• George Soros, Hedge-fund manager and billionaire just went green.
• He recently announced that he would be investing over $1 billion of his own cash into clean energy technology.
• Of course, he’s doing this because of the profitability of it all, and what hedge-fund manager would do it for anything else?  Although, he did mention that the investment should “actually make a contribution to solving the problem.”
• Congrats Soros, you’re a winner, now just convince your friends to stop being cheap bastards and do the right thing as well.

• Look at that face.  This man isn’t messing around.  He wants cleantech, and he wants it now.
• That’s why he’s made statements like this; “If it were up to me, I would put every cent into electric cars.”  I like your blunt nature, sir.
• Already, the DOE’s put billions into the auto industry for plug-in vehicles: Ford ($5.9 billion), Nissan ($1.6 billion), Tesla ($465 million) and Fisker ($528 million).
• I know a lot of people don’t like him.  I say, let’s re-visit this topic 3 years down the line, I think they’ll be singing a different tune by then.

• GM just sold 80% of the Hummer brand to Tengzhong and 20% to a private investor for $150 million.  They apparently have plans to manufacture a “green” hummer.  Good luck with that.

• Portland Oregon based Iberdrola Renewables has a lot to be happy about right now.
• They’ve applied for eight grants going towards renewable energy projects with a total of 980MW and $1.8 billion in investment.  They’ve received grants on all eight applications!
• Just last week, they received three grants from the US Treasury Department in total of right around $251 million.
• To date, they’ve received a total of almost $550 million in stimulus grants.
• Iberdrola currently has wind farms under construction in Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Illinois, and North Dakota.
• To put it into perspective for you guys, construction of 980MW worth of wind projects will support in between 11,800 and 14,000 jobs in one year.  That’s great!  Keep up the good work Iberdorla, companies like yours are driving us into a cleaner future.

• Now that the Cash for Clunkers program has drawn to a close, some interesting numbers are starting to come back.  Here are the top ten cars that were bought/clunked.

Most Popular Cars Bought

1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Ford Focus
4. Toyota Camry
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Toyota Prius
7. Nissan Versa
8. Ford Escape FWD
9. Honda Fit
10. Honda CR-V AWD

Most Popular Clunkers

1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
5. Ford Explorer 2WD
6. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Ford F-150 Pickup 4WD
9. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
10. Ford Windstar

• Is it just me, or does there seem to be a consistency here with the nationality of cars bought/clunked?  Hey US auto, get it together, eh?

• Essentially, The solar sector’s been ambivalent over the first four months of 2009, jumping from layoffs and losses all the way to hugely promising milestones, further establishing the uncertainty of today’s market.  We’ve seen a few reputable clean tech investment surveys, we’ve seen startups go under, and even the largest solar deal in history go down, but what’s next for the industry?  Here’s all the important things that’ve happened over the last four months so you can better respond to that question.
• An overwhelming consistency in solar headlines have discussed sinking demand and lack of capital to be the leading contributors behind current stalls in solar industry growth.  Lux Research predicted over a year ago that supply would exceed demand in 2009, which is exactly what’s happening.  They expect 2009 capacity to reach 10.4 GW, while demand will be near half that at 5.3 GW, down from 5.5 GW in 2008, leaving behind mountains of polysilicon inventory.  The Cleantech Group found worldwide green tech VC investments dropped 41% to a total of $1 billion in first quarter 2009 compared to Q4 2008.  Solar did take home the largest chunk of that funding, with a total of $346 million.
• We’ve seen tons of lost jobs thus far, and the solar industry’s no exception.  SunPower, GE Solar, BP Solar, Optisolar, Ausra, and Heliovolt all announced layoffs.  OptiSolar, specifically, shut down operations selling all of its current and upcoming projects (1.85GW) to First Solar in  a $400 million all-stock deal.
• Market darling, First Solar’s had quite the Q1 themselves.  Their stock price was only down 9% in late February, looking quite nice against the S&P 500’s average of -18% and fellow companies Solarfun’s -43%, JA Solar’s -52%, and ESLR’s -63%.  First Solar also doubled their fourth quarter profits, but expects a “flat to slightly down” Q1 2009 due to 10-15% of the customers being at risk of defaulting on their contracts.  On the positive side of things, the company’s successfully achieved 1GW worth of thin-film solar module production as well as lowered manufacturing costs to 98 cents per watt, down from $1.08.  Most recently, FSLR blew people’s minds by tripling their Q1 profits when compared to the same quarter last year.  There is some skeptisim to the accuracy of the claim as the company’s apparently been using some new accounting techniques, boosting their income on paper rather than through actual sales.
• Brightsource, out of Oakland, signed a deal with Southern California Edison in early February, which locked down the largest solar deal in history.  The agreement includes 7 separate projects, for a total of 1.3GW.  Mark this down as cleantech-utility-pwn #2 for Brightsource, who’d already locked in a deal with PG&E for 900MW over five projects.  SunPower and Exelon announced last week that they’d be developing the largest urban solar power plant in the US, totalling 10MW and residing in Chicago’s south side.
• On the same utility note, PG&E plans on building out 500MW worth of projects within the next year, at a cost of around $1.4 billion.  They’re even seeking approval from state regulators for  200MW worth of solar panels in space, to be provided by Solaren.
• Then to add even more positive outlook to the pot, the Chinese government made an announcement in the last week of March that shot solar stocks upwards.  They expressed their interest in solar development by offering subsidies up as high as 60% of the cost of installation and boosting demand by 200 MW.  This bumped the Chinese Solar Stock Index up 27.1% with Suntech up 38%, Yingli Green up 35%, Solf up 20%, LDK up 33%, China Sunergy up 29%, and Canadian solar up 17%.  Yingli Green Energy even announced that a branch of Bank of China is going to extend $880 million in loans to the company.  Less than a week ago, China announced that they’d be accepting applications up until May 15th for solar projects beginning construction in 2009, slated to finish within 2 years.
• When it comes down to it, First Solar’s CEO Michael Ahearn was on point when he explained that “Looking out three to five years or beyond, the market outlook for solar power has never been better, but the short term outlook has never looked more difficult.”  As I said back in December, the companies that can make it out through 2009 will come out leaner and stronger, as the weaker one will fall off.
• In general, or atleast for 2009, I’m long on solar.  What are you thoughts?  Will we see growth through 2009, or will everything stay on pause?

