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Technology Stocks : Ballard Power -world leader zero-emission PEM fuel cells
BLDP 3.630+7.6%12:53 PM EST
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To: BillTrudeau who wrote (5708)1/11/2005 2:16:48 PM
From: Sid Turtlman  Read Replies (1) of 5827
 
I'll say now what I said seven or so years ago. There is no certainty than anyone will ever successfully commercialize fuel cells, but of all the players, FCEL has the best chance. As investors, we must compare our hopes/fears for the future with the current price of a stock; I don't think you will find that I said much in favor of FCEL as an investment after late 2000, when the stock was "priced for perfection" and I got out of almost all of mine.

FCEL always had a chicken and egg problem to solve, and it still hasn't done so. It needs lots of orders to get its costs down, which will let it lower its prices, but until it lowers its prices it won't get those orders. It has raised enormous amounts of money over the last five years, but has wasted a lot of it, IMO. Had it underpriced its products and used that capital to subsidize its losses, it would have a lot more volume now and be closer to breakeven.

The main thing it has going for it is that the technology itself is quite good. Especially when combined with a turbine, it is a much more efficient converter of hydrocarbons to electrical energy than anything else out there. That efficiency counts more when energy prices are high, and also results in lower greenhouse gases. So it isn't impossible for FCEL to yet succeed. It has a chance. BLDP doesn't, and never did, still for all the reasons I gave in the 1990s.
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