Can A Good New Chief Operating Officer Save First Solar?

First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) had been trying to recover from its lows but its shares have stalled in recent days.  Now comes news that the firm has hired Georges Antoun as the Chief Operating Officer for the company.   While Antoun will initially have responsibility for manufacturing, R&D, quality and product management, his background is an interesting one:

• Antoun was most recently a venture partner at the private equity and venture capital firm called Technology Crossover Ventures.
• Before TCV he was the head of Product Area IP & Broadband Networks for Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) after the company bought Redback Networks, where Antoun was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Operations (and ultimately became CEO of Redback after the acquisition).
• Before Redback, Antoun spent five years at Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) as Vice President of Worldwide Systems Engineering and Field Marketing, Vice President of Worldwide Optical Operations, and Vice President of Carrier Sales.
• Antoun earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a master’s degree in information systems engineering from NYU-Poly.

Reporting to Antoun will be Tymen DeJong, SVP of Global Operations; CTO Raffi Garabedian; and Tom Kuster, VP Product Management and Customer Support.

It is hard to say that the pop in shares of First Solar is solely due to this appointment because the NASDAQ is up over 2%.  Still, First Solar shares are up 1.5% at $14.98 and the 52-week low is $11.43 and the 52-week high is $134.21.

JON C. OGG