DayStar Forced Offshore by Landlord?

(DayStar comments on landlord dispute added to this update.)

BOSTON (TheStreet) -- DayStar Technologies (DSTI) shares more than doubled in price Thursday after the solar products company said it is pursuing a strategy for offshore manufacturing, although the move comes after a dispute with its landlord resulted in DayStar's loss of its California address.

DayStar shares were surging by $1.56, or 111.4%, to $2.96 after the company said it is pursuing opportunities to manufacture its semiconductor absorber modules offshore. DayStar said it has begun discussions with several potential partners to implement this strategy.

In Thursday's press release, DayStar CEO Magnus Ryde says the offshore move comes as the company has "encountered challenges in obtaining affordable capital for the build-out and operation of our facility in Newark, California." That news was enough to send speculative traders into a frenzy.

However, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, DayStar was notified by its landlord, BMR-Gateway Boulevard LLC, on July 15, that the company's lease for a Newark, Calif., premises "was forfeited and terminated, and that the landlord has received a judgment for possession of the premises."

DayStar Vice President Patrick Forkin says the company has "had a long-running dispute with our landlord that goes back to December 2009. In March 2008, we leased a facility and did work on it. We started ordering equipment to get our production line up and running. When the credit and capital markets started to cave in, it became difficult to finance the equipment."

Forkin says DayStar has since been talking to strategic partners, and that those partners have indicated they considered the lease structure on the building "an extreme challenge." Forkin said the company is in the process of moving out of the premises now.

More than 3.52 million shares of DayStar changed hands by 2 p.m. ET Thursday, compared to the average daily share volume of 88,000.

-- Written by Robert Holmes in Boston.

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