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Energy

Will Solar Conference Address Slowing Trends? (FSLR, STP, AMAT, AKNS, TSL)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Solar industry consulting firm, Solarplaza, hosting a conference on “The Solar Future” on May 26th in Munich, Germany. Speakers from First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSLR), Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE:STP), and Q-Cells as well as industry analysts will discuss what is on the horizon for the solar industry.  Other companies which are listed at the conference’s site here are Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), Akeena Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKNS), and Trina Solar Ltd. (NYSE: TSL).

But the horizon may be closer than the participants think. The global economic slowdown has severely cut into solar industry growth, and the survival or profitability of the industry may be a more important topic for discussion than the size of the industry in 2013.

The near- and medium-term profitability of the PV solar sector may not attract as many conference attendees as futuristic discussions of solar domination, but the day may come when government subsidies for solar won’t cover the losses.  Maybe the conference ought to spend a few minutes on what happens then.

Paul Ausick
April 29, 2009

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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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