Bharti Airtel Ltd Bharti Airtel Ltd needs no introduction of its own as the company is one of the world’s leading providers of telecommunication services with presence in 19 countries including India & South Asia and Africa. The Company is the largest wireless service provider in India, based on the number of customers. The Company […]

Nomura Group Nomura Group is one of the leading Financial Services organizations operating across the world. Nomura was founded in 1925 in Japan and is a diversified Conglomerate with products and services in Banking, Financial Services, Financial Management, Consulting, Oil & Gas, Construction and Chemicals. The company currently employs over 27000 employees and is headquartered […]

However India’s biggest capital good equipment company BHEL owned by the government is plannning a $500 million investment to build a solar cell factory in at Sakoli which is part Union heavy industries minister Praful Patel’s constituency Bhandara.Talk about how dumb you can get. BHEL hardly has too much expertise in the solar panel industry and with solar cells in massive oversupply,it is almost sure to lose money. However that is how things work with Indian government companies where investment is made at the whims of ministers rather than rationality and business sense.BHEL is currently trading at one of the lowest valuations in its 10 year history and its not a big wonder why. The company has benefited in the past as did other machinery and engineering companies from an infrastructure invesment boom. However those glory days are over for the company as it faces competition from the Chinese companies and decreasing orders flow. Praful Patel the minister has already spent a few years in the airline ministry presiding over the conversion of the state owned carrier Air India ino a basket case. Now its the turn of BHEL to be turned into a basket case as well.

Updated: 7/06/2016 Japanese Solar Panel companies Sharp, Kyocera, Panasonic-Sanyo, Mitsubishi were the top solar panel producers in the world. Solar Energy in Japan has a long future dating back to 1994 when the government introduced capital subsidies to boost solar energy installations on rooftops. Till 2004, Japan was the largest solar market in the world […]

This may be a dramatic statement to make about the world’s most valued solar company but there are several reasons which I will explain below to illustrate this point. Note the solar industry is in a league of its own in the astonishing drop it solar panel prices (80% price drop over the last 3-4 years) and the rapid increase in demand (60% CAGR over the last 10 years).So the comparison and analysis by your usual stock hacks on financial portals like Motley and Seeking Alpha is way off the mark. First Solar had the worst 2 quarters in its history in 2011 as it went from a record breaking profit company into the red. Many issues which were hidden by its past success came out in the open and some of them are life threatening. Here are these problems

The falling prices of solar panels has made almost impossible thought of solar electricity prices possible today. In a state auction of solar projects ,a small company Alex Green Energy bid only 14c/ KwH to win the auction. The price is lower than that seen in the Indian federal subsidy auction JNNSM. Note Rs 7/ Kwh that was bid is close to the Rs 6-7/ Kwh retail electricity prices in most cities in India.Note in the first phase of auction the lowest price was more than 50% higher at Rs 10/ kwh