Silicon Ink Kingpin Innovalight Signs Up Another PV Customer: This Time, It's Motech : Greentech Media

Silicon Ink Kingpin Innovalight Signs Up Another PV Customer: This Time, It's Motech : Greentech Media

Innovalight is on a roll.
The VC-funded firm has developed a solar ink that boosts the performance of crystalline silicon solar cells. They've signed a series of deals to sell their efficiency-boosting material to a growing list of China-based crystalline silicon cell and module firms.
This morning, the firm announced yet another customer -- Taiwan's Motech. Motech builds single and multi-crystalline silicon solar cells in Taiwan and reached one gigawatt in production capacity in the third quarter of 2010, making them the largest solar cell manufacturer in Taiwan and one of the top ten manufacturers worldwide in terms of production capacity and output.
This is the fifth announced deal for Innovalight; the firm already has agreements with Asian solar powers Yingli Green Energy, Solarfun, Jinko Solar and JA Solar. This is a meaningful accomplishment for a 65-person Silicon Valley startup. Innovalight's nano-particle materials are produced in the U.S.
In Michael Kanellos' view, Chinese solar developers understand low-cost manufacturing and have the capital to build factories. Innovalight has innovative science on their side -- and these Asian solar giants recognize that value.

Innovalight manufactures a nanotechnology-based silicon ink and licenses a platform process that allows c-Si firms to upgrade solar cell manufacturing production lines, boost performance, and lower production costs.
The platform license business model is novel and seems to be working. Innovalight provides their silicon ink at a nominal cost -- that's not the primary source of their revenue. The licensing model is structured so that Innovalight's customers pay a fee for every wafer produced that uses the Innovalight special sauce. And with a world market of approximately five billion silicon wafers -- there's a large and growing total available market.
The value of the Innovalight product is that it fits gracefully into a customer's production process. One process step is added at the front end, after the wafer texturing step, and the Innovalight ink step is integrated into the customer's production line.
Innovalight owns a small ten-megawatt cell production line, which looks a lot like the production lines used by the Asian solar vendors. This allows Innovalight and its partners to develop their product and processes in a real world test bed and garners the credibility necessary for a VC-funded David to work with the gigawatt-scale Asian solar Goliaths.

The Solar Module Market: Concerns Ahead « TechPulse 360

The Solar Module Market: Concerns Ahead « TechPulse 360

Sales in other European countries, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic, are moving ahead in advance of tariff cuts of their own. This is leading prices to be stable and wafer prices to even climb a bit. According to Y. Edwin Mok, an analyst at Needham & Co., crystalline cell pricing has risen to $1.35 a watt, compared with $1.25 a watt or so in the first quarter.
This could help vendors such as SunPower, JA Solar and Suntech Power Holdings.
The danger is that this year’s strength will turn into next year’s softness. The fear is especially high in Italy and Spain, which are facing large tariff cuts, says Mok. German installations could decline as well, he adds.
Mok is not alone in his assessment. John Hardy at Gleacher & Company said he expects the world’s largest module maker, First Solar, to post better-than-expected second-quarter sales later this month and speak favorably about the rest of the year.
“The big industry test is coming” in the first quarter of 2011, he says. That’s when sales could slump and another rapid decline in prices could spark worries of another 2009.

JA Solar (JASO) and LDK

View From the Turret: Crossroads Trading -- Seeking Alpha

Solar Strength
A number of key solar names were sharply higher last week as traders reacted to a few compelling themes:

1. LDK’s $8.9 billion dollar funding from China Development Bank has the industry hopeful that additional funding and liquidity will be available in the quarters to come.
2. A sustained rally in the euro makes exports from Chinese manufacturing companies to European buyers more attractive.

Many of the stocks are extended significantly beyond an appropriate buy point, but a pullback in the next few days could offer an attractive entry point.
JA Solar Holdings (JASO) is one of the many solar companies that is seeing a rebound in both revenue and earnings, and analysts have been increasing their expectations for the next two years.
With a stable balance sheet and a PE multiple that is still in the single digits, JASO could continue to rally for some time to come. I’m not interested in chasing the stock at these levels, but a pullback to near $7.50 or $8.00 along with a period of consolidation would have me much more interested in picking up a small position and then adding more exposure as the trend reasserts itself.