First Solar (FSLR) is full of surprises these days.  Yesterday, the CEO abruptly left and this morning the company decided to ease fears a bit with a surprise earnings report ahead of schedule.  The company was expected to report next week and will keep the conference call at the original date of Nov 3rd.

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The earnings report this morning could really be summed up as “bad, but expected”.  The stock has been absolutely crushed for many months and traders have already built in poor results into the stock price for some time.  That was clearly apparent this morning when the company missed analyst estimates and reported significantly lower guidance but shares rose anyway.  At one point they were up 10% and ultimately closed up about 7%. 

The company reported an EPS of $2.25 /share which was well below the analyst consensus estimate for $2.76/share.  Revenues came in just shy of analyst estimates at about $1.01 billion vs the estimate for $1.03 billion.  The good news is that it still represented decent quarter over quarter growth.  It’s not surprising that guidance was going to come in well below analyst estimates for the year on the EPS side.

They now predict just $6.50 – $7.50/share in EPS for 2011 vs the analyst estimate for $9.13 on revenue of $3.0 – $3.3 billion, vs the analyst estimate for $3.65 billion.

Chairman and now CEO Mike Ahearn commented about not just surviving the tough conditions in the solar market, but thriving.  He indicated it would require reallocating overhead expenses to fund increased investments in development, sales and R&D.  Perhaps that’s an indication it will go the way of moving more manufacturing operations to Asia.