Stock price when the opinion was issued
80% of the North American market is owned by Generac. The market is about 6.5% penetrated. Every 1% increase in penetration increases revenues by about $6B to the industry, so you can do the math. Hurricanes and weather outages are what drive this company. Sees outages continuing as the grid deteriorates.
An interesting play on grid deterioration, and people taking matters into their own hands when you can't trust the local power company.
We think it is a hold, although growth has been slow/declining and it is not cheap at 19x forward earnings. EPS is forecasted to grow at approximately ~20% annually for the next three years, so there is some appeal if GNRC can start consistently meeting/beating expectations. The risk is that it does not offer a safety net of any dividend, but GNRC does have a decent buyback yield at 3.51%. We do not think it is a must own, but it does have high cash flows and if revenue and earnings growth picks up it could look more attractive.
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Demand for solar power and their stocks enjoy huge tailwings. ESG is one. Companies like Blackrock and Exxon Mobil are making ESG a serious priority, for example. Secondly, out electric grid is falling apart. Witness the Texas outage last winer. Third, new homeowners are happy to add solar panels to their roofs as prices of panels keep plunging. Fourth, governments are supporting solar panels more and more; for example, the federal government is offering tax credits, and Biden wants to extend the solar tax credit by 10 years. Also, Biden has slapped tariffs on foreign panels, and the American industry is divided over this. A few years ago they made acquisitions to store solar power energy. Stock looks pricey now, but the stock has quadrupled over 16 months. Buy a small position now. A great way to play solar energy.