Multibaggers for future

What is similar between Apple, Google and Buffett? Nothing at the first glance, dig a bit deeper and one comes across multibagger personalities. All of them are in different businesses rarely encountering others as competitors but I can’t help myself imagining the ever upwards sales and profit charts for these companies (Berkshire Hathaway in case of Buffett). All three of them share some common traits. Core business Apple and Google excelled in their initial businesses of computer hardware and internet search. None of them were the first entrants (a number of mainframe makers were present when Apple started) but harnessed the potential of being ‘not so late’ entrants. Buffett, on his part can easily find a place in the list of all time great investors on the basis of his early investment in Coke and Gillette. It was the firm belief in the value investing ideals that he refused to invest in any of the dot coms. Needless to say, Buffett had the last laugh. Diversification Ap

Corporate valuations of the cleantech firms have always been an issue of fervent debate. On one hand, a set of market participants advocates usage of traditional valuation methods (discounted cash flow, comparable company analysis etc.) to arrive at a figure, while another school of thought propagates the consideration of intangible variables like the impact of new technology on common masses and the quantum change the technology promises to bring in daily life of an average user. Automotive battery and electric vehicle manufacturers are no exceptions with a number of low sales, concept stage companies receiving high valuations. Here are a few examples. A123Systems Inc. The company was incubated in MIT in 2001. After initial rounds of funding and dropping the original idea of self-organizing batteries, A123 scored big with a contract to supply batteries to Black & Decker power tools in 2005. The company has raised around US$300m in as much as six rounds of funding excluding the com

Alternative energy storage and powertrain investments have been on rise lately. Apart from many venture capitalists taking a U-turn on their investment policies ( Vinod Khosla being the prominent one), encashing the old industrial investments and dedicating significant portion of their corpus for clean technology (Former president candidate Al Gore's Generation Investment Management Fund et al). After the recently completed investments of Berkshire Hathaway in BYD and GE ’s investment in A123 (battery manufacturer) and Think Global (makers of TH!NK City electric vehicle), an Israeli company has raised US$12m in Series A funding for the development of electric vehicle propulsion technology. Quercus Trust and 21Ventures LLC jointly invested in ETV Motors . The company is developing micro-turbine technology , another possible ‘game changer’ in plug-in hybrid-electric vehicle (PHEV) market. ETV is contelplating the vehicle propulsion system as a combination of high voltage lithium

Automotive battery market is heating up. Last week, the state of Michigan approved investments by four battery producers amounting to US$1.7 billion . Lithium-ion battery technology, which is often touted as the most mature technology for the automotive use dominated the investment space in the state. However, the week also witnessed a rather unusual deal between battery major Exide Technologies and relatively unknown Axion Power International . Axion is a small company focusing on Lead Carbon battery technology. The company is working on the similar lines as Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in developing the activated carbon battery. Axion Power is taking a slightly different approach with its battery technology replacing the negative electrode with microporous activated carbon. The company is confident that by doing so it will be able to overcome major drawbacks of lead acid batteries namely high weight and low energy density. Whil

Are we out of the woods now??? I'm not sure about it, but going by the laws of physics it looks the worst is over. After the months of bad news flow, even the absence of bad news is positive for the markets. So here we go, US automotive sales in the first quarter is a down by some gruesome number and the US treasury department continues to burn lots of green after the Detroit automakers and their supplier entourage for the cars no one would like to drive five years down the line. But the government can be spared on the ground of being a mere economic agent for the redistribution of wealth. Some individual portfolio investments in the current gloom however stand out. Warren Buffett has invested in a Chinese automobile and battery manufacturer BYD thinking that electric is the future of automotive industry (People will drive something afterall…the Oracle has also secured a pillion ride in Harley Davidson). This ‘never say die’ spirit is impressive, eventually everything that goes d

German engineering and energy giant Siemens AG has acquired 28% stake in Italian solar thermal company Archimede Solar Energy (ASE) for an undisclosed amount. The terms of the acquisition allows Siemens AG to increase its stake in the company to the majority level. Archimede, a subsidiary of Italian industrial group Angelantoni Industrie is a producer of solar receivers which use molten salt as the heat transfer fluid. The capital raised from the acquisition would be used in the expansion of Archimede’s production capacities. Siemens believes that the solar thermal market is set to cross €10bn mark by 2015. While Siemens is already a market leader in steam turbine-generators for solar thermal power plants, the acquisition has paved the way for the company to become a major solution provider for solar thermal plants. Solar thermal power plants use high temperature collectors to concentrate sunlight using mirrors or lenses. The concentrated energy is used by the heat transfer fluid to p