Andrew Ling

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    • Wed Apr 30th 08:53 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar's Future: Bright or Dim?
      $300 has already been broken it's all about $280 and $308 now. It looks like fund managers may have just been waiting until after earnings to buy in order to mitigate risk because the numbers were not impressive.
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    • Wed Apr 30th 08:51 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar's Future: Bright or Dim?
      The fact that the market deems this a "good quarter" shows how far behind the market still is on this stock. Expectations are still way below reality. This was the worst quarter fslr has had by far. I nearly sold a few thousand shares at $275 today. I suspect they may be through raising cash through secondary IPOs and that would be a big mistake. I believe this is limiting capacity expansion. They should've announced 8 new plants/32 lines by 2010. They are probably trying to stay cash flow neutral. With current cash flows they can only announce 1 new plant per quarter. Hopefully they're just trying to maximize throughput first, and when that starts hitting it's limit, they will resume their hypergrowth pace of expansion.
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    • Wed Apr 30th 08:43 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar's Future: Bright or Dim?
      Worst quarter FSLR has had so far and yet the stock has rallied back due to the 3% throughput gains and according guidance raises. Forex only added 4.1 mil or about 5 cents on earnings.
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    • Wed Apr 30th 07:47 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar's Future: Bright or Dim?
      Well they missed my expectation of 65 cents. They must've made a larger currency hedge against the Euro's rise than anticipated. This has been a money losing move every quarter yet they continue to do it for earnings consistency. The fact that it's trading down even though they beat analysts by 10 cents shows my expectation is what the street also expected. Let's see if there is any plans for new manufacturing announced on the call.
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    • Tue Apr 29th 23:36 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar's Future: Bright or Dim?
      His position is 20% short which means he's using it as a hedge. My position is 5-10% short term but that doesn't make me a day/swing trader. I'm still an investor. The fact that he's worth $100 mil proves by point once again. Shorting is mainly an instrument used by wealthy individuals to reduce risk not increase gain. A perfect example would be pair trading long a solar stock and short another. This strategy although greatly reducing volatility is almost guaranteed to underperform in the long run since the stocks will be highly correlated. Seriously, I would like to know if there are any though. I have thought about shorting Ford and AMD in the past due to technological obsolescence but decided not to bet against the market's general direction.
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    • Tue Apr 29th 21:52 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar's Future: Bright or Dim?
      BTW, the shorts who may or may not have been right last time the stock was at $280 have all disappeared. Typically when a stocks price goes up as FSLR's has recent short interest increases rightly or wrongly. Yet FSLR's short interest has actually been decreasing as people get used to the valuation.

