Hanergy Bubble burst

Hanergy has always been criticized by us as a massive valuation bubble and now the bubble has burst spectacularly. The company was using a solar technology, which does not have many backers and was purportedly selling this equipment to other shadowy Chinese companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. The solar market is still not in the pink of shape, with most solar panel players seeing low margins. Thin film solar technology is in a worse shape, with most companies going bankrupt. TSMC was the latest thin film technology company to announce an exit. Hanergy uses thin film technology to make solar panels, most of which it sells to its parent group. The company had bought 3-4 western solar thin film technology companies for very cheap prices in the last 3-4 years, as the mainstream silicon panel technology had beaten the crap out of other technologies using solar energy.

Hanergy had announced massive contracts to sell both panel making equipment and panels to other Chinese companies. Selling most of its production to its parent company was itself a red flag, which indicated that a major fraud was underway. Reaching a market cap of 50 billion dollars was another red flag, when the biggest and best run solar companies barely reach $5 billion with production many times that of Hanergy. The company kept announcing margins which were double that of other companies.

Now all of a sudden Hanergy has announced that it will not sell panels to its parent. It has also said that some of its large equipment selling contract have also gone bust. The Hanergy bubble has burst just as we thought it would.