Clean Energy Winner: LED Play Aixtron

LED equipment maker Aixtron rises in trading to a three-month high.
By Eric Rosenbaum ,

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- Shares of LED lighting equipment play

Aixtron

(AIXG)

are rising by more than 5% on Wednesday morning, on heavier than typical trading volume. The Germany-based LED equipment company had already surpassed its average daily volume in the first hour of trading.

The LED equipment plays tend to trade as a basket, but LED equipment rival

Veeco Instruments

(VECO) - Get Report

shares were up less than 2%, on average trading volume on Wednesday morning.

Aixtron and Veeco are the true trading mates, operating in the exact same market of selling MOCVD machines to the LED manufacturers.

The biggest difference between Aixtron and Veeco is geographic diversification of clients. Veeco is more heavily tied to the rising tide of LED manufacturers in mainland China, while Aixtron has not penetrated the mainland China market to the same extent, and has a larger focus on Taiwan.

While there has been clear evidence of a slowdown in the Taiwanese LED market at the same time that China seems to be set to rebound off a bottoming of the market, the difference between Aixtron and Veeco's business geography isn't big enough to merit a significant difference in the trading patterns of the stocks.

All the LED stocks have been on a run since a late summer/early fall selloff, led by

Cree

(CREE) - Get Report

. Part of the rise is the recovery from a selloff that was far steeper than any broad market dip, however. Over the past three months, the rise of the LED stocks far surpasses the gains in the Nasdaq and S&P 500, up 16% and 11% respectively.

>>Clean Tech Winners: Cree

In the past five trading sessions, Aixtron has been the outperformer among LED stocks, up 18%. With its recent gains, Aixtron is also up the most of the three LED stocks over the past three months, with a 49% gain.

Even though action in Aixtron's shares was notable on Wednesday, one-day trading patterns among LED stocks, especially when one stock is trading away from the group, are less important than the generally established sentiment trade, which for the past several months has been increasingly positive.

A new report from

Digitimes

on Wednesday presented an aggressive outlook for the lighting market in 2011, which could benefit all the LED stocks. Based on latest data from

Digitimes Research

, the LED market will grow to $12.6 billion in 2011, up 53% from $8.25 billion in 2010. The overall use of LEDs in lighting will increase to 12.4 billion units in 2011, from 4.8 billion units in 2010.

In addition, Aixtron has been road showing in Europe over the past few weeks. The LED equipment maker's German-listed shares were up 4% in trading on Wednesday.

-- Written by Eric Rosenbaum from New York.

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>>Clean Tech Winners: Cree

>>Cree Bucks the Trend

>>Veeco Instruments: Best in Class

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