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Cypress to Invest $8.8M in Silicon Solar Cell Maker
Online staff -- Electronic News, 5/31/2002
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. plans to invest $8.8 million in privately held SunPower Corp., giving the San Jose company a 44 percent stake in SunPower, the companies said today.
As part of the investment agreement, Cypress will also be able to increase its stake in Sunnyvale, Calif.-based SunPower, which makes ultra-high efficiency silicon solar cells.
SunPower’s products include concentrator solar cells, which use a lens or mirror to concentrate sunlight; one-sun solar cells and arrays for specialty applications such as solar-powered aircraft and race cars. The company also makes silicon-based optoelectronic devices for telecommunications and industrial applications. According to Cypress, SunPower’s cells are 33 percent more efficient than most commercially-available cells.
Citing research from Strategies Unlimited, Cypress said it believes the retail solar cell module market will double from its current level to more than $3 billion in 2006. Solar power and other renewable forms of energy are projected to capture an increasing share of the global energy market, the company predicts.
"The solar cell business represents a great opportunity for several reasons," said T.J. Rodgers, Cypress’ president and CEO, in a statement. "Even without the negative effects of political volatility, conventional sources of energy, such as oil, will be supplemented or replaced with renewable forms of energy.
"In an effort to grow faster than the revenues from our core communications businesses -- and to accelerate our growth toward our objective of $1 billion of revenue per quarter -- Cypress is seeking to engage in investment-level transactions with related but independent companies that we have the option to acquire," Rodgers added.
