First Solar, Inc.

First Solar, Inc. is an American photovoltaic (PV) solar technology and manufacturing company that designs and produces thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar modules using a fully integrated, continuous manufacturing process, generating $5.2 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, it is the only U.S.-headquartered company among the world's largest solar manufacturers and the largest thin-film PV module manufacturer globally.

This is a story about a company whose earnings power today would not exist without the U.S. government. The Inflation Reduction Act's Section 45X advanced manufacturing production credit contributed roughly $1.6 billion to First Solar's 2025 gross profit — a figure that exceeds its reported operating income of $1.6 billion for the same year. Strip away the subsidy, and the underlying module manufacturing business operates at a low single-digit gross margin. That is simultaneously the bear case in a sentence and, in the view of this file, a less interesting question than the one that actually matters: whether the industrial and policy architecture being constructed around American solar manufacturing can outlast the specific tax credits on which it was built, and whether First Solar's technology roadmap can close the cost gap before the policy umbrella closes.

The file turns on a single debate: is First Solar a subsidy-dependent manufacturer with an expiry date, or is it building a durable competitive position — anchored in differentiated thin-film technology, domestic supply-chain independence, and intellectual property — that will earn its cost of capital regardless of the policy environment?