AstroPower Reports Expansion Plans

AstroPower Inc. (Newark, DE) reported an acceleration of its capacity expansion plans. "We continue to be capacity-constrained, in spite of more than tripling our manufacturing capacity over the past three years," said Allen M. Barnett, president and CEO of AstroPower. Mr. Barnett also stated, "At the time of our follow-on offering last fall, our plan was to increase capacity to 25MW by the end of 2000. Over the past few months, we have increased this target to 30MW, and have recently adjusted it further to 35MW. We plan to further accelerate our plans for 2001 as well." Barnett continued, "The current state of the strong market demand represents an excellent opportunity for AstroPower to accelerate our historical rate of market share acquisition. We believe that the effects of the expansion will be to slightly increase revenues over the balance of 2000 and 2001. However, we believe that our product gross margins, which have increased for a number of quarters, will be relatively flat for the next few quarters, before beginning to increase again. Nevertheless, we continue to expect growth in earnings per share of at least 50 percent per year in 2000 and 2001."