Can Plug Power Finally Establish a Viable Business?

The nice thing about checking in with a stock once a year is that you’ll have completely forgotten what conclusions you arrived at last time. It’s like you’re looking at the stock for the very first time, and fresh eyes always uncover new things to like or dislike. Today, we’re going to start by completely ignoring our past research piece on Plug Power Stock: Why We’re Not Buying It and pretending like it’s the first time we’re coming across the stock, one that remains extremely popular amongst the retail investor community.

Before we start digging into Plug’ Power’s most recent 10-Q, let’s address the green elephant in the room. Our recent piece titled Is the Green Hydrogen Economy a Pipe Dream? looked at how hydrogen’s efficiency can’t compete with electric vehicles, something we believe is a showstopper with the exception being niche use cases where hydrogen production, distribution, and conception will all be centralized. In evaluating any use case, we’ll want to probe what benefits are being realized that electric vehicles can’t provide. Are hydrogen fuel cells a solution looking for a problem? We’ll also want to probe profitability, because we’re not going to invest in companies that are subsidizing their customers. That’s the first place that Plug Power (