Energy

Applied Materials Still Expanding Solar (AMAT, FSLR)

Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) appears to not be slowing down on its solar ambitions, or at least not as much as we might have all guessed about six months ago when new expansions were being canned and when oil…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published October 26, 2009, 11:10am ET · 2 min read

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Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) appears to not be slowing down on its solar ambitions, or at least not as much as we might have all guessed about six months ago when new expansions were being canned and when oil was at far lower prices.  This morning came an Applied Materials announcement that the company had opened the world’s largest non-governmental advanced solar research and demonstration facility in Xi’an, China.  We have not compared this to other large solar players, but the size of the labs and office buildings was listed as covering more than 400,000 square feet.  The site also contains an entire Applied SunFab™ thin film manufacturing line and a complete crystalline silicon pilot process, which are configured to closely simulate customer fabrication environments.

Today’s news is not a financial or guidance impact-event based upon its intent.  But it is the continued commitment to the solar industry at a time when many of the more junior players are still reeling from the financial crisis, lower orders, lower margins, and lower cost-benefit comparisons to more traditional energy sources.

The real direction for how solar shares trade will come later in the week when First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) reports its earnings and a brief top 10 earnings preview.  We have seen a very mixed bag in the group, and with First Solar being the biggest of the US-based pure-play solar stocks it will set a benchmark for drawing a line between the men and the boys in the sector.

JON C. OGG
OCTOBER 26, 2009

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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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