Stay up to date with these recent posts:

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• AT&T reported solid earnings today, showing little to no signs of slowing from the rough economic state. Beating the Street estimates, the death star delivered first quarter net income of $3.1 billion, or 53 cents a share, on revenue of $30.6 billion. CEO Randall Stephenson said the company continues to play through a tough economy and invest in growth areas.

Highlights:

• AT&T added 875,000 new post-paid subscribers, up 9.2 percent from last year. They now have 78.2 million total wireless subscribers (40% own a 3G device)
• Wireless data revenue is up 38.6 percent from a year ago.
• AT&T doubled the amount of text messages delivered to more than 94 billion. Wow.
• 1.6 million iPhones were activated in the first quarter (40% new to AT&T). That’s down from 1.9 million in the fourth quarter and 2.4 million in the third quarter.

• AT&T added 284,000 U-verse TV subscribers to hit a total of 1.3 million TV subs.
• Total broadband subscribers (includes 3G wireless cards) increased by 471,000 in the first quarter to hit 16.7 million.

Looking For A Job Or Need To Hire? Join The Thousands On TinyComb’s Job Board

• In the wake of GM asking for more money from our government, (no big deal, just $2.6 billion more) I had to post this chart displaying why GM didn’t deserve any of the help they’ve received thus far, and certainly doesn’t deserve more.  If this graph isn’t proof enough that GM sucks, I don’t know what is.
• The above chart via PatentCafe for their “Automaker Patent Assets Intelligence Report” represents GM’s patent portfolio as compared to the entire industry average.  As you can see, GM has devoted minimal effort towards Green Tech patent development.
• Although the data used was from 2007, PatentCafe still says, “The data suggests that General Motors is diverting resources away from core technologies toward development of telecommunications, lowering its Green Tech priority even further. Toyota, on the other hand, continued its Green Tech commitment with 158 applications compared to General Motors’ 20.”
• The report was submitted as part of Obama’s Presidential Auto Task Force and assisted in the decision to recommend that former CEO, Rick Wagoner, step down from his position.
• Just for comparison sake, 29.1% of Toyota’s portfolio represents Green Tech, 26.3% for Ford, and 22.8% for VW, while GM is at 15.1%.
• We’ve gone on far too long rewarding American companies for mediocrity.  I personally can’t wait to see GM go down.  They’ve been anti-progressive for too long and are way too caught up in the corporate america/oil lobby they’ve answered to for decades.  It’s too late for forgiveness.  GM….You’re fired.

Want to keep up on green tech in the automotive industry? Check out these recent tinyComb posts:

Apple Developing Safer In-Car Touchscreen System

Premature Leakage: The Tesla Model S

Fisker Automotive Airs It’s First TV Commercial

Cleantech Automotive: Volume 2: Pre-Geneva Motor Show

Palm Going All In With The Pre

• Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq:PALM) today reported preliminary results for its third quarter of fiscal year 2009, which ended Feb. 27, 2009. Palm is burning through cash, looking for more investment and further proving that unless the Pre is a major hit, the company is in trouble. I’ve said before that Palm is pushing their chips all in with their new smartphone; the below report further explains it. Palm will report its complete third-quarter fiscal year 2009 financial results on Thursday, March 19, 2009, and will host a conference call to review the complete financial results beginning at 1:30 p.m.

