rana

Three Reasons Solar Sell-off May Be in Early Innings

selloff in solar because of valuation - what is this simplistic generalization?
we get examples like FSLR ENER..., but what about SOL WFR TSL that trade with PE's close to 10 for this year and many others that are well below?
most of this forward estimates are based on oil at 90-110. so companies that are growing well above 20% and have PE's in the teens or lower are overvalued?
let's get real and stop being like deers in the headlights. we will always get price flactuations since this is the nature of the market. read about it in articles that deal with market psychology.
are we in the first inning of major selloff? only time will tell. if it does it will be confluence of events that will drive the selloff. they will all create enough fear to make it happen.
saying that the selloff is because oil dropped to 100$ or the wrong claim of overvaluation (the wrong claim is because of the generalization, there are few that sure are overvalued), is just small part of what is driving and what will keep driving stock prices in the solar industry or in many others.

Solar Breaks Oil Price Dependence

we need to understand that the solar market and the solar stocks are 2 different things, especially in the short term.
to read a comment like the one of sirfisup is quiet discouraging:"I must say that the writer is a pure amateur and knows very little about solar technology and where its heading. Sand is about one third of the earths natural resource and is the primary commodity to manufacture silicon. Solar technology efficiencies are improving significantly and of all the alternative energies is the cleanest form of energy. The writer must have very little regrad for the emerging economies of China and India and unfortunately a very poor understanding of the fundamentals of capitalism. The only reason why you haven't received many more retort replies is simply because you are an idiot."
this comment itself shows very low intelligance and no knowledge of the stock market and how it works. from the comment one might assume that solar stocks are heading only one way and will not have pullbacks of any degree. this is not the case.
investing in stocks is sensitive to many outside variables like the availability of money (interest rates), alternative investments, sentiment, political climate and many others.
they all translate to valuations. when everything is good we can get double the valuation relative to the bad times.
the fact that silicon will get cheaper and that the solar technologies are advancing will carry risk that is as high as is the opportunity. the solar industry will be commoditized all along the food chane. while costs will be much lower so will go the ASP's.
history shows us how things work and we will be fools to ignore it.
while i am a huge solar fan, i will never close my eyes and ears to the presence of risk. any growth industry carries risk and investing in stocks in these industries is also risky.
i can only wish investing was as simple as some of the commentators make it seem. we were all much richer. since it's not, please invest with your head and not with your heart. it is way more profitable (i started investing with my heart and fell in love with investments and it didn't work well. sometimes it's worst than a divorce as you can pay much more than half) :)

LDK Solar Nearly Doubles Estimates

forgot about another "5th tier" client: Hyundai. this company is much bigger than all these "1st tier" combind. :)

LDK Solar Nearly Doubles Estimates

don't pay too much attention to obscure unacurate posts jack. it's not worth it.
GT solar will not be supplying to LDK which is why many law suits are being presented against GT solar, but i guess facts don't bother people as they want to say something.
as for customers they have one like Qimonda, but i guess the fact that they have more than 4 times the sales of these giants like SPWR, YGE....., is problematic to what alpha wants to say, so he calls them 3rd and 4th tier. :) it would have been funny if it wasn't so sad that people are posting from the imagination and not the facts. it would have been good red flag on LDK if the facts were correct.
nanosolar was a favorite of mine as a real winner, which thin film will probably won't be, but after almost a year waiting for them to go with big projects after they said they are starting to go commercial, i'm starting to be a little sceptic about them. something is wrong there, since they really don't have any problem with financing (just like many others i tried to check with them about investing, but they declined and in the end they posted in thier site that they don't plan to raise money soon). if they will be able to do what they say, they will rock.
regarding thin film - the funny thing is that if polysi will drop to the levels people are talking, it will destroy the competitive advantage of thin film against PV.
EMKR might be the black horse if they will leverage thier technology by licensing it to others instead of going solo.
disruptive technologies may win the market or not, but the time isn't near. for the next 2-3 years, no matter what technologies will emerge, the PV industry will still be the biggest in this area (financing and actual time to build these kind of plants take a long time).
btw, the fact that wafer pricing was high this quarter is good for SOL, if they controlled the costs side.

