A winner from the BP oil spill

Aggressive Growth Stock – First Solar (NASDAQ:FSLR)

I mentioned in the last post that I expect the Oil services industry to get hammered due to the BP oil spill. This leaves me to seek opportunities in the renewable energy services sector. Solar, Wind and even Natural Gas (with the endorsement by Obama) may be the power giants of the future.

Future of Oil projections:

-Oil extracting will be very costly, as companies must follow regulation and may be hit with new taxes.
-This will be passed down to consumers making oil costly for the end user.
-The current state of the economy cannot handle another large increase in oil prices.

This leads me to the conclusion that alternative energy has to grow, aggressively. Hybrid batteries are not excluded - Azure Dynamics Corporation (Public, TSE:AZD) is a speculative stock I keep a close eye on. I will do a in depth analysis of this company on a later day.

Price as of this posting: 

 

About FirstSolar:

First Solar originally operated as a Delaware limited liability company from 1999 until 2006. First Solar, Inc. was then incorporated in Delaware on February 22, 2006. First Solar's initial public offering was on November 17, 2006. First Solar's initial public offering was on November 17, 2006. FSLR has the leading technology for Solar Panels today. Clean, Affordable and Sustainable are three words that describe the companies goals to the end consumer. First Solar deals with Utility, Commercial and Residential as for other solar companies I have found to do one or two out of the three. First Solar also is the only Solar company that deal with recycling its own products, Now thats going green!  FSLR is currently holding $714.17 Million as of last quarter and holds $162.48 of debt. It is currently trading at a low P/E of 15.46.

 

 Mr.Stock Picks Price Target for FSLR: $180

Year over year earnings starting from right to left (2006 - 2009)

Diluted Normalized EPS:                      7.78               4.25             2.03                .06

The growth rate has been great, it may slow but I still see aggressive global growth.

Mr. Stock Picks Conclusion:

Seeing how FSLR’s exposure being significant in Europe in order to buy this stock you must believe in the recovery in Europe. I feel this recovery will surprise everyone and the Euro will once again be strong. The global growth along with problems in the oil service sector are just added reasons for the future of this company. Not to mention the company's financial health is well.

Some of FSLR's Solar Panels:

This stock is put on my buy list, and I am keeping a very close eye on it.

Mr. StockPick

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These are brief explanations if you have any questions or would like additional information please contact me directly through the blog. Leave your email and I will try to respond quickly. These are just opinions of mine and you should not use a specific opinion to make an investment. Investors should be aware of the risk involved in making investments.

Is it time to sell BP?

BP (BP:NYSE) which is known to stand for British Petroleum, may now have the nickname Broken Pipe due to the recent pipe explosion in the gulf of Mexico causing the biggest environmental disaster of all time.

BP failed to insert a trigger switch at the source of the oil pipe which would have in-fact stopped the oil from leaking immediately. This trigger switch was taken out of the regulation while Bush was in office and is a necessary requirement for drilling in most parts in the world. While BP was making record profits they decided they did not want to spend the $500,000 it costs to place the trigger switch at the source which will now cost them a number which some analysts say is unforeseeable.

To sell or not to sell? That is the question.

May 27 - BP (BP:NYSE) was upgraded to Outperform from Perform at Oppenheimer, which said the stock's risk/reward appears more attractive at current levels. $55 price target.

BP is expecting lawsuits from some of the largest fish farmers in the world. BP has also filed a claim with a US court trying to get damages against Transocean, (NYSE:RIG) the company in charge of drilling the oil well.

BP's "top kill" attempt to stop the flow of oil from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico failed. Presidential adviser Carol Browner yesterday dampened expectations that renewed efforts to plug the leak would work, saying oil could leak until August when two relief wells are due to be completed.

The bill for BP, to compensate those who have experienced losses during the spill and for the cost of the cleanup is projected to be approximately $12 BLN says USB.

What does a $12 BLN hit mean for BP?
At the end of Q1 2010 BP has approximately $6.8 BLN in cash and $5.4 BLN in short-term investments bringing free cash flow of around $12.2 BLN. The total assets including long term investments for BP is at approximately $240 BLN which outweighs the liabilities by nearly $100BLN.

If the bill were to be $12BLN it can easily be sustained by BP, while taking a short-term fundamental hit the company can once again thrive in the long-term.

