Perspectives on the Recent U.S. Investigation of China's Solar Industry
Investing Hobo submits: The solar sector is a rather new, dynamic, and controversial industry. It attracts all varieties of people from casual investors to die hard technology gurus, and because of the endless news flow revolving around the sector it also attracts a lot of media coverage. Since the industry operates in direct conflict with much larger legacy industries that also play a part in the global energy market, the solar sector also attracts more than its fair share of critics. Unfortunately since the industry is so new a lot of information gets misrepresented by sources less informed on the technologies involved. Some of the misinformation is unintentional to be sure, but due to inevitable conflicts of interest a lot of information presented is also purposely misleading. So when news of the US investigating China’s unfair subsidization of its renewable “green” industries, solar investors in the US took the familiar sell first ask questions later path. While these claims don’t solely target the Chinese solar sector, only the impacts to Chinese solar companies are discussed in this article.The first question that should be asked: does China unfairly subsidize their solar industry? Since it would be too lengthy to discuss every company in the industry, only the largest and most profitable are compared in this article. The most profitable US listed Chinese solar company in 2009 was Trina Solar (NYSE: TSL), and the most profitable US solar company for the same period was First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR). Since unfair subsidies are being examined, it makes the most sense to look at the most profitable companies. TSL earned $98 million in 2009 while FSLR earned $640 million.Complete Story »
- Original article
- Login or register to post comments
