Chinese solarmakers will win the day: Kravetz
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - The solar industry will have its place in the sun for many years but Chinese manufacturers likely will win out over European players, hedge fund manager Shawn Kravetz said.
"The Chinese will crush them European manufacturers in up markets, and they will still make money in down markets," Kravetz, who runs Esplanade Capital in Boston, said at the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit in New York.
Kravetz, who specializes in retail and energy stocks, is betting that European solar equipment manufacturers' stock prices will fall while those of Chinese competitors will rise.
Detailing his favorite ideas for solar stocks to short, Kravetz named Germany's Solarworld and Norway's Renewable Energy Corp . On the long side, among others, he likes China's Trina Solar.
"The Europeans just can't compete," Kravetz said, because of higher labor costs, equipment prices and even electricity costs compared with the Chinese.
Solar energy has captured the interest of investors and manufacturers in the last years in a drive to go beyond traditional fuel sources like coal and natural gas.
But the early leaders in the field, European manufacturers, are now finding that Chinese competitors pose a real threat, Kravetz said.
Related News
Why electric buses haven't taken over the world—yet
LONDON - In lots of ways, the electric bus feels like a technology whose time has come. Transportation is responsible for about a quarter of global emissions, and those emissions are growing faster than in any other sector. While buses are just a small slice of the worldwide vehicle fleet, they have an outsize effect on the environment. That’s partly because they’re so dirty—one Bogotá bus fleet made up just 5 percent of the city’s total vehicles, but a quarter of its CO2, 40 percent of nitrogen oxide, and more than half of all its particulate matter vehicle emissions. And…
