Andrew Ling

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    • Thu Apr 17th 10:27 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar Now in Its Third Leg Up
      Exactly, the estimates are a joke and if you read my article from several months ago this quarter will be the same upside as last quarter due to further strength in the Euro. You want to be long stocks that are up on high volume particularly on earnings, and FSLR has been up 30% or more 3 of the 4 times they have reported. This is the real market direction, whereas most other price movements are based on technicals and trading.

      I was telling people that when forward PE rolled over this year to over $5, no one would consider FSLR grossly overvalued anymore, and the shorts would run for cover. Sure enough short interest has fallen off a cliff. They are likely shorting FSLR's competitors instead such as SPWR. Basically the longer a stock stays "overvalued" the more the market gets used to it and no longer considers it overvalued. Hence the theory of moving averages.
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    • Thu Apr 17th 09:34 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      First Solar Now in Its Third Leg Up
      I simply by when I have new margin buying power gained from the appreciation of the stock, leaving about a 10% buffer for fluctuations. I've made about 8 long term purchases starting at $33 with the latest at $280. As a long term investment it's unimportant what price you get in at. This is a stock which could easily go up another tenfold by 2012.
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    • Wed Apr 16th 10:34 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Tellurium Supernova Has Erupted
      Good response Jack. I've read similar responses from about 10 different people "Marc Anthony" just ignores them all and continues to blab. As you said FSLR has stated that Te supplies are not a constraint issue and that there are adequate supplies available for terrawatts of production. Marc Anthony responds by calling them liars. I think I'll trust FSLR management over some guy that shorted FSLR at $80 and covered at $250.
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    • Wed Apr 16th 10:14 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      Dr Sarangi, I don't think any of the players have the capital to focus on both technologies right now. Look at the solar cash cow, STP, and their venture into thin-film which I believe is a mistake. It unlikely to have much effect on sales since customers will simply choose one or the other not both. It's too early at this phase to try to build a solar conglomerate unless the likes of GE or BP decide to invest tens of billions. Each company needs to focus all their resources towards maximizing the viability of a single product.

      The most astonishing thing about FSLR to date has been their manufacturing prowess which often overlooked but cannot be overstated. Less than 1 year ago their lines were rated at 25MW/year. They are already up to 44MW/line which greatly reduces costs and increases revenues. As they were already running 24/7 on 4 shifts/day to achieve 25MW/year/line the gains were obviously major leaps forward. I suspect one reason they haven't announced 4 new plants yet is because they're still trying to tweak out more production from their old ones.
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    • Tue Apr 15th 10:47 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      Zawy, you're talking about the fuel costs which as we know is 0 with solar. The cheapest a nuclear plant has ever been built for is $2 billion. Exelon claims they can build one for $1 billion but that's just their claim. I've read coal capex is $1/watt though I dont know how accurate that is.
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    • Mon Apr 14th 23:08 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      Zawy, I consider ASTI one of those interesting companies worth following but to early to buy, much like ALTI. With $1 million in annual revenues it's simply too early to buy. There's nothing wrong with waiting for it to go up five or tenfold before jumping in. A poker analogy would be like having AK before the flop with many of these small caps but having Aces and Kings on a safe board at the river with a large cap name like FSLR. The majority of the time these companies are dead money until they have an obvious path to profitability. ASTI's panels demonstrate PV's potential but it's a huge crossover to go from NASA applications to industrial usage.

      Colin, CSP may be in all the headlines right now with all the huge several hundred megawatt panels, but much like wind the technology has been around so long that the best way for them to reduce costs is simply by increasing system size. I don't think smaller distributed systems are the way to go. CSP may have low materials costs but there are also maintenance costs which would increase with smaller systems. Besides that, you lose power output/acre when building outside the Arizona and Nevada deserts. I've looked at the major alternatives to PV but they all cost at least $2.00-$2.50/watt, including nuclear. At that price there's presently no urgency for CSP as it's not quite at grid parity. However, I'm an adamant peak oil theorist and if Oil were to break above $200 in the next few years, which has been my #1 wildcard reason for investing in FSLR (best return on energy investment among the major players), wind, CSP, EVs, nuclear, and coal would be the only real ways to make up the slack. Attention would shift away from the "future" in PV towards today.

      I'm not an expert in CSP but I can't imagine one of them coming through with a breakthrough proprietary technology. So if they did IPO I wouldn't be particularly interested. Colin, do you have any info on the installed costs for distributed CSP?

      I've also owned STP, SPWR, CREE, CCJ, and ZOLT over the last two years but in the end I always sell them off when their stocks start behaving improperly e.g. weak relative strength. I would still consider buying SPWR if polysilicon prices drop drastically, CREE if LED prices drop drastically, and CCJ or FXI if I can't find anything more attractive to buy.

      What I'd really like to invest in is an Electric Vehicle company like Tesla that can challenge the major automakers. I'm surprised there aren't major EV players out of China or India dominating the market already. Unfortunately they're losing their window of opportunity as the GM Volt and next-gen Prius will come out in a couple years.
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    • Mon Apr 14th 15:02 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      BTW, Steve, if you can come up with a link to a balance sheet which shows the cost of product at 60 to 80 cents it would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, I'm going to assume you're referring to Nanosolar's CEO's statements which I don't give much credence to. Even excluding capex depreciation, which will be massive for underutilized production equipment, with the number of employees/MW these startups have there is no way they are anywhere near economies of scale. The only way they could achieve 60 cents is by excluding all costs other than the materials. Unfortunately, that's an unrealistic way to look at things. e.g. an electric car costs on average about 1/4 as much to run but everyone knows electric cars are not considered "cheaper"
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    • Mon Apr 14th 14:44 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      Steve, Nanosolar may be the CIGS leader, but as far as I know they have yet to produce the flexible panels which are "100 times cheaper and made 100 times faster" outside of the lab. Instead they've been cranking out the not so glamorous glass substrate product, albeit also in small quantities. Very few people are aware of this bait and switch technique. If you read Nanosolar's news articles they've been promising the same things for 18 months with very little concrete signs of progress. You can easily find articles from early 2007 obviously written by people ignorant of the industry that state that "thanks to Nanosolar, solar is now cheaper than coal." I doubt the coal industry is shaking in their boots.

