Andrew Ling

151 Comments

    • ON: Fri Aug 8th 10:10 AM
      Commented on:
      The Year Ahead For US Wind
      Wind is cheaper than solar as of this moment, but not by much. As you mentioned a 1MW turbine costs about $2 million or $2/watt. FSLR's systems are $4/watt installed. However, wind has very high maintenance costs. About 1 in 10 turbines you see in Europe will be non operational. Also, wind generates most of it's energy late night and early morning. Electricity is less valuable off-peak. Solar obviously generates it's electricity during peak hours when it's the most valuable. The main reason investors prefer solar though is the often quoted fact that module prices have fallen 7% a year for the last 40 years on average. Wind turbine prices have barely budged. This is why most expect solar to be the primary alternative energy source in 20 years time.

      Additionally, the only predictable wind plays at the moment are the turbine manufacturers such as Vestas and Gamesas who are not traded on US exchanges. A carbon fiber manufacturer such as Zoltek is no more a wind play that a polysilicon producer such as MEMC is a solar play. AMSC is a small cap with no earnings. This week's price movement shows you the risks involved with these stocks. FSLR, which I have owned for 18 months, has never dropped double digits in a single day despite how overvalued many people claim it to be.
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    • ON: Wed Aug 6th 17:23 PM
      Commented on:
      Safe Haven Investments Amid a Global Crisis
      Exactly, Jake. He also posts on every major forum trying to attract a crowd like a street performer. Don't take your financial advice from street performers. He should have a disclaimer in bold at the start of each article stating how he began shorting FSLR at $140 since it would certainly go to 0. The higher it rises the more certain he becomes.
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    • ON: Sun Aug 3rd 15:23 PM
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      Nothing much has changed regarding the tellurium prices, hence not much change in my opinion of vnp.to I own shares mainly to offset risk of higher tellurium prices to FSLR. Announcements of new plants would be the best possible news for both FSLR and VNP. It would lead to higher te prices in the short run while also putting to rest speculation that FSLR can't procure enough te in the long run.
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    • ON: Sun Aug 3rd 15:19 PM
      Commented on:
      SunPower Is a Semi - It Deserves to Be Valued Like One
      You're statements are partly correct, but already reflected in the price of the stock. The reason FSLR has continued to outperform the market whereas SPWR has underperformed is because people think SPWR is in a commoditized market. Still, having the highest efficiency mass produced cell is worth a premium. Especially for the residential market where roof space is at a premium. SPWR is my favorite crystaline PV play though I need to sign concrete evidence of polysilicon prices coming down in 2009 before picking any up.
      Read my article comparing FSLR and SPWR here:

      seekingalpha.com/artic...
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    • ON: Thu May 22nd 09:47 AM
      Commented on:
      The Oil Shortage, and Other Fairy Tales
      The secret to my success has been to never follow the advice of analysts. I'm amazed the downgrade had such an effect on FSLR yesterday especially considering that while downgrading the stock they had the upgrade the price target from $150 to $200. Basically this shows the lack of credibility the company has. If they had kept their opinions up to date the stock would've had a higher price target to begin with which they could've later lowered. Personally I haven't changed my price target in 18 months. When it was $30 I put on a $400 price target based on earnings potential + inherent value. seekingalpha.com/autho...
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    • ON: Fri May 16th 03:26 AM
      Commented on:
      My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions
      Eck, I've been trying to find a way to ship my Elise to Europe for the 3 months I'll be spending there. When I was there last year I drove my 60 horsepower rental Nissan Micra on the Autobahn flooring it for hours at a time. Unfortunately few people know the details and I didn't want to spend my vacation dealing with foreign bureaucrats. They charge a 20% tax to import the car but I figured I could sell it there to recover it there due to the favorable exchange rate and buy a new one when I got back.

