Yesterday,
ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) rolled out a trio of
tidings.
In one announcement, the company updated its third quarter
and full year outlook. Taking a good news/bad news approach,
ReneSola's CEO cited evidence of a "steady rebound in the
global solar marketplace."
Of course, the rebound in solar demand is driven in part
by aggressive price competition, which is improving the cost
equation for end users like
PG&E (NYSE: PCG) and
Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). While input costs are
dropping fast enough to support
decent gross marginsat shops like
Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE) and
Trina Solar (NYSE: TSL), the swift decline in
average sales prices is still weighing on the near-term
revenue outlook for players across the sector. Hence
ReneSola's statement that "the improvement in the price of
solar products may take longer than anticipated."
It's up to us to puzzle out how long "longer" is, but
ReneSola has at least prepared us for a considerably weak
fourth quarter. The firm's third quarter revenue outlook now
stands at $130 million to $140 million. The company had
previously estimated a 60% to 70% improvement over its
soft second quarterrevenue, so this doesn't represent
much of a tweak. Full-year revenue guidance, on the other
hand, was dropped from a range of $500 to $550 million, to
$470 million to $500 million.
In other news, ReneSola is scooping up a company called
Dynamic Green Energy for shares and a $10 million convertible
note. Dynamic's subsidiary, Jiawei, is a familiar name. The
company's performed contract work for
SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWRA), and has also
teamed upwith
Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq: ESLR) to manufacture
that firm's string ribbon panels in China.
Jiawei manufactures ingots, cells, and modules, so this
acquisition helps advance ReneSola's
radical reshapinginto a vertically integrated solar
player. By year's end (and assuming the deal closes),
ReneSola now expects to have wafer, cell, and module
manufacturing capacities of 900 megawatts, 125 megawatts, and
475 megawatts, respectively.
In its third press release of the day, ReneSola announced
a follow-on offering of 14.4 million American Depositary
Shares (ADS). That is a big offering. The firm's U.S. market
IPO in January of 2008 only weighed in at 10 million ADS!
These ADS come in addition to the 26.8 million ordinary
shares ReneSola is issuing to acquire Dynamic Green. Assuming
the underwriters exercise their overallotment option,
ReneSola will have the equivalent of roughly 100 million ADS
outstanding, so be sure to update your valuation
accordingly.
This article was originally published as
Several Surprises From ReneSolaon
Fool.com
Copyright © 2009 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights
reserved.
|