Not all is rosy in solar land this morning.  Piper Jaffray is downgrading Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) from Neutral to Underweight and is slashing the price target from $21 to $9.

Hat tip to StreetInsider.com for the following analyst comment:

“ENER’s end market is ~100% commercial, which by and large remains the weakest segment of the solar market and has not experienced the pronounced seasonality being witnessed in residential and to a lesser extent utility scale deployments. Simply, commercial customers are more concerned with cash preservation and survival; and are less concerned with the high IRR that solar allows. Some big box retailers in Germany continue to install systems for the “Green Halo” but largely prefer branded domestic c-Si (silicon based) product from Germany and are increasingly turning to “China Inc.”. While we view the Italian and French markets as particularly attractive for ENER, we believe it will take several quarters for these markets to offset slower growth for ENER in the ROW. Longer term we believe Italy, France, and US will represent large markets for ENER. The 30% ITC grant will allow US corporations to receive a check rather than a tax credit. Although this alleviates some of the problems associated with the current lack of tax appetitive, the inability to monetize a system’s depreciation remains an issue.”