Norway’s solar silicon giant makes big gains
Renewable Energy Corp., one of the world’s largest suppliers of solar-grade silicon, is growing like gangbusters. Its fourth-quarter revenues jumped 2.5-fold to about $128 million (U.S.) and profits jumped 13-fold to about $54 million.
“The REC Group continued to outpace the industry growth … in the fourth quarter of 2005 and the year as a whole, and will focus on increasing production capacity throughout the value chain during 2006,” the company, which also makes wafers for the solar industry, said in a statement. “The group will decide on further capacity expansions during the first half of 2006.”
The company also said it plans to seek an IPO on the Oslo Stock Exchange, and analysts said the company could fetch as much as $4.5 billion given how hot the solar PV market has become. Such an IPO would be the biggest on the exchange in the last five years.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
