First Solar radiates confidence as stock price rises 20%

Angelo Zino, research analyst at S&P Capital IQ in New York City, is more sanguine. He told pv magazine: “I’d definitely say that First Solar is the highlight for the month. The biggest positive takeaways from the March 19 analyst day were that their system cost-per-Watt would be under US$1.00 by 2017; and that their system efficiency would be up to 19.6% by 2017. These are very aggressive targets, but in the past they’ve set high objectives and have been able to meet them. And with Tetrasun in their back pocket, they now have a big opportunity for rooftops in Japan—which is a shrewd move if things go south for thin film.”

Customer clout

Meanwhile in California, San Mateo-based SolarCity, a leader in both system financing and installation, announced in March that it had signed its 100,000th customer and said it expected to surpass 100 MW in residential bookings during the current quarter—putting the company on a clear path to achieve its target range of 475 MW to 525 MW deployed in 2014.

However, the stock was down about 30% for the month—closing at US$61.38 on March 28, as opposed to US$84.96 on February 28—in a “correction” that Pavel Molchanov of Raymond James said could prove to be “enticing” to investors. The analyst upgraded SolarCity shares to “outperform” from “market perform” at month end, citing both the lower share price and new solar asset securitization efforts (which are expected to materialize in April).

During March, SolarCity also announced a major new outlet for its services: Following a successful trial run at two Best Buy electronics stores in California and New York last year, SolarCity will roll out its installation and leasing services at 60 stores nationwide in the U.S. The installer already has a similar arrangement with Home Depot, as well as a string of marketing partnerships with the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Samsung.

What's more, late in the month, the company officially announced a financing deal with Bank of America that is expected to fund more than 200 MW of solar projects. According to the press statement, “This financing is the largest aggregation facility for distributed generation solar projects to date, and the third such facility entered into by SolarCity. SolarCity has raised funds sufficient to finance more than $4 billion in solar projects.”

And in a callout to supporters of distributed generation, SolarCity ended the month in a headline-grabbing standoff with California’s

public utilities. The company flaunted its industry clout when it halted the process of installing and connecting solar systems that include batteries allowing power storage, drawing attention to the fact that West Coast power companies have been reluctant to link the systems to the grid.

According to SolarCity, it has been more than a year since the utilities started refusing to provide grid connections for systems with power backup—and SolarCity already has about 500 interested customers on its waiting list.

“We’ve stopped submitting applications because we’ve lost faith that these things are actually going to be carried out in any reasonable time,” Will Craven, a company spokesperson, told Bloomberg.

If the rooftop giant succeeds in driving distributed generation on a faster schedule, SolarCity will truly have taken “the high ground” in American solar.

A strong number two

Our final up-and-comer for the month is SunPower. Second only to First Solar in the upstream U.S. industry, SunPower has also succeeded — with the help of the French multinational oil and gas company, Total SA , which owns 60% of the company—in penetrating emerging markets worldwide with its downstream EPC services.

SunPower created a buzz on the U.S. equity markets this month when it made a major move in China’s utility scale sector. On March 25, the company announced that it had begun operations in China for the first time via a joint venture that will use more than 70 MW of the company’s “concentrated solar PV packages” and its C7 Tracker technology. SunPower is teaming with Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor, as well as with regional independent power grid company Inner Mongolia Power and state-owned Hohhot Jinqiao City Development Company in China’s Inner Mongolia region on two projects scheduled for completion in 2015. The deal, which was originally cut in December 2012, got final approval last November.

"Today's announcement is a first step in our aggressive efforts to break into the Chinese market," Tom Werner, SunPower president and CEO, commented at a press event. "Working together with our strong local partners, we believe that we can deploy significant volumes of our SunPower C7 Tracker power plants to help serve China's growing need for clean power."

SunPower stock was slightly deflated on March 28—down 3.43% at US$31.85. But on March 31, the share price had taken a turn for the better, rising 1% in afternoon trading—and remaining on the Citi Focus List for the United States at a “buy” rating.