Key Takeaways
- First Solar rose 5% today after Guggenheim raised its price target to $299 from $282 ahead of Thursday’s third-quarter report, and Enlight Renewable Energy rose 5% as renewables stocks rallied.
- First Solar looks cheap on the earnings analysts expect, so Guggenheim’s target looks reachable if the report holds steady.
- Analysts expect normalized EPS to roughly double from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2028, and the average price target has gone up over the past year even as the stock fell.
- The report needs to show the backlog holding up and 2026 guidance intact, and the main risk is how much of the company’s profit depends on Section 45X tax credits.
First Solar (FSLR) stock is up 5% today after Guggenheim raised its price target to $299 from $282 and kept its Buy rating ahead of Thursday’s third-quarter report. Enlight Renewable Energy (ENLT) rose 5% too, as renewables stocks climbed along with a broader rally in small caps and tech.
The Street hasn’t followed the stock down
Guggenheim’s $299 is nearly 80% above First Solar’s last close. Other firms see big upside too: earlier this month, Goldman Sachs saw 51% upside after the stock had lost 43% from its June high.
The consensus target has held up through the selloff.
Analysts’ average target is $274 today, up from $244 a year ago, while the stock fell by about a third. Even the lowest target, $191, is above the current share price.
Cheap on the earnings analysts expect
That’s partly because analysts expect earnings to keep climbing. They see normalized EPS going from $14.21 in fiscal 2025 to $17.48 this year and $29.43 by 2028, roughly double in three years.
Yet First Solar traded at just 8.0x forward earnings at the last close. Guggenheim’s $299 works out to about 13x the $23.50 analysts expect it to earn in 2027.
TIKR tracks 36 analysts on First Solar. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on First Solar, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See First Solar’s Analyst Ratings
What Thursday needs to show
First Solar reports after the close on Thursday, Oct. 29, and bookings matter most. It ended June with 45.1 GW of contracted backlog running through 2030. But second-quarter sales fell 4% from a year earlier, which the company put down mainly to customer contract terminations.
Pricing matters too: First Solar has started telling customers about contractual price adjustments for CuRe, its higher-efficiency module technology.
And management guided to 3.9 to 4.5 GW of third-quarter module sales and $625 million to $775 million of adjusted EBITDA. In July it reaffirmed $2.6 billion to $2.8 billion of adjusted EBITDA for 2026.
That full-year range assumes $2.10 billion to $2.19 billion of Section 45X tax credits, so most of it depends on a federal credit for US-made modules. The Malaysia and Vietnam plants are also still running below capacity while trade policy is unclear, at a cost of about $30 million a quarter.
The bar looks low
My take: at 8x forward earnings, the market is pricing First Solar as if those estimates won’t hold. If Thursday’s report keeps 2026 guidance intact and the backlog near 45 GW, Guggenheim’s $299 looks a lot more reachable than today’s price suggests.
Of course, a guidance cut or another round of contract terminations would change that quickly.
So what is First Solar stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
