Pawel Kaczmarek

First Solar: Pre-Earnings, Street Optimism

The quote of "Ries adds that his checks find the company made “just a modest increase” in solar module efficiency in the quarter, but that greater improvement is expected in the September quarter."

Is very misleading. Efficiency increases are very marginal. The company reports:

We are currently on track to achieve our 2012 goal of 12% conversion efficiencies. This represents an increase of approximately 0.5% per year," spokesman David Erhart told Electronics Weekly. "In Q1 2008 our average efficiency was 10.6%."

Technically, the stock has been in a wide range for since April, every since insiders started selling $17+ million of stock!

Fundamentally, I think their model is moronic! Why would you create cells as a form of ALTERNATIVE energy with a scarcer resource (CdTe) than what you're trying to replace (Crude Oil)

For the risk tolerant, this is a great short (put spread) candidate before earnings.

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