FSLR

First Solar, Inc.

A maker of thin-film solar panels, First Solar is the largest solar manufacturer in the Western Hemisphere, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Its panels use cadmium telluride coated onto glass in a process closer to making flat-screen TVs than to cutting silicon wafers. The company began in 1990 as Solar Cells, Inc., founded by glass-industry inventor Harold McMaster, and was renamed First Solar in 1999 after a new ownership group took over.