MEMC Struggles to Shine in a Gloomy Solar Market
MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE: WFR - News), a supplier of silicon wafers to solar and semiconductor manufacturers, is planning to restructure its business, which would involve slashing its workforce by 20%, or 1,300 jobs. In addition, the company plans to put some of its facilities on hold in order to ride the slump in the renewable-energy sector.
Weak demand along with painfully low silicon prices in the semiconductor and solar industry are driving the changes. The restructuring would help the company trim its operating costs and strengthen its operating cash flows for the near term. Let’s take a look at the company’s latest third-quarter figures.
Woeful figures
The latest quarterly results were highly disappointing, with a 31% sequential fall in MEMC’s top line and a net loss of $94.4 million.
But it’s not just MEMC that’s facing the heat. Industry peers like LDK Solar and ReneSola have also witnessed sharp falls in revenue as well as profitability margins. This is forcing them to either cut capacity or close up shop altogether.
MEMC’s restructuring process is expected to cost the company $700 million in the fourth quarter. As part of its restructuring plan, it will also cut the capacity of its Portland, Ore., crystal facility and leave idle its polysilicon facility in Merano, Italy.
Apart from this, MEMC would also combine its solar material facility, which is struggling at present, with its SunEdison solar development unit. The hope is to improve efficiency and expand in the solar sector, which is considered less vulnerable to price swings, barring the present slowdown.
Facing the heat
Polysilicon prices have witnessed a tremendous crash since manufacturers raced to raise their production capacity when prices were at loftier levels of $500 per kilogram. Since then, the price has plunged over the years to as little as $25.
To make matters worse, the solar energy market in Europe is facing sunstroke as subsidies have started to shrink, thus adversely affecting demand. Moreover, Chinese competitors are relentlessly dumping their cheap products, causing prices to go southward.
The Foolish bottom line
After MEMC burned its hands with falling polysilicon prices, its restructuring initiative is definitely a welcome change. With its exit from the bottomless pit of solar materials, the company can now focus on restoring the stability of its margins and its business as a whole. So what do you Fools think about the company? Leave your comments in the box below.
Keki Fatakia does not hold shares in any of the companies mentioned in this article. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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The other day I was chatting with Rachel Bilson’s stylist, Nicole Chavez, about a pair of booties Rachel was wearing that we were obsessed with at the office.
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We exchanged pictures back and forth: who made them, where can we get them, they’re the cutest things we’ve ever seen, etc. Usually Nicole will tell me Martin Margiela or See by Chloe, but this time these cute suede, ankle-tied, wedge heel booties belong to ZARA. And they’re $99!
By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.
Country Music Star Jo Dee Messina Is Pregnant - UsMagazine.com
Jo Dee Messina is expecting her second child with her husband of 4 years, businessman Chris Deffenbaugh.
The “Unmistakable” singer and Deffenbaugh already have a two-year-old son, Noah Roger Deffenbaugh, attach.
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Baby on board!
“Our home is quite incited. In a few months, Chris, Noah and I ambition be welcoming BABY #2!!!” the country music star, 41, announced on her Twitter Wednesday.
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Inside Kim Kardashian’s Lavish Vegas Birthday Bash - UsMagazine.com
Clad in a white curve-hugging digit with sheer panels, the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star connected her mother Kris Jenner, sister Khloe and her husband Lamar Odom and Kim’s friend (and former Dancing with the Stars associate) Mark Ballas in Sin City on Saturday.
After a low-key supper at NYC hotspot The Darby on Friday night, Kim Kardashian and her hubby Kris Humphries jetted to Las Vegas to continue her 31st birthday festival.
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“I can’t trust [Kim namely rotating 31]! I feel favor she’s still my 5-year-old tiny girl with pigtails,” Kris Jenner told Us Weekly aboard the ruddy carpet outside the space. “I get very mawkish when it’s their birthdays. You know I feel so close apt them merely the time is working along so fast.”
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Khloe grasped her sister because a disco before jumping on the mic to convey one expletive-laden cheers to the birthday girl and leading the room in singing “Happy Birthday.”
