China Sunergy Ships 5 MW of Solar Panels To Bulgaria
It definitely isn’t the biggest solar market, but China Sunergy (CSUN :NASDAQ) is a top player in Bulgaria as they have delivered another 5 megawatts (MW) of modules to be installed in the Eastern European country.
Mitsubishi International GmbH purchased the modules and they are being installed and managed by Helios Power. The modules will be installed at the Yerussalimovo Solar Plant which will be located near the Yerussalimovo Village in Southern Bulgaria.
In 2011, China Sunergy shipped 18 MW to Bulgaria last year, or 30 percent of the total modules installed in the country.
Issuing the announcement 5 days before they announce Q1 2012 results, one would have to wonder if China Sunergy is trying to build momentum before the announcement. But with most solar companies offering less than compelling earnings reports for the last quarter, it will be interesting to see if China Sunergy can buck the trend.
Shares of China Sunergy were down 1.46 percent in late day trading.
In an announcement that will probably surprise very few people, the longtime seller/buyer relationship between Suntech Power (STP :NYSE) and Krannich Solar will continue as the former will be supplying up to 120 megawatts of solar panels to the latter in 2012.
Suntech and Krannich solar have been business partners since 2007. The panels in this deal will be supplied to installers and resellers in Europe and Australia.
Investors may only be luke-warm to this deal despite Suntech’s claims that Krannich Solar is currently one of the top-five photovoltaic systems providers in Europe. Overall, solar installations in Italy and France have slowed due to reductions in feed-in tariffs.
Whether or not Suntech actually sells the maximum 120 MW of the deal will weigh heavily on investors.
Shares of Suntech were down 3.4 percent in afternoon trading.
Health Insurance Management’s Simplee Raises $6M
Palo Alto-based Simplee has raised $6M in a series A round of funding. The round was led by The Social+Capital Partnership with current investor Greylock Partners Israel.
Even if you work in the health care sector, finances in health are complex and the Web sites from insurance companies don’t help much. So it makes sense for people to have a tool that imports their health records – especially if they have a family which makes it even more complex. Mint has not been adding a lot of new functionality so we are not going to hold our breath to see them innovate in health.
Simplee’s simple mashup is Mint for health. The startup competes head-to-head with Cake Health. We could imagine that employers might want to partner with one of these sites on a private label to help employees manage their health care.
View – site
Satcon Selected For 76 MW Plant In Caribbean
Shares of Satcon Technology Corporation (SATC: NASDAQ) received a much-needed jolt today as the Boston-based power inverter manufacturer was selected by GCL Solar Energy to supply inverters, subcombiners, and voltage transformers for a 76 megawatt (MW) project in the Caribbean.
Satcon will supply forty-five of their Equinox 500 kilowatt (kW) inverters, over 1900 Satcon Solstice Subcombiners, 680 SSC Smart Subcombiners, and 64 medium voltage transformers.
Working with GCL Solar Energy should help the beleaguered shares of Satcon as the former is aggressively pursuing projects in the Americas.
In February, GCL Solar Energy inked a deal with NRG Solar (NRG :NYSE) to form a 50/50 joint venture entitled Sonora. GCL Solar Energy will supply the photovoltaics for projects NRG Solar is developing. The two companies had been successfully working together before the joint venture as GCL Solar Energy had supplied 70 MW of photovoltaics to NRG Solar since the 4th quarter of 2011.
But the Sonora joint venture isn’t a guaranteed access to NRG Solar’s seemingly robust pipeline. In March NRG Solar selected to First Solar to build their 26 megawatt Avra Valley solar project near Tucson, Ariz.
Regardless, Satcon needs to expand its revenue streams. Facing a 87 percent drop in its share price over the past year, Satcon needs to work with more aggressive solar manufacturers like GCL Solar Energy if they are to boost their sagging share price over the $1 minimum set by Nasdaq.
Shares of Satcon were up 1.02 percent in afternoon trading.
After four straight quarters of increases in revenue, Canadian Solar (CSIQ :NASDAQ) has finally come back to earth in Q1 2012 with a 26.5 percent decrease in revenue from the same quarter in the previous year but the reported loss that was better than expected.
Canadian Solar’s net revenue for Q1 2012 was $325.8 million, a 26.5 percent drop from the $443.4 million reported in the same quarter of the previous year. The decrease in revenue could have been worse but the shipments for the quarter were 343 megawatts (MW), a 40 percent increase from the 244 MW shipped in Q1 2011.
Sales to North America were 45.1 percent of total sales while Europe represented 42.6 percent of total sales for the quarter.
Analysts were expecting a loss of $0.52 per share but Canadian Solar managed to beat those expectations by delivering a loss of $21.3 million or $0.49 per share.
The solar industry has become a survival of the fittest. To make sure it is around for the long term, Canadian Solar is going to follow in the footsteps of larger rivals First Solar (FSLR :NASDAQ) and LDK Solar (LDK :NYSE) and reduce its workforce to improve its margins.
Canadian Solar offered guidance of 8 – 10 percent for gross margins, an improvement from the 7.7 percent delivered in Q1 2012. Shipments are also expected to rise to a range of 430 – 450 MW.
If Canadian Solar is going to continue to improve its margins, it will be necessary for the company to stick to its guidance of improving its manufacturing costs to $0.50 – $0.60 per watt versus the $0.85 per watt in Q4 2011.
Shares of Canadian Solar were up 4.36 percent in afternoon trading.
