GH

An In-Depth Look at Solar Stocks

Geez. It is such a waste of time reading the vast majority of SeekingAlpha articles. There are about 3 really competent authors, and then hundreds who are rank amateurs who put maybe a week into reading some books and articles and think they know enough about a sector as huge as solar power to write an "in depth" article.

No more for me, thanks. Goodbye, SeekingAlpha.

Solar Shorts Keep On Rising Even As Oil Surprises

"Number of shares short" has no value for comparisons. How about showing short shares as a percentage of the float? And include STP, please!

Thanks!

Will LDK's New Company Create Competition for First Solar?

Mark,

Why do you think "competition is going to be brutal" ? In "commodity" industries, tiny advantages are the only differences and competition is fierce. However, in the solar power business, technological differences create major differences in product characteristics, and will allow many different players to prosper for the forseeable future.

OatLeaksBeans, I think your guess is correct. China is a sufficient customer to keep *any* business busy, never mind a clean energy business! And China has huge expanses of undeveloped high-insolation land: perfect for giant solar photovoltaic arrays.

Trina Solar: Best Value in the Solar Space

Jack,

Check out
nickgogerty.typepad.co...

I believe his work supports your thesis that solar is already at grid parity.

- GH

Trina Solar: Best Value in the Solar Space

I just noticed you asked for specifics on the other companies I like.

ORA - solidly established interational leader in electricity generation from geothermal and recovered-heat sources. Dividend-paying. This is not a pre-profit company; it's much closer to what you write these articles about. Geothermal per-kw costs passed grid parity several years ago, IMO.

OPTT - best investment (IMHO) in the area of ocean-wave power generation. Well beyond the proof-of-concept stage; the technology is proven and they are deploying significant first-tier projects at this point, as well as continuing R&D to scale up to very large projects. These devices effectively tap into a similar energy stream as off-shore wind turbines but IMO this is ultimately a much lower-cost approach, since off-shore wind turbines are incredibly expensive and difficult to maintain. Also definitely better from environmental and NIMBY perspectives.

ENON - one of several I like in the area of lithium-ion batteries. The current state of the battery art is that lithium-ion are going to replace the nickel-metal-hydride batteries currently used by hybrid-electric cars, enabling plug-in hybrids and pure-electric cars. Moreover, the next step after that is these batteries may well become cost-efficient enough to provide the load-filling required by the addition to the grid of large-scale solar and wind generation. Another to watch for in this area would be an IPO by A123 Systems.

CREE - positioned to lead the inevitable transition to LED-based lighting, which with economies of scale I believe will have even cheaper lifetime costs than compact flourescent.

- GH

Trina Solar: Best Value in the Solar Space

Jack,

I think your reference to Venture Capital investing shows we're actually in complete agreement about the potential for pre-profit companies. The idea of VC, of course, is to take manageable losses on most investments but be more than compensated by the huge gains on the winners.

Besides CPTC, I like a long list but to pick one from each energy-related sub-category that I follow, I like ORA, OPTT, ENON, and CREE.

CPTC is a somewhat odd story, in that they had a solid but temporarily struggling business selling next-generation power transmission lines - which are selling like hotcakes in China and should do fantastically well in the U.S. if we ever figure out how to finance upgrading our power grid. Basically you replace old high-tension lines with these new carbon-fiber-core ones, and you get much improved current-carrying capacity as well as lower losses... on the existing towers and rights-of-way. The lower losses are like increasing generating capacity without burning any more fuel.

The cables have been established as meeting U.S. industrial specs, etc., so, that should be a great business if they're just patient and keep finding places where their cable can prove itself... but then, as that process was proceeding, CPTC's management discovered DeWind at a fire-sale price... and bought it. Various merriment, including a brush with Chapter 11, ensued... but DeWind is a compelling story. Their turbine applies torque-converter technology to eliminate the most frequent cause of wind turbine failure (gearbox problems) - as well as a significant initial and ongoing maintenance cost (inverters). They've recently passed various third-party tests, and set up an insurance deal to calm the concerns of wind farm builders who would like to see a longer track record. As a student of engineering the advantages of their turbines are obvious to me, but of course those subtleties don't make much of an impression on people who finance wind farms.

Pure plays in transmission-line infrastructure improvement and wind-turbine production are extremely hard to find in the U.S. - and CPTC is both. I can't figure out whether CPTC's management are whackos or geniuses... but they're certainly interesting!

Trina Solar: Best Value in the Solar Space

Jack,

I posted a response a month or so ago when you stated that there were no pure U.S. wind plays. The closest is CPTC, which had as its primary business carbon-fiber-based high-performance power transmission cables. They purchased DeWind (a wind-turbine manufacturer) some time ago at a fire-sale price.

