Lithium-Ion Battery Stocks!

[greasemoney]

One is Polypore (PPO), a North Carolina-based company that makes sophisticated filters and separators for use in lithium-ion batteries. According to analyst Craig Irwin at Wedbush Morgan, Polypore supplies the separators for the iPad’s li-ion battery (Polypore hasn’t confirmed this). Irwin’s revelation last week gave shares of PPO about a 10% boost. Cabot Green Investor subscribers bought Polypore in June, making the Apple connection a welcome bonus to what we already saw as a compelling investment.

That’s because lithium-ion batteries are the next generation of batteries that will eventually all but eliminate the lead-acid battery we use in most applications today. Li-ion batteries can be more fully charged more often than lead-acid batteries, lose their charge more slowly when not in use and are generally much lighter for the power they can store than comparable lead acid batteries. In the iPad, li-ions offer over 10 hours of operation on one charge, by some accounts.

The real growth market for li-ion batteries is in automobiles, especially as electric cars like the Nissan (NSANY.PK) Leaf and hybrids like the Chevrolet Volt roll out. Last fall, another brokerage, AT Kearney, estimated the market for li-ion batteries in automobiles was just $32 million in 2009, but will skyrocket 700-fold to $22 billion by 2015 and then $74 billion by next decade.

Polypore is a leading supplier of separators for lead-acid automobile batteries already, making the shift into the more sophisticated, higher margin li-ion business a natural transition. It also makes filters and separators for the food and beverage industry, membranes needed in the pharmaceutical industry and filters to remove waste products from blood. Lead acid batteries remain a growth area too, thanks to Asian industrial demand. Polypore easily beat Wall Street expectations in its latest quarter, reported two weeks ago, posting sales of $150.1 million and earnings per share of 33 cents. For the full year, we see sales rising as much as 20% to over $600 million, while posting $1.22 or more in per-share profit.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/221847-3-green-stocks-for-playing-the-ipad?source=yahoo