The Nuclear Option
by ilene - May 18th, 2010 4:40 pm
The Nuclear Option
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By Marin Katusa, Chief Investment Strategist, Casey’s Energy Opportunities
Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced large new federal loan guarantees for the nuclear energy industry – totaling about $54 billion, or more than triple the current level of funding. Philosophically, we abhor government subsidies to any industry, but we also recognize that they’re a fact of life these days, with an inordinate influence on markets. So even though we’d prefer the government didn’t pick industry winners and losers, we must be mindful of what Washington is doing if we expect to reap profits as investors.
In this instance, the ramping up of government support means boom times are coming for the nuclear energy industry, which is about to awaken from a three-decade long sleep. And if you correctly position your energy investment portfolio, you can benefit from a comeback that’s baked in the cake.
Power is all about the numbers. Consider the illustration below, which shows how current electricity generation technologies stack up when it comes to producing energy (cost is in dollars per megawatt hour). Solar and wind generators are not cheap and don’t work when it’s dark or calm. They’re competitive only with heavy government subsidies and even then, will never contribute much juice to the grid.
Source: EIA. Adapted from http://www.investingdaily.com/tes/17201/sell-wind-and-solar-energy-stocks.html
Hydro, biomass, and geothermal fare much better, easily competing with more traditional technologies, and there are good investment opportunities among them that we’re following. But again, in the larger picture they’re minor players.
In terms of bang for the buck, it still comes down to coal, gas and nuclear, and Washington realizes we’re going to need all three to meet our future energy needs, especially as electric vehicles begin to replace those that run on gasoline.
The Obama administration is all for going as “green” as possible, but realizes that wind and solar are not going to cut it. Thus, after thirty years in the doghouse, the nuclear option has regained the respectability in America that it enjoys among nations such as China, where ten new plants per year are proposed (our last new construction project broke ground in 1977).
Despite lingering doubts among those who remember Three Mile Island, uranium has been dusted off and presented to the public as a safe, environmentally friendly, cost-effective source of power. And the new generation of plants is all of those…
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Solar Power: Sunshine’s Cloudy Days
by ilene - January 15th, 2010 1:06 pm
Solar Power: Sunshine’s Cloudy Days
Mike Ahearn, chairman of the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels, had every reason to party in September. That’s when his company, First Solar, based in Tempe, Ariz., was picked by China to build what promises to be the world’s biggest solar-electricity plant: a Manhattan-size facility in Inner Mongolia providing 2 gigawatts of power, about twice the size of a large coal plant or average nuclear power station. But the Chinese facility will take years to build, and the party buzz subsided pretty quickly. The next month, Wall Street analysts downgraded First Solar’s stock after the company missed its third-quarter revenue target. "I think the Wall Street perspective is pretty short-term," says Ahearn.
That’s true, but it’s also true that, while photovoltaic cells that turn sunlight into electricity may play a potentially vital role in weaning the world from fossil fuels, a transition will take decades — and the business metrics surrounding the solar-power industry currently are anything but bright. After a period of rapid expansion, panel manufacturers today are reeling from a pronounced supply surplus, falling prices and stagnating sales. In 2009, industry revenue plunged by nearly 40% to about $25 billion from $40 billion the previous year, according to BankAmerica Merrill Lynch alternative-energy analyst Steven Milunovich. Solar-panel output far outstripped demand last year; manufacturers made 66% more product than they were able to sell, estimates research firm iSuppli located in El Segundo, Calif. Some analysts believe the dismal conditions will persist into 2011, setting up marginal players worldwide for failure. "A large number of manufacturers will not survive," says Paul Semenza, an analyst with research company DisplaySearch, based in San Jose, Calif.
