Meyer Burger - Buy the rumour, sell the news?

2019年7月17日

Meyer Burger Technology (MBTN) is a Swiss solar supplier mid-cap in the semiconductor sector.
Despite having a bad performance the last months, I got a tip to look at this stock more in detail. Of course, this is a speculative investment!

As I do not (yet?) have a profound understanding of fundamental analysis to analyse the key figures of Meyer Burger, thus I will first to provide you some news of this year from swiss sources and then also bit of technical analysis.

I got some inspiration for my TA from DLavrov in his Live stream which you can watch here: youtu.be/hF1iOw9Mpf0?t=5660


Joint venture with REC Silicon for new solar technology?
A recent news from Finanz und Wirtschaft, one of the biggest financial newspapers in Switzerland, reported that Meyer Burger wants to union with a major customer REC Silicon (REC) which is a solar module manufacturer. Until now, Meyer Burger got an order from REC Silicon for their Heterojunction technology of around CHF 74M. This Technology combines the advantages of crystalline silicon solar cells with those of thin-film technologies. The solar cells thus achieve higher efficiencies and lower production costs. (3). In consideration of this big order, it makes sense, that Meyer Burger plans to step in the business with ready-made modules. The CEO of Meyer Burger speaks of REC Silicon as a "dream partner". With this strategy, Meyer Burger will be able to earn on the next level of the value chain. Furthermore there exists already a Joint Development Agreement with REC Silicon. (1)(2)

As of today, there is no confirmed information, over a possible merge of Meyer Burger and REC Silicon. Possible would also be a takeover from one or the other side or a Joint Venture around the HJT-technology. (2)

Involvement in Oxford PV
Meyer Burger already tried in spring to get more involved in the cell production when Meyer Burger communicated an involvement in Oxford PV, a start-up which develops HJT-cells further to Perovskite-Tandem cells on a Meyer-Burger-machine. Meyer Burger then acquired a share of 18,4% of Oxford PV using 62,29M new issues shares. Although, Oxford PV sold it's assigned shares only a week after receiving them at prices between CHF 0,60 and CHF 0,61 which was a discount of 11% to a small group of selected investors. On top of that a non-executive member of the boards of directors also bought shares to this discount prices and was able to make profit this way. and was Observers though speculate that Oxford PV just needed liquid funds. Also to mention, Meyer Burger's CEO Hans Brändle joined the board of directors of Oxford PV which corroborates further the intentions of Meyer Burger for a strategic partnership with Oxford PV. Still, Elysium Capital, a major shareholder of Meyer Burger commented critically on the missed opportunity to ask / inform it's shareholders about issuing and selling of this big amount of shares, and furthermore criticised that only a selected circle of investors was able to participate in buying these shares. (4)(5)(6)

Meyer Burger vs. Sentis Capital
Further to this situation, these sold shares from Oxford PV may decide, if the position major shareholder Sentis Capital can enforce its claims or not. The investment company of the Russian-born billionaire Petr Kondrashev requires a strategic realignment and a statutory strengthening of shareholder rights. As obviously the Meyer Burger's board of directors tries to resist against these demands, there may happen a struggle for power between them and Sentis Capital. Furthermore, Sentis Capital launched a website (7) to rally as many co-shareholders as possible. Some observers see the cross-shareholding with Oxford PV only to push down the voting power of Sentis Capital. According to Meyer Burger, Sentis Capital held, before creating the new shares for Oxford PV a share of 7% of votes. (4)(5)

As I am not well versed in financial numbers crunching, I am unfortunately not able to analyse the key figures of Meyer Burger, yet... :-)


Chart / Fundamentals
Some interesting connections I found between Fundamentals and Technicals:

• End of April, Sentis Capital a major shareholder, communicated it's mistrust in Meyer Burger. In addition to the points already mentioned, there was also lack of rights of the shareholder in the general meeting criticised.
  
• The current low of CHF 0.43 happened at 8th of July 2019, 3 Days after "Finanz und Wirtschaft" wrote about the partner ship between Meyer Burger and REC Silicon
  

Technicals / Trading Idea
Let's get down to brass tacks. As the price of Meyer Burger is clearly falling, it makes sense to have a look at the chart too, to find good buy opportunities.

• Market broke uptrend in March 19 and is currently in a downtrend.
  
