First Solar Takes Another Downgrade (FSLR)

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Solar_panel_picShares of First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) were already hit hard yesterday.  They are under pressure again this morning.  It isn’t just lower and lower energy prices and a slower and slower economy taking a toll on the stock.  This is due to an analyst downgrade.  It’s actually a pretty big one.

Citigroup slashed its rating to hold from buy.  The price target wascut to $170 from $205 as well.  The firm’s note put the downside onthe stock at under $100 and said it could go to $200 on the upside.

Citi noted that Q4 would look OK or good, but it has concerns about inventories, margin compression, and industry oversupply.These issues are expected for the duration of 2009 regardless of thestimulus package which is supposed to favorable to alternative energysuppliers.

First Solar shares fell about 9% yesterday and are down another 5% at$141.50 in pre-market trading on about 37,000 shares.  Its 52-weektrading range is $85.28 to $317.00.

Jon C. Ogg
January 13, 2009

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618