John Petersen
Tom Lehrer is frequently credited with a quip that perfectly summarizes my feeling about the financial markets in the third quarter, “Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” During the quarter we were given box seats to classic political opera in two acts. Act One was set in Washington DC while Act Two moved to Europe so we could hear the same tortured songs of woe in a different language. We all know the opera has to end with the immensely popular “Kick the Can Chorus,” but we suspended disbelief, bought into the fear and held a massive liquidation sale. As a curtain call it looks like we’ve let our elected demagogues scare us into a new recession. Do you ever wonder if the system might work better if ballots included “None of the above” as an alternative and required the offices to remain vacant if nobody won a majority?
For the third quarter the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes were down an average of 13.1% and it was even uglier in energy storage where the best names in the business were beaten down by 35% to 50%. The following table summarizes the price performance of my tracking list for the year and the quarter ended September 30, 2011.
It was a bloody time that’s creating a great buying opportunity. While it’s still a little early to buy the biggest companies in the sector, it’s a wonderful time to do some homework, map out a strategy and prepare for the inevitable bottom.
For reasons I can’t explain, several energy storage companies move in the same direction as the S&P 500, but react more violently to changing market sentiments. To illustrate the phenomena I’ve created a graph that compares percentage price movements for Johnson Controls (JCI), Enersys (ENS), Exide Technologies (XIDE) and Active Power (ACPW) against the S&P 500 using 10-day volume weighted moving averages instead of daily prices.
While the pattern is less obvious over longer periods, the following graph that tracks the percentage price movements since April 1, 2009 shows that the pattern holds in both up and down markets, which suggests that buying storage at the next bottom should have a significantly greater upside potential than buying the broader market at the bottom.
The next bottom may well be the buying opportunity of a lifetime as energy storage emerges as an investment mega-trend and the market realizes that cool has no place in an industrial sector where cost matters and the law of economic gravity reigns supreme. Core positions in Johnson Controls, Enersys and Exide Technologies are a must have for all serious storage investors. Depending on your risk appetite, more speculative companies like Active Power, Axion Power (AXPW.OB), Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) ZBB Energy (ZBB) and perhaps Beacon Power (BCON) also merit serious consideration.
For the last three years I’ve cautioned investors that the media circus around plug-in vehicles and exotic batteries was a transitory phenomenon driven by ill-conceived ideology instead of common sense. The upcoming recession will force the government and the markets to recognize that plug-in vehicles are unconscionable waste masquerading as conservation and a luxury no nation can afford, much less subsidize at relevant scale.
My last chart for the day compares the market capitalizations of my tracking list companies on September 30, 2009 and September 30, 2011. While Axion Power and Exide are far stronger today than they were in the fall of 2009, most of the companies that lost a lot of market value have also lost a lot of ground.
The simple but undeniable reality is everybody wants better batteries but nobody wants to pay a premium price for them. The green in an ordinary consumer’s wallet will always take priority over the green in his cocktail conversation. Manufacturers of objectively cheap products that can do the required work are certain to thrive over the next five years. Developers of exotic batteries for plug-in vehicles and other uneconomic applications are likely to follow the same tragic path as Ener1 (HEV).
Disclosure: Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a substantial long position in its common stock.
Exide trading at a ~5x is unbelievable. I’m trying to decide if I move a bit from my Axion stake to Exide and then back into Axion – it just looks so juicy.
I mentioned in the article that it’s a little early to buy the bigger companies. The reason is my tracking charts show the 10- and 20-day moving averages in a steep downtrend and I think the big stocks have a ways to go before they hit bottom. If you like Exide at $4 you’ll like it even better at a lower price. I watch all these companies very carefully and as soon as the 10- and 20-day averages start crossing the 50-day I’ll be sure to let readers know. Until then, watching is safer than buying.
I like Exide as a conservative stock with an easy potential to triple or maybe quadruple over the next year to 18 months. Since my expectations for Axion are much higher, it’s not a trade that I’d consider, but you have to do what makes it easiest for you to sleep at night.
It would be easier to sleep at night if I knew when LDK and SOL are gonna bottom out. The freefall seems way out of proportion to reality.
I don’t follow the solar sector, but the free fall in the storage sector is most certainly way out of proportion to reality. Investors who are able to buy storage at or near the bottom should have one heck of a ride to the upside.