Enphase Acquires O&M Provider Next Phase Solar
Meg Cichon Enphase (ENPH) has been slowly inching its way into the solar service business on both a residential and commercial scale, and may even tap utility-scale projects in the near future, according to Marty Rogers, Enphase’s vice president of worldwide customer service and support. Last year Enphase announced a partnership with solar crowdfunding platform Mosaic to offer O&M services to residential solar loan customers. More recently, it announced a commercial O&M offering that combines its C250 commercial microinverter technology with services that assist the design, installation and maintenance of solar projects, including cloud-based monitoring and a dedicated service...
One Solar Installation, Five Stocks
Tom Konrad CFA Invest In What You Know "Invest in what you know" is an old stock market adage. The idea is that, if you have some personal knowledge of the real economy, you can use that to make better investments. How useful this adage is depends on how you apply it. If you know more about a stock market sector than other investors because of "what you know," it's possible to make better investments because you may be better at spotting future trends. If, on the other hand, you feel you know a sector...
Chinese Commercial Solar Group Formed To Tackle Trade Wars
by Doug Young Chinese solar panel makers have taken an important step to solving their ongoing trade spat with the west by formally launching a private sector trade association to speak on their behalf. The move gives the panel makers their first truly commercial representative to discuss the matter with peers in the US and Europe, providing a better alternative to the government-backed groups that previously spoke for them. This kind of step is long overdue, and should help to de-politicize and hopefully solve what is largely a commercial matter, involving western claims of unfair state...
Rapidly Growing Alternative Energy Companies
The last post highlighted several companies in the alternative energy, conservation and environment technology fields that have delivered exceptional price performance over the last year. Prospects for growth in sales or earnings appeared to be key drivers of the price movement. It makes sense to seek indicators of growth as cues for those companies that may become tomorrow’s price movers.
Crystal Equity Research’s novel alternative energy indices were a good place to go on a ‘quest for growth.’
Beach Boys Index - Biodiesel
The two analysts who publish estimates for Renewable Energy Group (REGI: Nasdaq)apparently expect a surge in growth in the current year followed by a leveling...
Japanese Solar Manufacturers Get Their Groove Back
Junko Movellan The Skies are Brightening as Manufacturers Resume Spending to Improve Efficiency Almost one decade ago, Japanese PV makers dominated global PV production Sharp (SHCAY), Kyocera (KYO), Sanyo (now part of Panasonic) and Mitsubishi Electric represented about 50 percent of global production in 2005. When German and other European markets expanded quickly, a great number of companies in Europe and Asia, specifically China, jumped into the “potentially” profitable PV industry. They rapidly ramped up their production and brought down costs, leaving Japanese companies behind. When the Japanese government decided to pump life...
SolarWindow Story Deserves More Skepticism
Dana Blankenhorn Back in December I wrote skeptically of New Energy Technologies Inc., (NENE) whose SolarWindow was written-up here in September, mainly as a result of this press release. The press release drew press coverage, including an October mention by CNBC anchor Erin Burnett. I should add here Ms. Burnett has not done a Maxim cover shoot – the photo by the story is a fake. But is the story a fake? Since the fall NENE has been on a roll, rising in price from about 60 cents to over $1.60. The...
China Plans Aggressive Renewables Deployment But Falling Incentives
Doug Young Lofty targets contained in a new report show that China intends to push ahead with ambitious plans to build up its renewable energy sector. But perhaps the most interesting thing about this new report is word that Beijing finally intends to sharply reduce the inflated state-set fees now paid for solar and wind-produced power, in one of the sharpest indicators that it expects the industry to stop depending on government support and become commercially viable on its own. Such state support through a wide array of measures, which also include export credits and low-interest loans,...
Which Chinese Solar Companies Will Survive The Coming Shakeout?
Tildy Bayar Lux Research’s report, The Great Shakeout: China’s Path to a Rational Solar Industry, outlines the challenges Chinese solar companies will face during the anticipated consolidation, and suggests likely strategies for survival and success in a post-shakeout solar market. While many smaller companies will go under, the nation’s top-tier companies will survive and thrive in an eventual balanced global solar landscape, the report predicts. Policy Measures China’s government will continue to support its solar sector, upping its domestic capacity target in order to boost local demand and reduce its dependence on foreign markets. But Zhun Ma, Lux...
