First Solar-SunPower fire up joint venture, Comcast talks Time Warner Cable deal & Lowe's jumps

First Solar (FSLR) and SunPower (SPWR) shares are on fire. The two are teaming up to form a "yield-co" which is simply a unit that bundles power plants and other assets and pays out much of its cash flow to shareholders. Once its formed, if all goes well, it will likely IPO. The team at Deutsche Bank (DB) raised First Solar to a buy on the news saying this could be the "next best growth story" on the horizon.

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Shares of Lowe's (LOW) are seeing a bit of a bump today as Wall Street bets its quarterly results, due Wednesday morning, will be as strong as rival Home Depot (HD). The world’s largest home improvement chain, which is the top stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average today (^DJI), posted fourth quarter revenue of $19.2 billion, and overall comp-store sales that rose 7.9%, while U.S. sales jumped 8.9%. So it looks like Lowe's may be able to justify the 40% jump in the shares we've seen over the past six months.

Shares of Comcast (CMCSA) are higher by more than 1%. The cable MSO, NBC parent company, movie studio and broadband internet conglomerate posted earnings and revenues largely inline with analyst expectations. Not surprisingly the number of video subscribers fell 1% year over year but the company managed to add 375,000 high-speed internet customers last quarter bringing the total gain for last year to 6.2%. Consistently ranked among the least popular companies in America, Comcast is in the middle of trying to acquire Time Warner Cable (TWC), a merger which would leave them with near-monopoly pricing power in much of the country. That's a slightly different kind of dominance than Comcast's box office blocbuster Fifty Shades of Grey, which the company says will boost results in the current quarter. The lesson here: You can't cut the cord and there is no safe word.

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