Plug Power stock: buy or sell?
Updated on:
September 20th, 2019
3
Plug Power Inc., an alternative energy technology provider, engages in the design, development, commercialization, and manufacture of hydrogen fuel cell systems primarily for the material handling and stationary power markets in the United States.
Should I buy Plug Power stock?
Make a decision about when to buy or sell stocks is one of the hardest parts of being a trader or investor. Having a trading plan helps to make decisions easier, quicker and with less hesitations. There are thousands of trading strategies for you to choose, but at Stocks2.com we prefer those that are simple but successful.Just 1 of our buy setups matches with Plug Power stock now:
| Buy setup | Elegible |
|---|---|
| New all-time high | No |
| New 52 week high | Yes |
| Price crossing up 200d MA | No |
| 100d MA crossing up 200d MA | No |
Is Plug Power stock a buy?
Financial institutions and banks publish stock ratings everyday.
At Stocks2.com, we detected 3 ratings published for PLUG stock in the last 30 days.| Date | Analyst / Broker | Previous rating | Current rating |
| 2019-8-7 | HC Wainwright | n/a | Buy |
| 2019-1-30 | Roth Capital | Sell | Neutral |
| 2019-1-10 | HC Wainwright | n/a | Buy |
Plug Power stock analysis
Daily outlook
Shares of Plug Power slightly fell a lame -0.36% and closed at $2.80.
Plug Power ended today at $2.80 and slightly fell a lame -0.36%. On August/16 PLUG price bounced up over the SMA of 200 days demonstrating to be a significant support for this stock. From a daily perspective, PLUG is in a short term uptrend after plotting its last bottom ($2.11, on September 3rd) higher than the previous bottom, and its last top ($2.94, yesterday) also over the previous top. Now trading in between its last bottom and last top PLUG might consolidate in a plain range, waiting to break out over $2.94 or down under $2.11. Since last May when SMA100d and SMA200d crossed up, PLUG price gained $0.23 per share (8.95%).
Weekly outlook
Plug Power ended this week at $2.80 and boosted a super good 5.66%. For 5 weeks in a row, price climbed and marked a profit of 33.97%.
Since SMA20d and SMA40w crossed up late April, PLUG price climbed $0.28 per share (11.11%). Since price and SMA40w lines crossed up by mid February, PLUG climbed $1.18 (72.84%).
Plug Power stock price history
Plug Power IPO was on October 29th, 1999 at $157.50 per share1. Since then, PLUG stock lost a -98.20%, with a yearly average of -5.20%.
1: Adjusted price after possible price splits or reverse-splits.
Plug Power stock historical price chart
PLUG stock reached 52-week highs yesterday at $2.94, and all-time highs 2000-01-24 with a price of 1565.
Plug Power stock price target is $3.10
Nobody can reliably foresee how stock prices may evolve in the future. However, financial institutions invest time and resources to provide the most accurated estimations to help investors to make their decisions. The accuracy of these stock price predictions is not very high, and you should not blindly believe and make decisions only based on what this ratings or price target predictions say. For the last month we found 3 price targets for PLUG stock:| Date | Analyst / Broker | Action | Previous target | Current target | Diff |
| 2019-8-7 | HC Wainwright | Reiterates | n/a | $4.00 | - |
| 2019-1-30 | Roth Capital | Upgrades | n/a | $1.30 | - |
| 2019-1-10 | HC Wainwright | Reiterates | n/a | $4.00 | - |
| (in average) | $0.00 | $3.10 | 0.0% |
Financials and fundamental analysis
Earnings date and Earnings per Share
On March, Plug Power reported its latest financial data, posting an extraordinary gain for the Earnings per Share (EPS) ratio. Experts were expecting $-0.05 per share, but Plug Power posted $-0.08.| Quarter | Reporting date | Estimated EPS | Actual EPS | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-Q1 | - | n/a | -0.13 | n/a |
| 2017-Q2 | - | n/a | -0.19 | n/a |
| 2017-Q3 | 2017-11-08 | -0.04 | -0.18 | n/a |
| 2017-Q4 | 2018-03-07 | -0.07 | -0.09 | n/a |
| 2018-Q1 | 2018-05-09 | -0.06 | -0.07 | n/a |
| 2018-Q2 | 2018-08-09 | -0.06 | -0.08 | n/a |
| 2018-Q3 | 2018-11-08 | -0.08 | -0.07 | n/a |
