AstroPower's EPS and PE are the foundation for its "house of cards" and with its impending restatements they are about to be kicked out from under it. At first glance APWR looks extremely attractive and many unsuspecting individual and institutional investors have been lured into its snare since its has generated positive EPS for its last 5 consecutive quarters and has had only one negative EPS quarter in its last 20 quarters. Its current PE of 12 is deceptively attractive especially since its "suspect" revenue growth rate over its last 12 months is 34%. However, APWR's OPS, operating cash flow and free cash flow numbers paint a completely different picture. APWR has never been able to generate any positive annualized OPS or free cash flow. Only in three of its last 20 quarters has it been able to generate positive OPS or Operating cash flow and it has been able to generate free cash flow for only one of its last 20 quarters.

Suprema Specialties Inc

Suprema, like AstroPower, appeared to be a good investment opportunity all the way to the bitter end. For its fiscal year ending June 2001, Suprema reported its fifth consecutive year of record EPS at $1.41 per share and its seventh consecutive year of record revenue at $420 million. Despite this apparent stellar performance and a having a PE under 10, trading was halted on Suprema's shares in December of 2001 at $13, one month after Wall Street sold $60 million of its shares at $13, including $10 million of its founder?s shares. Unsuspecting investors that were relying on Suprema's low PE and high revenue and EPS growth rates were stunned when trading resumed at $.02, pricing it down 99% from its previous closing price after Suprema filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

 
StockDiagnostics.com has been issuing warnings on AstroPower since May of 2002, when Wall Street had 15 buy recommendations and its shares were trading at $22.