Chinese Solar Stocks Present Compelling Value

TSL - with the option to the underwriters they will raise close to 140M$.
if we take low conversion price of 40$ per ADS we get 3.5M additional shares. if we add this to the current count we have around 28.6M shares.
if we had this count in this Q the current estimated EPS for Q2 2008 would have been (under the assumption of the mid range, which i agree with jack that it's more likely we'll be at the higher end, but we always prefer being conservative):
73-74
this means we have a 12-13% reduction in the EPS.
the important thing is that the cloud of financing will be lifted (at least for the short term).
margins are still a problem, but it goes to all the industry and the higher growth might compensate for that partially.
regarding the stock price - if we take the new dilution into account and assume 10% EPS growth for each coming Q and use the mediam assumption for the current Q - we get EPS around 3$ (this is super conservative if we assume no more margin erosion). we have 2008 PE around 11 and 2009 is under 8.5 assuming EPS of 4$ for 2009 (33% EPS growth for 2009).
i like the numbers, but off course everyone needs to make thier own decisions regarding price vs. risk and there are clouds out there in the futureas we don't have a clue regarding which technology will be the big winner, or how silicon prices will be in the future (some new companies that are building new silicon plants may not be able to raise enough money to complete the new plants, see HOKU as an example) and so many other uncertainties that with the current environment of risk aversion is impacting the prices of risky assets.

Chinese Solar Stocks Present Compelling Value

SPIR 2009 estimated PE is under 10 now.
the stock created a falling wedge formation with bullish divergence on the RSI on 3 points and the same with the money flow.
i'm long SPIR and adding.

Chinese Solar Stocks Present Compelling Value

the latest annoucments from CSIQ TSL lead me to believe that the silicon shortage is almost certain to stay with us at least till 2009, which is still unclear also.
as i posted before regarding pricing of wafers in taiwan, the prices moved up in June which brings more pressure to the market.

Chinese Solar Stocks Present Compelling Value

SOL book to bill in the 2nd Q was over 1GW bookings to an estimated 75-80MW shipments. nice ratio.
i looked at each news item in the Q to get the bookings number and the estimated shipments from the 1st Q report, the guidance for Q2.
i didn't calculate the exact average period of the bookings, but if it's for 5-6 years, or 24 quarters, the average addition per Q is over 40MW. do the math.

Chinese Solar Stocks Present Compelling Value

TSL gave preliminary 2nd Q results.
if we take the lower end of the results we get 200M$ sales and 14% operating margin. this gives us 28M$ operating profit.
if we assume higher interest expenses, net, and lower exchange loss, which will offset each other, and 10% tax expense we get:
28000000-6200000=21800...
EPS - 19620000/25130000=0.78...
if we use the median:
202500000*0.146=295650...
EPS - 0.84
we have a range of 0.78-0.89 between the high and low end, depending on exchange loss, interest expenses, net, and income tax.
the median gives us 0.09$ better than estimates.
a big question will be the margins.

Chinese Solar Stocks Present Compelling Value

dicki
there is no talk about TSL (which i'm long) poly positioning but what if..
with that said, it seems you don't know how poly contracts work, so you better learn them first and than we can talk about possible scenarios.

Chinese Solar Stocks Present Compelling Value

there is no way to compare WFR to TSL.
if we'll get growing demand next year for silicon from the semiconductors industry, WFR will probably go balistic while TSL will go down hill.
for this reason alone they can't be compared and there are other reasons which i won't even mention.
i am a solar fan myself, but i am realistic and as long as the markets are bearish there will be negative premium for high growth high risk companies.

Is There Value in Silicon Solar PV?

you use the early stages of growth which is unsustainable.
do you really think that CSIQ will have 600% earnings growth in 2009 and 2010?
i only commented on the reason we don't use 1 year data, just like the reason we calculate moving averages and exponantial MA or the reason we use logarithmic scales and not linear.
if it's not understood you can use the unsmoothed method, but it will probably cost you somewhere down the line.
even here with CSIQ, if you think under 1 is good measure of value, you can pay 500$ for this stock and stay well under 0.5.
do you really think it's logical?

Is There Value in Silicon Solar PV?

these PEG numbers are not how we usually calculate PEG, so please try and use the standart method.
if a company made 1 cent last year and will make 1$ this year and 2$ next year and share price is 50$ with 50 million shares. we get PEG of 0.05 using the above method. if we will apply the concept of PEG of 1 the stock price will be 1000$, while next year we will get PEG of 5 which will take the price to 200$. (all is theoretical and is given for example purposes).
in order to smooth the results and get better picture of the longer term picture we use the 5 yr. expected growth which gives us very different results.
we still get very low numbers compared to other sectors, but no way near these results.
overall good post as it's very informative and comparative.

LDK Solar: Forecasting Sunny Skies in Q2 Earnings

if you can just post the numbers from the chinese reports we can crunch the numbers that are implied, using your method.
crunching numbers to all these companies is too much to ask from you especially as we can't paste excel spreadsheets to the posts.
thank you in advance, but even if you can't thanks for LDK, one of my favorites.