      This is why I'm turned off by the CIGS companies. None of them have delivered on their timetables to date. Nanosolar said they would produce 400MW by the end of 2007. Yet with only a few hundred million dollars, the math didn't add up. Sure enough they produced perhaps 1MW. Perhaps the building is big enough to produce 400 MW some day but they forgot to mention it was 95% empty right now. It's the exact opposite of what you have with FSLR which has risen by 30%+ 3 of the 4 quarters they've announced earnings thats to underpromising and overdelivering.
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    • Mon Apr 14th 09:25 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Cloudy Future for Applied Material's SunFab - Barron's
      Eli, if AMAT's equipment is really able to produce at $.80/watt the $3 capex/watt investment may be worthwhile. The question would then shift to installation costs. The physically huge panels should in theory also reduce installation costs. However, we'll have to wait and see since as you mentioned no one has yet dealt with such huge panels. If they succeed in economically installing such huge panels I'd expect FSLR to follow suit within the next few years with a larger substrate.

      Installation costs really are one of the few things the monocrystaline manufacturers have going for them, along with limited area systems such as the retail market. Lower efficiency panels involve higher installation costs.
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    • Mon Apr 14th 09:11 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      FX, as I stated in my article Silicon is no longer a threat in the industrial market. Many of the largest solar farms in the world 20 MW+ already use FSLR product. The return on investment for electricity generators in Germany using FSLR product is between 8-12% depending on system size. This is simply the best government guaranteed investment in the world. Imagine a Euro denominated bond that yielded 12%! Even with subsidies falling 8% annually FSLR's prices have fallen at an even faster rate.

      This year FSLR will cross the $1/watt threshold which will make their product cheaper than monocrystaline even if silicon were free. With by far the largest margins in the business it's no wonder FSLR is the first solar stock to touch new highs. People used to think STP was the "safe play" in solar because of their low PE. Obviously they were wrong as STP has been hammered this year. If there's oversupply in 2009 and beyond FSLR will be hurt, but not nearly as much as STP and the like. They will be struggling to stay in the black.
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    • Sun Apr 13th 23:01 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      According to wikipedia Global Solar is actually the CIGS "market leader."
      That's stunning at only 4 MW/year. The entry may be slightly outdated but it's still an eye opener. Like I said all the CIGS companies have major obstacles to overcome.
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    • Sun Apr 13th 22:52 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      Global Solar, Steve? They produce 4 MW/year. In the very same article it mentioned how Miasole, a much higher profile name, was stuck at 4-6%. I'm not interested in what will dominate the market in 30 years. I'm interested in 2012. PV has been known to achieve 42% efficiency in labs. Efficiency is meaningless without the context of price. Global Solar's definition of "volume" is probably not sufficient to get the price below $2/watt. In fact I have never seen any concrete figures for CIGS costs, probably because no one has been able to produce in volume. This is a safe assumption since all of them are deep in the red.
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    • Sun Apr 13th 14:34 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      Rana, Nanosolar's own CEO was quoted as saying the company is worth about $1 billion. Hardly the "probable winner." Don't get me wrong when Nanosolar IPOs I'll have to buy a few thousand shares just to be safe. But they have yet to disclose any solid figures on production and capex costs. Also, the promises they were making last year were made by Maisole 5 years ago. Neither has made much progress since.

      Steve, I guarantee you Nanosolar is unable to produce at $.60/watt today. They've spent hundreds of millions to produce maybe 20 MW so far. They're having all kinds of problems and missing all kinds of goals on their roadmap. I remember when I heard in Feb. 2007 how Nanosolar was going to produce 400 MW at $.60/watt by the end of 2007 I nearly passed on buying FSLR. At the same time FSLR was supposed to turn profitable in 2009. The track records speak for themselves. I also drove by their headquarters and I was not impressed. By 2010 the smaller companies that fail to achieve breakthroughs will find it difficult to obtain financing. For a newer technology to displace an older one it has to be far superior. With conversion efficiencies of 6% and countless manufacturing problems CIGS has hardly proven itself superior. The lower the efficiency the higher the installation costs will be.

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    • Sun Apr 13th 14:16 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Cloudy Future for Applied Material's SunFab - Barron's
      Eli, AMAT never said their sunfab equipment could produce cheaper than FSLR. I'm assuming the 17% cheaper figure is based off of AMAT's 2010 goal of $1.00/watt vs FSLR's 2007 costs of $1.17. Hardly a fair comparison. Check out my similar article
      seekingalpha.com/artic...
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    • Sun Apr 13th 08:29 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry
      pk de cville, some of my favorite investing resources include investor's business daily investors.com (FSLR is the #1 ranked energy stock there) solarbuzz.com peakoil.net. Also click on bio and more articles and check out some of my previous blogs.

      Zawy, I doubt FSLR purchases any equipment from AMAT. FSLR has been in the business longer and is very secretive about their proprietary manufacturing techniques. It wouldn't make sense to allow AMAT to develop their equipment and risk them selling it to competitors.
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