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Back of Napkin

Plug Power Inc. PLUG

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The bet you're really making is that Plug Power can build a green-hydrogen business, fuel cells for the forklifts in giant warehouses and the hydrogen to run them, faster than it burns through its cash. You're betting it stops losing money on the things it sells before the money runs out, because for a decade it sold that gear for less than it cost to make. Right now it is finally close on that one line: last quarter it came within a whisker of breaking even on the cost of what it sold, the best in years, though it still lost $188 million overall and its cash keeps draining. You pay about 4 times yearly sales for a company that has never turned a full-year profit in its 29 years and holds only $162 million in cash against losses that size.

Key data

Price$2.17
52-week range$1.41 - $4.58
Price / sales (TTM)4.1x
Price / book (TTM)5.2x

PLUG · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$0$3$6$9$12 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jul '25Feb '26Sep '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Plug Power sells hydrogen fuel-cell systems, the GenDrive units that replace the lead-acid batteries in the forklifts running big distribution centers, and it has spent recent years building the other half of the chain: electrolyzers, green-hydrogen plants in Georgia and Louisiana, and the fuel and service contracts that trail every forklift it places. The pitch is razor-and-blade. Put tens of thousands of fuel cells into warehouses, then sell the hydrogen and the service for years. The installed base is real, and it does create switching cost once a site converts. The trouble sits one line down: for most of a decade Plug sold the whole package for less than it cost to build, so every dollar of growth widened the loss. A warehouse manager would recognize the hardware on sight. An accountant would recognize the hole.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05Closing thoughts
  6. 06Methodology

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