Solar Plays Following Hillary Defeat

Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the run for U.S. presidency represents an “incrementally negative” for the alternative energy space, mainly due to the “loss of policy support that had been likely” in case she had won, Barclays’ Jon Windham said in a report.

Although most U.S. renewable demand has historically been driven by state policy, rather than federal policy, Trump’s victory is likely tomeaningfully impact the solar sector.

While Clinton’s campaign had called for the expansion of solar capacity to 140GW by the end of her first term, there has been no indication from Trump whether his administration would support renewables “in a meaningful way,” analyst Windham pointed out.

Broadly Negative

“We view the Presidential election results as broadly negative for the entire solar space, but especially for names with exposure to distributed generation, which in part is supported by a generous IRS interpretation in valuing roof-top leases, in our view,” Windham wrote. He added that Trump could roll back some of President Barack Obama’s executive orders.

The analyst named key stocks that could be impacted, including:

• SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ: SCTY): Rated Underweight.
• Solaredge Technologies Inc (NASDAQ: SEDG): Rated Overweight.
• SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ: SPWR): Rated Equal Weight.
• Sunrun Inc (NASDAQ: RUN): Rated Equal Weight.

Image Credit: By lorie shaull (source) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons