However it has now thankfully put its plan on hold of spending another 520 million euros on solar energy. The company has already wrote down $1 billion in solar after the valuations of Ersol and Aleo have crashed from the time it bought it. Note most Western solar companies are going bankrupt as they can’t compete with the 80c/watt solar panel prices. Stalwarts Q-Cells are defaulting on the debt payments while according to Total CEO, Sunpower would have been bankrupt if they had not bought it. Even the biggest US Solar Panel Company First Solar has been ravaged by the price war. Bosch has bravely said that it would continue to remain in the solar panel market while it makes more sense for them now to make an exit and concentrate on their core competencies. It can realistically never hope to get into the top 20 solar panel suppliers and stop spending good money after the bad.
Bosch started out into the Solar Energy field by making a very expensive acquisition of a Tier 2 German solar company Ersol in 2008 for Euro 1.1 billion.Bosch paid a premium of 60% for buying out Ersol which was a manufacturer of wafers,cells and modules.The company paid a very price to buy Ersol which was a jack of all trades kind of solar company without any substantial competitive advantages.Bosch had set a target of Euro 750 million from renewable energy (don’t know whether they met it ).Bosch made a bad decision because at the current stock prices it can buy almost the entire German solar panel manufacturing sector for Euro 1.1 billion.Its doubtful that Ersol would have survived the current solar panel downturn and was extremely lucky to get bought by Bosch for that price.The company also bought two other small German solar companies at expensive valuations Aleo Solar and Johana Solar (a thin film solar panel producer).It could have similarly bought these companies or even better companies at much cheaper prices.