And notably, First Bank, St. Louis’ largest locally chartered bank, posted its first profitable quarter since 2007.

“We’ve had a significant reduction in new loans going bad and continued steady progress in exiting problem assets,” said Terrance McCarthy, president and CEO of First Banks, the holding company of First Bank.

The improved performance by local banks is a sign of some stabilization in the industry, but lending levels continue to decline.

The 73 banks chartered in the St. Louis area tracked by the Federal Reserve had loans totaling $19.4 billion at the end of March, down 6 percent from $20.6 billion in the first quarter of 2011. The first quarter 2012 data does not include banks based outside of St. Louis, such as Bank of America, or financial services firm Stifel Financial.

The number of local banks that were unprofitable in the first quarter, seven, is down from 12 a year ago. Through March, local banks posted a combined $57.2 million profit, up from a $56.3 million profit a year ago.

Many banks have sought to decrease the amount of commercial real estate loans in their portfolios, which dragged down profits as home and commercial developments failed and loan defaults mounted.

“We don’t expect there to be any uptick anytime soon as commercial real estate loans in St. Louis and nationwide remains weak,” said Julie Stackhouse, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

While some local banks hit hard by bad real estate loans are preserving capital and lending less, Stackhouse said many banks have successfully moved bad loans from nonperforming status and are disposing of foreclosed properties.

“It’s what we expected to see in this point in the cycle, and commercial real estate loans should be stabilizing,” she said.

For St. Louis chartered banks, loans have declined each quarter for more than two years. For the group of 73 locally chartered banks, real estate, small business and consumer loans are all down from a year ago.

“We continue to hear bankers express that they want to increase lending to small businesses that are bankable,” Stackhouse said.

Finding borrowers with a solid credit history, collateral to support a loan in the event of a default and having a business plan, however, is a challenge, she said.

Low demand for loans prompted the Bank of Edwardsville, which has 18 locations in the Metro East, to close a branch in downtown Alton and shutter a branch inside a Shop ‘n Save grocery store in Edwardsville since the start of the year absolutely free credit score.

Loan demand “is beginning to stabilize a little bit for us but we’re not finding much demand for commercial real estate loans, which has been our bread and butter,” said the bank’s president, Tom Holloway. “We’re starting to see some more home mortgage activity, but it’s far below where we’d like it to be.”

Some banks have sold off branches, including First Banks, to boost capital. If First Banks is removed from the Fed’s data, local lending declined only 1 percent compared with the first quarter of 2011.

First Banks has pared its geographic footprint after posting $948 million in losses from 2008 to 2011. Last year, the bank sold three bank branches in Northern Illinois to United Community Bank, which assumed $92.2 million in deposits. First Banks sought to sell its 19 branches in Florida this year, but the deal fell apart in early April. McCarthy said the bank is still evaluating whether to retain or sell its Florida operations.

Selling branches and putting aside less in reserves for loan losses helped First Banks return to profitability. In the first quarter, First Banks posted a $6.9 million profit compared with a loss of $6.1 million in the first quarter of 2011.

“We’re focused on growing and building revenue,” McCarthy said.

One area many bankers say they’ve been tried to boost lending – commercial and industrial loans for businesses – remained flat at $3.3 billion in the first quarter compared with a year ago. C&I loans include loans to buy inventory and to fund acquisitions.

“I expect loan growth to continue to be slow, and construction and development lending will clearly be slow for a long time,” Enterprise Bank & Trust’s Chief Executive and President Stephen Marsh said about overall lending trends by local banks.

Clayton-based Enterprise Bank, the second largest locally chartered bank based on assets, saw its loans grow in the quarter as mergers and acquisition activity picked up and boosted the bank’s C&I lending 4 percent in the quarter.

“In the midst of the recession, everyone was afraid to make any acquisitions at all,” Marsh said. “People now have some confidence in the economy and expect a slow, steady recovery.”

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Facebook is raking in a little over $1 billion in sales every three months. That sounds like a big number, but with more than 900 million active users, it means each Facebook user is bringing in just $1.21 a quarter.

It’s an astoundingly low number compared to other companies that report average revenue per user, or ARPU. The metric is usually used by service providers and communications companies, which typically collect hundreds of dollars per quarter from each customer through subscription fees and other charges.

For instance, Verizon (, Fortune 500) FiOS customers pay an average of $444 for three months of service, and Time Warner Cable (, Fortune 500) receives $348 from its users over that span. AT&T (, Fortune 500) brings in $193 for three months of contracted mobile service, and customers of Sprint’s (, Fortune 500) prepaid Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile brands pay the company $80.46 every three months.

Those companies have very different business models than Facebook, so their ARPUs aren’t anything close to an apples-to-apples.

That’s what makes Facebook’s decision to include ARPU in its quarterly financial reports so surprising. For service providers, ARPU is a valuable metric that helps the companies and their investors understand how much customers are paying for their services each month.

Facebook () customers don’t pay the social network directly — they upload their personal information, which Facebook uses to attract advertisers. (For a look at how Facebook profits from your data, check out "How you help Facebook make billions.")

