Eli Hoffmann

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Thanks for asking Richard.

I was out of town yesterday, so I didn't manage to do UTR. It's back up today though:

seekingalpha.com/artic...

Stay tuned -- soon-to-be defunct Under The Radar News will soon be replaced by something much more exciting.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Hi Dave M.,

I think the point is that the other half are filings connected to properties that have already begun the foreclosure process.

Cloudy Future for Applied Material's SunFab - Barron's

Hi Andrew,

According to the Barron's article, AMAT's CTO Mark Pinto says SunFab could turn out modules for $0.80/watt, vs. $1.00/watt for FSLR, according to their presentation.

Of course Barron's is very skeptical about their ability to follow through...

BTW, that's a tremendous piece you wrote, and a great follow through in the comments section. I am far from an expert on solar technologies, but I think I got the facts straight from Barron's.

Cloudy Future for Applied Material's SunFab - Barron's

It's a good question Dr. Duru. Here's my understanding: FSLR's cadmium telluride wafers are less efficient, overall, than competing polysilicon products. But because its wafers are a fraction of the size, the material itself is actually better at absorbing sunlight.

Here is the relevant section from Barron's:

"First Solar doesn't use silicon crystals, employing instead another semiconductor called cadmium telluride that better absorbs sunlight. More importantly, the company puts down just a thin film of the material, which is just one-hundredth the thickness of a typical solar wafer. The resulting thin-film panels are much cheaper, even though they convert sunlight to electricity less efficiently than silicon wafers."