe and China, but they all have dirty combustion systems and need to reduce toxic nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions or risk running afoul of government clean air standards. These shipments are just the most recent in a string of orders Fuel Tech has won in recent months. In late August 2015, the company received similar air pollution contracts from...
China Everbright Greentech
by Debra Fiakas CFA Investors based in the U.S. need to look far and wide for new stock issues from renewable energy companies. Capital markets activity has slowed in the last couple of years, in part to due to their own success. In reaching new efficiency in energy production, renewable energy companies are generating their own internal capital and are not as dependent upon the capital markets. The Hong Kong market has come to the rescue of U.S. investors with a ‘green’ offering China Everbright Greentech Ltd. is now trading on the Hong Kong Exchange with the...
Plasma Arcs For Pig Waste
This week MagneGas (MNGA: NASDAQ) announced new work completed toward plans to enter the commercial pork sector with a proprietary manure processing and disposal solution. Management held a meeting with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to discuss MagneGas technology to treat agriculture waste and the state’s required environmental permit protocols. MagneGas aims to sell to pig farmers equipment based on its innovations.
The company wants to help pig farmers address environmental problems cause by manure accumulation with its proprietary waste sterilization process. Handling pig waste using conventional methods can be costly, but failure to...
The EPA’s Carbon Rule: Likely Stockmarket Winners
By Harris Roen Greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector A seismic shift in the power generation landscape is starting to sink in. It has been two weeks since the EPA announced its new proposed carbon rules, one of the flagship efforts of the Obama Administration to address climate change. This shift is meant to move the country in the direction of inevitable changes coming to the energy economy. It is important for investors to know which companies and sectors stand to benefit from the...
A Concrete Proposal
The Economist recently had a story on how the cement industry is beginning to confront the fact that the industry produces 5% of the world's emissions of greenhouse gasses. Carbon dioxide is emitted not only by the fossil fuels used to create the heat used in the creation of cement, and by the chemical reaction in that process. Unfortunately for us, cement is a remarkably useful building material, not least as a structural material which can also serve as thermal mass in passive solar buildings. All the large cement firms: Lafarge, Holcim, and Cemex (NYSE:CX) have joined a voluntary...
Water Out Of Thin Air
It is an irony that surrounded by the flood waters of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, a drink of fresh, clean water may be hard to come by. Of course, the all three levels of government make plans for stockpiling and deploying emergency bottled water well ahead of natural disasters. Yet in the hours and days following the worst of both the recent storms, the media was filled with stories of people who lacked water.
What if water could be made manufactured? If such a technology existed, what a boon it might be to thirsty storm victims.
Ambient Water Corporation (AWGI: OTC/PK) has...
The Low Cow-bon e-Cow-nomy
Jim Lane This month in Finland, a team of intrepid researchers herded one thousand European cows one-by-one into a glass “metabolic chamber” to measure their methane emissions, digestion, production characteristics, energy-efficiency, metabolism, and the microbial make-up of their rumens. The Project is known as RuminOmics, but if it had been titled The Truman Show II: When the Cows Come Home, we wouldn’t have been a bit surprised. The Cow Emission Crisis. No Kidding Around. The ultimate aim of the study was to find an optimal, low-emission, high-yield cow, and the team noted in its premise that of all greenhouse...
Boiler Maker in Need of a Shot
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
A reserve split is in the works to keep shares of Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises(B&W) listed under the symbol BW on the NYSE. The stock price of this storied environmental engineering had slipped below the Exchange’s minimum price requirements. Ten shares will be melded into one beginning July 23, 2019.
Reverse merger math alone will not solve B&W’s problems. One hundred and fifty two years in business, B&W has been providing environmental technologies and services for energy and industrial customers since the company’s first boiler was sold right after the American Civil War. The company boasts that Thomas Edison was one of...
OriginClear Gambles on Marketing Program
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
Last week waste water treatment developer OriginClear (OCLN: OTC/QB) announced pilot projects for rental of its commercial water systems for pool cleaning. The company has several patents to its credit, protecting its innovations. OriginClear has developed a proprietary catalytic process to clean up solids from waste water as well as an oxidation technology to eliminate microtoxins in water. Unfortunately, the company has struggled to extract value from its efforts. OriginClear has yet to report profits. Indeed in the most recently reported fiscal year ending December 2019, revenue of $3.588 million only barely covered cost of goods of $3.217 million, let alone operating expenses that...
Southern Company’s Carbon Capture Testing
by Debra Fiakas CFA Coal emissions photo via BigStock An electric utility of Southern Company’s size - $38.3 billion in market capitalization - is not among the typical company covered in the Small Cap Strategist weblog. Southern (SO: NYSE) owns and operates six dozen power plants in the southeastern U.S., generating 12,222 megawatts of power from a mix of fossil fuel, hydroelectric, nuclear and solar plant assets. The company earned $2.68 in earnings per share on $16.5 billion in total electric power sales. Sales dipped in 2012...
Capturing CO2 for Environmental Remediation
by Debra Fiakas CFA In 2009, the Department of Energy (DOE) awarded $17.4 million in funding to a gaggle of companies pursuing practical uses for carbon dioxide. The recipients were asked to kick in a total of $7.7 million. A year later in 2010, the DOE picked six projects to a second round of support totaling $82.6 million. Industrial giant Alcoa, Inc. (AA: NYSE) leads one of the winning groups, including partners U.S. Nels, CO2 Solutions (CST: V or COSLF: OTC/BB) and Strategic Solutions. The DOE gave the Alcoa team $13.5 million to complete a pilot...
Ten Insights into Carbon Policy and Its Implications
On November 27, I attended the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Fifth Energy Analysis Forum, hosted by NREL's Strategic Energy Analysis & Applications Center. The forum focused on carbon policy design, the implications for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. As a stock analyst focused on that sector, I am extremely lucky to have NREL as a local resource: the quality and the level of the experts at NREL and the ones they bring in is probably not matched anywhere in the country, and conferences like these provide priceless insights into what these Energy Analysts are thinking. Why should investors...
The Worst Waste
Jim Lane Peter Brown of FFA Fuels, promotes his company these days with the pithy slogan, “Fuels from the Worst Waste Around.” Which of course raises the legitimate question, what is the worst waste, and can we find a use for it? Discussions of worst waste will usually focus on the obvious say, landfill or the odious say, medical or nuclear waste. Toxicity and longevity are typical concerns, and that’s one of the reasons why nuclear energy remains controversial to this day. No Waste in Nature As LanzaTech’s Jennifer Holmgren observed in a recent article by...
