First Solar Up as Insider Selling Stops

First Solar Inc. (FSLR) is down about 24.5% in the last month but is bouncing up by 3.94% to $253.92 after what has been the longest reprieve from a three month deluge of insider selling since a break in sales between Apr. 22 and May 13. It’ probably not a coincidence that the 52-week high of $317 was reached on May 14 and that it has been downhill ever since.

As Bloomberg noted at the beginning of June, Chief Executive Officer Michael Ahearn has amassed quite a fortune, reducing his stake to 3.1 million shares down from an ownership of 6.1 million shares at the company’s initial offering in November 2006. But it’s not just the CEO. From late February onward, the estate of John Walton – yes, the Wal-Mart (WMT) Walton, has also participated in the mass dumping of stock along with Executive Vice President Kenneth Schultz and other officers. Yet the good news is that the insider selling has stopped with the last reported transaction occurring on May 28. It’s now been ten trading days and counting.

Comments

[ezetrader]

Insider selling tells the real story. So everyone should dump at least half your holdings in FSLR. There must be better places for their money or they would not have sold. Even Cramer, a diehard FSLR fan says sell. PE are too high and the competition from AMAT and silicon solar is heating up.

[xavier102772]

Of course these guys are selling. They know that it's value is only about half of the $317 it skyrocketed to. 20B market cap selling for $317, that's ridiculous. Look at Mastercard, they have double the cap and are selling for near that amount.

[Gumby]

First Solar wont sell modules to you for your own DIY projects cuz it is too toxic for you. It must be installed professionally in commerical places not residential areas. this much limits its potential... But if any of you are serious about dismantling aging fossil fuel powerplants, hydropower dams, nuclear plants over the decades, you have plenty of time to wait to find which one will be the next General Solar! No rush about it... There is so much fossil fuel powerplants to dispose of and put in solar modules for so many years to come!! First Solar may have a research development arm that will prboably come up with super efficient solar modules , I dont really care..

[Gumby]

General Electric appears to be favoring windpower over PV modules as GE is producing thousands of wind towers annually and just bought Prime Solar recently. GE doesnt have any big plans for PV yet. it looks like windpower will hold sway over PV modules for a long time to come. Windpowr had been around for decades already yet it hasnt matured or saturated the marekt yet.. Windpower is much quicker to deploy than solar power.. Just follow what General Electric is doing about alternate energy, if GE is using windpower then solar stocks has no chance...

[Gumby]

GE would have jumped into solar stocks if GE think solar is better than windpower. so far, GE is stiing on its solar acqusiton of Prime Solar and doing ntohing much...

[Bob N.null]

Don't forget...windpower needs wind...and lots of it....Solar needs sunlight ..I would think that there is alot more populated areas on this earth that have plenty of sunlight than have plenty of wind...

[Global E]

Try Occhim's razor: A) sensible folks do not keep all their financial resources AND their work/professional resources in the same place. There's an outside chance that First Solar's major owners decided to balance their personal resources. Selling when the stock is higher than value (at least for the moment?) doesn't require a cabal, B) Cadmium telluride is nasty stuff, but so is the material in a florescent light bulb. and the lead in paints - it shouldn't be used on the window sill where youngsters might chew it. C) We need all the help we can get. The sun and wind are in no sense mutually exclusive - that's silly??

[lisaberlin]

The handwriting seems on the wall. There are massive mortgage foreclosures, the housing-credit-crunch, climbing unemployment figures, income and savings losses, the construction downturn and the sinking dollar. Let me see, when does someone tell the king he is not wearing any clothes? Creating solar panels to be sold to whom seems the question in the U.S. Consider that First Solar has an Asian and European base with new plants in Germany. Germany has a strong solar as other alternative renewable energy source base. Then there is the H.R. 6049 that was just read on the Floor of the U.S. Senate, 5 June. This legislation had just passed the House in May but faces a tough row to hoe in the Senate and before the President. First Solar is said to have hired the Lobbyist firm of Angus & Nickerson to guide this extension of solar investment tax credit and climate change legislation through Congress. Considering all the factors and investing elsewhere seems to not be so difficult to work through. This is especially true if future investment tax credits seem moot at the moment. The only thing renewable seems the politics of change.

[gonzalj3]

While wind power is currently far cheaper than solar, and that's why GE has stayed away from solar for a long time, I think that this will dramatically change. GE acquired wind business from Enron in 2002 by 150M$, now the business, after some years of misfortune, has grown into a very profitable 6b$ business. GE started its solar business by acquiring bankrupt Astropower in 2004, a very small manufacturer of PV. Recently GE purchased a significant stake on Prime Star, a thin film PV maker. Thin film technology is expected to cut the cost of electricity by half because of dramatic decrease of manufacturing costs as compared to traditional PV, therefore targetting a much bigger solar business in the medium-long term www.cnbc.com/id/250958...