SUN Stock Price Gains Momentum on Clean Energy Push

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After finding double bottom support around $46.20, SUN was just upgraded by Piper Jaffray to Overweight from a Neutral rating. The firm now has a price target of $77 a share.

They also noted the pullback in the sector has been a “head-scratcher,” as quoted by The Fly, “since yields have recently moved lower and the market has gained more visibility on long-term federal policy support.”

solar panels

Another key catalyst for the solar stock is Joe Biden.

For one, he has a potential $2 trillion clean energy infrastructure plan on the table. Plus, he wants to “upgrade four million buildings and two million homes over four years to meet new energy efficiency standards,” as noted by The Conversation.

SUN chart

In addition, the U.S. has also pledged to cut solar energy costs by up to 60% in a decade.

“The U.S. Department of Energy said the goal accelerates its previous utility-scale solar cost target by five years. For the U.S. power grid to run entirely on clean energy within 15 years,” reports Reuters. “To get there, the agency committed to spending $128 million on technologies including perovskite solar cells, which are regarded as a promising cheap alternative to the silicon cells that dominate the market. Funds will also support research on cadmium telluride and concentrating solar technologies.”

Sunrun earnings also appear to be solid

“The fourth quarter capped off a transformative year for Sunrun,” said Tom von Reichbauer, Sunrun’s CFO. “The Sunrun team again delivered sequential volume growth and margin expansion. We also closed the acquisition of Vivint Solar and with more than four months of integration behind us, we’re increasing our expected cost synergies from the transaction from $90 million to $120 million. The combination of continued operational improvements and strategic advantage from our increased scale sets the company up for a break-out 2021.”

There’s also a good deal of market opportunity.

As noted in a company press release, “The growth opportunity for the solar industry is massive. Today, only 3% of the 77 million addressable homes in the U.S. have solar. The U.S. residential electricity market is over $187 billion per year and ongoing utility spending has resulted in escalating retail rates, increasing our value proposition and expanding our addressable market. In addition to delivering a superior electricity service, we are increasingly working to network our dispatchable solar and battery systems to provide resources to the grid, such as virtual power plants, to also serve the $120 billion annual market for utility capex.”

At the time of this writing, Ian Cooper did not hold a position in the Sunrun stock.