Trina Solar (TSL) went to market for $18.50 a share in December 2006. Since, the company has grown way in the triple digits and shows good profitability. Yet, we’re really not that far off from it’s IPO price. If you missed it the first time, now you get a second chance, but you get MUCH more for just paying a slight premium. Seems a good deal to us..

Here is the two year graph to illustrate what has happened since the IPO. We’ve almost come full circle:

Just to give you an idea of the transformation of the company, consider the following:

• Revenue Q106 was $14.5M. Revenue Q208 (the latest quarter) is $204.2M

Get the picture?

It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to argue that this more than 15 fold increase hasn’t been entirely reflected in the stock price, which is almost back where it started from. Yes, growth might be slowing down a bit, but we’re still in triple digit territory, and next year it will still be 50% at least.

A profitable company growing that fast, in one of the more promising sectors of the economy, having a p/e of.. 8. It’s curious, to say the least.

And also consider that the IPO price was considered relatively cheap at the time:

• Mr. Pichel said investors bought the stock, at first, because it was priced cheaper than other solar companies [redherring.com]

And we have reported before that most of the sell-off in the solar sector is on the US failing (so far) to extent tax credits for alternative energy. For Trina, the US market isn’t that important, and it’s likely that these extensions will come anyway.

We’ve had irrational exuberance, now we see irrational fear in some places appearing..