Cells to Dump Its Stake in REC?
Rumors spread yesterday that Germany’s Q-Cells was planning to sell its 17.9 percent stake in Renewable Energy Corporation. Q-Cells, the world’s largest solar cell manufacturer, declined to comment on the rumor that sent its stock down 3.7 percent to €73.53. Norway-based REC is currently building 1.5 GW manufacturing plant in Singapore that will combine its wafer, cell, and polysilicon fab works. It’s been a tough few weeks for Germany’s publicly traded solar, whose stocks are down across the board over investor concerns that the CDU will succeed in its bid to cut the country’s feed-in tariff by 30 percent within the next year. The rumor follows on news from the end of April announcing Norwegian industrial Orkla had ended its put option in Q-Cells’s shares of REC. In February, Good Energies sold 12.48 percent of REC to Orkla and what would become Q-Cells’s 17.9 percent stake. At the time of the sale, Orkla struck the put option deal with Q-Cells, which was worth about $13 million. The
