fxtrader07's Comments on SeekingAlpha.com

Calling a North American Palladium Bottom

the above comment was by me - somehow my name didn't appear

fxtrader_2007
Dec 13 08:16 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
Calling a North American Palladium Bottom

Hey mark, this is by far the strangest and, frankly, most absurd commentary I ever came across at seeking alpha.

Are you aware that by this strange construction of causes and effects you do not only accuse mgmt of outright planned share price manipulation and fraudulent SEC filings? But that you simply are way off the mark (no pun intended) by failing to address the one most obvious and most reasonable point of them all??
And this one is, plain and simple: PAL's mgmt screw it up completely and will run the company straight into the ground if it is allowed to continue.
As I see it, and is clear from the cash-flow statements, mgmt simply failed to generate sufficient cash from operations to keep the ever declining production running. In the current climate of credit squeeze they suddenly woke up and discovered that access to capital to keep the company running was getting very difficult. Now, at the end of the quarter they were almost running out of cash and hence, made this awful secondary that destroyed (diluted) shareholders' equity and put enormous pressure on the stock price.
If they did so intentionally as you assumed, they ought to get fired instantly and a class action lawsuit filed against them.
However, by looking at the development of this company in a PM and PGM bullmarket environment, I cannot help but conclude that the mgmt of PAL is simply one of the worst in industry, a bunch of incompetent managers that do serve only their own interests, i.e. living off shareholders' money as long as possible.
Rather than blindly pumping the stock you better wake up to realities at PAL before urging people to throw in their money.-
This stock should be avoided except for a short-term rebound trade, (though i would not bank on even that).
Because, regardless whether the q3 loss and the subsequent secondary offering were done by intention to depress the share price (robbing shareholders) or whether they were the result simply of mgmt's incompetence, the net effect is the same: a company, whose mgmt cannot and should not be trusted.
I know, we differ on that, but I side with the great Warren Buffet here, who is supposed to have said that investors should seek to own companies that even a monkey could run -- because eventually, one will. Now, the mining industry isn't one that a monkey will ever run successfully and PAL is a case in point.

Dec 13 08:14 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
First Solar's Rapidly Expanding Economies of Scale

that document keeps tellingly silent about te-supply and costs.
Te is a buy-product in copper mining, yes, but it's not to be found in every copper mine! quite to the contrary!
the paper you have linked discusses potential environmental damage caused by FSLR's technology, broken panels etc. And btw, imho it downplays these risks considerably.
Dec 04 07:33 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
First Solar's Rapidly Expanding Economies of Scale

well, if you produce 1GW, 3 cents will mean 30 million $ after all - if you can get the Te in these amounts at all. But anyway, that's not the point i want to make.
Have you even noticed that FSLR has to recycle each and every panel made by them? And that the costs for doing so might be substantially higher than projected and allowed for by the company? have you noticed that just one broken panel could cost the company huge amounts in litigations when the cadmium gets dispersed? Do you have an idea what such an event would mean for its future business? yep, it would fall off a cliff! contracts will be cancelled en masse. n

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fxtrader07

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Calling a North American Palladium Bottom

Calling a North American Palladium Bottom

First Solar's Rapidly Expanding Economies of Scale

First Solar's Rapidly Expanding Economies of Scale