Sunny Day for Solar Stocks and the Shorts Come Off
Posted: 11 Jan 2012 07:27 PM PST
L. Myron Clark
Solar energy stocks took a huge jump today in U.S. trading. While the sheen faded slightly as afternoon skies turned overcast in the eastern U.S., as of the NYSE closing bell about half the sector was up 20% or better. Absent major industry news or earnings blowouts, short covering is the most plausible explanation for the sudden sharp rise. Among the biggest winners were:
§ Hanwha SolarOne Co. Ltd. ADS (HSOL) +36.80%
§ JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. ADS (JASO) +34.72%
§ JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. ADS (JKS) +31.86%
§ ReneSola Ltd. ADS (SOL) +30.23%
§ Trina Solar Ltd. ADS (TSL) +29.18%
§ Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. ADS (STP) +25.78%
Recently lagging stocks moved to the head of the pack, evidence that short covering helped power the move up. The graph below shows 3-month stock charts (since shortly after the broad market low in early October) for six stocks that made new 52-week lows in December 2011: FSLR, SPWR, WFR, SOL, HSOL, and JASO. Three of these – Hanwha SolarOne, JA Solar, and ReneSola were among the big winners in today’s trading. JinkoSolar nearly fits the pattern, as the stock’s December minimum was barely above its 52-week low in September. Though the big jumps today were not enough to catch up to the sector’s better performers over the same interval, this lends credence to the old saw that every dog has its day in the sun.
“FSLR SPWR WFR SOL HSOL JASO 3m
Few other catalysts are available to explain the dramatic move. Last week LDK offered to purchase Sunways, another welcome milestone on the industry’s long and tortuous road to consolidation. The announcement seemed to give solar stocks a boost early in the new year’s trading. But this deal by itself it not likely to take much production capacity out of an oversupplied market. In a contrary vein on the M&A theme, the CFO of Jinko Solar was recently quoted as saying that Chinese solar firms would rather shutter production or operations than be acquired by a competitor.
Many solar stocks were trading well below book value and arguably primed for a jump on that basis alone. Among today’s big winners, several had recently traded at one-third of book value or lower. The denominators are dubious because not all companies’ physical plant and equipment will maintain its value through the end of the supply glut. But the new year helps resolve some lack of clarity as the lower price for solar panels sustains growth in installations, even with fewer subsidies available. So some reversion toward nominal book value is reasonable.
The solar sector has been extremely volatile lately, and today’s jump somewhat resembles the spike in stock prices in late October, which accompanied (and extended by one day) a big run-up in the broader market. Most of those gains faded before the recent recovery. A partial replay of that pattern seems likely: prices for most stocks in the sector will pull back from current or slightly higher levels, and a few hardy short sellers will rush back in. In the medium and longer term the heavens should smile upon solar stocks, but the industry remains sickly for now.
DISCLOSURE: I am long TSL, LDK, YGE, ITRI, AMSC
L. Myron Clark is an independent industry analyst based in the Boston area. He previously covered the technology services industry as an analyst with Gartner Inc. He has an undergraduate degree from Cornell and also pursued postgraduate studies there. Mr. Clark has traveled extensively and has a broad range of interests in energy and environmental topics.
Tier One Chinese Solar To Continue To Outperform
Posted: 11 Jan 2012 04:53 PM PST
by Clean Energy Intel
TAN v STP, YGE and TSL
Source: Barchart
The chart above tells a particularly interesting story. Back in November of 2011, having been bearish on solar for some months, we argued that the market was finally beginning to see a process of rebalancing in the solar sector. A key component of this of course related to a number of announcements from Chinese solar players that they would bring a halt to new plans to expand capacity – at least until the end of 2012.
This factor, alongside the prospects for demand growth outside of Europe, led us to see the potential for a healthier market for solar as 2012 progresses. Nevertheless, it remains obvious that a powerful process of creative destruction remains in place, with low cost module suppliers likely to push out the weaker players.
As a result, our main call was for an outperformance and recovery of a basket of low cost tier one Chinese solar stocks – Suntech Power (STP), Yingli Green Energy (YGE) and Trina Solar (TSL). The chart above shows the performance of these stocks versus the solar ETF TAN – from the closing prices on Friday November 25th, ahead of the publication of our recommendation to go long on the following Monday.
Clearly the trade has worked well with all three stocks having performed strongly. STP, YGE and TSL are up 36%, 24% and 29% respectively. Moreover, what is most interesting is not just the recovery in the solar sector as a whole but the significant outperformance of these tier one Chinese solar players – must as anticipated. Whilst the the tier one Chinese solar players have seen a very strong performance, the overall solar ETF TAN is only up 5% – a reasonable recovery from the bottom but nothing to match the performance of China’s low cost suppliers.
Of course, it is too early to suggest that this is a new trend. However, in many ways it does make sense and perhaps the market is beginning to pick winners and losers in solar’s war of attrition as both costs and average selling prices continue to fall.
TAN v STP, YGE and TSL – 1 Year View
Source: Barchart
The second chart above also underlines the fact that this appears to be a new development. During the difficult period for solar over the past year, tier one Chinese solar stocks have, in broad terms, tended to follow the overall market – with TAN down -64%, Yingli doing slightly better at down -56%, and STP and TSL both under performing at down -66% and down -69% respectively. Against this past performance, the recent outperformance of tier one Chinese solar players looks like it may be a new development well worth following.
In terms of where we go from here, it’s seems worth repeating our previous analysis pointing to a healthy rebalancing in the sector as a whole:
§ On the demand side, the rest of the world has been making up for slack demand out of Europe. In particular, the latest data points to blistering demand in the US – more detail here
§ Likewise, China and Asia are showing extremely strong demand growth – see our article on the issue here
§ And most importantly, on the supply side, the major Chinese players have drawn a halt to their excessively aggressive capacity expansion plans – more detail here.
Finally, survey-based data from SolarBuzz also points to an ongoing consolidation in the industry. You can read a fuller discussion of this data here. In summary, the SolarBuzz survey conducted in Q2 of the current year, pointed to manufacturers’ shipping plans of just over 8 GW of modules in Q3 of this year and almost 9 GW in Q4. The somewhat obvious result was oversupply, a continued inventory build and falling module prices.
However, in the latest SolarBuzz survey, conducted at the end of Q3, those numbers have fallen to just over 6 GW for Q3 and a tad over 5 GW for the final quarter of the year. This level of adjustment is precisely what is required to finally bring the industry back towards balance during the course of 2012.
All of the data above of course simply highlights this new realism on the production and capacity side of the equation. Taken together, these factors should allow the supply-demand imbalance currently facing the industry to be eroded as 2012 progresses.
Moreover, as consolidation in the industry progresses, the low cost tier one Chinese players should continue to outperform. We continue to recommend being long a basket of SunPower, Yingl and Trina Solar. Separately, we also recommended being long First Solar and would continue with that trade.
Disclosure: I have no positions in the stocks discussed.
About the Author: Clean Energy Intel is a free investment advisory service (available at www.cleanenergyintel.com), produced by a retired hedge fund strategist who also manages his own money inside a clean energy investment fund.