Easy Analytics Mixpanel Raises $10.25M
San Francisco-based Mixpanel has raised $10.25M from Andreesen Horowitz. The company has previously raised seed funding from YCombinator, Sequoia Capital, Square COO Keith Rabois, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, and Bebo co-founder Michael Birch.
We have talked with co-founder Suhail Doshi in recent months. He’s a one man gang who manages business development in addition to all other work at his up to this point scrappy startup. Mixpanel says it is working with Path and Viddy to power their analytics. We know of a few other fast growing mobile companies that use Mixpanel. For these companies they can either decide that they want to build their own custom analytics which will take up at least one engineer’s time and be full of bugs and be slow to update or they can just slot in Mixpanel. Analytics might not be super differentiated but who cares – end users generally want to see the same data points in a familiar way. As an end user, actually, we would love to see Mixpanel build a standard for analtyics as we get tired of looking at new reports layouts and figuring out their quirks.
It’s interesting to see that there seems to be a second wave of analytics companies like Mixpanel that are getting traction. In past years we have heard from startups that they don’t want to be in the analytics business as there is no money to be made there. So analytics companies would transition into the ads space in many cases.
View – site
Alex Solar Lands 1 GW Project In China
Alex Solar? Not exactly a household name in the solar industry but the Shanghai-based solar company will be working on a 1 gigawatt (GW) project in Jinchang City, China over the next 5 years.
Despite not being considered a leader in the solar industry, the 1 GW of solar will be owned, financed, and developed by Alex Solar. The overall cost of the project is expected to be $1.7 billion and the power stations will be built on the western slope of Jinchang City.
Founded in 2007 by Shanghai Huayi (HY) Enterprise Group, Alex Solar has completed 4 projects totaling 55.2 megawatts (MW) of projects in the Czech Republic and two projects totaling 2.7 MW in Germany according to their Web site.
Alex Solar currently has a vertically integrated production capacity of 600 MW. With the Jinchang project using up approximately 200 MW of that capacity, Alex Solar will be looking for work.
While Suntech (STP :NYSE), Jinko Solar (JKS :NYSE) and LDK Solar (LDK :NYSE) would seem to be immediately threatened by the rise of Alex Solar, First Solar (FSLR :NASDAQ) and SunPower (SPWR :NASDAQ) better keep an eye on this company.
Alex Solar is currently hiring sales people who are proficient in English. And with the company already licensing technology from the United States, we would not be surprised to see them compete on projects in Arizona, New Jersey, New York, and California.
Soon there will be 85 million gallons of non-petroleum based diesel fuel available as Honeywell (HON :NYSE) announced a licensing agreement with Emerald Biofuels to produce their Green Diesel.
Honeywell’s Green Diesel is produced from non-edible, second generation oils and fats. It can be dropped into any diesel fuel tank without any modifications to the fuel system or the engine.
While 85 million gallons of fuel is barely a drop in the bucket of the overall fuel needs of the U.S., it’s a lot more than one-time Bay Area biofuel contenders Solazyme (SZYM :NASDAQ) and Amyris (AMYS :NASDAQ) are currently producing.
Solazyme is producing fuel as their Q1 2012 revenues were almost double that of the same quarter in the previous year. $13.6 million in revenues isn’t exactly inspiring for investors but that should change as Solazyme announced a joint venture with Bunge to produce 100,000 metric tons of renewable oil in Brazil.
There is hope for Amyris as they are working with Ceres (CERE :NASDAQ) to successfully refine their sweet sorghum hybrids into renewable diesel fuel.
And both Solazyme and Amyris are working with Volkswagen to test their renewable diesels on the 2012 Passat TDI and 2012 Jetta TDI. The year-long testing will analyze each of the fuels’ and they affect each of the vehicles.
But right now, Honeywell appears to be the new king of the biofuel block with their 85 million gallons of renewable diesel.
Shares of Honeywell were down 0.25 percent.
Angry Birds’ Rovio Earned $106M In 2011.
Angry Birds Maker Rovio announced today that it has $106M in revenues in 2011. For some this might be a surprise but for us its not as the Angry Birds are everywhere we look. Our son’s little league’s team bag has a bird. We just paid extra for the Roku version that comes with Angry Birds. Today Comscore put out a report indicating that 80% of time spent in apps.
The reason for the financials announcement seems to be that Rovio wants to get some excitement for an upcoming IPO. A big moment for Rovio will be when its plans to launch several more titles in 2012 come to fruition. This will include a non-Angry Birds title.
Finland-based Rovio raised$42M in Series A from Accel Partners, Atomico and Felicis Ventures. Given its rapid growth, some analysts have valued Rovio at $9B, which is comparable to the valuation of the struggling world number 2 phonemaker Nokia.
View – site
Despite not directly serving any residential customers west of Kentucky, Duke Energy Renewables (DUK :NYSE) has purchased another solar farm in Arizona. The latest acquisition, the 10 megawatt (MW) Black Mountain Solar Project in Mohave County, comes from large-scale photovoltaic solutions provider SOLON Corporation.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Tuscon-based Solon will provide the panels, their single-axis tracking technology, and the operations, monitoring, and maintenance of the system once they have completed the installation. The solar farm is expected to go online in October of this year.
For Duke Energy Renewables, this will be their third solar plant in Arizona. They currently own the 4 MW Ajo Solar Farm in Pima County and the 15 MW Bagdad Solar Farm in Yavapai County which were purchased in December 2011. The Arizona Public Service Co. is purchasing the power generated from both of the plants under 25-year power purchase agreements.
Shares of Duke Energy were down 0.28 percent in afternoon trading.
