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Investors Take Dim View Of Evergreen Plan
Evergreen Solar came up with what looked like a clever method of financing expansion of a solar-panel factory, but its shareholders on Friday were unimpressed.

Marlboro, Mass.-based Evergreen Solar (nasdaq: ESLR - news - people ) announced the pricing of a secondary public offering of $325.0 million in senior convertible notes, due in five years, to raise equity for the solar-power-panel plant in Devens, Mass. The notes will pay 4.0% interest.

Investors, concerned about a potential dilutive effect to their shareholdings, knocked the stock down 7.6%, or 82 cents, to $10.01, in late- afternoon trading in New York.

Evergreen granted underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional $48.8 million worth of notes if the offering is oversold.

The incentive for potential buyers is that, assuming the stock price rises by 2013, shareholders can get their convert their notes into cash and stock, said Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Al Kaschalk.

The solar company said each $1,000 note was valued at 82.6 shares, at an initial conversion price of $12.11. Notes can be converted into cash up to $1,000, and if the stock trades above $12.11, any additional value would be paid in shares.

But this would have a dilutive impact on the company's existing shareholders by increasing the number of Evergreen shares outstanding, explained Signal Hill Group analyst Michael Carboy.

To get around this point, Evergreen entered into a capped call transaction with an affiliate of Lehman Brothers, the lead underwriter, that will raise the effective conversion price to the company to $19.00 per share. Lehman will provide the extra stock Evergreen would have to issue should its shares trade above $12.11 and below $19.00.

This way, if the shares do appreciate, as the company and shareholders hope, the conversion will have less of a dilutive impact.

Carboy said this was a smart strategy for Evergreen because it allows the company to raise equity at a relatively cheap price, providing the capital it needs to grow while minimizing the dilutive impact to shareholders. The downside for investors is that for the plan to work, the share price must appreciate, meaning the company must perform well both operationally and in share price value, Carboy added.

Friday's announcement widened the scope of an initial pricing of $300.0 million of notes announced Wednesday.

Cowen analyst Robert W. Stone said that Evergreen's transaction is significant for the company because the raised capital make it much more certain that its second phase of expansion at the Devens factory will come to fruition. Stone, who rates Evergreen as "outperform," said the expansion "should drive strong growth in Evergreen's revenues and earnings in the next couple of years."
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Solar-power firm devises innovative capital-raising mechanism to minimize dilution, but shareholders don't see it.
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Parting With the Pastor
LAST MONTH, during a speech on race in Philadelphia, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) repudiated "in unequivocal terms" the explosive sound bites from his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., without denouncing him or repudiating their long relationship. In a confident address that discussed in an effective and intelligent way the impact of race on American life, Mr. Obama sought to put the rights and wrongs of the Rev. Wright into understandable historical context.

Yesterday was a different story. A downbeat Mr. Obama announced at a hastily convened news conference in North Carolina: "The person I saw [Monday] was not the person that I met 20 years ago." Forcefully breaking from the Rev. Wright, Mr. Obama said: "The insensitivity and the outrageousness of the statements shocked me and surprised me." He added that they contradict "everything that I'm about and who I am."

We didn't join the renewed and growing chorus calling on Mr. Obama to renounce the Rev. Wright after the minister's all-about-me rant at the National Press Club on Monday, but the candidate's motivation is pretty obvious. The Rev. Wright praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, said it was plausible that AIDS was a genocidal tool of the U.S. government to kill African Americans and proclaimed that attacks on him were an attack on the black church. He also delivered a deliberate poke in the eye to his former parishioner, suggesting that Mr. Obama's conciliatory Philadelphia speech was nothing but politics. With each defiant utterance Monday, the Rev. Wright dug a deeper political hole for Mr. Obama.

Did Mr. Obama climb out of that hole yesterday? It seems to us that the whole sorry episode raises legitimate questions about his judgment. Given the long and close relationship between Mr. Obama and the Rev. Wright, voters will ask: How could Mr. Obama have been surprised by the Rev. Wright's views? How could he not have seen this coming? Mr. Obama didn't help matters much by initially seeming to dismiss the furor building over the Rev. Wright's Washington performance, just as he did with the initial uproar last month. At a media availability at an airport Monday afternoon, he displayed none of the anger and sorrow that etched his face in North Carolina one day later.

But Mr. Obama is right when he says that his entire career is antithetical to the divisiveness of the Rev. Wright's comments. We've found things to cheer and things to criticize about Mr. Obama during this long campaign, but we don't see how anyone could question his commitment to transcending old racial battles and finding common ground. The Rev. Wright doesn't speak for the candidate, and we hope the pastor doesn't become a continuing excuse for political ads built on racial fears.
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We hope the pastor doesn't become a continuing excuse for political ads built on racial fears.
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You can get a private jet with a wraparound sunroof for just $53 million
For those poking around the private jet market but not seeing anything that truly embodies conspicuous luxury, aircraft manufacturer Embraer has the answer: a plane with a wraparound sunroof.

The sunroof wraps around the sides and top of the aircraft, offering amazing views to the surrounding skies. The windows are the size of a typical door on a commercial plane.

Embraer has given the Lineage 1000 aircraft with this feature the "Kyoto Airship," and the price starts at $53 million.

Jay Beever, Embraer's vice president of interior design, told Wired that a potential customer of the Kyoto Airship would be a Japanese businessman who prefers to sit on the floor, bathed in sunlight.

Although installing the super-sized windows is a fairly easy procedure — just punch some holes in the plane's fuselage and then stick some windows in there — the placement can work against the plane's structural integrity. Beever said this problem is alleviated by the windows' placement in front of the wings.

However, the large windows will add weight to the plane and hurt fuel economy. But then, if you're buying a $53 million private jet, is fuel economy your biggest concern? Probably not.

Embraer is experimenting with electrochromic glass to allow tinting and shading of the windows, which could make it possible to completely block out light (for nap time).

If a wraparound sunroof isn't motivation enough to consider Kyoto Airship, the plane's 800-square-foot living space comes with a queen-sized bed and two-person shower.

"We've proven to ourselves that we can make this," Beever told Wired. "And when a Lineage customer is ready to order this airplane, we will make it."

While commercial fliers can seethe and cite world poverty statistics, it's impossible to deny that it would be pretty cool to fly through the through the skies with a near-panoramic view of the world outside.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
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assistant: We'll wait while you dig out the change from between your couch cushions.