Solyndra's Estimated Market Cap Up to $2B: Report

Katie Fehrenbacher — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:55:47 +0000

Solyndra’s revenue ramp up last year was pretty mind boggling — the thin film solar maker went from generating $6 million in revenues in 2008 to $100 million in revenues in 2009. What will that mean when it finally plans to IPO later this year? According to a report from Next Up! Research posted on the marketplace run by startup SharesPost, Solyndra’s production and sales growth could lead to a market cap of between $1.76 and $2 billion.

Market capitalization is the size of a public company equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding, and changes every day for every public company. It’s basically a way to incorporate in public consensus of how much the company is worth. And Next Up! Research clearly thinks that Solyndra will be worth a whole lot.

Next Up! Research’s projected market cap for Solyndra is based on a variety of data, including that Solyndra will have a 50 percent compound annual growth rate for revenues between 2010 and 2015, compared to a more modest 30 percent growth rate for the rest of the solar market. The report says that the installation costs for Solyndra can range between $0.50 and $0.75 per watt, which it says is about half that for other solar panels with a flat geometry, and that cost advantage could translate to better pricing and thus share gains. Next Up! Research also predicts that Solyndra will have a price per share of $6.54 – $7.44 for the common shares.

Solyndra’s estimated market cap of up to $2 billion is definitely aggressive. In comparison thin film solar leader First Solar has a current market cap of $9.66 billion, solar panel maker Sun Power has a market cap of $1.84 billion (bad week for SunPower this week) and Suntech has a market cap of $2.55 billion.

The report is available now on the SharesPost site, an experimental market place that lacks regulatory oversight and launched out of private beta in June. SharesPost valued electric vehicle maker Tesla (which also plans to IPO this year) at over $1 billion with an estimated price per share of $4.21-$4.93.

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In Private, Facebook Valuation Up 42%

Liz Gannes — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Employee shares of Facebook are selling for $21 on SecondMarket, valuing the social network’s common stock at $9.5 billion, Bloomberg is reporting today. That’s up 42 percent in the past four months, which SecondMarket takes to mean that an IPO is nigh, but could also just reflect Facebook’s recent announcement that it’s cash-flow positive. And $9.5 billion doesn’t include the preferred shares issued to investors.

However, a recent report by Next Up Research (reg. req.) put out by a competing private company stock exchange, SharesPost, puts Facebook’s value much lower. Interestingly, it doesn’t use data from SharesPost’s own stock trades — though that may be due to the fact that the exchange’s last noted Facebook transaction is from August at $12 per share — but rather uses revenue projections, value vs. comparable companies and Digital Sky’s recent investment in the company (which included purchasing of employee stock). Those three methods give Facebook a total valuation of $5.48 billion, $5.07 billion and $6.5 billion, respectively.

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Solyndra's Estimated Market Cap Up to $2B: Report

In Private, Facebook Valuation Up 42%