      short interest daily volume days to cover
      4/15/2008 3,367,817 5,723,195 1.000000
      3/31/2008 2,837,420 4,130,981 1.000000
      3/14/2008 2,739,593 5,422,561 1.000000
      2/29/2008 2,990,775 5,125,587 1.000000
      2/15/2008 3,297,304 7,836,434 1.000000
      1/31/2008 2,797,210 8,571,926 1.000000
      1/15/2008 2,864,144 5,152,465 1.000000
      12/31/2007 3,211,976 3,349,538 1.000000
      12/14/2007 6,694,072 4,803,766 1.393505
      11/30/2007 7,211,171 4,880,855 1.477440
      11/15/2007 6,243,647 5,070,728 1.231312
      10/31/2007 5,991,271 3,019,707 1.984057
      10/15/2007 5,991,492 2,660,295 2.252191
      9/28/2007 5,619,191 3,195,216 1.758626
      9/14/2007 3,562,261 2,496,180 1.427085
      8/15/2007 2,701,487 2,959,008 1.000000
      7/13/2007 3,355,712 2,783,997 1.205358
      6/15/2007 4,563,173 1,779,744 2.563949
      5/15/2007 3,548,055 2,125,631 1.669177
      4/13/2007 2,302,800 1,670,706 1.378339
      View article »
    • Tue Apr 29th 21:48 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar's Future: Bright or Dim?
      Mr. Frankola, your risk tolerance is probably high because you don't have much to lose. I don't know anyone with substantial wealth including myself that has ever shorted any stock, let alone this one. I've also never heard of any renowned investors who have built a fortune primarily on shorting stocks. Options and futures, yes but stocks no. Leave shorting to professional day trades looking for a few ticks and to billionaires looking to hedge and minimize risk. The state Lotto has probably made more wealthy individuals than from shorting stocks. Maybe you should give that a try.
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    • Thu Apr 24th 13:17 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Solar Power Will Be Transformational in the Next Decade
      Supershort you're missing the point completely. A major reason the economy is in such bad shape is due to rising energy prices which benefits solar stocks. Would you also short agricultural stocks, energy, and mining due to the economic downturn?
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    • Wed Apr 23rd 19:09 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Trina Solar: Best Value in the Solar Space
      Also, all the debate your hear about silicon supply and pricing, government subsidies, new cigs entrants, solar's viability vs other renewables etc are all really arguments about whether future earnings will be better or worse than expect. 2009 silicon prices has a direct impact on 2009 and 2010 earnings of all solar stocks, and therefore effects today's stock price. Whether solar's market share vs wind in 2030 is a sort of 2030 earnings debate, with far less effect on today's share prices. The only reason that the dramatic stock movements are cause by things such as current and next quarter's earnings is because 2009 earnings change very gradually. They determine the intermediate term performance of the stock.
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    • Wed Apr 23rd 19:01 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Trina Solar: Best Value in the Solar Space
      Ignoring 2009/2010 earnings is a big mistake. 2009 earnings on what today's stocks will be primarily trading on. Even if you find the analyst's estimates unreliable you should at least use 2007/2008 earnings and growth rates to extrapolate 2009 earnings. In Feb. 07 FSLR analysts called for 0 08 earnings. I speculated $1.50 08 earnings and bought the stock. The rest is history. If you ignore them you're just throwing darts at the Wall Street journal. Just because speculation is difficult it doesn't mean you shouldn't speculate at all.
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    • Wed Apr 23rd 18:34 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar and SunPower: Competitors With Synergy
      sfrankola insiders are selling, as they always do, but institutions are still buying at a ratio of 2-1 as of yesterday. Last week the ratio was as high as 5-1 to the buy side.
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    • Wed Apr 23rd 16:07 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Tellurium Supernova Has Erupted
      Obviously Jack's March article is his new stance on Te over the old stance from Feb. As I recall back in December you went from short FSLR to long FSLR and now you're leaning short again. Does this cost you your credibility as well? People are allowed to chance their position with new information.
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    • Wed Apr 23rd 14:46 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Tellurium Supernova Has Erupted
      Mark, it's irrelevant what Jack's opinions are he's drawing attention to simple important facts. Jack point is not about current tellurium production. It's based on potential output from copper production. It doesn't matter where the Te is produced. He illustrated that the estimates are based on 1/6 of the copper.

      msd, his cdte data is also wrong. At 3 micros fslr uses 6.5g/panel. This is calculated by using the density of te. Since we're talking about future supply not current, let's assume FSLR is using 6g/80 watt panel by the end of the year. The gains will mostly be from efficiency gains but thinning the te layer may also be possible. That would be 12 MW production/ton te. With 800 tons te potentially available that would equate to 9.6 GW or $19.2 billion in sales/$6.4 billion in earnings. Even with a growth rate moderated by the growth in te production, these earnings would justify a $200B market cap.
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    • Wed Apr 23rd 04:58 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Solar Power Will Be Transformational in the Next Decade
      Also, consider the adoption of past comparable technologies. In order to displace an old technology it's not enough for the new technology to be equal. It has to be far superior. I've always been an early adopter, one of the first 1% to switch to a new technology e.g. dialup modem to broadband, film to digital cameras, cds to dvds to blu-ray. But there is a major lag between when a product seems clearly superior to me and other early adopters and when the general public finally switch over.

      A good example of this is the number of HDTVs that were still flying off the shelves last year that were NOT 1080p capable. By the year the prices for 720/1080i and 1080p were already comparable. People just weren't aware what 1080p was.

      Another is when Intel introduced the Core Duo. Everyone that reads benchmarking sites knew this was the end for AMD. After a decade of having a superior product but being barely able to compete with Intel they now had an inferior product and nothing in the pipeline. The market is still discovering this as proven by the fact the entire market sold off when AMD missed but then rallied when Intel beat. This was to be expected.
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    • Wed Apr 23rd 04:47 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Solar Power Will Be Transformational in the Next Decade
      Jack, using solar water heaters as a example, just because a technology is economical doesn't mean it will catch on quickly. Solar water heaters are such a great value and have been for decades. But relatively few in the States have one. Then again, the Toyota Corolla is probably the most economical car on the market but again
      it's not even the best selling car in the country.

      Most of us agree that solar will take the lion's share of new energy generation 30 years from now due to economics, but how much share it has in 5 years will depend highly on the whims of people and governments.
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