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Solar Cycles and Stocks: The Sun Also Rises
Why It's Time to Invest in Domestic Banks
A Look at Four Polysilicon-Based PV Manufacturers' Funding
Great analysis. Bu how would you compare Amazon.com in this regard. They were unprofitable for many many years and sunk every dime into developing their business. In the end - it paid off.
I read a recent report from UBS (and others) that over a 170 companies are now intensely engaged in bringing new raw poly to market - and as this poly came onstream in 2H2008 and 2009 the increase in poly supplies will be four fold from present levels. That's a lot of new supply. Hemlock - one of the world's leading suppliers - believes that the supply/demand curve has already turned and that existing suppliers can easily provide all or more of 2008's poly needs.
So I see two dynamics here: falling supply costs + the hope that the United States would embrace solar and wind with initiatives similar to California, Spain, Japan, and Italy to get solar back onto the front burner. I find it remarkable that the only decision-makers in the U.S. who seem against the government supporting and developing FREE alternative energy sources(solar/wind/wav... are the U.S. congress (18% approval rating), the president (23% approval rating) along with the biofuels farmers and Big Oil.
The PV industry very much reminds me of the early days of the semiconductor chip equipment companies: it's like high-stakes poker. They have to ante-up in order to buy the new equipment with the better die sizes (cost efficiencies) and better technology development (technology improvements) in order to stay in the game. Right now, it looks like thin-film is winning the game because poly costs are a minimal or non-existent part of their business (ENER, ESLR, FSLR, Nanosolar). But poly technology has been around 40 years. Is it just going to "go away", supplanted by thin film? And if the long-term poly costs return to $100/kg - after that it all comes down to labor costs and manufacturing costs. Last time I looked China was the world leader in those areas.
Probably - within three years from now - all the companies you mentioned will have been consolidated into a company like Q-cells with deep pockets. They only thing they really need is money, yes?
Wuxi Pharma: Too Much of a Good Thing
Wuxi Pharma: Too Much of a Good Thing
Semiconductors: Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?
Semiconductors: Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?
Solar Symbiosis: Making a Clean Break
Happily buying more in the $5s.
Semiconductors: Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?
Small caps - 100-200% up from the lows of the cycle. Large caps - 75-100%. Major tops in Semiconductor seem to run in Februaries and sometimes Julys. Bottoms in August, October, and April. When to sell? Always the hardest to pick.
Legg Mason's Bill Miller Is Optimistic
Financial Sector Shows Flickering Improvement
I once read this missive by a very wise investment manager in Dallas, TX who had made double digit returns for his customers over a 35 year span (before he retired last year). His sentiments have always stuck with me: "Times of great uncertainty present the greatest opportunity to purchase stocks below their intrinsic value. This pattern has repeated itself so many times we believe it to be axiomatic." (Arnold Van Den Berg, Century Management, Dallas, TX)"
And so I own KCAP at 11.47, and AFN at 2.42 (and bought more today of both); And Citi (C) at 18 and 20, and BAC at 33 etc; and I own lots and lots of semiconductors -especially the ones whose management see no bottom to their abyss and doesn't know when it will ever get better. Every time they said that before, I made triple-digit gains the next year. Human nature is structured to be most wrong whenever it is closest in time to the news-influencing events that rule markets.
One might pose the question, "Will human nature be different this time around". I think not. It worked OK for Shakespeare and it's still working OK for me.