John Cordes

The Solar Shuffle: Only the Best Will Do - JPM

So if there is over production of Poly and price presuure will come to bare then presumably product costs will come down substantially. The sales/cost advantage FSLR currently has is strictly related to the fact that their primary PV component is not Polly, ergo the wafer companies price competiveness should weigh directly against this situation. Meanwhile FSLR's electric PV conversion is poorer by a measure than the wafer's. Once again it's abandon all and pump FSLR. It's tired.

Has the Sun Set on Solar Energy Stocks?

Your thesis is somewhat erroneous. Solar stocks, particularly the Chinese solars are suffering because of commodities decline. Pollysilicone in this instance is being treated like any other commodity. Of course, as commodities go, oil is correlated. The world wide slump in commodities indicates demand destruction for oil. Try charting against commodity prices and see what comes up.

Solar Breaks Oil Price Dependence

Also, relative to the comments about Henry Ford: You are quite correct, that if you believe in "peak oil", regardless of the time frame, then you must accept the notion that a pradigm shift is inevitable. In other words, much as prior to the turn of the previous century when whale oil was relied on to illuminate homes and horse traffic was such a sanitation nuiscance in big cities, the paradigm shift built around petrolium oil. Obviously in hindsight it was enevitable, but at the time it seemed a stretch. What would run on oil? where was the infrastructure to deliver it? and how would acceptance drive the cost of building the necessary industry to bring it about. People were quite fond of their horses and smokeless whale oil. Petroleum oil was smokey and smelly by comparison. The industry and wealth in many of our North Eastern port cities was built around whaling, and people were reluctant to abandon this. When Ford delivered a low cost vehicle that ran on petroleum oil, the paradigm shift was complete. When some car company can deliver an affordable electric or hydrogen car, then the pace of things will pick up and oil will be headed for the anachronisms of history a hundred years from now.

Solar Breaks Oil Price Dependence

I am completely befuddled as to why any discussion of Solar stocks is so controversial and so political. I follow these stories and commentaries regularly, and the level of vituperative has increased dramatically. Everything from conspircacy theories to good old name calling fills up half of the submissions.
So lighten up. We're not on SA to round up votes, we're trying to garner useful investment information. If politics is a component which influences that, then try and be rational about it. (Go find a political blog site to rant on.)

By the way oil has at times had linkage to solar stocks, but has become less of a factor. When oil was running up very dramatically, solar benefitted from the belief that this would more quickly deliver more subsidies from various countries and create comparative cost efficiencies. Subsequently, oil prices began to influence the cost of smelting polysillicone and transports costs which then cause solar to actually link inversly with oil, pretty much like all equities did. The author is certainly right that if oil recedes to much lower levels (under $60 or $70), legislative incentive for passing the renewables bill will undoubtedly become less driven and consumers will be disincentivised to purchase with paybacks that require twenty plus years. On the other hand, it is widely accepted that the trend in polysillicon, which cost is influenced by available refining capacity, is toward cost errosion. We have two presidential candidates spewing many promises about renewables, albeit the Democrats have a good more emphasis. So perhaps the upcoming legislation has become bullet proof. Individual Solar companies are not all the same for sure, while Chinese Solars are almost all undervalued relative to their American counterparts. I personally submitted an article about this; "What's the Problem with Chinese Solars?". Relative symbols, CSUN, SOL, LDK, and ESLR, FSLR.