Mr. Stock Picks thoughts on the situation:

This spill is a growing disaster for BP. While the share price has fallen tremendously giving it an attractive 8% yield I feel like I need to stay away from it for now. The Obama administration has a lot of power and I can see a new oil drilling tax coming in place in the near future. Solar and Wind energy anyone? I will do some analysis on some green energy companies as I can see them benefiting most from this environmental crisis.

Video of oil leaking:

Question for you readers to comment on below:

Will BP go Bankrupt?
How big of a liability will this oil spill be?
Are you a buyer or a seller?

Mr. Stock Pick

National Bank of Greece Bets on Turkey to boost growth

How can you ignore NBG - National Bank of Greece.

These are Bargin bin prices!

Current share price $2.50

Heres a video for you guys:



Mr. Stock Pick

This bank stock can double! - 10/05/2010

Bulls,

The Greek Gods have been on vacation and they have not done their banking.

Greek God Zeus has his mortgage with the National Bank of Greece – NBG

About The National Bank of Greece:

Founded in 1841 as a commercial bank NBG is the oldest and largest among the Greek banks.  It has been listed on the Athens Stock Exchange since the latter's foundation in 1880. Since October 1999, the Bank has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

The NBG Group provides a full range of financial products and services that meet the constantly changing needs of corporate customers and private individuals, including investment banking services, brokerage, insurance, asset management, leasing and factoring.

One of the Bank's main strengths is the confidence shown in it by its customers, who hold over 9 million deposit accounts and more than 1.5 million lending accounts with NBG.

Horizontal Analysis:

	2008          2009
Total assets	113,394	101,323
Shareholders' equity	8,453	5,972
Loans and advances to customers (net)	69,134	64,498
Due to customers	71,194	67,657
Total operating income	5,077	4,926
Operating expenses	2,483	2,366
Provisions for loan losses	1,057	520
Net attributable profit	923	1,546
Net interest margin (NIM)	4.09%	4.25%
Return on equity (RoE)	13%	25%
Cost / Income	49%	48%

Finansbank – NBG’s stake in Turkey

“Greece’s biggest bank is relying on Turkey to pull it through an economic crisis at home.”

National Bank has spent over than $5 billion since 2006 to acquire Finansbank.

National Bank of Greece SA plans to open 75 branches from Ankara to Izmir this year to benefit from Turkish economic growth that is forecast to reach 5.2 percent. National Bank earned more last year at its Istanbul-based Finansbank ASunit than it did in Greece.

Its not just in Greece, NBG is diversified:

NBG - earned 425 million Euros in Turkey last year, Good investment? I think so.

Turkey’s banking industry is “much better regulated and supervised, and we’re highly capitalized” relative to Greek lenders

Now that the EU put together nearly a TRILLION $ aid package for Europe I think the National Bank of Greece will soar to the upside.

Mr .Stock Picks short term price target for National Bank of Greece (NBG) - $4.11

This stock should be kept on a radar, as this morning it is currently up: $0.36 to $3.03 per share.

Until the next one,

Mr. Stock Pick

Market Commentary – 07/05/10

Let me describe part of my day yesterday,


So I was browsing on the computer as my phone is going off. Text messages and Blackberry Messenger pings going off. 
Text messages read:

1) Dow down 900 points

2) Armageddon 

3) Blood on the streets - Buy Buy Buy

I try and visit Bloomberg but its appears that the site was crashing. I than go to Google finance and WOW.
It felt like the world was falling, I saw the DOW -934 Points and it was jumping within seconds. It appears as though it tanked and was free falling and all of a sudden its stopped on a dime and reversed. The volume was rapidly growing as this was happening. 

Big Moves at 2:45:

Accenture Plc 

(Public, NYSE:ACN) Went from $40 down to $0.01 than back up to $40

Google Inc. 

(Public, NASDAQ:GOOG) Went from $500 down to $460 than back up to $500

The Procter & Gamble Company 

(Public, NYSE:PG) Went from $60 down to $39 than back up to $59

Apple Inc. 

(Public, NASDAQ:AAPL) Went from $245 down to $200 than back up to $240


What happened here?


"Fat Finger" Trade? 


This is currently being investigated but rumor has it that a manager at Citigroup meant to sell $15 million dollars worth of PG but instead sold $15 Billion dollars. This has not confirmed true and there is no evidence at this time but it may not be an impossible human error. 
Keyboard: zxcvBnM not too far? What do you think?


Computer Glitch? 



Cancelled Trades:


NASDAQ cancelled nearly 300 trades that happened during this wild period. Some speculated that the bizarre trades were caused by technical glitches in the computers that caused trading to slow down causing stock prices to make big moves.


