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Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

bostonherald.com

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Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#21

Post by JulianK »

sliverstorm wrote: post #18
JulianK wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you were just making a rough comparison, but $150 is 1% of 15000. If you're saying you spend $150/month in electricity and that's barely more than you get from a mutual fund, are you saying you get on the order of 12% a year from your mutual funds, even today? I need different mutual funds.

Plenty of dividend stocks give more than 1%, even. Edit: I am not on the ball tonight

Per month? Quite consistently? I'm well outside my realm of expertise here so I'm honestly curious. It seems like if this were even semi-consistent people would be borrowing very heavily from banks and dropping it into these consistent stocks with something like 2-4x the interest.

I guess I'm always suspicious of free money.

Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#22

Post by sliverstorm »

JulianK wrote: post #21
sliverstorm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of dividend stocks give more than 1%, even. Edit: I am not on the ball tonight

Per month? Quite consistently? I'm well outside my realm of expertise here so I'm honestly curious. It seems like if this were even semi-consistent people would be borrowing very heavily from banks and dropping it into these consistent stocks with something like 2-4x the interest. I guess I'm always suspicious of free money.

Per month?

Oh, duh. My mistake. I can't even claim "it's late, I'm tired"

Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#23

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sliverstorm wrote: post #18
JulianK wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you were just making a rough comparison, but $150 is 1% of 15000. If you're saying you spend $150/month in electricity and that's barely more than you get from a mutual fund, are you saying you get on the order of 12% a year from your mutual funds, even today? I need different mutual funds.

Plenty of dividend stocks give more than 1%, even. Edit: I am not on the ball tonight

> Plenty of dividend stocks give more than 1%, even.

1% a month, 12% a year on stock price? This is utterly impossible, the stock price would have risen. But if you can tell me where I can get 1% a month for some N$ investment, please share!

Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#24

Post by hijinks »

TwoBit wrote: post #8

I've been looking into Solar for my house and it's hard to justify. A $15,000 installation pays back only $150 a month in electricity. This is little more than what I could get by putting that $15,000 into a mutual fund.

might be only $150 now but in 10-15 years when rates double then it turns into a lot more money. Most solar companies are pitching the protection of the power companies rate increases.

Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#25

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TwoBit wrote: post #8

I've been looking into Solar for my house and it's hard to justify. A $15,000 installation pays back only $150 a month in electricity. This is little more than what I could get by putting that $15,000 into a mutual fund.

I suspect your numbers may be off. A $15 000 investment that produced $150 in nominal cash flows a month for 20 years (low end) would produce an internal rate of return of 9.1%.

Yet solar panels do not produce nominal cash flows, they make energy - a real good. Energy inflation for urban consumers in the U.S. has averaged, month-to-month annualised, 6.7% over the past 10 years. This raises your IRR to 16.3%. The closest maturity-matched non-callable bond is TXU's 2034 6.55 yielding 15.2% to maturity and rated CC by Fitch.

Even allowing you to capture only 1/2 of the energy inflation, your return is 12.7%. A whole point south of Venezuela. Then again, a warranty from a solar company may be worth as much as a dollar lent to Caracas...

Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#26

Post by Volpe »

dguido wrote: post #12
tokenadult wrote: post #5

Some of the reporting on Suntech by other news organizations is quite interesting. From "China’s Solar Billionaire Undone as Banks Push Suntech to Brink" http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-20/china-s-solar-billi... comes this striking summary of the market: "'Being in the solar manufacturing industry over the past eight years has been an excellent way to turn a big fortune into a small one,' said Jenny Chase, lead…

Looks like all that stolen technology can't save the company from making bad business decisions. Solar and other green tech intellectual property has been among the highest priorities for Chinese hackers in recent years.

Citation? Or is this just racial slur?

Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#28

Post by yardie »

TwoBit wrote: post #8

I've been looking into Solar for my house and it's hard to justify. A $15,000 installation pays back only $150 a month in electricity. This is little more than what I could get by putting that $15,000 into a mutual fund.

Is that $150 a month in credit the electric company gives you to cover your bill or is that $150 straight up and no electric bill since the panels provide it?

If it's the former it's still a good investment. If it is the later it's a way better than any mutual fund in existence.

Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#29

Post by smackay »

Volpe wrote: post #26
dguido wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like all that stolen technology can't save the company from making bad business decisions. Solar and other green tech intellectual property has been among the highest priorities for Chinese hackers in recent years.

Citation? Or is this just racial slur?

Last time I checked, China was a very large and quite diverse country. The comment has a touch of jingoism about it, but racially motivated, hardly.

Re: Chinese solar producer Suntech declares bankruptcy

#30

Post by nikcub »

reportingsjr wrote: post #2

It turns out when you sell products near cost to gain as much market share as possible, not only do you shut them down, but you will eventually get shut down. Who would have thought?

Misplaced blame - selling at a loss to gain market share is a very well understood business growth method that works.
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