Solar Stocks Weekly Report - Week ending January 12, 2007
Solar stocks do surprisingly well after another week of significant Crude Oil price drop.
As you can see the in the graph below solar stocks did well across the board even with Crude Oil dropping another 5.38%. This compared to last week when we saw the solar stocks decline across the board with Crude Oil dropping 7.76%.
Sunpower Corp. (NYSE: SPWR) was the big mover as the stock closed the week up 16.93%. The stock was upgraded by Wedbush Morgan to a ‘Buy’ from a ‘Hold’. The price target was raised to $52 from $38 due to the closure of the Powerlight acquisition from last year.
MEMC Electronics (NYSE: WFR) also had a fantastic week with the stock closing up 12.48%. MEMC Electronics seems to trade in the range of high 30’s to high 40’s so we will have to see if the stock has enough strength to break $50 or if it comes back down.
Suntech Power Ltd. (NYSE: STP) couldn’t duplicate the move of Sunpower Corp. but did well in its own right. I recently wrote about how it could benefit from the growing pollution problem in China and in particular Beijing before the 2008 Olympics.
So far the newly IPO’d Chinese Solar stocks (CSIQ, SOLF, TSL) aren’t performing too well. I wrote about avoiding these in an earlier article here.
Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq: ESLR) finally showed some signs of life by closing the week up 3.68%. The stock had closed in red for six consecutive weeks before this one.
Another thing that I noticed was how PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy (AMEX: PBW) has hung in there even with the big decline the crude oil.
- SunPower Corp. (Nasdaq: SPWR): 16.93%
- Hoku Scientific (Nasdaq: HOKU): 16.28%
- MEMC Electronics (NYSE: WFR): 12.48%
- Daystar Tech. (Nasdaq: DSTI): 10.53%
- SunTech Power (NYSE: STP): 6.75%
- First Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR): 4.90%
- Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq: ESLR): 3.68%
- Nasdaq: 2.82%
- Energy Conv. (Nasdaq: ENER): 1.95%
- Trina Solar (NYSE: TSL): 1.78%
- PS WILDERHILL ENR (AMEX: PBW): 1.77%
- S&P 500: 1.49%
- Dow: 1.27%
- Spire Corp. (Nasdaq: SPIR): 0.48%
- Canadian Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: CSIQ): -2.56%
- Solarfun Power (Nasdaq: SOLF): -4.76%
- Crude Oil: -5.38%
* I am long STP, ESLR and short FSLR
- Solar Stock Week-over-Week Price change vis-a-vis Oil Price - Week Ending November 12, 2006
- Solar Stocks Weekly Report - Week ending January 19, 2007
- Solar Stocks Week-over-Week Price change - Week ending January 05, 2007
- Solar Stocks Week-over-Week Price change - Week ending December 24, 2006
- Solar Energy Stocks Weekly Report - Week ending February 02, 2007
January 16th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Himanshu,
I just found your Financial Nirvana site, and was very pleased to see it.
I first heard about Peak Oil a couple years ago at a solar power workshop, and began to believe we would be seeing big changes in the world of energy very soon.
With this in mind, I invested in Evergreen Solar, and Suntech Power, back in March of ‘06. As you probably know, both stocks slumped after that, and only Suntech has come back and surpassed it’s price at the time of my investment. Right now, my losses on Evergreen still greatly outweigh my gains on Suntech. But things appear to be picking up (again) for solar.
One question for you and other visitors: besides solar stocks, what are you investing in, and why? Also, to what degree is the price of oil the driving force behind solar stock prices?
And finally, I’ve considered selling all of my Evergreen stock (at a loss of about 45%!), and re-investing that money in SunTech, and/or SunPower. Any thoughts on that move?
Great site!
January 16th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Suntech has been on a really good momentum and I think it should go to 40’s. Evergreen Solar has really not been doing much lately but I think low 7’s was the bottom. I forsee it going up from here but maybe not a lot. I bought ESLR a couple of week’s ago in the 7.40s.
I can understand your frustration with ESLR but I think it might be ready for a bounce. I am not a technical trader but the stock has been shorted a lot (25% of float) so there is some upside with buyback or a shortsqueeze.
The oil is amost at $50 and everything considered Solar stocks have help up pretty well. With the state of the Union address coming up I forsee President Bush bringing up Alternative Energy again which might benefit solar stocks in the short term.
Bottomline is that we might have seen the bottom of ESLR and STP has had a great run the last few weeks and STP might be high risk less reward at this point. Who knows? I would wait to see if ESLR can somehow make it to the 9s and then sell it. I am planning to sell my holdings in 9’s as well.
** I am not a financial advisor or a financial analyst so don’t take this as a recommendation or an advice.