The company announced that it expects to report revenues for the third quarter of fiscal year 2009 in the range of $85 million to $90 million. The revenue declines vs. the company’s second quarter of fiscal year 2009 and third quarter of fiscal year 2008 are the result of reduced demand for Palm’s maturing legacy smartphone products, the challenging economic environment and later-than-expected shipments of the Treo(TM) Pro in the United States. The company expects declining revenues and continued margin pressure from its legacy product lines in the fiscal fourth quarter.
“The much-anticipated launch of the Palm^(R) Pre(TM) remains on track for the first half of calendar year 2009, but as expected we’ve got a difficult transition period to work through,” said Palm President and Chief Executive Officer Ed Colligan. “Despite the challenging market environment, the extraordinary response to the Palm Pre and the new Palm webOS(TM) reaffirms our confidence in our long-term prospects and our ability to reestablish Palm as the leading innovator in the growing smartphone market.”

Palm stated that cash used in operations for the quarter is expected to be between $95 million and $100 million. The company’s cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments balance is expected to be between $215 million and $220 million at the end of the third quarter.

Although Palm believes it has sufficient cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments to meet its working capital needs under its current operating plan, the company intends to strengthen its working capital position given the challenging economic environment and the opportunity to drive both the launch of the Palm Pre and future product-development efforts. The company is currently evaluating options in this regard, including the exercise of its right to direct the remarketing of a portion of the common shares underlying the Series C preferred stock and warrant units owned by Elevation Partners. Palm is entitled to retain any net profits realized from such remarketing.

• In retrospect, I have to agree with Farhad, but will a VC give the money back? Consider this; A VC who loses confidence or interest in a company can choose to cease new investments in that company and get diluted, or give the money back. But why would they? An LP who loses confidence in a VC fund technically still faces a legal obligation to continue meeting their capital calls. At best, they face losing all their capital. At worst, they have no choice but to throw good money after (perceived) bad. (EarlyStageVC). So as VC’s continue to live off of fumes (the average return is lower than a government bond, with a much higher magnitude of risk), will they continue to raise new funds, continue to take their 2% (and 20-30% of profits) in the belief that the good times are around the bend, or will they concede? With the overcrowded market, it seems that the life of the VC cannot live on as they once have before. It has been 11 years since the venture industry has returned more cash than it has plowed into investments, according to the National Venture Capital Association. The industry is now managing $257 billion, up from $64 billion in 1997. The general sentiment in the market since it has crashed is to avoid putting money into an industry than hasn’t turned a profit in that amount of time. So, the question now may be less of when will they give it back, as when will the VC’s run out of money, starting the long awaited industry shakedown? If there was any year to have it happen, 2009 seems appropriate. Look out.

(Image Via Forbes)

• A new provision might give Verizon $1.6 billion in credits in the next two years to bring fast Internet connections to rural and low-income areas*. The House bill that passed Wednesday will provide $6 billion in grants to broadband projects. The latest Senate bill increases those grants to $9 billion says The WSJ.
• Here is the breakdown of tax cuts: Companies would get a 20% tax credit on investments made on broadband speeds of at least 5 megabits per second for unserved areas and a 10% cut for investment in low-income and rural areas.
• Providing unserved, rural, low-income areas with speeds of at least 100 megabits per second gets a 20 percent credit. Currently Verizon FiOS is one of the only ISP’s with speeds at or above 100 megabits per second, and here is why they will cash in.  It’s all in the small print. The bill says “A qualified subscriber, with respect to next generation broadband services, means any nonresidential subscriber maintaining a permanent place of business in a rural, undeserved, or unserved area, or any residential subscriber.
• ”or any residential subscriber”–means that Verizon will get a tax cut for continuing to build out their FiOS network, which they are already currently doing. AT&T and the smaller phone companies don’t have technology that meets the 100 meg-bit-per-second threshold and Comcast is just beginning to roll out their new technology to meet the qualifications. According to analysts, Verizon is planning to spend $4 billion a year to continue building out FiOS, meaning they would get an annual tex credit of $800 million. The tax credits are in place to encourage the company to accelerate its plans and run FiOS past more homes over the next two years. How much did Verizon have to pay senator Rockefeller of West Virginia to include those last 4 words in the bill?
• What’s not included in the bill is that along with the tax credits to build the infrastructure, is an incentive to create more jobs with the additions or cut prices. Verizon, who cut 2700 jobs the day after Thanksgiving, and has cut 15,000 jobs since 2003 is receiving nothing but free money for this initiative. What’s worse is that the Senate proposal also would not require any recipients of the credits to abide by network neutrality. Verzion is already getting grants to help build out the 700 mhz wireless spectrum they won the auction for last year, and on top of that they had another record year, beating analysts projections by a landmark in the down economy. Remove the last 4 words from the bill, require them to create more jobs and lower prices, and then you have got yourself a potentially legitimate infrastructure grant. Other than that, this is ridiculous.

