Friday, March 19, 2010

Analyst Roundup: SunPower (SPWRA; SPWRB)

As usual Eric Savitz does it better, backwards and in heels.
From Tech Trader Daily:

The Street is not happy about the guidance, and analysts are chopping their numbers. Here’s a rundown on some of their revised thinking on the stock:

  • Timothy Arcuri, Citigroup: He repeated his Sell rating, cutting his price target to $15, from $18. With the company’s recent acquisition of SunRay, he notes, SPWRA is increasing reliant on its systems business for profits; he calculates that its core module business trades at a 60%-70% premium to Chinese vendors. “While SPWRA continues to get an efficiency and ‘based in U.S.’ premium, this seems unjustified given that gross margins for the Chinese players are as good or better than SPWRA -a nd likely to remain so for the foreseeable future,” he writes.
  • Gordon Johnson, Hapolaim Securities: He repeats his Sell rating and $15 target. “Given the potentially severe module pricing pressure to follow Germany’s 15% mid-year feed-in-tariff cuts - and the potential for other countries to follow suit in reducing subsidies - France, Italy and the Czech Republic - in conjunction with industry wide capacity ramps, it is likely SPWRA’s price premium will weaken in 2010…we anticipate Street numbers will have to come down through the year.”
  • Gary Hsueh, Oppenheimer: He repeats his Perform rating. “While most peers expect sequential growth in Q1/Q2, SPWRA is experiencing the opposite due to a push out of systems revenue from the first half to the second half,” he writes. “We remain on the sidelines on SPWRA given disappointing guidance, a high cost structure and lumpy systems business.”>>>MORE