Since my last post on Ballard Power Systems, the stock has dropped even further, closing yesterday at 5.77. Yet last month's 2006 results show that revenues are still rising - up from $42.2 m in 2005 to $49.8m in 2006. The annual loss was much bigger at $128m, but a good 90% of that was due to a discontinuation of their electric drive business and its sale to Siemens on February 15th 2007 . As it was loss-making, capital intensive and not part of their core business, this has to be a good move.

I know I've been down on fuel cells and particularly fuel cells for transport for some time, but I do wonder if there is now room for a small recovery for Ballard and the transport fuel cell sector in general?

Ballard's latest deal with the US Department of Defence for forklift trucks research and development has to be a step in the right direction. Some people think that fuel cells for transport may only make it in transport niches - and Toyota would agree that forklift trucks are one of them.

Arguably, Ballard's early error in the 1990s was to overstate the case and the learning curves for their technology. It was always around the corner and we would soon all be driving fuel cell cars fuelled by hydrogen.

Yet the corners came and the fuel cells didn't.

This state of delusional optimism was embodied by the now ludicrous sounding book "Powering the future - the ballard fuel cell and the race to change the world", published in late 1999.

To be fair though, Ballard weren't the only ones to come out of that period not smelling of roses. The dot com boom went bust and then there were of course more than a few corporate scandals.

All in all, what I'm saying is that by Ballard standards, 2007 has the potential to be quite a good year. So let's see what happens - and I shall be very interested to see their Q1 2007 results.