The Rally in Renewable Energy Equipment Stocks Could Be Coming to a Halt

Since the bottom in March, all facets of the renewable energy industry have made huge gains. Some of the renewable energy equipment stocks have seen gains of 800% and more. While the gains have been impressive, the rallies could be coming to an end or seeing a pause at the very least.

Three companies in particular jumped out at me because all three have seen pullbacks in the current week. Those pullbacks have caused a bearish crossover in the weekly stochastic readings. Enphase Energy (ENPH), Plug Power (PLUG), and SunPower (SPWR) are all three seeing their stocks drop this week. All three have seen big gains in their stock prices since March, but Plug Power stands out among the three.

Plug bottomed at a price of $2.53 in March and it recently peaked at $28.70. That is a gain of 1,034% in nine months. The huge rally has put the stock in overbought territory based on the weekly stochastic readings and the 10-week RSI. The monthly versions of those indicators are also showing overbought levels. SunPower and Enphase are both in overbought territory based on the weekly and monthly indicators as well.

When I got the signals for the bearish stochastic crossovers on the three stocks, I pulled the three up on Tickeron’s Screener to see how the stocks performed in the various fundamental and technical categories. The first that jumped out was that all three stocks received “sell” ratings from the Tickeron Scorecard.

If we break down the ratings, Plug and SunPower both have four negative fundamental ratings compared to only one positive reading for each one. Enphase Energy does considerably better with three positive ratings to only two negative ratings. The only area where all three get negative ratings is in the Outlook Rating. Plug and SunPower both get poor ratings from their SMR Ratings and the P/E Growth Ratings. Enphase and Plug both get negative ratings in the Valuation Rating category. The only area where two of the three get a positive rating is in the Profit vs. Risk Ratings—both Plug and Enphase score well in that category.

The stocks do score better in the technical indicators. Both Plug and Enphase have three bullish signals and three bearish signals. SunPower has two bullish signals and four bearish signals. There are several areas where we see all three stocks getting the same reading. All three are getting bearish signals from the RSI, the MACD, and the Bollinger Band indicators. All three have gotten recent bullish signals from the Momentum and AROON indicators. Because of the big rallies, both Plug and Enphase get bullish readings on the Moving Average indicator.

Investor and analyst’s sentiment is quite different for the three companies. Analysts love Plug with nine “buy” ratings and only one “hold” rating. Enphase is slightly below average in this indicator with 10 “buy” ratings and seven “hold” ratings. SunPower is the one that is the least liked by analysts with only three “buy” ratings, seven “hold” ratings, and two “sell” ratings. What this tells us is that analysts are expecting to Plug to outperform the others while SunPower is expected to underperform.

SunPower also has the most pessimism from short sellers with a short interest ratio of 3.79. That reading is a little higher than the average stock. Enphase’s short interest ratio is at 3.0 which is right in line with average while Plug Power’s short interest ratio is below average at 1.78.

Here’s how the three stocks rank in the various fundamental and technical indicators from Tickeron.