24/7 Wall St. » RSOL

A Green Business Investing Conference (ASTI, DSTI, HEV, LDK, RSOL, STP, VLNC, VRNM)

247wallst — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:39:05 +0000

A conference on clean and green technology sponsored by ThinkEquity LLC opened yesterday in San Francisco. It is billed as a gathering for industry executives, investors, influencers and policy makers within the cleantech and alternative energy industry. Some of the public companies presenting at the conference include Ascent Solar Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTI), DayStar Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: DSTI), Ener1, Inc. (NASDAQ: HEV), LDK Solar Co. Ltd. (NYSE: LDK), Real Goods Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: RSOL), Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE: STP), Valence Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: VLNC), and Verenium Corp. (NASDAQ: VRNM). That’s quite a list, especially if you consider how far these companies are down from their 52-week highs (as of yesterday’s close):

Ascent – Down 80%
DayStar – Down 77% (new low this morning)
Ener1 – Down 47%
LDK – Down 89%
Real Goods – Down 79%
Suntech – Down 84%
Valence – Down 61%
Verenium – Down 92%

The best performing company, Ener1, is down ‘only’ by just under half. Just the sort of group one might turn to for advice on how to make money in the cleantech industry. If any of these companies can get that Obama spending money for green business efforts, they better be on that track now.

You can go to the full list of presentations at the ThinkEquity conference if you choose.

Paul Ausick
March 25, 2009

Posted in Alternative Energy, Green Biz Tagged: ASTI, DSTI, HEV, LDK, RSOL, STP, VLNC, VRNM

Real Goods Solar In The Shade (RSOL, GAIA)

247wallst — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:47:21 +0000

Real Goods Solar (NASDAQ:RSOL) came public in May at $10.00 per share (at the bottom of the $10 to $12 range) yet its trading high is only $9.25 this year. It has been dropping ever since. It closed yesterday at $4.37, only a dollar above its all-time low. But lack of support for its share price hasn’t stopped Real Goods from acquiring more assets.

Yesterday, Real Goods announced its fourth acquisition in less than 12months. It merged with a small private company named Regrid Power for less than $15 million, spending about one-third the purchaseprice in cash and the rest in stock. There’s also an earn-outprovision, but no details were given.

In the announcement, Real Goods noted that Regrid’s founder and CEO,Tom McCalmont, will become the Real Goods CEO within the next twomonths. The founder and current CEO of Real Goods, John Shaeffer, willbecome President. Now it’s not unheard of for one company to buyanother in order to capture management or technical talent. But in thiscase, swapping the CEO of one small company for another doesn’t seemlike a particularly innovative move. If Real Goods wants to grow, itshould probably have gone after a bigger fish. There will be plentyavailable real soon now.

Gaiam Inc. (NASDAQ: GAIA) is the parent which spun Real Goods Solar outas a new company. Its shares are also a back off of the 52-week lowsand shares are down considerably more than their high.

Gaiam is a lifestyle company promoting its media and apparel for yogaand other healthy lifestyle choices. Its customers are more likely tobe interested in solar power than many other customers, but this was astrange combination from the start.

Paul Ausick
October 16, 2008

Posted in Alternative Energy, Apparel, Entertainment Tagged: GAIA, RSOL

Growing List of Damaged Post-IPO’s (SB, NM, RSOL, RAX, IPI, WES, PSE)

247wallst — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:17:44 +0000

We would be reporting the economic numbers from the government’s Department of Redundancy Department if we said it is an ugly bear market and if we told you that the IPO market was all but dead. But what is amazing here is the absolute poor performance we have seen out of the 2008 post-IPO companies. Many of these companies are still doing well, and some are not. But in our screen of the big IPO’s there is an astonishing number of post-IPO’s that are trading much worse than just busted IPO’s by being under the IPO price.

Our list of 2008 IPO’s here was 30% and a somewhat active stock volume. Below is the list of post-IPO’s we track with shares down more than 30% from the IPO price:

Stock (Ticker)                                  Loss Close IPO$
Safe Bulkers Inc. (SB)                   -62% $7.27 $19.00
Navios Maritime Acquis.(NM)       -61% $3.89 $10.00
Real Goods Solar (RSOL)          -57% $4.25 $10.00
RackSpace Hosting Inc. (RAX)    -48% $6.95 $12.50
Intrepid Potash (IPI)                      -36% $20.58 $32.00
Western Gas Partners (WES)       -32% $11.27 $16.50
Pioneer Southwest Energy (PSE) -31% $13.11 $19.00

Jon C. Ogg
October 7, 2008

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: IPI, NM, PSE, RAX, RSOL, SB, WES

Top 10 Pre-Market Analyst Calls (ALU, ATHR, HUN, LVLT, MAA, RSOL, TER, TEVA, TWTI, WFMI)

247wallst — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:04:39 +0000

These are ten of the analyst calls we have seen in the early hours of trading this Monday morning:

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) Raised to Neutral from Underperform at Merrill Lynch.
Atheros Communications (NASDAQ: ATHR) Raised to Buy from Neutral at Piper Jaffray.
Huntsman (NYSE: HUN) raised to Hold from Underperform at Jefferies & Co
Level 3 Communications (NASSDAQ: LVLT) Cut to Sell from Hold at Citigroup.
Mid-America Apartment (NYSE: MAA) raised to Outperform at Robert W. Baird.
Real Goods Solar (NASDAQ: RSOL) started as Perform at Oppenheimer.
Teradyne (NYSE: TER) Raised to Buy from Neutral at Piper Jaffray.
Teva Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: TEVA) raised to Overweight at HSBC.
Third Wave (NASDAQ: TWTI) Cut to Neutral at Piper Jaffray.
Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) Cut to Neutral from Buy at UBS.

Jon C. Ogg
June 30, 2008

Solar IPO FILING: Real Goods Solar (RSOL, SPWR)

247wallst — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:03:41 +0000

Real Goods Solar, Inc. has filed to come public via an initial public offering. For filing purposes the company has a proposed maximum offering set at $57.5 million. It will have the proposed NASDAQ ticker of "RSOL."

The lead underwriter is ThinkEquity and additional managers in the deal at Canaccord Adams and Broadpoint.

Real Goods Solar is a residential solar energy integrator. It is ranked number one in California, which is nearly two-thirds of the total U.S. market for grid-connected solar energy systems. Services offered are design, procurement, installation, grid connection, monitoring, maintenance and referrals for third-party financing of solar energy systems. Its first sale was in 1978 of the first solar photovoltaic panels in the United States, and it has sold more than 2,400 residential and small commercial solar energy systems and some 30,000 various customer products.

For fiscal 2007 the company generated net revenues of $32.7 million, with a 30.0% gross margin and $1 million of income from operations. It sells PV modules from Sharp, SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR) and Kyocera Solar.

SunPower’s guidance nailed solar stocks initially
Lazard Capital defended SunPower after that…

Jon C. Ogg
February 7, 2008