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Another promising player is Active Power (NASDAQ:ACPW - news), an Austin, Texas-based maker of battery-free backup power systems. The gist: A spinning steel disk stores kinetic energy, which kicks in when a primary power supply goes down. The target audience includes high-tech firms and telecoms that rely on uninterrupted power supplies. Active Power says one of its systems, about the size of a refrigerator, replaces 50,000 pounds of lead and sulfuric-acid batteries.
The good news: Active Power already has products on the market. The most promising, which went on sale last summer, is the CAT UPS, a flywheel-based backup power system jointly developed with Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT - news). Base units retail for $90,000 to $115,000, with top-of-the-line configurations selling for as much as $350,000. The product, which is expected to make up about 80% of Active Power's sales for 2001, is already having an impact on the top line: Revenues jumped to $5.1 million in the first quarter, up 91% from the fourth quarter. (It posted a net loss of $6.7 million, or 17 cents a share.) Active Power shares, which ended Friday at $18.47, are down 65% from their first-day close of $52.75 but are still above their August 2000 offering price of $17.
Active Power is on the verge of announcing the distributor of its next commercial product, the HIT6, a more advanced power-supply product aimed at telecoms that's being field-tested in 2001 with commercial rollout slated for 2002. Upbeat news about another commercial product could do some nice things to Active Power's stock — in the short run, at least. |
