West1

Three Reasons Solar Sell-off May Be in Early Innings

"I think the argument the author is laying out against solar is a fairly short-term one. He never claims solar won't be a great business down the road. But if oil continues to plummet, Solar's high valuations will not be sustainable.

Value is about what a business is trading for relative to what it's really worth - even the greatest business can be overpriced and the worst underpriced. And at current and future PEs, solar profits need to keep growing at an insanely fast rate to sustain current valuations."

I'm sure both you and the author are aware that the P/E ratios of FSLR and SPWR are the exception and not the rule when it comes to solars, and that in terms of P/E, other solars "stand out from the pack" even further than LDK.

Solar Breaks Oil Price Dependence

Can we please stop treating the two presidential candidates as if they are equally likely to be beneficial to renewable energy such as solar? They're obviously not. McCain is about nuclear, and just picked a VP who is all about drilling.

When Will Solar Achieve Grid Parity? We're Already There!

milwaukee.bizjournals....

Which Solar Stocks Will Continue To Shine?

in.reuters.com/article...

"The energy ministers agreed on the need for more large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects that bury emissions from power plants, a cornerstone of the International Energy Agency's call for a $45 trillion energy "revolution".

"The time for talking is over. We have to implement this," British Business Minister John Hutton told Reuters in an interview, referring to the IEA goals.

The IEA report released on Friday, commissioned by G8 leaders three years ago, said the world would need to effectively "decarbonise" the power sector by building dozens of billion-dollar CCS plants over the next 40 years, although world governments remain at odds over who should foot the bill."

Which Solar Stocks Will Continue To Shine?

TSL's switch to the $ as "functional currency" was effective Jan 1, 2008, per their Q1 earnings release, so I'm guessing that's why it didn't impact Q4 2007?

Perhaps Trina is being paid by a greater % of it's European customers in dollars than, for example, YGE and CSIQ. I notice that CSIQ cited the "strong Euro vs USD" as a significant factor in their blowout quarter, though they also said "the large foreign exchange gain is likely a one-time event". I don't see where they state how much this was, but their statment of operations shows an $8 million figure under "Others - Net" under other income that I'm guessing is it.

What's weird to me is how YGE and CSIQ expressed their currency gains as a simple function of currency movements, but Trina's statement makes it sounds as if the loss is accounting mumbo jumbo:

[The $4.0 million exchange loss was] "... primarily associated with Trina China's non-US-denominated obligations that are now required to be remeasured in the US dollar functional currency. Such remeasurements are and will continue to be, to the extent we continue to have such non-US denominated obligations, recorded as transaction gains or losses in the consolidated statement of operations".

If you don't get it, I sure as hell don't.

Which Solar Stocks Will Continue To Shine?

This article I think is probably very relevant and helpful in understanding the currency question:

www.nytimes.com/2008/0...

Which Solar Stocks Will Continue To Shine?

Re: currency

Did some further reading and found out about YGE's currency gain of 9.5 million in Q1 2008, and $4 million loss in Q4 2007.

biz.yahoo.com/bw/08051...

"Foreign currency exchange gain was RMB 66.3 million (US$9.5 million) in the first quarter of 2008, compared to a foreign currency exchange loss of RMB 29.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 and a foreign currency exchange loss of RMB 0.1 million in the first quarter of 2007. The foreign currency exchange gain in the first quarter of 2008 was primarily due to the appreciation of the Euro against the Renminbi coupled with an increase in Euro-denominated sales, which was partially offset by the depreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Renminbi."

So this seems to indicate that a depreciating dollar against the RMB is also a negative for YGE.

Which Solar Stocks Will Continue To Shine?

ysong,

Thanks for your insight.

Which Solar Stocks Will Continue To Shine?

VP,

Shouldn't the Yuan being pegged to the dollar be favorable? My thinking is that if sales are in Euros and costs in Yuan, then the weaker dollar would be good...but if so, why the $4 million loss?

Which Solar Stocks Will Continue To Shine?

Jack,

Any idea why the change in "functional currency" to the $, given that most of their business is in Europe? I was under the impression that other foreign solars had been coming out ahead with regards to foreign currency in Q1, so the $4 million loss is an unexpected contrast. Since it is a Chinese company, I did not think being long TSL was inconsistent with a bearish view of the dollar, but now I'm wondering if it is.

Solars Should Bounce Today

Btw, the second half of that youtube video does an excellent job of elucidating the method by which the right wing and their "think tanks" obfuscate truth through the media on so many issues.

One more link for you:

www.logicalscience.com/

Solars Should Bounce Today

petyaczar,

Just a few comments and then I am content to let our respective words stand for themselves.

"You citing ridiculous points of reference such as salon.com and wikipedia, it laughable. And it points out your liberal point of view."

If by liberal, you mean not motivated by greed, fear and hatred, and interested in exposing the endless stream of fabrications and distortions from the current administration and it's tentacles in the media, then yes, feel free to call me "liberal". Speaking of fabrications and distortions, perhaps you can show me where I cited wikipedia. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that.

"West1, It IS NOT my responsibility to prove something is NOT the cause of something else = ie human activity is the cause of global warming.

It IS the responsibilty of those proponents of a sepcific theory to PROVE their specific theory = especially as regards causality.

The Scientific Method does not accept anecdotes as evidence."

I just spent a few minutes doing some more digging, started watching (haven't finished) this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?...

by Naomi Oreskes:

www.washingtonpost.com...

and then read about the Keeling Curve

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (now you can claim that I have referenced wikipedia)

and Benny Peiser

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

for whom Wikipedia is a useful place to start - where you go from there is up to you.

In any case, whether or not you believe that anthropogenic (caused by human activities) global warming is proven or not, clearly it is not a position supported by just "anecdotes".

Solars Should Bounce Today

petyaczar,

Although you have made a lot of statements, I continue to notice that you have not "documented" any of them. On the other hand, I provided links containing information obviously at odds with your theories on global warming. Conspicuously, you ignored these.

Even if I were to accept your theory at face value that the U.N. is in favor of wealth transfer into the 3rd and 4th world, the first question that comes to my mind is: so? Is 'wealth transfer' of any kind an inherently bad thing?

The second question that comes to my mind is, how do you make the leap from this assumption to the conclusion that human activity is not a significant factor in global warming? I suspect it has more to do with the likes of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh than with scientific fact.

Big Daddy,

Regarding the fallacy of the "liberal media", here is a good place to start repairing your misinformation:

www.salon.com/opinion/.../

Solars Should Bounce Today

petyaczar,

I asked about your real name only because if you're going to make statements such as,

"As A Scientist, I DO NOT BELIEVE there is ANY sufficient data supporting the notion of human activity as a cause of global warming."

I think you ought to be willing to put your name to it, especially since a quick google search is all it takes to make any unbiased thinking person have serious doubts about the likelihood of anything coming out of your mouth being anything other than prejudiced nonsense.

"I state a righteous assertion founded in documented fact."

Uh huh. Zero for two buddy.

How about you just explain this sentence:

"IMO global warming is a purely political and financial scam. A power grab by the U.N. to steal America's wealth and transfer it to the "poor countries" thru an international tax."

I think you may be on to something. The powerful third world lobby cooked up this global warming thing to try and grab money from rich countries like the United States. Then the scientists all just fell in line:

www.sciencemag.org/cgi...

www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/.../

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6.../

www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO.../

Solars Should Bounce Today

"As A Scientist, I DO NOT BELIEVE there is ANY sufficient data supporting the notion of human activity as a cause of global warming. "

petyaczar,

If you're a scientist, maybe you'd care to state your actual name?

You sound like just another mentally unbalanced right wing idiot to me.