• Around CHF 0.45 is a strong of support which held the market already once in November 16
  

Trading Idea
As the Price is at a strong support right now, you may now buy some volume. Anyway, it is safer to wait for some retrace like when the price breaks the blue resistance line. It is possible to add volume if the price can break MAs like 50, 100, 200 also which is a clear sign of strength. As I also provided a lot of fundamental news, it also makes sense to learn German ( :-) ) and search the Swiss news sites like fuw.ch or cash.ch to get the newest news about Meyer Burger and be one of the first to FOMO in, because "you're in for the technology", jokes aside, af course knowing also the fundamentals of this mid-cap gives further security to invest in this speculative asset.



the touch of my drawed line at CHF 0.30 is solely to demonstrate the trading idea, when looking at the chart you can actrually see there is alo of support around CHF 0.45 and it is probably already reversing

I am not a financial advisor you shall not take this idea as financial advice. This idea's purpose is solely to educate and ahare my ideas.



Sources:
(1): https://www.fuw.ch/article/meyer-burger-sucht-den-befreiungsschlag/
(2): https://www.fuw.ch/article/meyer-burgers-hoffnung/
(3): [url= meyerburger.com/de/technologien/photovoltaik/hocheffizienz-technologien/heterojunction/] meyerburger.com/de/technologien/photovoltaik/hocheffizienz-technologien/heterojunction/
(4): https://www.fuw.ch/article/meyer-burger-steht-turbulente-generalversammlung-bevor/
(5): https://www.cash.ch/news/top-news/oxford-pv-macht-kasse-klares-misstrauensvotum-fuer-die-aktie-von-meyer-burger-1306166
(6): https://www.dgap.de/dgap/News/corporate/elysium-capital-zaesur-bei-meyer-burger-technology-notwendig-wegweisende-hauptversammlung-mai/?newsID=1137807
(7): https://www.changemeyerburger.ch/meyer-burger-gv/

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2019年7月19日

註釋

Little Update:

It actually continues the downtrend, I found a nice channel to observe too:


I would not buy until it at least breaks the channel.

2019年7月22日

註釋

NEWS: MBTN fell today from 0.43 to 0.36 (-15.28%), with a daily low of 0.3172 (!).

What happened??
NZZ, one of Switzerland's biggest Newspapers titles: "Meyer Burger is running out of air - everything is possible, even a flog abroad", well that doesn't sound good at all, but what actually happened?

So lemme tell you:
-> They announced today, their EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) is actually a loss of CHF 14M. Thanks to selling their wafering business they get to a black zero. 2018's EBITDA was CHF 8,3M.
-> Turnaround for the first half of this year is CHF 120M. This is only about half than the prior-year period which was CHF 201M (without the turnaround of the sold wafering business)

-> Not enough new, big, orders (CHF 25M total). Also, the orders are for standard PERC technology whose profit margin decreased a lot already.
-> Only promising possible order of CHF 100M is a US-Startup which wants to use their new HJT technology. Though, precondition is a successful financing round of that startup. If succesfull, down payment will occur in fourth quarter.

-> Management announced they will review their business model and strategy. "They will consider all options".

As mentioned, an option would be to partner up with another business, though Meyer Burger does not want to go into detail at the moment who this could be. Difficulty is, that most of the manufacturers upgraded their factories for PERC technology, a switch to the HJT technology would thus mean another big investitions first for them. So it makes sense, to partner up with a company which is already using HJT technology, like already mentioned REC Silicon. So there is a probably very profitable speculation on the breakthrough of the HJT technology of Meyer Burger possible. Time will tell.



Sources: NZZ, FuW

2019年7月24日

註釋

The quiet after the storm:

As expected, after the hard dump, the price could get back up a bit.

But now the price gets resistance at the previously identified descending channel. Additionally, the ascending wedge, which got tight just at the lower end of said channel, certainly didn't helped further recovery of the price either.

Fundemantally speaking, neither did the news about the proposal about Russish main shareholder Pyotr Kondrashev's Sentis Capital to elect members of it's own Board of Directors as additional members to the Meyer Burger Board of Directors. (1)



Sources
(1) cash.ch/news/top-news/solarzulieferer-meyer-burger-aktionaerin-sentis-schlaegt-eigene-vr-mitglieder-vor-1370380

2019年7月31日

註釋

Update after some more or less turbulent trading days:

Technical point of view:
- MBTN formed an ascending triangle which broke up, as expected. Hourly MA50 played a bit of support here after breaking said Moving Average.
- Successful restest of the ascending triangle.
- Run got stalled by the upper line of the descending channel and got then rejected completely by the hourly MA200.
- We have a bearish divergence and MACD crossed down on the hourly chart.

