August 27, 2009 ndash; LDK Solar (NYSE:LDK) announced an agreement with Yancheng City of Jiangsu Province for the development of a number of PV projects (ground-mount, roof and BIPV) totaling up to 500MW over the next five years. And Canadian Solar (Nasdaq:CSIQ) said it has signed a LOI with the Administration Committee of Baotou National Rare Earth Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, for rights to design, install, operate and maintain a 500MW solar facilitynbsp; in Baotou. The three-phase project is expected to start in September 2009 and run through December 2011 (phase 1: 100MW; phase 2 and 3: 200MW). These announcements mark an important trend in the solar markets and one that we have been commentating on a lot lately ndash; the further move by midstream solar firms to vertically integrate downstream and even moving into operations of solar facilities. Cowenrsquo;s Raj Seth this morning commented on the ...

April 2, 2009 ndash; Analyst Comments ndash; Pacific Crestrsquo;s March Bachman said today that he expects First Solarrsquo;s (Nasdaq:FSLR) acquisition of Optisolarrsquo;s project pipeline to be complete this week, in an all-stock deal valued at $400 million, which will be less dilutive to shareholders than when first announced given the stockrsquo;s increase since March 2. Other key takeaways: middot;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; 21 individual 10MWac projects in Ontario Canada could reasonably be expected to be installed at $1.50/watt of EPS ($380 million) middot;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Expect First Solar to announce further manufacturing capacity expansion middot;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; 21 projects will not be eligible for newly proposed Canadian Feed-in Tariff middot;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Price target on stock is $209, based on 25x 2010EPS estimate of $8.38; maintains OUTPERFORM rating