Recent Pullback Offers Attractive Opportunities in the Cleantech Sector

Guildford Securities Incorporated research report.

In our opinion, the recent sell-off in the market and in renewable energy stocks offers very attractive opportunities for investors. During this earnings cycle, solar focused companies have released robust earnings and given positive guidance for the rest of 2010. This is despite the lack of urgency exhibited by governments for new subsidy regime and revision of subsidy regimes in Germany in Spain. We continue to view, the renewable energy area to be positive in terms of investments, investors attention and overall government support.

Among our coverage universe, we continue to view GT Solar (SOLR – Buy) and Trina Solar (TSL – Buy) positively in terms of fundamentals and valuation. TSL, especially, offers a very attractive proposition at current valuation. The company is expected to release its 1Q2010 earnings on May 25, 2010. We expect the company to post strong sales and profit margins. Furthermore, we expect the gross margin guidance to be close to high 20 percent reflecting continued cost reduction in processing and material costs (polysilicon). While we don’t expect to see strong solar panel pricing, we expect demand to be back on track.

In terms of GT Solar, the company is expected to release its FY4Q2010 earnings on May, 19, 2010. We anticipate strong sales and orders in DSS equipment for solar panel manufacturing and continued momentum in CVD equipment for polysilicon production. We continue to view these two end markets (solar panel manufacturing and polysilicon production) positively. We are of the opinion that Chinese vendors will achieve meaningful market share in the solar polysilicon market within the span of a few years generating strong demand for GT Solar’s CVD equipment. SOLR’s sales split between DSS and CVD is 40%:60%.

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Source: Guildford Securities Incorporated, Author: Nimal Vallipuram