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Energy

First Solar… First Cheer, Then Dump (FSLR)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) is out with earnings today, and there is nothing great and nothing awful to report in here.  For its fourth quarter, revenues were $641.3 million, up from $480.9 million sequentially and up from $433.7 million a year ago.  Net income was $1.65 EPS and $141.6 million.  That is down sequentially but up from a year ago.  Thomson Reuters had revenue expectations of $581.4 million and $1.52 EPS.  We had noted a significant sentiment change.  We first saw shares rise 1%, but now shares are down in the after-hours.

This also marked the year-end for 2009.  Net income for the year was $640.1 million or $7.53 EPS versus $348.3 million or $4.24 EPS for 2008.

The guidance is where First Solar gets tricky.  For 2010, sales are expected to be $2.7 to $2.9 billion.  Thomson Reuters is at $2.73 billion.  Earnings are expected to be $6.05 to $6.85 EPS versus Thomson Reuters consensus of $6.37 EPS.

Total cap-ex for 2010 was put at $500 to $550 million, and the company expects to generate $730 to $790 million of operating cash flow and $180 to $290 million of free cash flow for the year.

The stock closed up 1.67% at $126.29 today, marking the fifth straight rise in the stock.  Shares initially popped up on the news to over $127 in after-hours, but now it looks like shares are trading down around $120.00 in the after-hours session.  At 4:20 PM EST there have been 375,000 shares in the after-hours session and the last seen print was $120.80.

First Solar ended the quarter with over $784 million in cash and marketable securities combined, and then listed $329.6 million in long-term marketable securities.

JON C. OGG

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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