The global glut has been building for a number of years as hundreds of solar cell and panel start-ups, attracted by a potential boom in alternative energy as oil prices climbed and by government solar-energy-subsidy programs, swarmed into the market. Because the industry’s barriers to entry are relatively low — crystalline solar cells are rudimentary semiconductors that are comparatively easy to make — the number of solar-panel and photovoltaic suppliers mushroomed nearly tenfold from 2002, when there were about 80 manufacturers, to somewhere between 500 and 800 today, according to iSuppli. In China and Taiwan, whole solar-energy sectors sprouted almost overnight. Stefan de Haan, an analyst for iSuppli, says industry profit margins,…
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Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Market Comments
by ilene - October 2nd, 2009 11:50 am
Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Market Comments
October 1, 2009
Featured Trades: (IDX), (INDONESIA), (FSLR), (STP), (YGE)
1) Was that nice for you, dear? Now that cash for clunkers has expired, new car sales have cratered. September is coming in at a 7 million unit run rate, lower than before the program started, and down 24% from already depressed YOY levels. It really makes you wonder what will happen when the other government stimulus programs run out. The $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers ends November 30, and unless you have a deal in contract, the program is effectively over. That is thought to be behind the recent weakness in new home sales, the biggest beneficiaries of the program. Is this the beginning of the “square root,” or the “W.”
or 
?
2) If you are looking for another emerging market to add to your list of things to buy on dips, then take a look at Indonesia. The world’s largest Muslim country offers a combination that I love, a population with great demographics that is also a major energy and commodities exporter. The archipelago is the biggest country in Southeast Asia and a huge exporter of oil and LPG to Japan on long term contracts. (An old friend of mine torched their Borneo fields at the beginning of WWII, and spent four years in a Japanese prison camp for his troubles.) Other big exports include marvelous textiles, rubber, and increasingly rare tropical hardwoods. The global financial crisis only knocked their growth rate from 6.1% to 4.5%, and now it is back above 6%. No doubt, $63 billion of direct foreign investment into the country helped. A series of tax reforms promise to keep the train moving, cutting the top corporate rate from 30% in 2008 to 28% this year, and 25% next year. Wisdom Tree had the “wisdom” to launch the country’s first ETF (IDX) in January (what timing!), which became one of the best performers this year, rocketing over 300% from the lows to $60. Islamic inspired terrorism is still a lingering concern. I keep Indonesia in the category of highly volatile, high risk, high return frontier markets that you only want to buy on a big dip. Keep it on your…
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Balance sheet wars – US solar companies vs. the Chinese government. Who’s going to win?
by ilene - August 31st, 2009 3:44 pm
Warm solar-powered welcome to Financial Hippie, the long and the short of it…
Balance sheet wars – US solar companies vs. the Chinese government. Who’s going to win?
Courtesy of Financial Hippie
We all know the foot race that is going on in the solar industry – companies are trying to achieve the lowest per megawatt cost for an installed system. Until the next leapfrogging technology comes along, the most important factor to drive down cost is scale*. Here is where the US solar companies will have serious problems competing against the Chinese solar companies because the US solar companies lack cheap, indiscriminate access to capital like their Chinese cohorts.
Let’s take First Solar (FSLR) for example. FSLR is funded by private money. Even though the US government is offering tax incentives for installing solar projects, they are not however involved in the funding of the company in any way. Why would they? FSLR has one plant in the US, the rest of the plants are mostly in "low cost locations" – ie. Malaysia. Have you ever heard of the "United Solar Workers"? I would guess a few hundred out of the 3,500 FSLR employees are Americans. My point is… if they closed shop tomorrow, there will be plenty of companies to fill the supply void. I wonder if the Malaysian government has the capacity or the desire to step up and lend.
The Chinese solar manufacturers are a different story. Remember, the number one goal of the Chinese government is to maintain social stability. Suntech Power (STP) employs close to 10k employees by itself, and these are "high quality" jobs that are looked upon favorably by the Chinese Government. If I include all of STP’s peers in China, their upstream suppliers such as LDK Solar (LDK) and the downstream system installers, I would guess the Chinese solar industry employs probably a few hundred thousand people throughout the value chain.
Now let’s look at the banking relationships. Many of these loans are unsecured and covenant lite and represent roughly on average 25% of total capital. Top 3 Chinese solar related company by market capitalization and their respective government backers are:
- Suntech Power (STP) : China Construction Bank, Bank of Communication.
- Yingli Green Energy (YGE) : Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank
- LDK Solar (LDK) : China Construction Bank, China Development Bank, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.