      I also got in and out of SOLF for a small profit last year before it had a huge collapse. I decided only to trade stocks I don't mind holding for long periods of time from now on. I'm still practicing my trading as it only accounts for about 5% of my position even though I make about 20 trades a month. My main trading principle is the change in the change in stock price. In other words when a stock accelerates on the way up it's commonly referred to as a break out and a buy indicator. Similarly when a stock sells off but the pace of the selloff slows to a stop it's also a buy indicator. This has been a great day trade with FSLR whenever the stock opens down on low volume. It will usually decrease it's downwards slope and then reverse itself at midday rallying back close to the open price by close. This doesn't work on high volume trading days since any resistance and support levels can be easily broken on volume.
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    • ON: Wed May 14th 17:56 PM
      Commented on:
      My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions
      Tommy C, carbon fiber is indeed light but the cheapest car made out of carbon fiber is actually the electric Tesla Roadster at $100K. It's a long way off from mass market appeal. Automakers will have to walk before they can run. They are still using mostly steel in their chassis which should be replaced with Aluminum. My Lotus Elise does 0-60 in 4.8 secs and gets 30 MPG thanks to it's 150 pound aluminum chassis and lightweight plastic body panels. I'm still amazed that Porche and other sports car makers still make their chassis out of steel.
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    • ON: Wed May 14th 09:07 AM
      Commented on:
      My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions
      Slider the difference between the 70s and now was that the 70s was an artificial opec shortage and the peak was in US production. Current prices have nothing to do with opec. They are due to a peak in world production. Unless you plan on discovering life and hence oil on Mars peaking in world production is a problem several orders of magnitudes greater than peaking US production. There is no real solution within 20 years although anything that helps compensate for energy shortfalls will benefit.
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    • ON: Tue May 13th 16:16 PM
      Commented on:
      My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions
      sirfisup, when I drive to the Akeena Solar I can see obvious differences between the modules offered by different manufacturers. When I was in Europe I saw no differences between the GE, Vestas, or any other wind turbine. The only way to cut costs in wind is to make them even bigger, and 1MW turbines are already huge. It's a similar story with solar thermal. Although wind and solar thermal are about half the price per kwh of PV currently, they are mechanically based technologies that have existed for centuries with very little innovation occuring. This is why 2030 forecasts have PV accounting for the lions share of new electricity generation as well as a large chunk of total capacity.
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    • ON: Tue May 13th 15:34 PM
      Commented on:
      My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions
      I try to stay away from small caps under $500 mil or so. Over the years I've seen numerous promise the moon and fail to deliver. I'm beginning to suspect some of these managements may not even believe they can achieve the targets they set. Many are just pumping their stocks. A revolutionary technology needs to be combined with credible management. That's why Tesla Motors is my most anticipated IPO. Although they're also missing production goals, their CEO Elon Musk is proven as the billionaire founder of paypal.
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    • ON: Tue May 13th 15:27 PM
      Commented on:
      My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions
      I've owned STP in the past as my "value" play simply because I've been uncomfortable at times having all my holdings in FSLR. However, AMAT is my new limited downside play and I see no reason to buy STP over AMAT. With 2 billion in annual income AMAT is the real potential economy of scale. The $1.9 Billion Best Solar order alone would leapfrog best solar over STP. The slew of low priced pv coming online is very bad news for any company still trying to expand economies of scale with a potentially inferior technology. STP realizes this and is also a customer of AMAT. When you think about AMAT's potential it's comparable to all the other solar stocks combined. Since they're turning over equipment quickly they don't have to raise as much money as STP or Best Solar.
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    • ON: Tue May 13th 14:38 PM
      Commented on:
      My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions
      GE is currently lacking an LED presence. That's what led to rumors they may make an offer for Cree. I wouldn't worry about GE. The same thing could've been said about all these solar "startups" 10 years ago. But GE has been unbelievably slow to the solar game. Competition is always fierce in the early stages of hypergrowth but generally all the stocks involved appreciate for at least a few years until the market sorts out the winners from the losers.
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    • ON: Tue May 13th 14:07 PM
      Commented on:
      My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions
      Wind farms are great but the problem with wind power stocks is that it's a commoditized business. I used to own Zoltek (ZOLT) as a wind power play since they have a large share of the carbon fiber market, but the company is obviously mismanaged. Notice how I left all the Chinese solar stocks off the list. All of the companies I focus on have disruptive technology.
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    • ON: Sun May 11th 08:26 AM
      Commented on:
      Uranium: Safely and Efficiently Powering the Future
      fxtrader07 you need to learn something about the issue before you start ranting. Nuclear power produces less radioactive waste than coal. Is it better to have the radioactivity released into the atmosphere in the case of coal? Nuclear does have serious problems, but all of them are political ones.
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    • ON: Fri May 9th 07:17 AM
      Commented on:
      First Solar: Large Intangible Assets and High PEs Go Together
      parker and jack, I thought the article was quite clear. The intangible asset is the cdte manufacturing process. When customers of AMAT are willing to pay double the capex, totally almost $2 Billion for a higher cost/watt it indicates tremendous value in FSLR's process.

      Since this is often close to 100% of the valuation of a company which does not yet have earnings, why would you focus entirely on earnings once the company is profitable? Earnings is merely added to the inherent valuation. This is assuming you want to apply valuation measures at all which most successful investors don't.
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