Short sellers have been hammering solar companies for years. And now that a man has been elected president who disdains renewable energy, short sellers may be downright giddy about their future prospects.
Short sellers have made $3.6 billion shorting ten of the top solar companies since the beginning of 2024 for a 66 percent gain, according to calculations from S3 Partners. Following Donald Trump’s presidential victory, they added $706 million in shorts on these companies.
Given Trump’s views on energy and China’s slowdown, “there was no respite for debt-laden residential solar companies in 2024, with a hangover so wretched it could make the sunniest optimist squint,” said Kingsford Capital founder Mike Wilkins, a prominent short seller, in an annual holiday gift sent to investors that typically details some of the companies he has shorted over the prior year. This past year’s offering was a Kingsford branded stocking full of tokens—among them a small solar panel along with a beaming sun. Wilkins called the theme “Icky Icarus.”
One of the biggest solar stocks Wilkins singled out is Enphase Energy, which has long been a popular target of short sellers. They’ve sold short some $1.33 billion worth of Enphase as of Jan. 13, 2025, according to S3 Partners. Short interest on the company went from 9.9 million shares at the beginning of 2024 to about 20 million as of Jan. 13, with some 15.9 percent of the float being sold short, according to S3 Partners.
Enphase’s revenue growth had already peaked in 2021, but the company “began 2024 by missing revenue estimates that had already been cut in half,” Wilkins noted in his missive to investors. (Petaluma, Calif.- based Enphase designs and manufactures micro solar inverters, called microinverters, and software for the solar industry.)
The stock lost another 50 percent in 2024. Since then short sellers have made $866 million, for a more than 60 percent gain.
Wilkins also mentioned SolarEdge Technologies, whose shares fell 80 percent during the year. SolarEdge is a much smaller company than Enphase, and its current $319 million shares shorted amounts to 39 percent of the float — the biggest percentage of the ten stocks that S3 Partners analyzed for Institutional Investor. It was one of the most profitable shorts of the ten stocks, giving short sellers a nearly 170 percent gain since the beginning of 2024.
The hedge fund manager also called out Sunnova, whose shares last year dropped 60 percent, and Sunrun, which was down 50 percent. Sunnova and Sunrun are in the business of financing solar projects. Sunrun — also a short target of Muddy Waters in recent years — currently has $487 million in short interest, or 23 percent of the float. Sunnova has $116 million in short interest, or 32 percent of the float. As of Jan. 13, shorts had a 45 percent gain on Sunrun and a more than 150 percent gain on Sunnova since the beginning of 2024, according to S3 Partners.
Others on Wilkins’s list included SunPower and Maxeon, the maker of SunPower’s solar panels that restructured in June, which ended the year at $8 per share (down from a reverse split-adjusted $680). Investors are now short 14.55 percent of the float, or 762,788 shares worth about $4.8 million. Since the beginning of 2024, shorts have chalked up a gain of more than 366 percent on Maxeon.
But not every solar company was a win for the short sellers. First Solar had the biggest short position, besting Enphase with $1.65 billion worth of shares sold short. But given its much bigger market cap, that was only 8.4 percent of the float. Some analysts expect First Solar, a U.S. manufacturer of solar panels, to profit if Trump enacts tariffs on Chinese solar panels.
The stock was basically flat during 2024 and is up 5 percent year to date. Short sellers have lost about 6 percent betting against the stock since the beginning of 2024, according to S3 Partners.
