Solar Photovoltaic

By Jeff Siegel 've said it before, and I'll say it again... If you want to profit from solar, the money is in installation and technology. Certainly SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR) knows this to be true. One of the few U.S. solar plays still around, SunPower surprised analysts with a narrower Q1 loss and sales that exceeded estimates. This, by the way, was due to an increase in installations. No surprise there. And certainly those of us who regularly monitor installation data, which is not hard to come by, have been quietly picking up shares since the start...

by Sneha Shah LDK Solar (NYSE:LDK) which used to be the biggest solar wafer producer has completely stopped production of polysilicon and sharply reduced shipments to preserve cash. The company is effectively bankrupt and surviving due the largesse of state owned Chinese banks which have given $3 billion in loans to the company. LDK has almost no chance of paying down this monstrous debt given that it has been operating on negative gross margins for the last few quarters. LDK cost structure is way too high compared to its competitors LDK has a much higher cost structure in...

Doug Young Struggling solar panel maker Yingli (NYSE: YGE) is trying the good news-bad news approach to distract investors from its latest downbeat earnings, announcing its biggest-ever new order on the same day it released its dismal third-quarter results. Based on shareholder reaction, the approach has been quite successful, with Yingli's stock surging more than 13 percent in Wednesday trade after both announcements came out. Investors seem to clearly be focused on the big new order, and are hoping that Yingli may actually be able to manufacture profitably by the time it delivers the solar cells to this...

If you Hate Money, Don't Invest in Solar! It took the solar industry forty years to reach a cumulative global capacity of 100 gigawatts … By 2020, more than 100 gigawatts will be installed in a single year! According to a new report from the good folks over at Greentech Media, the solar industry will install a mind-blowing 135 gigawatts of solar PV projects all across the globe in less than five years. This will push the cumulative market to nearly 700 gigawatts - or about the size of all the electrical generating capacity in Europe today....

Tom Konrad, Ph.D. This continues a series of entries on opportunities in solar stocks, based on a panel at Solar 2009.  The first article introduced the panelists, and took a look at the solar sector as a whole.  The others focus on individual companies. Pradeep Haldar Investors remain bullish on thin film technologies such as CdTe (First Solar's technology.) CdTe currently has the lowest cost, but it may not have long term sustainability. Peter Lynch on First Solar (FSLR) If First Solar ever stumbles, gravity will take over. They could fall 50% in a day. They...

Doug Young China’s struggling solar panel makers must are slowly transforming into de facto state-owned enterprises as they take increasing loans from Beijing, with Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) becoming the latest to take a handout from the policy lender China Development Bank (CDB). If Beijing is trying to convince Europe and the US that it’s not unfairly supporting its solar sector, then this certainly isn’t the way to do it. But that said, I doubt that Canadian Solar or many of its peers could get financing to maintain their operations from any true private sector banks right now,...

Doug Young Trade War. photo via Bigstock Just days after China finalized anti-dumping tariffs on US makers of polysilicon, the main ingredient used to make solar panels, the US has announced it is opening a new anti-dumping investigation into solar panels imported from China. The close timing of this latest round of developments in a solar trade dispute between the US and China may look worrisome on the surface, especially if they had come a year ago. But in this case the solar signals seem less confrontational...

by Debra Fiakas CFA   Solar module producer First Solar, Inc. (FSLR:  Nasdaq) received a boost last week from a new rating upgrade from Hold to Buy.  There are at least fifteen sets of analytical eyes scrutinizing First Solar.  The prevailing view on First Solar had been ‘hold’ or ‘neutral’ with a median price target of $70.00, representing a 13% return potential from the current price level. Solar power generation has on a roll in recent years as lower solar cell prices have helped find demand at higher volumes.  The U.S. Solar Energy Industries Association...

By Beate Sonerud SolarCity (NASD:SCTY) is issuing US$200m of asset-linked retail bonds, with maturities ranging from 1-7 years and interest rates from 2-4%. Wells Fargo is the banking partner. While the bonds are registered,SolarCity expects the bonds to be buy and hold, and not traded in the secondary markets. The bond is issued for small-scale investors, with investment starting at US$1000, giving this bond issuance a crowdfunding aspect. Choosing such a different structure allows SolarCity to diversify their investor base – the company stresses that small-scale investors are a complement, not substitute, for large-scale institutional investors. While...

Tom Konrad CFA Green energy experts accept that solar panels are one of the least cost effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint.  Nevertheless, many buy solar stocks.  They should rethink their investment strategies. I recently spoke on "Stock Selection in the Era of Peak Oil and Climate Change" at the ASPO 2009 International Peak Oil Conference.  Whenever green energy enthusiasts find out that I analyze green energy stocks professionally, they react in one of two ways.  Many want to know my top stock pick in general (New Flyer Industries NFI-UN.TO/NFYIF.PK) or in their favorite sector (see below.)   ...

Doug Young  Bottom line: Yingli is likely to get sold or announce a major government-led restructuring, which could include bankruptcy, before a new round of 1.4 billion yuan in bonds comes due next month. In what looks like a case of deja vu, fast-shrinking solar panel maker Yingli (NYSE: YGE) is in the headlines again as it looks set to default on 1.4 billion yuan ($220 million) worth of bonds set to come due next month. The default would be Yingli’s second within a year, after it failed to pay off part of another big bond that matured last...

Doug Young Sunrise over Mount Huang in China. China's solar panel industry is starting to look more and more like a beggar kneeling on the doorstep of Beijing, with the latest word that the central government is preparing to hand out an additional $1.1 billion in subsidies to the struggling sector. That news comes just after a government official was quoted saying Beijing is considering a plan to double its already ambitious target for a massive building spree of new solar electricity plants, again in a bid to support...

By Harris Roen SolarCity (SCTY) fell 9.1% Wednesday when the company released its first quarter earnings report, but gained all of it back and then Thursday on huge volume. Still, the stock has plummeted 22% in three months, and is down 37% from its highs in February 2014. Is this just a healthy correction from its outsized 400%+ gains from the IPO just 17 months ago? Or have we entered into a new lower trading range more in line with financial realties? This article will analyze current developments to this distinctive energy stock, and project where...

To win the U.S. solar installation game, SolarCity (SCTY) continues to go vertical and thin its margin stack... so what'll be next? James Montgomery SolarCity (SCTY) is acquiring Zep Solar and its rackless mounting design in a $158 million stock deal, illustrating the growing importance of improving costs and complexity in residential solar. Much of the cost-cutting in solar PV has been shouldered by the upstream manufacturing side, but half the costs or more in a residential solar PV system come from the softer side, and they'll have to keep coming down dramatically to support widespread deployment of...

Tom Konrad CFA Electric utilities today look a lot like newspapers in 2000: Too much debt in an industry primed for disruption. Speaking at the Economist's Intelligent Infrastructure Conference, Brad Tirpak, Managing Partner at the private investment fund Locke Partners made the case that electric utilities are as woefully unprepared for the coming disruption of cheap, distributed solar power as newspapers were unprepared for the disruption of the Internet in 2000.  He outlined the following parallels: Both had long been considered to be sure-fire businesses with dependable income. Both took advantage of the seemingly...

Different solar incentives encourage different types and locations of solar installations.  Better solar installations will result if we first decide what we want from solar, and then choose the solar incentives we use to match. Tom Konrad, Ph.D. Choosing Carefully This article is based on a presentation I gave at Solar 2009 .  As with wind, the current incentives for Solar photovoltaics are good for encouraging more solar, but they are less effective at encouraging better solar.  Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison and Jigar Shah Consulting, told the audience that they should be very careful in calling for a Feed-in-Tariff...