Piggybank

Solar Companies Discuss Possible Effects of the Downturn on Their Industry

good stuff. Solar is part of the sollution to this mess. Decrease oil dependency, make the economy more effeciant, increase margins of all industry's with cheaper electricity, create jobs, and help the ecology. The subsidies are in place, the quarter results and growth of solar company's remain strong. there has been no indication yet that this industry is in any way affeced, while we see about every other industry be affected indeed.

The maket has so far overreacted with arbitrary selling off everything. Sure solar multipliers were high, but it is a strong growth sector too. the raw numbers remain great, rising sales, rising profit, expanding industry. Let the industry post another 2 quarters of great numbers on earnings during this crisis and were off for decades. people will weel unhappy should they not have taken the opportunity to buy at these cheap levels if this scenario continues to fold out so positivly.

And why not? Solar is not a big industry. With all it's current cappacity it hardly manages to provide more than 0.3% of world needed electricity. All in all, i think this industry is still so small and yet so promising that it is quite easy to dodge the ill effects of this credit crisis. And afterall, the only concern for solar company's atm is that this crisis might inpact it's superb growth, not it's current revenue. Other company's are facing real decline in demand, solar is not even feeling decline in a demand that is far higher than the sector's output, to be only concerned about how fast they could still grow, thats one heck of a luxury at this moment.

Goldman Turns Cautious on Solar Sector

/quote
Molnar Tuesday cut his rating on First Solar (FSLR) to a Conviction Sell from Buy, slashing his price target to $103 from $365.
quote/

Seriously, if Mister Molnar is just going to pull prices on the fly from his ass, then he can aswell make it a nice round number. 103$? Why not just a 100$? I'd like to see their calculations scheets that first turn ip with 365$ and a few month's later with 103$.

Anyway, if you listened to Molnar when FSLR was at 315$ not that long ago, then you'd be seriously screwed over with this new target. Maybe GS should start to predict the fluctuations months into the future, like FSLR will first go to 365$ and then to 103$ and then to 25.689$ and 24 cents and then back to 5$.

SunPower Is a Semi - It Deserves to Be Valued Like One

"My real hunch though, is that this pie is going to be big enough to sustain a lot of players for the next decade. "

I agree. The solar industry is just soo small, even for all the company's it has and for all it's production and growth. It's a minimal amount of world energy output, below 1%, far below that even. And at our current energy crisis, were likely to pick up every energy generation form as an way to get our energy bills down again. Every bit will be needed, but even then solar has a few advantage's why especially we should use it. It can provide energy independance, it can provide lots of jobs, it can improve so much that one day it could even become the source of the majority of our energy, thus can act as a long term sollution, thus in a world where every source of energy will be needed, solar is likely one of the first to be considerd.

Solar Stocks Feeling the Heat

Meh it doesn't matter all to much. At the current state Solar energy is a niche, it is that small that demand easily far outstrips supply for years to come at this moment. Most established solar company's have very deep backlog's, and even during this crisis the backlog's only appear to increase. Solar energy is like something of 0.2% of our total world energy supply, probably not even that, and they have been installing for a few years.

There only needs to be a tiny shift towards solar energy use on global scale and already it would mean enourmous demand difference for the solar sector and even for that tiny market share many of these company's are already very financially sound, much better than most banks these days that are filled with gifted analysts.

And the shift will come quite soon enough. Electricity prices should be youre indicator to follow. It could be more determinal that subsidy's, because the more electricity prices rise, the faster solar panels pay themself back. And solar power has a hughe advantage, it empowers people to produce their own energy, the more electricity prices rise the more people and company's that will want to be specificly energy independant.

But i think that if electricity prices begin to soar, then many major company's will feel compelled to invest heavily in solar panels and produce their own energy. Not only because it would greatly improve the net income of these company's but also their competitiveness, and often it's just that very large profitable company's just have the excess money anyway to easily afford a solar upgrade.

I think the damand curve of solar panels wil just smoothly continue as it's going now, steadily up.

