Industry General

By Jeff Siegel You probably wouldn't recognize him if you saw him on the street. Heck, you probably don't even know his name. But Ali Al-Naimi is one of the most powerful men in the world. As the Saudi oil minister and chairman of Saudi Aramco, Al-Naimi is not particularly popular with U.S. oil producers, especially after telling the media he didn't care if oil prices crashed to $20 because it was not in the interest of OPEC producers to cut production  regardless of price. Still, he remains the most influential oilman on the planet. Listed as one of Forbes' 50...

By Harris Roen If you follow the energy sector closely, then you know that many questions regarding the direction of alternative energy companies were looming during the 2012 campaign season. Was the country going to continue with the Obama Administration’s “all-of-the-above” strategy with its strong emphasis on renewables, or would there be an accelerated domestic drilling and pipeline bonanza under Republican leadership. When the election finally ended last week, many pundits expected investors to pour money into the beleaguered alternative energy sector resulting in a surge of stock prices. So why, instead, did alternative energy...

by Garvin Jabusch There’s an argument in the world of impact investing that goes something like, "impact happens only through private investments; there is no real impact, apart from shareholder engagement efforts, in public equity investing." An associated perception is that investment impact means capitalizing an enterprise beyond what would happen otherwise, meaning private equity alone has the power to provide real impact. But is this true? Publicly traded corporations are the largest and most visible social and environmental bellwethers of the global economy, and the high allocation to public equities in most investor portfolios means public equity...

Tom Konrad CFA In the US insider trades are easily found on the SEC website, stock exchange websites, and financial aggregation sites.  No so in Canada.  A search for insider trades for a Toronto-listed stock on Google will turn up all the financial aggregation websites, but they don’t have any data. The TSX has more clean technology listings than any other exchange worldwide, many of which are truly international.  I follow several, so I was thrilled when I came across CanadianInsider, where anyone can peruse recent insider trades for Canadian listed companies. Of the 14...

James Montgomery Crowdfunding illustration via Bigstock   The SEC has finally proposed its rules to allow crowd-funding under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. What do they mean for small-scale investments in renewable energy companies and projects? Title III of the JOBS Act created an exemption under securities laws for crowdfunding, which set the table for its regulation by the SEC that was supposed to happen by the end of last year. Two weeks ago the SEC finally issued its proposed rules on crowdfunding (summary...

The stocks and mutual funds we own have a real effect on the behavior of the companies we choose (not) to invest in.

James Montgomery Google Doodle for Earth Day 2006 This week the Internet giant Google revealed that in December it invested $75 million in Pattern Energy's (NASD:PEGI) 182-MW Panhandle 2 wind farm in Carson County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo, expected to be operational by the end of this year. Pattern will hold an 80 percent stake in the project, whose owners also include Google and two institutional tax equity investors, with Morgan Stanley providing construction and equity bridge loans and a letter of credit. Google certainly has displayed a healthy...

Tom Konrad CFA Anew report written by Nathaniel Bullard at Bloomberg New Energy Finance highlights the difficulties large institutional investors would have divesting from fossil fuels. What it does not specifically discuss is that these difficulties could lead to large financial losses for investors who see the difficulty of divesting as a reason to delay. Just as we can't easily fill up our cars with solar power instead of gasoline, the report points out that there is no asset class that can directly substitute for oil and gas in large institutional portfolios. A person...

by Garvin Jabusch Lord Nicholas Stern recently said, “Strong investment in sustainable infrastructurethat’s the growth story of the future. This will set off innovation, discovery, much more creative ways of doing things. This is the story of growth, which is the only one available because any attempt at high-carbon growth would self-destruct .” More pointedly, the Investment Bank division at Morgan Stanley in 2016 advised clients that long-term investment in fossil fuels may be a bad financial decision, writing, “Investors cannot assume economic growth will continue to rely heavily on an energy sector powered predominantly by fossil fuels." What...

By Harris Roen There have been six earnings reports released so far in 2013 for alternative energy stocks, all small or microcap companies. There were no blowouts, but also no superstars – most were within analyst expectation or somewhat below.  Date DayStar Technologies Inc. (DSTI) More Info 1/7/2013 Revenues remain elusive for this thin cell PV producer. EPS dropped about 10%, and gross losses doubled. The stock is down 35% for the year, but has bounced up 20% for the quarter. SEC...

By Greg Pfahl Renewable IPOs in 2010 2010 proved to be a much better year for the initial public offering and renewable energy companies, perhaps surprisingly, saw their share of activity. In 2010 there were more than double the number of initial public offerings than in 2009, and we also saw a significant increase in secondary offerings as well. Worldwide public investment in renewable energy increased 21 percent last year, with China representing 20 percent of the 2010 market, according to VB/Research of London. The REW 40 Index is up 15 percent over the...

by Garvin Jabusch Next economics posits that for the global economy and earth's tolerances/carrying capacities to run in a mutually tolerable equilibrium, we must continue to make rapid advances in economic efficiencies in all sectors. For 7.3 billion of us (and counting) to thrive on finite resources and avoid the worst effects of climate change, we have to drive more and more economic output from less and less input. Fortunately, energy is one of the areas where we can quickly make huge strides in this respect but not with fossil fuels in the mix. On the contrary,...

David Gold The stimulus bill along with the $31B cleantech element focused on grants and loan guarantees through the Department of Energy was passed into law over 18 months ago.  About a year ago I wrote about how the cleantech stimulus was not very stimulating to our economy. I suggested at that time that the goals of stimulus and of long-term investment are largely incompatible, and the evidence is bearing that out.  At the time, I felt like a bit of an outcast for having such a critical view and yet being an ardent supporter of clean technologies...

David Gold So, you’re at a networking event and you get an opportunity to talk with a Venture Capitalist (VC) for just a few minutes. After breaking the ice with quick introductory formalities, you present your elevator pitch, right? Wrong. How can you possibly capture that VC’s interest if you don’t know what excites them? Would you try to sell meat to a vegetarian or bricks to a carpenter? Not if you knew a little about their needs and interests!  When you are raising money, you are selling yourself and your company to your prospective...

Garvin Jabusch The last couple of weeks have seen some remarkable next economy pronouncements from three of the world's smartest people, each representing a different realm of human endeavor: business, politics and academics. Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton, and Oxford University professor Nick Bostrom are among the world's highest achievers, and each has remarkable visibility in to the real, actual state of the world. As such, I couldn't help but notice their recent confluence of messaging. In his most recent annual shareholder letter, release February 25th, 2012, Warren Buffett touted Berkshire Hathaway's significant, recent investments in renewable energies:...