Sunday, June 13, 2010

IPOs in a holding pattern

Right now, the forecast isn’t phenomenal for the five Massachusetts companies looking forward to their day in the sun.

Newton’s First Wind Holdings Inc. develops and runs six wind farms in states including Maine and Vermont, and has plans to build others; the company originally filed to go public in the summer of 2008, and it hopes to raise as much as $450 million, using the clever ticker symbol WNDY.

And Ethan Zindler, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said First Wind may also have a tough time.

“The economic downturn has led to a decline in electricity demand,’’ Zindler said, “and that has slackened the demand for new generating capacity, particularly for renewables, which are more expensive on a per-kilowatt-hour basis than fossil fuels.’’

But Zindler added that First Wind may be better positioned than other companies building new wind farms, since “a number of their projects are in the tightest electricity markets, like Hawaii and New England. They’ve been very smart about picking their spots.’’

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