Pacific Ethanol, Inc. (PEIX)

Renewable fuels going down.

zero dollars

As we work to become less dependant on imported oils & fuels, the markets for other forms of renewable fuels will continue to grow. If everyone would only encourage the use of ethanol instead of fearing it on unfounded stories of it's damaging effects!!!! I often find people who really believe that using ethanol will damage their cars when what it really does it clean out the old gunk and allow it to run better and also cleaner. Of course you will find that when the gunk comes out you will possibly need a new fuel filter in the older model cars but any car with a fuel filter needs a new one occasionally.

Keeps gasoline cars on the road. Helps with price. And I am willing to pay more for food that is produced in the US than oil produced else where. Just wish they had an E85 station around me.

takes 1700 gallons of water to make a gallon of this stuff

beaten down like the corn it needs to run its process, but once corn returns to a normal level, this stock will grow tall

PEIX is at a low and most institutional investors have sold, the new plant coming on line will add to cash flow and the undying need for fuel will help keep demand up. Expect improvments in financials in the next two quarters.

Corn prices are on the rise like it's nobody's business. I don't need any analyst to tell me that...I go through the "10 Items or Less" line in my grocery stores and still end up with a $78.50 bill...I'm qualified enough to tell you prices are on the rise!

So, back to investing...PacE (my nickname for this soon to be out of business company) is doomed. First, the price of their input (corn) is exploding. I do not see an end in sight. I think we'll all just get used to higher food costs over the years. Secondly, their buisness model is stupid. Ethanol is stupid. I hope the next President eliminates corn based ethanol, but hope is what you have when nothing else is left. How about we drill for oil rather than burn food in gas tanks? I like that business model much, much better.

Rising food prices reduces revenue

Oversold on the floods of cornfields in the midwest. But there is a large support for alternative energy stocks, especially as oil shoots up. I personally do not believe ethanol is the future of energy... it's actually a very bad source due to emissions and the cost of making it... (and the fact that it takes oil to run the machinery to plant/harvest it....)

The uptrend could last several weeks, as it just hit a 52-week low after a spike. It should be no less than $3.

Rising corn prices are going to make it tougher to offer ethanol at a competitive price

Bottom fishing at this level you should be well below plant replacement cost. As long as the mandates hold and the price of corn does not get too high, the stock will be o.k. from here.

Increased prices for corn and the suffering of corn crops in 2008 will increase materials cost. In additiion, government regulations can turn adverse for firm.

I owed this in reality but lost badly. Now I think all biofuels are bogus and there is crop catastrophes in the midwest.

The current growing sentiment against corn-based ethanol is a big problem for this company. On the upside, I see the government grant they received in January to construct a test facility that will generate ethanol from cellulosic sources (i.e. not food). Target of this plant is 2.7 million gallons annually, about 1.4% of their current capacity and about 0.5% of their planned 400 million gallon capacity.

I did some research into cellulosic ethanol in university and recall that the process was generally considered more expensive than the corn-based process, but with corn prices climbing quickly the higher process cost will be offset by a very low feedstock cost. I'll be watching the results from the test plant carefully, if it can scale to large capacity Pacific Ethanol will be on the ground floor of a fundamental shift in ethanol production which will see ethanol produced from much cheaper, non-food sources.

Price/ tangible book value: 0.5.... very good!
Debt/tangible book value: 75%... hmm?
Shares hold by insiders 10-20% ... good!
Current ratio: 0.66.... Very bad bad bad!
Sentiment about the sector: Everybody hates it... very good!

They desparately need to raise working capital....
60M of their current liabilities are plant construction related. Their current ratio would be 1 if they could refinance those with long term debt.

This stock shot up quick after their earnings report and then quickly went back down after their market offering of some more shares which will add to the outstanding amount of shares. However I think the financials looked good and the demand for ethanol is not going away anytime soon (as absurd as the whole thing is) so I'm betting on an upward trend over the next 3-6 months for Pacific Ethanol.

This stock is the basic materials sector of the market place and in the industry of chemical manufacturing. It's revenues for last year 2007 tatoled $461.5M and net loss appliciable to common decreased 79% which reflect increased sales volume of ethanol and a rise in the average sales price of ethanol.

monster spike in volume with light volume retracement. One to keep an eye on, especially if it breaks through its 2 yr dowtrend line