SunPower

SunPower (SPWR) is a company that I first came aware of through ValueLine. I purchased stock in the company in October but recently sold my position and currently do not own any solar stocks.

SunPower is headquartered in California and has a manufacturing facility in the Philippines. The company is also considered to have the most efficient cell with conversion rates over 20%. With its purchase of Powerlight Corporation in late 2006, it is positioning itself to not only be a cell or module manufacturer, but to supply turnkey solar power systems to both commercial and residential customers. In addition, with the creation of a holding company jointly owned with Morgan Stanley, customers can have a system made and installed but only pay for the electricity generated by the system. The holding company would actually own the solar system. Morgan Stanley put in $190MM and SunPower put in $10MM.

In the last quarter, SunPower received 56% of revenue from the US and only 10% from Germany. That is important to note because Germany is the biggest market for solar systems and the other two top companies, First Solar and SunTech receive over 80% of their revenue from the German market. Only a year ago, SunPower also received a large portion (51%) of its revenue from the German market. Something I need to research further.

Since SunPower uses silicone to make its cells as does SunTech, it is important to note that the company has long term supply agreements with various suppliers.

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Solar Companies

Here is a list of solar companies. By no means is it comprehensive but it includes the companies that I will consider looking into. You will also find, in the table, information I thought is key in comparing these companies. Stock price and market cap came from Yahoo finance and quarterly revenue values came from the companies' press releases.



By market capitalization, you can see there are two tiers of companies, the three above $10 billion and those below $5 billion. I will start my research on the three companies with market caps above $10B, First Solar, Suntech Power and SunPower.