SunPower Puckers On Analyst Licking (SPWRA)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ: SPWRA) has already taken a licking and its lowered guidance is not helping.  Ditto for an analyst downgrade.  JP Morgan dropped the stock from “Overweight” to its least desirable “Underweight” rating.  Jefferies has managed to maintain a “Buy” rating but did cut estimates and the price target.

JPMorgan cut its price target from from $28.50 to $15.00.  Jefferies cut its target to $40.00 from $50.00.  In January, SunPower guided 2009 EPS to $2.20-$2.80. The JPMorgan analyst now sees the company’s EPS at $0.56. Now that’s a significant difference.

Citigroup recently cut its target to $15.00 from $23.00.

The inability of individual and corporate consumers to get financing to help with the purchase of solar panels is a major constraint on the solar industry. SunPower is not immune to that illness. The company is facing a downturn in its European business as well.  And now solar has to compete with much more reasonable traditional power prices.

The company’s shares are taking a beating again today with a drop of more than 5% to $22.75.  While this is not a 52-week low as its bottom was $18.50, SunPower is down from a 52-week high of $107.00.

Paul Ausick
March 12, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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