PV Companies Lost More Than 30 Billion Dollars In 2011

The year 2011 saw the industry's stock-listed solar companies lose more than 30 billion dollars. This is based on Solarplaza's Top 10 lists of the World's Best-Performing PV Stocks and the World's Biggest Stock-Listed Solar PV Companies (market capitalization). GCL-Poly Energy Holdings turned out to be the biggest stock-listed solar PV company, with a market capitalization of 4.3 billion dollars. The best-performing stock was that of GT Advanced Technologies, which still suffered a loss of 23%.

All of the solar PV stock-listed companies lost money in terms of market capitalization. One share of GT Advanced Technologies was worth $11.40 as at 23rd August 2011, an increase of 21% compared to the beginning of the year. Four months later, the shares of GT Advanced Technologies decreased to $7.24. Despite this remarkable loss, they still had the best-performing PV stock in the industry. Of the solar companies included in Solarplaza's Top 30 list, most shares lost over 50% of their value. The total amount of these losses ran into billions of dollars. Only three stocks currently remain with a value that hit double-digits. At the beginning of the year, there were still fourteen companies.

GCL-Poly Energy Holdings , the biggest stock-listed solar PV company, lost more than 1.5 billion dollars in 2011, yet was still the best-performing company. First Solar is still the second biggest stock-listed company, with a market cap of 2.9 billion dollars. They lost 8.5 billion dollars of its value on the stock exchange over 2011. Combined, the companies in the Top 10 of the World's Biggest Stock-Listed Solar Companies lost over 16.5 billion dollars. Stock-listed companies which do not focus solely on solar energy have made losses as well, but these losses are smaller in comparison to the purely solar-focused companies. Kyocera Corp is the biggest of the stock-listed companies which focus only partly on solar PV, with a market capitalization of 14.7 billion dollars. The share of Kyocera Corp only lost 15% of its value in 2011. The economic crisis, together with solar industry consolidation, had a huge impact on the solar industry.