It would be nice if this happened on an up day!

Today's Headlines:

Euro recovers from 14-month lows

Payrolls increase but unemployment rises 

Germany approves of Greece's bailout

Oil Hovers at $75

One hot stock to watch over the weekend and next week:

National Bank of Greece (ADR) 

(Public, NYSE:NBG) Currently trading at 2.63 is near its 52-week low.


I will not be surprised if at some point next week this stock is up close to 20% on recovery hopes.


This is a speculative stock and investors should know the risk involved in investing.


Other stocks to watch with potential upside for next week:

Bank of America Corporation 

(Public, NYSE:BAC)

Google Inc. 

(Public, NASDAQ:GOOG)

Kraft Foods Inc. 

(Public, NYSE:KFT)

The Coca-Cola Company 

(Public, NYSE:KO)

Las Vegas Sands Corp. 

(Public, NYSE:LVS)

Apple Inc. 

(Public, NASDAQ:AAPL)

General Electric Company 

(Public, NYSE:GE) 




Have a good weekend,


Mr. Stock Pick


These are brief explanations if you have any questions or would like additional information please contact me directly through the blog. Leave your email and I will try to respond quickly. These are just opinions of mine and you should not use a specific opinion to make an investment. Investors should be aware of the risk involved in making investments. 

Pre-Earnings Analysis on Google (GOOG)

Buy Google Right here, Right now!

Google has:

Mobile

Video

Blogs

Finance

Books

Patents

Product Search

Docs

and oh ya, they have a pretty good search engine too.

Mr. Stock Picks Price Target, $750

To our readers we have indicated a buy for Google at $535/shr

Benchmark analysis

“Analysts at Benchmark maintain their "buy" rating on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). The target price for GOOG is set to $700.

According to Benchmark, Google is expected to achieve 21% revenue growth on a y/y basis. 

Benchmark mentions that “Channel checks on YouTube are positive.

Primarily YouTube, generate about 40% of all domestic online video views.

“While Apple and Google are increasingly competing in mobile, we believe Google is well-positioned with a strong brand, proven digital ad solutions and a huge base of satisfied advertisers,Benchmark adds.”

Earnings excluding items of $6.56 a share for the period ended in March, and $4.93 billion in net revenue are expected to be reported by the firm, that compares to earnings excluding items of $5.16 a share, and $4.1 billion in net revenue in the same period last year.

"New formats recently deployed by Google include images -- a departure from the company's traditional, text-based advertisements. These formats were rolled out during first quarter and may see much success and are a good indication on how Google will proceed with these in the future.

Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Jordan Rohan told clients in a research note that Google should report a "solid" first quarter, thanks in part to the deployment of additional paid advertisements in search results. In addition, Rohan wrote that demand for paid search keywords in the travel and financial industries "has returned to normal seasonal levels" following a decline."

Schachter has a $650 price target for Google shares.

Google preformed terribly after Q4 results and the China issue, but I think this thing is due for a turn around. Right here, Right now! BUY!BUY!BUY!  

I will further cover Google as I am putting an analysis together dealing with:

Can Google be the new era Berkshire Hathaway?
$100,000 + per share?

Investors need to check up for that one!

Earnings season coming up with Alcoa today should be interesting.

Mr. Stock Pick

Market Commentary – 04/09/10

Bloggers,

The Dow continues to flirt with 11,000 as the Dow, S&P 500, and the NASDAQ march forward.

Oil slightly fell to $85/Barrel while Gold is touching $1160/Oz and Natural Gas is back up to above $4/BTU.

The Euro Gained against the US Dollar today. The Canadian dollar fell stretching the Par mark that was hit on Tuesday further away.

Earnings Reports to look out for:
Bank of America – BAC – April 15^th
Google – GOOG – April 15^th
General Electric – GE – April 16th
Apple – AAPL – April 19^th
JC PENNY – JCP – May 13^th
BP plc – BP – April 26^th

Today’s Winners:
Atlas Energy (NASDAQ:ATLS)
Casey’s General Stores (NASDAQ:CASY)
Taseko Mines (TSE:TKO) 

Today’s Losers:
Monster WorldWide (NYSE:MWW)
Constellation Brands (NYSE:STZ)
Targa Resources Partners (NYSE:NGLS) 

I feel Google will have a big move after earnings, I will post an in depth analysis of Google before earnings as it will be one of Google's most important earnings release. 

Until the next one,

Mr. Stock Pick