Which Solar Stocks Will Continue To Shine?

In early February 2008, I wrote this article giving my thoughts on 11 solar stocks. As you will recall, the stock market was hurting in January, and so were the solar stocks. In that article, I opined that the high-PE stocks in the group - First Solar (FSLR), SunPower (SPWR), and Suntech (STP) - were overpriced, while two were underpriced and screaming “BUY ME.” I further opined that if the market is truly rational, the investment returns on the low-priced stocks would exceed the returns from the high-PE stocks.

In that first article, I submitted a table I had put together, which calculated forward PE’s for 10 stocks in this space. The table is set out again below, with updated data as of yesterday’s close. As you can see, the market has been largely—but not completely—rational.