2020 Solar Investment Outlook
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....
Alternative Energy Companies Posting Large Returns
Alternative energy companies delivered compelling returns for investors. A look at Crystal Equity Research’s ‘indices’ of renewable energy, conservation and environmentally-friendly technology companies found some exceptional price moves. We review five companies here that have experienced top price moves from 52-week lows.
Codexis, Inc. (CDXS: Nasdaq) has gained 257% from its 52-week low. The company won a place in our Beach Boys group through development of proteins for a mix of applications from biocatalysts for industrial enzymes, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. While the company has started generating revenue from its technology, it has yet to post a profit. Codexis delivered a smaller than expected loss in the...
ReneSola Share Repurchase Program Starts Slowly
by Clean Energy Intel Late last month, I discussed the fact that in another sign of the undervaluation in the Solar sector, the Board of Renesola (SOL) had authorized a $100m share repurchase program. On the day of the company's announcement, its stock price was down 66% on the year. You can read more detail on the original share repurchase program and the related shareholder rights program here. As a follow-up to the original announcement, Renesola has now released details of the progress that has so far been made in executing the program. The Company itself has purchased 645,424 American Depositary Shares...
Solar Eclipse
Debra Fiakas The chip makers dominate discussion of the solar energy sector. Nonetheless, a passing comment in a recent blog post introduced me to an interesting company that seems to have been over looked in the solar story - Apollo Solar Energy, Inc. (ASOE: OTC/BB). Apollo produces tellurium, a little known chemical element that looks deceptively like tin. It is typically a by-product of copper and lead mining operations, but can be found hiding beside gold as well. While these are very common metals, tellurium is quite rare on earth. Outer space is another story. Although...
Solar Verticals and “Balance of System” Valuations
Garvin Jabusch Tom Konrad has kindly provided an opportunity for me to contribute a response to his recent piece “Inverter Stocks: A Value BOS Play on Solar.” I’m grateful for the opportunity because it gives me the chance to discuss these stocks and along the way to clear up some misconceptions it seems may exist regarding Green Alpha’s portfolios and our vision of the next economy. Tom wrote, for example, that “Garvin... has been making the case that the solar sell off is irrational on this blog since...
Photovoltaics: 10 Trends to Watch in 2013
2012 Report Card plus my 2013 trends and predictions. Ed Gunther Though I’ll blame my lingering flu, the Photovoltaics: 11 Trends to Watch in 2012 review and 2013 photovoltaic (PV) trends and predictions post has again extended well into February. As usual, I won’t be grading on a curve. Photovoltaic Market Demand Growth Last year, I said: In 2012, I predict at least 25% global PV installation demand growth. I am tempted by the under since the early year Feed-in Tariff (FiT) headwinds seem stronger than ever with serious talk of a 1 GW...
SunPower and SolarWorld: Strange Bedfellows
by Paula Mints
Oh, what a tangled web you weave when vying for an exclusion from tariffs via strategic ac-quisition. In April, SunPower (SPWR) announced it had acquired (subject to regulatory approval) So-larWorld US, subsidiary of the company that kicked off the solar tariff dispute with a petition in 2012, focused on China as the dumper of cells and modules. SolarWorld GmbH, based in Germany, could not file the petition. It needed its US subsidiary to do so. As SolarWorld US is, currently, the only crystalline cell manufacturer in the US, it takes on a value beyond the sum of...
SunRun: The Next Big Solar IPO
By Jeff Siegel Good news for solar investors … Another solar financing/installation company is about to go public. And if history serves as any indicator, this could be yet another opportunity to land some pretty solid gains. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Sunrun, Inc. is set work with banks including Credit Suisse Group AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on an IPO. No final price has be set at this time, but currently the company is valued at more than $1.3 billion, which puts it roughly in the same box with Vivint Solar (NYSE: VSLR). The fastest...
