- With shares up over 5x YTD going into the company's Q3 report, SolarCity (SCTY -14%) investors are taking profits in the face of a Q3 beat and above-consensus guidance.
- Credit Suisse (Outperform, $75 PT) is defending SolarCity today, while praising the company's operating leverage and incremental retained value per watt (rose 35% Q/Q in Q3 to $1.9)1.
- Goldman (Neutral, $65 PT) also talks up SolarCity's value retention, as well as its declining operational costs/watt (fell to $0.59/watt from $0.80/watt in Q2). But it also cautions expectations were high, points out "no volume upside was provided" for 2013/2014 deployment targets, and that there's "limited clarity" for SolarCity's solar lease securitization efforts.
- On its CC (transcript), SolarCity mentioned it invested $200M+ in solar deployments in Q3, and financed another $86M. The company has been raising funds for its deployment efforts at a breakneck pace.
- Many solar peers are also off sharply on a rough day for tech momentum play. Thanks to good earnings news, the group rallied sharply both on Monday and last Friday. In addition to SolarCity, China Sunergy's poor guidance could also be playing a role.
- Solar decliners: FSLR -4.2%. SPWR -6.1%. SOL -5.1%. JKS -4.8%. YGE -4.7%. JASO -6.5%. DQ -10.2%. SPWR -6.1%. LDK -5.5%. SUNE -3.8%.