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Energy

First Solar Financing Pact Vs. Rough Sector Call From Goldman Sachs (FSLR)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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solar-panel-pic6A new 53 megawatt PV solar power plant is being built in Germany by First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSLR) and its German partner Juwi Holding AG. Construction began in January and is expected to be complete by the end of this year. The partners announced this morning that they have secured financing for the project, about 80% of which is non-recourse debt from a consortium of banks.  This might be great news on any normal day, but the solar sector in Europe is suffering a downgrade from Goldman Sachs.

The site for the plant is a former Cold War military zone, and the ground is supposed to be strewn with land mines, grenades, and other munitions, which will all be cleaned up as part of the project.

The project covers 162 hectares of land (about 400 acres) and will provide enough electricity to power 14,000 homes. It is the second-largest PV solar project in the world.

First Solar and Juwi Holding plan to sell a majority of the plant once the construction is completed. No cost for the plant was announced.

Germany is Europe’s leading installer of PV solar power generation, but the solar industry is not faring well in the current economic climate. Goldman Sachs today downgraded several German solar players, including SMA Solar Tech and SolarWorld to ‘Neutral’, and Q-Cells to ‘Sell’.

First Solar shares are down less than 1% in pre-market trading, at $137.50. The stock’s 52-week range is $85.28-$317.

Paul Ausick
April 21, 2009

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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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