STR Holdings Shares Plunged: What You Need to Know

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of solar-panel components maker STR Holdings (NAS: STRI) fell behind a dark cloud today, dropping as far as 24.9% on very heavy volume.

So what: Management warned us a month ago that the second quarter wouldn't look too bright and the stock took a 19% beating on that news. Now the results are in, and almost exactly as good or bad as we were told to expect -- and there goes another run down the gauntlet.

Now what: STR shares have now lost some 39% of their value over a six-week period and trade for just over 8 times trailing earnings. To be fair, that's downright expensive in the solar industry as sector neighbors LDK Solar (NYS: LDK) , ReneSola (NYS: SOL) , and JA Solar (NAS: JASO) all trade for less than 3 times earnings -- though all of those companies are Chinese and STR is as American as apple pie and baseball. I think it's fair to say that STR investors are getting swept along with today's general market panic, creating a great buy-in point for opportunistic investors.

Interested in more info on STR Holdings? Add it to your watchlist.

At the time thisarticle was published Fool contributor Anders Bylund holds no position in any of the companies discussed here. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool is investors writing for investors.

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