Plug Power Backer Files To Unplug (PLUG)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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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.

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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.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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