No, they're not currently profitable... but neither was FSLR when I bought it in November 06. In my opinion your insistence on use of P-E based criteria, which forces you to exclude not-yet-profitable companies, will prevent you from tapping into the best parts of the growth curves in the alternative energy sector.

In other words: right sector, but inappropriate trading criteria.

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

By the way, a correction: NACEL's trading symbol is NCEN .

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

Solar wind, thanks for the heads-up about NECN.

Himanshu, regarding other American wind pure plays, there is a near-pure play: CPTC, which owns DeWind turbine, now a CPTC subsidiary. CPTC also produces high-performance power transmission lines.

LDK Solar: Conversation with Pichel Revisited

JG: How can you say "If Piper traded on its knowledge for its clients (not for themselves - they don't take positions in stocks)..." and then say "Piper was an underwriter of LDK's IPO" ? They are (indirectly, but effectively) the same thing.

WiseInvestor is right; Schwab was clearly trying to generate selling pressure on LDK - which they succeeded in doing.

All: anyone who trades LDK or any other speculative stock on margin, or allows it to become more than 5% of their portfolio exposure, is taking an inappropriate risk, and survival of the fittest *always* eliminates those people from the market eventually. Analogy: if you keep doubling down, the house inevitably wins in the end.

Why LDK Beats First Solar

"David White" is either an alias for Mark Anthony, or a clone. Same ill-researched or made-up numbers, same unsupportable innuendo. "Questionably stable employee" ?? Questioned by whom, except LDK shorts? Are you *trying* to get Seeking Alpha sued?

What you clowns don't get is that the rest of the people who write misleading, manipulative market commentary are GOOD AT IT. They know how to make it sound convincing. Your stuff just sounds like you're getting paid by the word.

US Energy Bill: Solar Stocks Will Feel All the Heat

Buffettz has the only statement on this page (the author's article included) that has a solid basis in fact. Because of the on-again off-again history of the U.S.'s pathetic subsidies for oil alternatives, no one has invested serious money based on them for decades. The two main U.S. solars, SPWR and FSLR, have not relied significantly on anything provided by the U.S. government. (California, yes, a bit - but no one is talking about CA cutting back). The other important solar - STP - also does not rely on the U.S. market.

Short away, if you want: it will be fun watching you try to cover as the U.S. economy goes into recession, and the only U.S. companies continuing to grow are those - like FSLR and SPWR - that are in a growing sector and selling primarily overseas.

LDK Solar: Give Us the Facts

By their nature, independent investigations cannot adhere to a "due date", and absolutely cannot be pressured by management or shareholders to hurry up and finish. They need to double-check and cross-confirm every fact they turn up. They gave a time estimate as best they could when they started, but without knowing how many facts they would turn up, or how long it would take to obtain confirmation of said facts.

This should have been familiar territory if you paid any attention to the option grant audits done at hundreds of companies since mid '06. Most of them were found to have only minor discrepancies and paperwork errors - which proved both that the audit was exhaustive, and that the companies were basically honest. Obviously the market expects a similar outcome here.

Comparison of Chinese Polysilicon Based Solar Module Manufacturers

"moot point" depends on whether you believe First Solar's CFO - who can go to jail if he misinforms us - or a whacko (IMO) blogger, who won't even get his wrist slapped.

In any case, a solar panel producer's key raw material is hardly moot. If CIGS can be scaled up to give efficiencies comparable to Si, but costs below CdTe, all the Si-based companies, as well as FSLR, will be left behind. There are literally billions of VC dollars chasing CIGS. However, there have been hundreds of millions spent already over the last 5+ years without success. Eventually nano-tech will produce a cheap solution, but that may be more than a decade away. In the meantime, First Solar is well ahead of the rest of this nascent industry.

LDK Solar: Thompson Gets It Wrong

Mr. Schaffer,

The points your post makes are well taken. But you are guilty of the same kind of incorrect re-interpretation as Mr. Vlastelica; you wrote:
"LDK Solar [...] reports that the audit will be concluded no later than early December" when as you say yourself, the company is in no position to be that specific. What they actually said was: "Due to the independent nature of the Audit Committee's ongoing investigation, LDK Solar cannot provide a specific timeframe for its completion. However, this is an important issue, and the Audit Committee is committed to resolving this issue as quickly as possible. The Audit Committee expects to be able to report the findings from the investigation in early December and the Company would be able to report earnings for the third quarter shortly thereafter.".