How Is First Solar's Investment Strategy Powering Its Long-Term Growth?

First Solar FSLR is investing in expanding its manufacturing capacity to meet rising demand from its customers. This strategic expansion is projected to add significant value to the company and support steady long-term revenue growth.

First Solar is witnessing strong demand for its thin-film solar modules, partly due to the Inflation Reduction Act and rising clean electricity demand from large-scale projects, such as artificial intelligence data centers.

FSLR is accelerating its next-generation solar strategy, launching higher-output CuRe modules in early 2026 and pouring resources into perovskite thin-film R&D to improve efficiency, lower costs, and capitalize on growing global solar demand.

During 2025, FSLR expects to allocate between $0.9 billion and $1.2 billion toward capital expenditures, reflecting its continued focus on expanding and modernizing its operations. These investments include constructing new manufacturing facilities, continuing research and development, and upgrading existing machinery and equipment to improve efficiency and productivity. The upgrade is expected to increase module output, expand production capacity and improve throughput for First Solar's production network.

Such a comprehensive and forward-looking capital expenditure plan positions the company to deliver between 16.7 gigawatt (GW) and 17.4 GW of solar modules by the end of 2025, supporting rising demand for high-efficiency photovoltaic products. This manufacturing expansion not only strengthens First Solar’s competitive advantage but also enhances its ability to serve a broader customer base, thereby driving revenue growth and market share gains.

Strategic Investments Are Driving Growth Across Solar Leaders

Strategic investments have helped the companies expand their existing operations and develop new products. Other companies benefiting from investments have been discussed below.

SolarEdge Technologies’ SEDG investment in R&D has allowed it to improve its existing products. Investments have helped the company in expanding into new, high-growth markets, such as AI data centers, through strategic partnerships. 

Sunrun RUN has leveraged strong investments to become the leading U.S. residential solar provider and largest owner of third-party systems. Its capital supports new offerings like the “Flex” product and technology improvements that boost margins and enable larger system installs.

FSLR Stock’s Earnings Estimates

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 and 2026 EPS indicates an increase of 21.63% and 58.36%, respectively, year over year.

FSLR Stock Trading at a Discount

FSLR is trading at a discount relative to the industry, with a forward 12-month price-to-earnings of 11.45X compared with the industry average of 18.29X.

FSLR Stock’s Price Performance

In the past month, FSLR’s shares have risen 9.2% compared with the industry’s 4.9% growth.

FSLR’s Zacks Rank

The company currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

 

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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