What Constitutes an Alternative Energy Company?

There's a debate going on in the clean energy investment community about which companies are "green" enough to merit our attention. Before the filming of my WealthTrack appearance, I got into a discussion with Ardour Global Indexes' Joseph LaCorte. The Global Alternative Energy ETF (GEX) is based on the index he manages.

The format of the show includes a top pick from each of the guests at the end of the show, and Mr. LaCorte was hoping that I'd pick GEX, since I had previously told him that it was my favorite alternative energy ETF. However, my pick was General Electric (GE), because they have a substantial presence in many alternative energy sectors and are attractively priced. GE does not fit Ardour Indexes screen as an alternative energy company because only about 6% of their earnings (his number) come from alternative energy.

Coven v. Coven

Another index manager, Raphael Coven, Managing Partner of the Cleantech Index, made roughly the same point on my Give the Gift of a Green Future article. He said,

Are [GE and Sharp's (SHCAY.PK)] cleantech businesses (very good ones) sufficiently large to significantly affect their earnings and hence stock prices? Certainly not in the case of GE and probably not in Sharp's case either.

Yet in an interview on EnergyTechStocks, he says that

He is “particularly bullish” on companies involved in making electric power grids more efficient, and thus he likes Siemens, ABB and General Electric, each of which he thinks could do very well fixing the woebegone grids in the U.S., China and elsewhere in the world.

I couldn't agree more... Siemens (SI) and The ABB Group (ABB) are also among my top picks for the same reasons he outlines, although some of them are particularly pure clean energy businesses. Part of our difference of opinion may be that I see fixing and improving the grid as essential to the future of clean energy, while he may be thinking of it as an end in itself.

Indexes v. Portfolios

I believe Raphael Coven was speaking about different things at different times. The two index managers and I agree that GE shouldn't be in a clean energy index. There's too much to the company other than clean energy. However, the question of whether GE should be in a green portfolio is an entirely different matter from its inclusion in an index. From our conversation, I don't know if Mr. LaCorte agrees on this point, but Mr. Coven most likely does from his comments above.

Put another way, it would be irresponsible from the standpoint of portfolio management to put an entire portfolio into a narrow sector such as alternative energy. For instance, a portfolio composed solely of GEX would be up about 30% since GEX started trading last May, but if it had started trading at the start of 2008 (or, more realistically, an investor decided to reallocate his entire portfolio to GEX as the market opened on January 2. I say "he" because men are much more likely to choose aggressive portfolios than women.)

The hypothetical investor who bought GEX on Jan 2 would have already lost 12% of his money (or $12,000 out of a $100,000 investment) two weeks later, compared to only 3.6% if they'd put their money in the broad S&P. Very few investors have the emotional conviction to ride out that kind of quick decline without acting (usually exactly when their holdings are at their lows.)

Clean Energy Earnings: The Lessons of Green P/E

Companies like GE allow a diversified investor to buy into excellent clean energy businesses, such as GE Wind, roof-integrated solar tiles, and their LED lighting business at cost multiples far lower than the lofty multiples of pure-play counterparts, if those companies have earnings at all. Per Yahoo!, GE's P/E is 16.9. Using Joseph LaCorte's 6% number as the percent of GE's business that's in alternative energy, we find that you have to buy $282 of GE stock to get $1 of earnings for alternative energy. I'll call this GE's "Green P/E."

A 282 Green P/E sounds high, until you start looking at the alternatives. The world's top wind company, Vestas, has a P/E of 107, First Solar (FSLR) last year's solar high-flier has a P/E of 161, and the top pure-play LED company, Cree (CREE) has a P/E of 36. This gives us an average P/E of these three about 101.

An investor who wanted to buy $1 of clean energy earnings from GE would have to invest $181 (= $282-$101) more than an investor buying an equal-weighted portfolio of the three companies listed above. For that $181, he would get $15.68 of other (non-alternative energy) earnings, so he would have essentially invested in a well-run non-green business with a P/E of 11.5, something which is basically impossible to find in today's market.

Put another way, either GE's green businesses are currently under-priced relative to leading pure-play companies, or the rest of the company is selling for peanuts. Either way, GE seems like a great relative value play.

That is why it's in almost every portfolio I manage.

DISCLOSURE: Tom Konrad and/or his clients have long positions in GE, SHCAY, ABB, SI, CREE, and a short position in FSLR.

Comments

[Robert Nabloid:]

Ultimately I think GE will become increasingly green, so expect the percent of green sales to increase quickly. I believe they will do this as it begins to make sense from an economic standpoint. GE can't turn green overnight - they are a massive company - but at least they are one of the large companies that is trying to steer into the right direction.

Economics will dictate what they do in the future and "green" is now profitable. Who would think GE would have gone green and began to generate so much green revenue in a few short years?

2008 Jan 16 06:30 PM

[Mark Anthony:]

Tom:

I like your writings ever since I first read them. I followed the link to your interview with WealthTrack. It really surprised me that when Bill pitched First Solar (FSLR) all three of you kind of agreed.

There are huge problems with FSLR, first it is not truly thin film. It's built on pretty thick glass substrates and the who panel are way much heavier than traditional none-thin-film panels.

The bigger problem is FSLR rely on tellurium as its vital raw material supply, because they use the cadmium telluride semiconductor. Tellurium is extremely rare on earth with extremely limited annual global supply. Cadmium is the most toxic material on earth. The technology is neither green, nor renewable. There is a looming global tellurium shortage, causing tellurium price to skyrocket. I see within a space of no more than two years, FSLR will be forced to go out of business.

Actually the tellurium problem is already very evident as of now. Read this:
seekingalpha.com/artic...

I would like to pitch Cold Fusion as the ultimate perfect solution of alternative energy, and the palladium metal, which is not only used in cold fusion, but in fuel cell and environmental cleansing agents as well, is the ultimate material for alternative energy. For this reason I strongly recommend the ONLY two primary palladium producers in the world, PAL and SWC:
seekingalpha.com/artic...

2008 Jan 17 02:56 AM