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    • The Tellurium Supernova Has Erupted [view article]
      Piggybank,

      I'm not an expert on this issue by any means, but I've enjoyed your discourse with Mark.

      I agree with you that even if Te prices were to rise 3 to 4 times, that would probably be a drop in the bucket for FSLR in terms of their raw materials cost.

      However, in support of Mark, Te is a rare element irrespective of the price/kilo. Even if the price of Te went up 4 times, according to Mark, the mining company would only get $40 of Te for the $8800 in copper it could get. I don't think that's enough of an incentive for a mining company to start mining for Te. (As Mark mentioned, the Te proce would have to increase in orders of magnitude for the miners to look at getting more Te, at which point the price would significantly affect FSLR's production costs)

      This gets me to my main point which is that even though FSLR could pay for more Te at a higher price, there just may not be enough of it to meet FLSR's demand, irrespective of price. That might hamper FSLR's ability to grow at the rate it projects. (which I think is one of Mark's original points) I'll leave it to Mark to estimate how much Te is available and how much FSLR needs to meet its growth targets, but from a 30,000 feet point of view, that seems to me to be the concern for FSLR going forward.

      With a P/E ratio as high as it is, FSLR is richly priced and will need to meet or beat all of its forecasts in order for people to sustain the stock price or push it higher. Any sign of weakness or lowered growth forecasts and this stock probably tanks to more reasonable P/E ratio.       Apr 11 01:59 PM
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