Solars Should Bounce Today

I got bored reading all the comments. In the end it's all irrelevant. The point Jack makes is clear enough, US goverment now accepts the idea of climate change too. Wel ladiladilaa, after all the BS, "poof" we accept climate change. Germany will continue to subsidize alternative energy, and they already did so for years. Energy resources like coal, uranium, gas and oil are all increasing in price, and energy demand itself is fastly increasing along with globalization. And we are all dependant for a large part on foreign country's to supply us with energy resources. World energy demand is hughe, there is just such an hughe space for alternative energy to grow in.

Some people identify alternative energy as a "bubble", others as the next bubble. It is not and it won't be a bubble neither, but it will sure look like one if you will see the stellar growth the alternative energy sector will have the next decade. Go read some income statements of established solar and wind energy company's, the average year to year growth is just ammazing.

Many people identify alternative energy as "the next big thing". Psycholigy is a large part of investing, and here you have a wide basis of people who are convinced of the potential of alternative energy. So am i, and IMO, rightly so. It strikes me that an fairly irrelevant 2008'ish little crisis has sown so many doubt among alternative energy investors, i do not doubt the long term potential of my stocks just because their stock has a few bad weeks.

The future is great for alternative energy, and noone needs some Wall street idiots to tell them otherwise and play some manipulation games. Wall street aint the center of the earth, and it has made HUGHE mistakes before. Atleast Germany has now an alternative energy sector creating ample new jobs, the USA on the other hand has a lot of empty houses. The antics of some of the SA editors here are just hilarious, i visit this site to have a good laugh for the most part. The amount of irony to spot is just excessive.

The devide in mentality across the pond clearly is quite deep. But Europe is in a far better shape these days, heck investors these days look to US based company's with a strong foot in Europe for revenue growth. It's utterly remarkable how much the world has changed in the last years, and especially so for the USA in relation to the rest of the world.Reality shows these days that a hughe amount of presumptions ingrained in the US mentality on various issue's have proven to be utterly wrong and shortminded, and it becomes time that the USA gets a new perspective on modern issue's like climate change and energy needs wich most other modern nations of this world have already accepted long before the USA. These issue's now form a large part of the political agenda of current presidential candidate's.

But what really needs to change is the mentality of certain groups withing US society. The Bush administration has been utterly ruining for the USA, but it remains so that it was a large part of USA society that supported Bush in ellection, in his actions and in his warmongering. It's ironic that so many US people now complain so much about Bush, in large part due to the war and the ramifications, while more than 95% supported for the Bush administration in the runup towards the Iraq war in a surge of Patriotism. Clearly, US society is gullible for lies and propaganda, and you cannot blame Fox media more than their watchers. Some people just don't know what they should believe in.

In europe we don't need some meddling Wall street schmucks. We have the largest alternative energy company's in the world and damn were quite happy with them too. Alternative energy will grow for decade in Europe with the mentality at wich we work on it. In the end it's inevitable, do or "die", and the more America pospone's it, the more they will fall behind.

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

1MW turbine's are small stake's compaared to vestas 3.5MW turbine's, the 4.5MW turbine's gamesa is developing, and the 5MW giants that Repower and Suzlon are putting out. And i'm not complaining on the profit im pulling in on wind turbine stocks in Europe.

That the turbine's cant be produced fast enough is because demand is so damn high, sure it takes some time to builmd them, but the wind turbine company's are expanding fast, and even at their rate Vestas is expecting the shortage to stay for a few years. All the more profit for them though. Vestas shot up 15% on last earnings, a week ago. Maybe you should consider Gamesa's earnings on thursday 15th of may.

I know some pretty hefty wind farms in development in Europe going over the 1 gigawatt total output, and even if it takes some space, there is always room in the sea. In the meantime takeovers in this sector are coman, Just recently European utility company SUEZ took over the largest wind farm in America, and Vestas is expanding in USA with a new factory.

Anyway, Andrew wanted to talk solar. Then again clearly he doesn't like any of the European Solar company's neither. this aint new on Seekingalpha, but Europe is well ahead in this sector and you would think that would be important in the grand sheme of things. Most of my solar investments are in renewable energy corp and Q-cells anyway. hey get MY honourable mention atleast.

As to the stocks listed. i have a small position left in ASTI, for reasons of their product, though i cant be all to happy about the stock dillution, lets hope they get really forward with that capital. I hav a large investment though in the bottom listed stock, 5N plus or VNP.TO, the "safe way" to play FSLR, but a company that has many strong advantage's in other fields to. Otherwise i stay somewhat out of the USA, don't like the dollar to much yet. I am following some wind farmers and own a position in NCEN.OB. A few more small positions in USA, but thats for an other topic.

