Last week Ormat announced a solid quarter with revenues $79.5M, up 2% Y/Y and earnings of $15.8M up 13% Y/Y. Details of the earnings announcement are available in this press release. Dita Bronicki reaffirmed guidance for the year and the quarter and the stock has responded well in the market place. For the year, Ormat is on track to deliver $280M in revenue and around $55M in earnings for 2007.

The equipment business continued to be “lumpy” showing a decrease of 15.8% Y/Y – while the recovered heat product wins seem to be coming in, increased competition in the geothermal heat conversion business could be starting to have an impact. Also, a number of developers we have contact with are not inclined to select Ormat equipment for their projects due to the competitive relationship (some have used the word “predatory”) Ormat has fostered with developers. This bears watching closely, though the electricity segment continues its growth generally as predicted.

A secondary offering of 3.3M shares raised $155M in this quarter, though it is not reflected in the results. This money will be used to further advance the development of new power plants. Also, it is rumored, though not reported that the company may have realized positive results from one of its drilling and exploration programs in Nevada.

At current market cap, $1.89B, Ormat is trading just north of 34 times 2007 earnings.

Notice, the Illinois player was in the air, the ball was in the air. This led to 7 points, the difference in the game. I’m not saying that Illinois wouldn’t have scored another touchdown, but this was a blown call that did affect the outcome of the game. The refs certainly didn’t contribute to the 3 interceptions tossed up by OSU or the run defense being shredded (ok, maybe a little with the absolute mugging of the defensive line, but show me a game where this hasn’t happened this year.)

This was allegedly the same officiating crew that blew the big calls in the Penn St/Purdue game the week before and was punished. It makes you wonder if key figures didn’t stand to gain financially from a poorly officiated game ala the NBA refs. That’s it, I’m not going to talk or think about it again.

Film sucks for politicians these days…much of this is old news, but it is still stunning to view.

It’s always best to see what the characters say in their own words, they’re far more effective than what anyone else could say. Sad. Sad. Sad.

In prior entries we showed the relationship between the population of pirates and global warming, see this one and that one. Finally, a motivational poster that summarizes the situation succinctly (above.)

Haven’t done many music related posts this year, so I decided to slot one in this morning. Let’s start with a little Ray Charles, Hit the Road Jack.

Great quality image and music in that one. Let’s stay with Ray and a cover of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire.

Love how that song works both as the original Cash tune, but also as a bluesy soulful rendition. Ah, what the heck, here’s Johnny with his version of the tune. Love those horns!

While we’re in the genre, here’s Willie Nelson singing one of my all-time favorites, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.

Here’s one that was new for me, another great tune, Townes Van Zandt’s Pancho and Lefty performed by the unlikely duo of Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan.

Here’s another old favorite, Dolly Parton’s song Jolene. Mindy Smith does an amazing cover of this that I hate to say, but I like better than the original.

Hope you enjoyed this musical interlude. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…