Fundamental point of View:
Looks like I did analyze the situation not accurate anough before. Actually, at the moment it looks like the main shareholder Sentis Capital and it's group of shareholders, need to gain more influence to be able to push their demands.

Thus, they seem like buying shares to increase their holdings of Meyer Burger which also will possibly attract FOMO buyers (or already did). Sentis Capital raised their holdings to 8% and with the whole group they hold about 10%. At an earlier point of time, Sentis Capital held alone 6% and although it's demands got rejected by the board of directors, their demand was able to get a not to be despised 42% of votes. So this can actually get very interesting indeed.. (1)(2)

One of Sentis Capital demands are, to cooperate with REC to advance in the solar cell production. However, it is to be feared that a merge with REC could have financial disadvantages for the Meyer-Burger shareholders. In this context, the shareholders' group's desire to exert influence on the strategic repositioning may also be at stake. (2)



Sources:
(1) FuW App (Subscription only)
(2) cash.ch/news/top-news/oppositionelle-aktionaersgruppe-kaufen-die-aktionaere-bei-meyer-burger-weiter-zu-1373614

2019年8月10日

交易進行

It looks like Meyer Burger is now getting down to brass tacks.

Due to following reasons, I opened my position Friday morning.

On August 8th, Meyer Burger announced their strategic partner, Oxford PV ordered for CHF 20M HJT-production line including the necessary adjustments for the upgrade to the perovskite HJT tandem technology. Which as aforementioned reduces costs and increases efficiency even more compared to "normal" HJT cells. This partial order shall enable an initially production capacity of 100 MW for Oxford PV. Until the end of 2020, they want to raise the capacity to 250 MW. (1)

Frank Averdung, CEO of Oxford PV, said, "With our first order, we are well on the way to becoming the world's first manufacturer of perovskite HJT tandem solar cells, and we are delighted to partner with Meyer Burger, a global leader Photovoltaic Equipment and Technologies - Building on Meyer Burger's expertise, we're shortening the time to market for our perovskite HJT tandem solar cells. " (1)

This news relieved the shareholders as the lack of orders is actually a pain point in Meyer Burgers preliminary published key figures for the half-year result of 2019.

On 9th August, UBS-Analyst Alessandro Taiana commented that he spoke with the Oxford PV CEO. The analyst expects the next months with further orders from the partner company and thus awakens the hopes for even more orders on Friday. (2)

Result of this relief among shareholders was, that the price broke out on August 8th of the range between 0.385 and 0.395 which got established on the beginning of the week (Aug 5th) and started to rally by over 16% in two days. This also broke the descending channel and also the resistances at 0.40 and 0.45 as the market bravely held 0.45 and closed on Friday even a bit higher at 0.46. This is roughly a performance of +15% this week.



Additionally to this new order the opposition around Sentis Capital is still growing, they hold now about 11,125% of votes. According to Sentis, the Group will probably grow even more. (3)

Note: At Thursday, August 15th, there will be held a Webcast about the Financial results for the first half of 2019 of Meyer Burger Technology AG. You'll find the link to it in the sources. (4)

Sources:
(1) finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2019-08/47390095-meyer-burger-technology-ag-medienmitteilung-thun-8-august-2019-353.htm
(2) cash.ch/news/boersenticker-firmen/meyer-burger-aktien-im-zuge-von-auftragsfantasien-gefragt-1380006
(3) cash.ch/news/top-news/solarzulieferer-meyer-burger-die-opposition-waechst-1378018
(4) 78449.choruscall.com/dataconf/productusers/meyerburger/mediaframe/30985/indexl.html

2019年11月20日

註釋

Little Update:

TA on 4H / 1D:
- 0.46 has been attacked multiple times already
- Main support line seems to hold pretty good
- SMMA6 crossed up EMA30* and already acted as breather before another attack
- seems like we have a nice cup and handle pattern here too

* Steve Nison PB&J long strategy

FA-wise, the fights between Meyer Burger and Sentis Capital could be cleared up, as a candidate from Sentis Capital did not get elected into the board of directors in an extraordinary general meeting. This means, shareholders stay behind Meyer Burgers Strategy, for which they got critizised by Sentis Capital numerous times in the past few months. Also Meyer Burger is now concentrating even more in concentrating on their core competencies by selling an IT-subsidiary and also selling their Main building near THun in Switzerland, this gives also more liquidity to support their strategic realignment.

I'm Bullish.