Plug Power Inc. (NASDAQ: PLUG) has just filed a shelf registration for a secondary offering of 39.5 million shares of common stock.  Based on recent prices that translates to a $135+ million offering, and that compares to market cap of $282.6 million after a 5% stock price drop today.

These shares may be offered and sold from time to time by Smart Hydrogen, Inc., which is a stockholder of Plug Power Inc.  It appears that all proceeds if and when shares are sold will go to the shareholder.  It appears that this holding also came about from a 2006 private placement where the company received $217 million in gross proceeds.

Plug Power, Inc. is a low-priced early stage company which engages in the design, development, and manufacturing of fuel cell systems for stationary and motive markets.

You can join our open email distribution list to hear about other secondary offerings, IPO’s, key financings, secondary offerings, spin-offs and other special situation previews.

This is one we have screened several times in the recent years, but the company has not been in the real "revenue generation stage" that we like to see.  But interestingly enough, this one has been public this entire decade and back in the tech bubble its shares briefly traded  at a price of more than $100.00.  That is one of the reasons why we have been keeping this one on our watch lists for that newsletter. 

The company is one we have also been watching as 2008 and 2009 are supposed to be years where product sales start to look real, although these are still small.  We currently have two other alternative and renewable (or less-brown) green energy stocks as active picks for our "10 Stocks Under $10" weekly newsletter.  PLUG is not currently on that list.

Shares closed down about 5% at $3.21 today, and the 52-week trading range is $2.42 to $4.75.

The company offers GenCore, a hydrogen fueled Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell system to provide back-up power to businesses and governments in critical infrastructure.  Its GenDrive is a hydrogen fueled PEM fuel cell system to provide motive power to light industrial vehicles. Its "developing products" include GenSys as a natural gas or liquid petroleum gas fueled continuous power system to support off-grid electric generation products, and a high-temperature polybenzimidazole combined heat and power fuel cell system for light commercial and residential applications.

Jon C. Ogg
April 22, 2008

Jon Ogg is a producer of and editor for both the Special Situations newsletter and the "10 Stocks Under $10" weekly newsletter for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com; he can be reached at [email protected] and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.