SiliconBeat

The only stock I track on my Yahoo! homepage that fell Thursday was SunPower, the San Jose solar cell and system builder.

According to a MarketWatch story, that’s because company execs at two events this week cast doubt on first-quarter revenue and earnings due to European and North American business, the troubled global economy and the weather.

The story quotes J.P. Morgan analyst, who said, “We are concerned that the company may need to raise additional funds within the next 12 months given its balance sheet position.”

Shares of SunPower closed at $23.10, down 3.95%.

SunPower, the San Jose maker of solar power chips, revealed in a filing Wednesday afternoon it signed a deal a week ago to supply at least 100 megawatts of solar panels and systems between 2009 and 2011 to City Solar Kraftwerke, a German developer of large-scale photovoltaic power plants.

Without supplying any financial details, SunPower stated that the agreement “is a material revenue opportunity.”

SunPower, the San Jose maker of electronic devices used in solar power systems, is getting a new chief financial officer, which is one way to announce its losing its current one. Dennis Arriola will begin work next month when he will “work closely with retiring CFO, Manny Hernandez,” the company said in a release today.

Hernandez (pictured), 52,  joined SunPower in 2005, but was previously an executive at Cypress Semiconductor, the company that spun off SunPower into a separate company in November of that year. SunPower chief executive Tom Werner announced Hernandez’s planned retirement in an earnings call with analysts on July 15.  At the end of August, however, Read the rest of this entry »

SunPower, the San Jose maker of chips used in solar-power systems, put out a press release Tuesday to address concerns about the impact of the bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers, a co-underwriter of the company’s 2005 initial public offering as well as its numerous follow-on offerings of SunPower’s stock and debt.

In February 2007, SunPower lent Lehman 2.9 million shares of its common stock to enable the investment bank Read the rest of this entry »

The marketing folks at SunPower (along with its shareholders) must be salivating this morning after the San Jose maker of chips used in solar-power systems revealed in a press release that the U.S. Department of Energy has installed a 205-kilowatt SunPower solar-electric system on top of its Forrestal Building in Washingto n D.C. (Pictured is Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman at the unveiling this morning of the installation, one of the largest solar power systems in Washington, D.C.)

In its release, SunPower says it’s PowerGuard solar-electric system was chosen for the DOE’s rooftop “because Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the board of directors at Cypress Semiconductor set up a committee that will be authorized to approve the distribution to its stockholders of the shares it owns of SunPower, the maker of chips used in the generation of solar energy that it spun out into a separate company in 2005.

The special committee is expected to approve the distribution after the Securities and Exchange Commission completes its review of SunPower’s preliminary information statement filed with the SEC on Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, Cypress Semiconductor sold 2.5 million shares of SunPower, the company it spun-off into a separate public entity in November 2005, reducing its ownership stake by 5.6 percent. Cypress continues to be SunPower’s single biggest stockholder, with 42 million shares, or 52.3 percent of SunPower shares outstanding, according to a filing with the SEC today.

The shares were sold to a private investor. The amount of the transaction was not detailed. SunPower shares rose 18 percent last Friday Read the rest of this entry »

SunPower named Marty Neese its chief operations officer Tuesday who will oversee construction of its newest solar cell fabrication plant to be built in Malaysia. Neese was formerly an executive vice president at Flextronics where he was in responsible for worldwide operations for the the Singapore-based provider of electronics manufacturing services, according to an SEC filing Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »