Inside Our Investment Process: The T1 Energy Case Study

How we found a 10x candidate in solar manufacturing, visited the factory, and ultimately sold after a 150% gain — and what that tells you about how we think about risk.

Why We're Sharing This

Most of what we publish at Rebellionaire is about Tesla. That's by design — our clients are concentrated Tesla investors and the majority of our work is helping them optimize those positions. But we also evaluate and invest in other companies, particularly in energy and manufacturing, where our expertise transfers directly.

We don't talk about those investments often. This time we're making an exception because the T1 Energy position — start to finish — illustrates almost every element of our process: how we find ideas, how we model them, why we visit factories instead of just reading 10-Qs, how we size positions when risk is high, and most importantly, how we decide when to walk away from a company we genuinely like.

This is the behind-the-curtains look. Nothing here is investment advice. It's a case study in how we think.

How We Found T1 Energy

The initial signal was a social media post showing T1 Energy's production output. The number immediately stood out: outside of First Solar, we weren't aware of any US-based solar manufacturer hitting that kind of run rate. A little digging revealed something more remarkable — they had gone from zero output to approximately 5.1 gigawatts annualized in under a year.

If that sounds familiar, it should. That kind of ramp echoes what Tesla accomplished with Gigafactory Shanghai, where they went from an empty field to volume production in a timeframe that the industry considered impossible. When we see a manufacturing operation ramp like that, we pay attention regardless of the sector.

The factory footage showed a highly automated process — robots handling nearly every step of assembly. We took it with a grain of salt (companies post their best footage), but getting a brand new factory to that level of output that quickly is an impressive feat regardless of the optics.

What T1 Energy Actually Does

T1 Energy operates a solar panel assembly plant — their G1 facility — in Wilmer, Texas near Dallas. The factory takes solar cells (at the time, imported from China), and assembles them with glass, racking, and wiring into finished solar modules through a largely automated process. The technology they produce is called Topcon, a higher-efficiency premium solar cell with better energy yield than standard panels.

The company's history adds context. T1 Energy is essentially the successor to Freyr Battery, a Norwegian company that had attempted to build battery factories in the Arctic and in Atlanta. That venture failed, but the team pivoted — acquiring the Dallas facility from Trina Solar, a major Chinese solar manufacturer. Trina stayed on as a key partner, sharing manufacturing know-how and helping T1 ramp production. China leads the world in solar manufacturing by a wide margin, and Trina's involvement was a big part of how T1 got operational so quickly.

The company is also building a second facility — their G2 plant in Austin — which would manufacture the solar cells themselves rather than just assembling them. Cell manufacturing is where the real value (and the real technical difficulty) lives. The Austin plant would represent a significant step up in vertical integration, but it requires substantial additional capital to complete.

The Initial Valuation: 10x Upside With a Lot of Risk

When we first built our model, the stock was trading around $3.50 per share. Assuming the company could get both plants fully operational and reach a stable 5 GW run rate, and applying a reasonable multiple to those future financials, we arrived at a price target of roughly $35 per share. That's a 10x from where it was trading.

But that 10x came with a stack of risks that we had to take seriously:

Risk	Why It Matters
FEOC status	Trina Solar, as a Chinese entity involved in ownership and operations, could be classified as a Foreign Entity of Concern — potentially disqualifying T1 from critical tax credits and its customers from domestic content bonuses.
45X tax credits	Section 45X manufacturing credits are worth approximately 11 cents per watt — hundreds of millions of dollars annually at scale. T1's financial viability depends on maintaining eligibility, which was subject to evolving Treasury guidance.
Capital needs	The Austin G2 plant requires significant additional capital. The company was transparent that another raise would be necessary — dilutive to existing shareholders.
Customer concentration	Revenue was concentrated among a small number of customers — a vulnerability if any single relationship deteriorated.
Incomplete offtake	The plant had a 5.1 GW run rate, but not enough contracted demand to fully utilize that capacity into 2026. On the day we visited, less than half the production lines were running.

We drilled into each risk individually and concluded they were each manageable. Our base case was that the company would methodically tick these risks off, and as it did, the stock would re-rate upward to reflect the improved risk profile. That was the thesis.

How we sized it

Because the risk of total loss was real — bankruptcy, regulatory disqualification, failed capital raise — we sized the position at less than 1% of client portfolios. This is a core principle: when a position carries existential risk, it has to be small enough that even a total wipeout doesn't damage the financial plan. The upside potential was enormous, but our fiduciary obligation to clients comes first.

Why We Visited the Factory

We're big believers in boots-on-the-ground diligence. Financial models and SEC filings tell you a lot, but they don't tell you everything. You can't model the quality of a management team from a 10-Q. You can't see whether a factory is actually running efficiently from a balance sheet. You can't feel the culture of a company from an earnings call.

We've applied this approach repeatedly. We visited Bloom Energy's operations — well before it was on most investors' radar. We've visited Aehr Test Systems' site three times. Bradford literally staked out Tesla's Lathrop Megapack factory to count deliveries. When we invest, we go see it.

For T1 Energy, the visit was especially important because the company's story was built on manufacturing execution. If the automation claims were real, this was a significant competitive advantage. If they were exaggerated, the whole thesis was in question.

What We Saw Inside the Plant

The G1 facility in Wilmer is massive. Raw materials enter at one end — primarily glass and solar cells — and finished, tested solar modules come out the other. The facility is so large that what appears to be the back wall from the entrance is actually not even the midpoint; the lamination stage happens there, with further assembly, validation, and testing filling the entire second half of the building.

The automation was real. The manufacturing process is almost entirely machine-run. Robotic arms cut and arrange solar cells into strings, then place them onto glass substrates. The stringing, lamination, wiring, and packaging stages are all automated. Very few humans are involved in the actual production flow — mostly quality monitoring and oversight.

One detail stood out. In the wiring stage, robotic arms were handling flexible wires and plugging them into connectors on the solar panels. Anyone who follows robotics knows that wire handling is one of the most difficult manipulation tasks for robots — Elon Musk has spoken repeatedly about how challenging this is in automotive manufacturing. At another solar plant we'd previously visited, humans were performing this step. At T1, machines were doing it, using a vision-based AI system to orient components and a shaker mechanism to flip parts into the correct position before robotic placement. It may not look dramatic on video, but it represents genuinely cutting-edge manufacturing automation.

The facility also uses autonomous transport robots to move inventory between stations — complete with Imperial March sound effects, which gives you a sense of the culture. Rapid inventory turnover. Real domestic manufacturing. A team that clearly takes pride in what they've built.

What we also noticed: less than half the production lines were running on the day we visited. This confirmed what we already knew from the financials — offtake contracts hadn't caught up to capacity. The capability was there. The demand wasn't fully locked in.

The Day We Visited, a Short Seller Report Dropped

The timing was notable. The day before our factory visit, a short seller published a report on T1 Energy. The stock was taking a hit. Management was clearly dealing with the fallout — not flustered, but visibly processing the situation.

We'd read the report before arriving. Most of the risks the short seller identified were ones we'd already underwritten in our own analysis. One item was new to us: a customer lawsuit alleging breach of contract. That was concerning, though the fact that T1 subsequently signed a new customer — a customer that had presumably done due diligence on the nature of the dispute — gave us some comfort. A pink flag, if not a red one.

Meeting the CEO and senior staff in person, in that context, was valuable. You learn a lot about a management team by seeing how they handle adversity in real time.

Why We Sold Everything

Here's where it gets counterintuitive. We liked the factory. We liked the management team. We believed the company would likely continue to perform well. And we sold the entire position.

The stock had risen approximately 150% in two months from our entry point. But when we went down the risk checklist, the story had not de-risked by anywhere close to 150%. One risk was partially mitigated (they raised capital for the Austin plant). The others — FEOC regulatory clarity, 45X credit eligibility, incomplete offtake — remained unresolved.

On top of that, two new risks had surfaced that weren't on our radar at the time of the initial investment:

The customer lawsuit. While not necessarily a deal-killer, having a customer allege breach of contract is not a clean look for a company that needs to sign more offtake deals. It introduces uncertainty about the customer relationships that the entire business model depends on.

Silver prices. The price of silver went nearly parabolic shortly after we invested. For Topcon solar cells specifically, silver is one of the most significant raw material costs. A doubling in silver prices could, in theory, wipe out the entire profit margin for a company like T1. Their existing deals were structured as cost-plus (protecting margins), but rising input costs still create pricing pressure for future customers and contracts.

So the equation had shifted. Price up 150%. Risk not meaningfully reduced. Two new risks added. At the higher valuation, the risk-reward no longer justified the position.

This is the discipline that matters: Selling a winner that you still believe in because the risk-reward has changed is one of the hardest things to do in investing. It's much easier to anchor to your original thesis and ride the momentum. But our job isn't to fall in love with companies. It's to continuously re-evaluate whether the current price is paying clients adequately for the current risk — and to act when it isn't.

What This Tells You About How We Work

T1 Energy was a small position in a company outside our core Tesla focus. But the process we applied to it is the same process we apply to everything — including how we manage our clients' Tesla positions.

We find ideas by paying attention to real-world signals, not just stock screeners. We build financial models, but we don't stop there. We go see the factories. We meet the teams. We look at the business with our own eyes. We size positions according to risk — small when existential risk is present, larger when the story is de-risked. And we re-evaluate continuously, willing to sell even when it's uncomfortable because the risk-reward demands it.

We remain fans of T1 Energy. We may produce additional content about them, and it wouldn't surprise us if an opportunity to re-enter the position presented itself at a different price. But as of now, we don't own it — and being transparent about that is part of the process too.

About Rebellionaire

Rebellionaire is a fiduciary financial advisory firm (a brand of Halter Ferguson Financial, based in Carmel, Indiana) specializing in concentrated Tesla investors. We also evaluate and invest in companies across energy, manufacturing, and technology. Our approach combines rigorous financial modeling with boots-on-the-ground diligence — because spreadsheets don't show you everything.

If you're looking for an advisory team that actually does the work, we should talk.

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This post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute personalized investment advice. Rebellionaire does not currently hold a position in T1 Energy as of the time of publication. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of principal. The financial projections and price targets discussed are hypothetical and based on internal modeling — actual results may differ materially. Consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.