Jim Jubak
But the company has just started to penetrate the market for intelligent white LED lighting, which is much more energy-efficient than incandescent or fluorescent lighting. In 2007, the company estimates white lighting will make up about 5% of sales.
But this is where the future lies in a quintessential hockey-stick fashion: As white-light sales grow, the company (and it competitors) can bring down the prices so that this technology can pick up market share. As LED prices drop and energy prices (and carbon-offset costs) rise, white-light sales will grow -- and so on in a virtuous cycle. 2. The killer app lives. Here's a startling figure that should guide your investing strategies for the next decade: The giant multinational oil companies of the world together own or have access to less than 10% of world oil resources. The rest belongs to state-controlled national oil companies. Think that puts the multinational oil companies in a bind? They've got the cash flow to invest just about anywhere, but they can invest just about nowhere. Sitting back and doing nothing isn't a viable strategy for any oil company CEO, since it amounts to presiding over the liquidation of the company. So any company selling a "product" -- and I'm using the term very loosely here -- that promises to solve this problem can charge just about anything. In the case of the energy sector, that product is the deep-water oil deposits of the continental shelf. In many cases, these areas belong to countries such as the United States that are still willing to grant production rights to the multinationals, and drilling for this oil requires expensive technology that only the multinationals can afford, so they have more negotiating clout. But drilling in deeper and deeper water is pushing the envelope for drilling technology. It requires the invention of new pipes and valves, the outfitting of new deeper-water drill ships and the exploration of even more challenging environments. I can think of two energy companies that fit this profile. First, Transocean(RIG Quote - Cramer on RIG - Stock Picks) is a leader in deep deep-sea drilling and the owner of the largest fleet of mobile offshore drilling units. The worry in the drilling sector has been that the extraordinary run of higher and higher lease rates for drill rigs can't go on. But, au contraire, mon ami, it can in the deep-sea business, because global politics is pushing multinationals to drill in ever-deeper water no matter the price.
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