“Tonight was so many fun!!! Yummy meal at Lavo then fun night at Marquee! Thanks to everyone who came out! Now jetting back to LA!” Kim tweeted early Sunday.
Kim was presented with a cake from Gimme Some Sugar namely was in the fashion of her and her hubby Kris sitting in a pearly Ferrari with a custom Kardashian VI on the motorcar.
First the group sat for a fast dinner at LAVO, where they ate on a scatter of the Italian restaurant’s specialties including their Kobe meatballs with tomato sauce, chicken parmigiana, veal, steak and Ceasar salad. They toasted the birthday girl with Midori Sour cocktails and champagne.
The Kardashian klan left coated up their night at around 2 a.m.
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Next they headed to Marquee Nightclub inside The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, where Kim and her group sat at a VIP chart surrounded by a packaged house.
wholesale moncler dressing PIC See Snooki’s New Red Hair Color
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Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi and her Jersey Shore housemates are not strangers apt painting the town red, and now the starlet has done the same apt her hair,wholesale moncler clothing!
“Thank u my adore @BradleyStyleNYC for the intense hair workout lol!” the star tweeted with a pic of the terminal look.
The daytime ahead, she and her go-to hair pro Bradley Moreland of NYC’s Gemini14 Color Bar Salon tweeted several pics guiding up to the her big hair makeover reveal.
The 23-year-old debuted a fiery current hair color during her exterior at a New Jersey mall in Freehold above Saturday.
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This isn’t the premier time the reality star turned entrepreneur and writer has been in the red — she stained her hair “fireball” in July 2010, fair days behind she officially trenched her trademark pouf.
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Moreland, who also spiced up Snooki’s ‘do with lavender Great Lengths Extensions this summer, accustom Goldwell color to accomplish the starlet’s ravishing red locks.
This Fall, Pipit Grows Up
—Meenal Mistry
Dustin Horowitz is admittedly a Philo-phile, yet his admiration as infallibly cool, stripped-down luxury dates back apt mid-nineties Helmut Lang. “It’s an elegant we grew up with, everybody from namely era,” said Horowitz, catching a crash from his lookbook shoot last week. “It’s something that’s really not worked away for a lot of human, yet it’s likewise variety of just back in the wind anew.”
That brand of imminently wearable minimalism advised the fashionable Fall ‘11 intention of his under-the-radar wear tag Pipit. Though Horowitz has forever worked within a few neat profiles, focusing aboard fabric and texture, what was once quirky (overdyed and creased tartans, dresses made of Tyvek) chez Pipit is immediately clean, silence, and color-blocked. A piece favor the straight-cut shift in bone Ultrasuede with its sleeves and back pieced in black cotton—reportedly a favorite of his cardinal stockist, Barneys New York—has adult, no-brainer chic in spades. He’s also introduced a new sack, a kind of unconstructed drawstring hobo.
There’s a another seventies feel to Pipit’s Fall scope in its apronlike simplicity and, of course, the Halston-y Ultrasuede. Horowitz had a copy of Helmut Newton’s Page From the Glossies near at hand. But his slightly off-color palette of grays and earthy yellows comes from present-day furniture designer Roy McMakin’s subversively classic work. And when Pipit’s new look—with its advisable and on-trend hemlines—is undeniably less girlish, it avoids creature overly serious alternatively preciously ladylike. Happily, so do the prices, which hover between $260 and $290, and aren’t going to be nudged up at the extra sophisticated outlook. “I like working within this co-op price point where you must extend and come up with material within that price point,” he says. “It’s challenging and fun.”
Photo: Courtesy of Pipit
Cheap & Chic Denim Romper - UsMagazine.com
PHOTOS: Spring’s hottest neatness trends
By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To peruse extra of the Recessionista blog, press here
If you want to attempt out the trend now, pair your romper with black tights, booties and a leather bomber. When the weather gets warmer, you can dress it unattended or with a tank alternatively lacy bra peaking out. Throw ashore some flip-flops or wedge sandals and you’re good to go. Another tip: Add a black bandage or a leather belt to heighten your waist.
Loving this Susie Rose denim romper! It looks fair favor Kate Bosworth’s Mulberry edition, but you tin get it because just $16 by walmart.com.