September 3, 2010 - Darwinian Downsizing in the Solar Industry

Featured Trades: (CHINESE SOLAR INDUSTRY), (STP), (YGE), (FSLR)

3) Darwinian Downsizing in the Solar Industry. The solar industry is suffering some 19th century Darwinian style competition, with Chinese manufacturers Suntech (STP) and Yingli Green Energy Holding (YGE) clearly dumping panels in the US and Europe below cost to gain market share.

You may laugh, but I watched the Japanese pursue the same strategy in the seventies and eighties with a vast array of products, from cars to memory chips, to devastating success. They now control half the US automobile market, and the most profitable half at that.

As a solar consumer I shouldn't care, as the 50% price drop has, with Obama's generous tax subsidies, made new installations cheaper than obtaining electricity from my local power company (PGE) at 12 cents a kilowatt. It's just a matter of booking the profit in China instead of Phoenix.

But the predatory pricing has also kicked my beloved First Solar (FSLR) in the shins. Use the weakness to pick up (FSLR) on the cheap. The company is using advanced cadmium telluride based thin film semiconductor technology, which has enabled it to match the Chinese price cuts dollar for dollar, and the engineering will allow them to continue to do so. The Chinese, wedded to an older polysilicon product, can't keep playing this game, unless they want to hemorrhage cash, or face US anti-dumping enforcement. To see more on the current fundamentals of solar, please click here.

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