Solar panel stocks are an interesting play in today’s markets, with many analysts being quite optimistic on a number of major installers.
However, today saw one of these companies completely beat already bullish expectations from Wall Street, surging up significantly in the process. Shares of SunPower, one of America’s top solar manufacturers and installers, jumped by 22 percent on news that they had reported a surprise Q2 profit and raised its guidance for the year.
Sunpower Earnings
The company went on to report that they had earned $122 million, or 75 cents per share, in Q2 as opposed to the $447 million loss seen during Q2 2018.
Revenue did decline from $449 million to $436 million in comparison to a year ago, but the company did raise its end of year guidance to around $120 million, as opposed to its previous guidance of $110 million. Overall, this quite easily beat what Wall Street was expecting from the company.
“Given our solid performance in the second quarter as well as continued positive industry trends, we are well positioned to meet our second half financial and operational targets,” said Manavendra Sial, SunPower CFO in a press release. “We also prudently managed our expenses while further investing in our growth initiatives. Additionally, we expanded our leadership in project finance, signing agreements to improve our residential lease economics, as well as reducing our working capital requirements in our commercial business. We remain committed to achieving positive cash flow at the business unit level in the second half of the year while continuing to improve our profitability throughout 2019.”
Analysts have been bullish on the solar energy sector for a while. With many major energy companies promising to transition a large portion of their output to renewable sources, solar panel manufacturers and installers are seeing a surge in demand both from industrial as well as retail sectors.
A number of solar stocks have already begun to hit fresh highs so far in 2019 while showing no signs of slowing down.
Shares of SunPower shot up 8.2 percent on Wednesday throughout the trading day before skyrocketing an extra 19.5 percent in response to the press release. The company’s stock has gone on to double over the past six months, rising from $5.8 to peaking at $12.47 during early July.
Already many experts are calling SunPower a “must own” growth stock for investors. It’s worth noting that on a five-year chart, shares are still down around 75 percent from their earlier trading range in the $40s.
SunPower Company Profile
SunPower Corp is a vertically integrated solar module manufacturer and systems installer. The company’s modules derive from crystalline silicon technology and possess the industry’s highest conversion efficiencies (the percentage of sunlight that is converted into electricity). French oil giant Total is now SunPower’s majority shareholder. The operatinig business segments of the company are SunPower Energy Services and SunPower Technologies.
The maximum revenue of the company comes from SunPower Energy Services Segment, which includes sales of solar energy solutions in the North America region, and direct sales of turn-key engineering, procurement and construction services. – Warrior Trading News
