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Cree Has Banner Fiscal Year in Projects, Customers, and Profits
SSLDesign News Staff
August 13, 2010...Cree of Durham, North Carolina had a banner fiscal year in 2010. The year has given the company a string of new customers, and projects around the world as well as a positive financial performance. The company reported that its CR6 downlights wil be utilized in homes built by the charitable organization, Habitat for Humanity, and a consumer version of the CR6 downlight will be available at Home Depot this fall. Cree also announced that products based on its LEDs were installed at an Netherlands-based consumer products packaging plant by LedNed.
Cree reports that its annual revenues increased 53 percent compared to fiscal 2009 to $867 million.
The company's annual net income jumped a massive 402 percent.
Cree posted record revenue of $264.6 million for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2010, ended June 27, 2010. This is a 79 percent increase compared to revenue of $148.1 million reported for the fourth fiscal quarter of fiscal 2009 and a 13 percent increase compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2010. GAAP net income for the fourth quarter increased 445% year-over-year to $52.8 million, or $0.48 per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $9.7 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009.
For fiscal year 2010, Cree reported revenue of $1.45 per diluted share compared to $0.34 per diluted share for fiscal 2009.
“Fiscal 2010 was a great year for Cree and the LED lighting revolution,” stated Chuck Swoboda, Cree chairman and CEO. “We made good progress building momentum in our business and delivering on our four key objectives for the fiscal year. Entering fiscal 2011, we are focused on extending our leadership position while we build the scale, cost structure and channels to win in the market.”
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Lighting Science Group LED Street Lights Installed in Spain
SSLDesign News Staff
August 13, 2010...Lighting Science Group has completed the installation of its Prolific series of street lights
along the streets of Banyeres de Mariola Alicante, Spain. The company boasts that its Prolifc Series of street lights are 50 percent more efficient than traditional HID street lights, provide more uniform light distribution, increase light levels, and save Banyeres de Mariola Alicante thousands of dollars in energy cost over the life of the fixtures.
Lighting Science claims that the street lights are maintenance free.
An independent laboratory reportedly tested the Prolific series under the rigorous LM-79 process approved by the U.S. Department of Energy's CALiPER program. According to Lighting Science, the test results show that the Prolific street lights outperform competing products on the market. Furthermore, the company says that the maintenance-free Prolific LED technology eliminates costly re-lamping and re-ballasting of HID street lights and direct line wiring is used in place of starters or capacitors to further eliminate traditional maintenance issues.
"The Prolific series LED street lights bring into balance the need to responsibly illuminate roadways and reducing energy consumption and maintenance cost. The Prolific series is the perfect solution for communities and cities all around the world that are looking reduce energy use," said Zach Gibler, Chief Executive Officer of Lighting Science Group. "I would like to thank Eyeleds Spain SL for introducing our cutting edge products into Spain and INELBO S.A.U. for installing them."
Nexxus Lighting Unveils 2nd Generation Array' LED Replacement Lamps
SSLDesign News Staff
August 13, 2010...Nexxus Lighting, Inc. of Charlotte, North Carolina USA, today announced the production of its 2nd generation Array' Lighting line of products.In addition to the company's new Par 38, the Gen2 R30 and R16 are now available with a 2700 Kelvin color temperature and improved color rendering indexes exceeding 80 CRI. Both of the new Gen2 product lines are UL listed, and can be ordered in either architectural white or custom black housings. They will feature the new Lighting Facts label on the packaging.
The Lighting Facts label provides a standard format for listing key performance elements. Third party LM-79 testing has already been completed for the new Gen2 R30 and those reports, along with required IES files and LM-80 test data on the LEDs, can now be downloaded from the Nexxus Lighting website at www.nexxuslighting.com or the Array Lighting website at www.arraylighting.com.
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Cree and Habitat for Humanity Break Ground on First All-LED Habitat Home
SSLDesign News Staff
August 10, 2010...During this past weekend, Cree, and Habitat for Humanity of Durham kicked off the construction on the first Habitat for Humanity house to be lit with all LED lighting fixtures. Habitat for Humanity is a charitable organization dedicated to providing quality housing to the poor and underprivileged.
Cree is sponsoring the construction of this home, with Cree employees assisting as volunteers on the project. The home will include Cree's newest LED downlight, the CR6, as well as other LED products featuring Cree LEDs. The LED lighting is expected to save approximately $250 worth of electricity costs per year compared to traditional lighting.
The LED lighting in the new Durham home, located at 1015 Moreland Avenue, is part of Cree's previously announced three-year, $1.5 million pledge to provide its LED downlights for all new Habitat homes built in the U.S. The house is sheduled to be completed by October 2010.
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Commentary & Perspectives...
LED Lighting Market Has Room for Less Fancy
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
August 12, 2010...In a pair of May editorials (Driving down the costs - Part 1 & Part 2) we talked about some of areas where cost will be driven out of LEDs and solid state lighting solutions. In both, we discussed how we might hit price floors that the industry will settle on and simply add features to, similar to how laptop PCs have stubbornly clung to something around a $500 price point as the floor for something fairly full featured. That doesn't mean everyone will head to the low point with their products. There is going to be plenty of room for varying levels of quality and engineering that will reflect as "commercial" versus "consumer" or "feature rich" versus "base model". There will also be examples of products that are thoughtfully designed to be commercial grade, without having to be particularly pretty, for the job they do. How many of us have marveled at the artfullness of the gymnasium lights?... Fair to say 'none'?.