| 2018-Q4 | 2019-03-07 | -0.05 | -0.08 | n/a |
| 2019-Q1 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 2019-Q2 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Annual financial results
In 2018, Plug Power annual sales boosted an amazing 74.37% to $174.63 million USD from $100.15 marked in 2017. When comparing 2018 vs 2017, in line, profit margin (that is, the net income divided by revenues) skyrocketed a 82.15% to -44.73%.| Year | Sales | YoY | Income/(margin) | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | $27 M | - | $-62.67 M-235.6% | - |
| 2014 | $64 M | 141.47% | $-88.49 M-137.8% | 41.20% |
| 2015 | $103 M | 60.81% | $-55.69 M-53.9% | -37.06% |
| 2016 | $86 M | -16.81% | $-57.49 M-66.9% | 3.23% |
| 2017 | $100 M | 16.55% | $-127.08 M-126.9% | 121.06% |
| 2018 | $175 M | 74.37% | $-78.12 M-44.7% | -38.53% |
Quarterly financial results
Plug Power reported $59.82 million in revenues for 2018-Q4, a 12.52% improvement compared to previous quarter. Reported quarter earnings marked $-16.85 million with a profit margin of -28.16%. Profit margin stepped up a 1.11% compared to previous quarter when profit margin was -29.28%. When comparing revenues to same quarter last year, Plug Power sales marked an astounding gain and rocketed a 74.89%. Looking back to recent quarterly results, Plug Power posted 3 negative quarters in a row.| Quarter | Sales1 | QoQ2 | Income1/(margin) | QoQ2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-Q1 | $15 M | - | $-24.04 M-157.7% | - |
| 2017-Q2 | $21 M | 36.35% | $-42.62 M-205.1% | 77.29% |
| 2017-Q3 | $35 M | 70.21% | $-40.98 M-115.9% | -3.84% |
| 2017-Q4 | $34 M | -3.29% | $-19.44 M-56.8% | -52.57% |
| 2018-Q1 | $29 M | -14.98% | $-19.84 M-68.2% | 2.04% |
| 2018-Q2 | $40 M | 37.30% | $-25.87 M-64.8% | 30.42% |
| 2018-Q3 | $53 M | 33.16% | $-15.57 M-29.3% | -39.83% |
| 2018-Q4 | $60 M | 12.52% | $-16.85 M-28.2% | 8.24% |
Plug Power ownership
When you are planning to buy a company, it's worth to overview its ownership structure.Management staff in all public traded companies that hold equity is required to report every transaction to the SEC. For Plug Power, 1.29% of all outstanding shares are owned by its staff.
In case of Plug Power stock, 26.58% of its shares are held by institutions (mutual funds, pension funds, big banks and other large financial institutions). Bearish positions for PLUG stock account 0.00%, no big difference from last month.
For a better understanding, the following table shows ownership data compared to other related companies:
| PLUG | APD | BLDP | CPST | ESNC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market cap | $663.4 M | $48.8 B | $1.2 B | $37.5 M | $0.7 M |
| Total shares | 236.9 M | 220.4 M | 232.6 M | 73.4 M | 68.1 M |
| Float shares | 220.1 M | 219.6 M | 180.1 M | 71.8 M | 45.5 M |
| - Institutional holdings (%) | 26.6% | 89.1% | 4.1% | 11.6% | 6.1% |
| - Insider holdings (%) | 1.3% | 0.2% | 29.9% | 1.9% | 33.9% |
| Shares in short selling | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Plug Power summary
| Friday, September 20th, 2019 | |
|---|---|
| Open | $2.84 |
| Close | $2.80 |
| Day range | $2.75 - $2.88 |
| Previous close | $2.81 |
| Session gain | -0.36% |
| Average true range | $0.14 |
| 50d mov avg | $2.28 |
| 100d mov avg | $2.35 |
| 200d mov avg | $2.10 |
| Daily pattern | lt06a |
| Weekly pattern | |
Plug Power performance
To measure stock performance is always good to compare with competitors or related stocks. For Plug Power, the benchmark is made against Air Products and Chemicals, Ballard Power Systems, Capstone Turbine, EnSync, General Electric, Lowe's Companies, Procter & Gamble and Walmart.| Stock | 3m | 6m | 12m |
|---|---|---|---|
| PLUGPlug Power | 21.74% | 12.90% | 47.37% |
| APDAir Products and ... | 0.25% | 20.28% | 33.11% |
| BLDPBallard Power Sys... | 42.82% | 74.92% | 23.17% |
| CPSTCapstone Turbine | -38.55% | -46.32% | -46.32% |
| ESNCEnSync | 0.00% | -95.00% | -97.06% |
| GEGeneral Electric | -10.42% | -5.92% | -19.57% |
| LOWLowe's Compan... | 10.63% | 6.74% | -3.16% |
| PGProcter & Gamble | 10.62% | 21.84% | 46.76% |
| WMTWalmart | 5.78% | 20.25% | 24.57% |