Akeena's Loss Widens, Quality Issues?

Solar installer Akeena Solar, the company behind a Lego-like modular solar rooftop system, is in need of some sunshine today. The company saw its loss for the second quarter widen to $5.1 million from $1.92 million a year earlier, while its revenues shrank slightly, to $7.06 million from $7.51 million. Sales of commercial installations, however, dropped by a massive 80 percent.

Akeena CEO Barry Cinnamon attributed the drop in commercial installations to the fact that “commercial installations span multiple quarters,” and the company expects to “see continued revenue volatility as commercial projects become a larger portion of our revenue mix.” But the company has also been cutting its operating expenses, and in an age when you’d expect a solar installer to be expanding, the company has cut 36 positions since the beginning of the year. Cinnamon said that the economic weakness and fears that the investment tax credit won’t get renewed are also taking their toll on the solar industry.

The Street wasn’t feeling it. On a day when the U.S. markets overall posted their second straight session of gains, the Los Gato, Calif.-based company saw its shares drop 3.7 percent to close at $4.22. To make matter worse, yesterday Barron’s Eric Savitz reported that Pacific Crest analyst Mark Bachman says Akeena is having quality issues with some of its Andalay solar products. “Some panels are being returned to Akeena, depending on the severity of the defect,” and the issues supposedly “involved the frame, and not the performance of the modules themselves.” Regardless, it’s still an issue.

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