As an example of cost-optimization, we're seeing some interesting examples play out in the virtual aisles of Home Depot. Back in the May/June time frame, Home Depot added an A19/Edison type incandescent replacement under the EcoSmart brand name (their in-house private label brand), courtesy of Lighting Sciences Group. I haven't seen it show up in my local Home Depot yet, but it does show up online as a "40w equivalent" for $19.97. LSG hasn't commented that I know of, but the industry consensus is that we're looking at the same product as their Definity A19 3000K model that puts out about 430 lumens on about 8 watts (54 lumens/watt). Interestingly, while it's priced for less than $20 at Home Depot, it sells for substantially more inside the commercial lighting channels. It looks like a good placeholder product that LSG would presumably plan to cost engineer, and perhaps "feature down" as time passes, while "featuring up" the commercial versions to justify the higher selling price. One can only guess if LSG is making any money on the EcoSmart version, given that Home Depot needs some margin in order to carry the product. Survey says... well, it doesn't seem to be a hard guess. Keep in mind, cell phones are all sold well below cost in order to make it up in service, so as long as your plan includes making money "with the business model" it can all work out.
In another move at Home Depot, Cree has apparently cut a deal to add the giant as a retail channel for their CR6 downlight. The CR6 was announced a bit ago as a cost-optimized approach to compliment their popular LR6 which was the original "good enough for prime time" commercial market entry product acquired as part of the LLF deal. There hasn't been an official announcement yet, but Cree President, Chuck Swoboda, let it be known in their recent earnings conference call that the CR6 would be stocked under the EcoSmart brand, and selling for less than $50. As Chuck said, Cree's goal is to, "...challenge people's addiction to inefficient lighting," and this looks like a good way to move that agenda forward. The product has shown up on Home Depot's website, and according to the statement on the call, it should be in the stores this fall.
Since their conference call, Cree's stock price has been punished for forecasting $270M - $280M in revenues next quarter, when the analysts were averaging a guess of $284M. How dare they... They did turn in a 48 cents a share net (up 400%+ from a year earlier), which came in short of analysts expectations, and they aren't getting much credit for 56 to 59 cents a share forecast beating the 54 analysts say they expected. The stock market is a fickle mistress, no doubt, and one suspects the analysts either didn't hear, or didn't much care about the Home Depot deal. Of course, this is all reported by folks that can miss on their interpretations of "the why" in probably the same way they might make a small goof on "the who" (cached version of "supercomputer maker Cree..."). Oops, that would be C-R-A-Y. Personally, I think it's a jittery market that is looking for excuses to to explain bits of irrationality, or "guilt by association" when it shows up. Cree, LSG, and Nexxus are the only publicly traded LED/SSL fairly pure-plays, so you're never sure what "the street" really thinks they are, and what success is going to look like.
On the other track, regarding "engineered but not fancy", we had a chance to visit a rare local-to-Austin SSL manufacturer named Ringdale. It was an interesting visit, with their facility located in the not-fancy area of nearby Georgetown, right next to the airport, in an unassuming building that is being remodeled with their own solid state lighting and controls. It was difficult to pin down exactly what Ringdale's expertise was ahead of time, as LED lighting is a new avenue for the 30+ year old company. We had the pleasure of spending some dedicated time with Klaus Bollmann, who is CEO and head visionary for the company. Klaus has been "extracting light" from things for a similar 30+ years, going back to days at the epitaxial level with semiconductor lasers. What we saw was some non-glitzy common sense engineering that appears to be backed up by results. A big part of their ActiveLED product line is built around a custom implementation of Nichia die and phosphor that they have packaged (not by Nichia) into a neat 4x9 array that is mounted to their secondary heat sinks with clips that allow the metals to expand and contract without stress as you would find in other bonding approaches (they have the IP on that trick). They have also designed their extrusions that reflect and direct the light to take advantage of the natural imperfections that come any time you have light passing through materials, whether it be lenses or simply air. By harnessing imperfection, they are able to get the light where they want, without having to take "exotic" or "perfect" approaches to get it to do that.
They've also taken a general approach of not eeking out every bit of performance into the smallest package, and lo and behold, the "relaxed" system isn't pressing the envelope of anything. Big, nearly mil-grade capacitors were selected for their highbay's power supply so that getting to rated life wasn't going to need to be a 'hopefully' proposition. How long do lightly-taxed power LEDs run when you keep the junction temps at a sane level? The answer is 'a long time' (ask again after the ActiveLED luminaires been running for 10 years and we'll probably have an even better estimate of how much longer they'll go for). Ringdale also developed their own controls, taking advantage of lessons they learned from years in the printer protocol and networking environments. The wall control is intuitive and simple, with high and low settings, as well as motion sensor timeouts all easy to program, at a price that appears easy to swallow. The control itself typically connects to the fixture nearest the switch (which is usually battery backed-up with nearly a week of runtime), and then the rest of the fixtures wirelessly sync levels with whatever the master has been set to. The controls and back-up side has set them up to take advantage of solar systems, including incorporating an approach that slightly dims the lights as the battery state slowly declines. That results in radically extending the useful amount of light without taking the batteries to the levels than can impact their lifetime.
They've got some artsy products as well, including a nice shiny walkway bollard, but even that uses the same simple building blocks, without having to get fancy. There's always room to bring common sense to the party.
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Don't miss the SSL Summit Series, kicking off September 14-15 in New York City, conveniently in Manhattan. It's all about quality, so if you are a luminaire manufacturer that would like to connect with some of the top lighting decision makers in the area, you won't find a more efficient two days during this year. Any luminaire manufacturer receiving product visibility is being vetted for basic quality criteria, but if your company doesn't quite have those LM-79 reports and datasheets all matched up yet, fear not. You're absolutely welcome to attend for the top-level networking and "how to get it done" discussions that can make it even more critical that you find your way there. Visit www.SSLsummit.com for series details, or jump directly the NY overview here.
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