What Do You Think? Fill In The Blank In The Comments Section:

I Think This Deal Is (A) __________

• There’s no doubt about it, ‘Question and Answer’ based search is finally going to find a home in the US for 09′. The concept was originally made a phenomenon by South Korea’s No.1 search engine, Naver. This year, we have seen quick success with Mahalo launching their take on the service, Mahalo Answers, and now mobile QA search company ChaCha has just raised $30M to continue their strong growth.
• Although two different platforms, Mahalo Answers and ChaCha will run into eachother at some point down the road. Mahalo recently enabled a way for anyone to email Answers@mahalo.com (member or not), and crowdsourced answers will be mailed back for free. ChaCha users (no membership needed) SMS their question to 242242 and receive an answer back from am outsourced ‘guide’ getting paid per response. Standard SMS fees involved plus your text back includes a text-ad. I have been using both services, and I find ChaCha to be more convenient on the go due to speed, however on the standard web, I find myself using Mahalo Answers a few times a week for random questions I don’t have the time to search for.
• In a perfect world of speedy, quality responses, would QA based search become your preference?

• Google earnings expected to be grim when they are released Thursday. According to the WSJ, U.S. search advertising spend fell 8% in the fourth quarter of 2008 from the same period in 2007, according to a new study from search advertising firm Efficient Frontier, whose search industry spending index was flat for most of 2008. The study — which covers an undisclosed portion of the $750 million in annual spending the company manages globally — marks the first quarter of negative annual growth for its index in the several years Efficient Frontier has been gathering such data, says James Beriker, president and CEO of the firm”.
• Sampling a search advertising firm may not predict the whole industry pie that includes Google, Yahoo and MSN, but if search marketers are seeing revenues drop, it should be a good sample of what is to come.
• Here are a few things that might throw off the numbers for Google.
  • First, if market share had anything to do with it, Google’s has actually grown to 72% over last year’s 65%. That a direct result of more online search adoption, and could help to offset falling revenues. I said the same thing with Amazon, where the reason why they had such a big holiday season was a simple math problem.
  • Second, Google has been pulling out all the stops this quarter to find new avenues to drive revenue. In September, Google began allowing beer and wine companies to advertise, and as of recently hard alcohol companies. In addition, they have begun monetizing Google Maps, casual games, mobile search, and more for the first time ever.
  • Third, Google has always said that in a bad economy, many retailers and other advertisers flock to Google because it’s one of the few places to keep a close eye on your pennies. Between Google Analytics and conversion tracking, it’s unlike any other form of advertising. Holiday advertising spend showed this.
  • Fourth, Android, Google’s mobile operating system is expected to pick up quickly this year and is expected to out sell the iPhone’s OS by 2010.
• To me, it’s not this 4th quarter that is worrisome. Between Google adding new ways to monetize different products, adding significant market share and branding themselves as ‘the place to go to advertise in a bad economy’, they will be fine. However, I think Q1 will see tougher times for the search giant. Q1 will see a Google that has squeezed out revenue from any potential products, no holiday season and a slowly growing online search adoption through the first 2 quarters. Here are a few more stats from the study:

• • “Advertisers who spend less than $50,000 on search ads cut their spending by 23% year-over-year, while advertisers that spend more than $200,000 on search per month cut spending by 9% during that time. Purchases by advertisers who spend between $50,000 and $200,000 were relatively flat.”
  • “Finance and automotive advertising continued to deteriorate. Search-ad spending among financial advertisers fell 20% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007. Search spending from automotive advertisers declined 15% during that period.”

• Private Equity blogger, Dan Primack has discovered something interesting in an SEC filing names eBay founder Pierre Omidyar as an executive of a new stealth startup called Ginx. The service, which is currently available for invite-only participants is said to be a micro-blog management service that recomends news, images, and other items to users based on their interests.
• Ginx is alreay being used as a URL shortener on Twitter by a handful of people including Omidyar, similar to Bit.ly and tinyURL. Could the eBay king really be getting back in the game for a venture in an industry that has valuations of pennies compared to his previous ventures and acquisitions? Check out this link, to see a sample of what the service does and see for yourself if this is something worthy of an eBay founder.
• Hopefully with this venture, the same mistake that eBay made won’t arise. Here’s 10 Reasons Why eBay Died.