There's a Solar Shakeout Coming - Citigroup

What a load of nonsense. I bet they the analysts at citigroup make their predictions on whether they throw well or not on a dartboard. Advice brought to you buy people who messed up big time in the credit market, at this point i would just do the reserve of what they are saying, look at their own stock, who still has confidence in this establishment?

Spain and Germany's subsidies program at risk? Like they know anything about it. What they came over here and asked Merkel and Zapatero themselfs? I bet they can't even point Frankfurt on the map.

Solars keep ramping up production due to high demand. Saying this demand won't rise in the future is more speculative giving the trend than saying demand will keep going up. Like Citigroup has a magic orb that can predict the future in this regard.

And then there is the matter of P/E's. FSLR and SPWR are valuated taking into account large growth in a large growth market. If this market won't grow like this Citigroup man predicts, then these stocks are overvalued. Putting a buy with target 450$ on FSLR in this regard is just rediculous, not to speak about SPWR.

Lets face it, Citigroup doesn't know much more about this market than we do, why would we listen to them?

SunPower Chairman Doesn't Talk Green

I think the largest incentive for companies to go for slar would be energy independance, no energy costs eans higher profits, and company's that swim in cash can afford it, it's even an interresting opportunity for them to make an investment that makes them a lot more effeciant profit wise.

SunPower Chairman Doesn't Talk Green

I think the largest incentive for companies to go for slar would be energy independance, no energy costs eans higher profits, and company's that swim in cash can afford it, it's even an interresting opportunity for them to make an investment that makes them a lot more effeciant profit wise.

Solar Power Plays Look to Grow with Clean Energy Act, Spanish Subsidies

What about the frikkin European solar company's, shouldn't they profit from the Spain case for ex. ? Renesola maybe? Q-cells or REC?

It seems that to SeekingAlpha and so many sites that promote solars, European solar company's simply do not exist!

Suntech, SunPower, MEMC and First Solar: Four Solar Stocks Worth Investigating

All these seekingalpha guys forget about such company's as REC and Q-cells. In general there is very very few talk here about european renewable stocks. Even as they hyped the market in 2007 few ever came to talk about such great company's like Vestas or Gamesa, wich is wind power.

But my money is mostly in european renewables. REC, Q-cells, Vestas, Gamesa, and not to forget Roth & Rau, wich is an excelent company and just tottaly forgotten here.

Beware of the Solar Stock Fad

I think you need to be an American to say this kind of stuff.

While many of you americans are driving on high oil consuming SUV's and just waste energy as it's no big deal, atleast here in europe were atleast 10 years ahead in saving our energy with all sorts of measures. Someone here mentioned this energy effeciancy, other ligtbulbs and that kind of stuff. Well i can simply say to them, it doesn't work like that over here in Europe.

Were 10 years ahead in energy saving, but living in brussels i have this very keen sense that the EU will actually expand subsidies to renewables, having read article's from top euro politicians here who all seem to hammer on solar/wind, and who all hate biofuels for the rediculous pricesurge it creates in food and such.

And it's perfectly reasonable from an EU perspective, way to many euro's flow out from the Euro zone to oil producers. And we have emmerging markets to compete with i general economics. If the EU wants to survive as an economic powerhouse in the future then it has to remain on the edge of many technoligies, and alternative energy is one of those technoligy's were were doing quite well in. It's creating jobs for us, we can make an export product of it, it lowers our energy bill, win win win situation. European wind energy is miles ahead of the rest of the world, we have all the top wind turbine manufacturers.

And it's quite simple to piont out that Europe is the largest market for all renewables, Germany on top. In fact America's own solar company's have ther majority sales in Europe. And if europe increases renewables funding then yioure point vanishes into the drain.

it only shows that Americans don't take their energy problems to serious. How else could they have lagged just so far behind Europe. The posters article here just shows that sentiment.

And to US politics. No renewal of renewables funding? Go for it! by 2020 Europe and china will dominate the renwables market. Heck youre own wind farmers aleady buy European turbine's. Keep fooling on!