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Fresh on the heels of a disappointing IPO for Canadian Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: CSIQ) comes yet another Solar IPO this week from First Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR). Canadian Solar went public last week and closed the day today at $14.70 which is below its IPO price of $15.

According to this article in Marketwatch, First Solar plans to offer 17.5 million shares priced at $17 to $19 each in a bid to raise about $315 million with Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley.

Highlights from First Solar’s Prospectus:

• Headquartered in Phoenix, AZ with a manufacturing facility in Ohio.
• Designs and manufactures solar modules using a proprietary thin film semiconductor technology
• Proceeds will be used to completed manufacturing facility in Germany and build a new one in Asia.
• First Solar is not profitable. The company lost about $5.9 million in the quarter ended April 1st, 2006. In 2005, it reported a net loss of $6.4 million on revenues of $48.1 million.
• Sales to our largest customer accounted for approximately 45% of our total net sales in 2005 and approximately 24% of our net sales in the first quarter of 2006.
• Average manufacturing costs were $1.59/watt in 2005. They believe its significantly less than those of traditional crystalline silicon solar module manufacturers. I did a quick search but couldn’t find anything via Google. I will try to find this metric for all the major solar companies if available and publish it in the near future. If anyone knows this metric for other solar companies then please let me know.
• First company to integrate non-silicon thin film technology into high volume low cost production.
• Objective is to become, by 2010, the first solar module manufacturer to offer a solar electricity solution that competes on a non-subsidized basis with the price of retail electricity in key markets in the United States, Europe and Asia.
• Stable supply of raw materials. We are not currently constrained by and do not foresee a shortage of cadmium telluride (?CdTe?), our most critical semiconductor material. In addition, because of the relatively small amount of semiconductor material we use, we believe our exposure to CdTe price increases is limited. By contrast, Solarbuzz estimates that a shortage of silicon feedstock will constrain the production of certain crystalline silicon solar module manufacturers until 2008.

First Solar Inc. looks a lot better then Canadian Solar inc in my opinion. Unlike Canadian Solar Inc, which only produced Solar Panels, First Solar produces Solar modules using their proprietary thin film semiconductor technology. My guess would be that they will perform better then Canadian Solar but what do I know? I already own two solar stocks, Suntech Power (NYSE: STP) and Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq: ESLR), and luckily I am up on both the stocks. So for now I am just going to sit back and see what happens with First Solar Inc.

By the way, I am still in search of a good Wind Energy stock. I am aware of Zoltek (Nasdaq: ZOLT) but can’t make my mind on it and GE is just too big to have any significant upside from its Wind Energy business. Suzlon Energy is another one but trades only in India. Anyone know of any others?