Averaging each Facebook user isn’t remotely the same as averaging phone plans or cable bills. Different advertisements appear for each Facebook user, and the cost and quality of ads varies tremendously in different regions.

For instance, Facebook’s ARPU in the United States and Canada is almost twice its global average, coming in at $2.23 per quarter. Facebook’s fastest user growth is coming from developing countries, where the company says the ad market brings in significantly lower sales. Its quarterly ARPU is just 61 cents in those regions.

Also, some users log on once a month and see just a few ad impressions. Others spend virtually their entire day on Facebook and are eyeing hundreds or thousands of ads. Some use the company’s ad-filled website, while others stick to the ad-free mobile app.

All of that makes the worldwide "average" a difficult statistic to make heads or tails of.

That’s why it’s extremely rare for Internet companies to break out ARPU. Facebook is probably calling out ARPU in an attempt to draw attention to its growing non-advertising business like in-app payments, but since more than 85% of the company’s sales are still made up of advertising, the number remains kind of silly.

Related story: Inside Facebook - how the social media giant really works

Meanwhile — since Facebook did us the favor of starting the conversation — we took the liberty of seeing how Facebook’s ARPU stacks up against other Internet companies.

To calculate Facebook’s competitors’ ARPU, we divided the company’s first-quarter revenue by the total number of unique visitors for March 2012 as reported by either the companies themselves or by comScore (). It’s a fast-and-loose number, but it tells an interesting story.

Both Twitter and Microsoft (, Fortune 500) make even less per user on their Internet properties than Facebook.

Twitter is generating 74 cents per user per quarter, according to a revenue estimate from eMarketer. The six-year-old site struggled for years to figure out a way to monetize its service, but it has recently been making headway in the advertising business.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s online business is losing upwards of $1 billion per quarter as the company spends lavishly to grow MSN and Bing’s market share. Currently, its quarterly ARPU stands at 81 cents.

Social network LinkedIn’s () ARPU isn’t much higher than Facebook’s, coming in at $1.76 per quarter.

Top search engines like Baidu and Google seem to offer a better business model. China’s Baidu brings in $2.54 per user per quarter, and Google makes $7.14.

"It’s a different type of advertising," said Debbie Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer. "For Google, advertising is related to what you’re searching for. Facebook has built a whole new form of advertising based on targeting to users’ expressed interests, as well as information about themselves and what their friends do."

The key for Facebook’s ARPU growth, Williamson said, is for Facebook to prove that its new style of ads work better than search-driven ads like Google’s. Some advertisers aren’t buying it. In one ill-timed blow, General Motors (, Fortune 500) said this week that it will stop spending money on Facebook ads.

"The secret for Facebook will be better targeting and more proof that social cues make targeting advertising easier," Williamson said. "Facebook has to show that social causes users to have more affinity for and engagement with ads."  

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The euro and European stocks plunged as trading in New York began after efforts to form a government in Greece collapsed. Newly-elected political leaders there disagree about whether to accept more international bailouts and continue with painful spending cuts.

In the U.S., stocks opened mixed then edged into small gains after word that confidence among U.S. builders rose to a five-year high in May. The index has risen for seven of the past eight months.

Homebuilders rallied. KB Home and Lennar Corp. rose 4 percent, Hovnanian Enterprises 5 percent.

Earlier, a survey by the New York Fed found that manufacturing activity in the New York region rebounded this month far more strongly than economists had expected.

The early rise deflated, but stocks had returned to daily highs shortly before noon. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 42 points to 12,737. It was lifted by JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, shaking off recent losses related to a surprise $2 billion trading loss that JPMorgan announced last week.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose four to 1,342. The Nasdaq composite index rose 21 to 2,923.

Stocks are having their worst month in the past eight. For the month, the Dow is down 518 points _ about 4 percent _ after hitting a four-year high on May 1. The average is on track to post its first monthly loss since September, when it fell 6 percent.

If the Dow closes higher, it will be only its second up day since the peak reached on May 1.

The euro fell as low as $1.2752, a four-month low against the dollar, after Greek socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos declared that attempts to form a governing coalition there had failed and new elections will be held next month. If voters elect parties opposed to the terms of the country’s financial rescue, Greece could be expelled from the euro and global markets would likely shudder.

Stock indexes in France, Britain and Germany gave up earlier gains after Venizelos’ remarks and closed sharply lower.

Home Depot slumped 2 percent, the most of the 30 companies in the Dow, after the world’s biggest home-improvement company forecast revenue that was below what Wall Street analysts were expecting.

Among other stocks making big moves:

_ TJX Cos., which owns the T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods store chains, shot up 7 percent, the most in the S&P 500 index. The discount retailer reported a 58 percent surge in first-quarter income and raised its full-year profit forecast.

_ Avon Products Inc. fell 10 percent, the most in the S&P 500 index, after Coty Inc. canceled its unsolicited, $10.7 billion bid for the cosmetics retailer.

_ Groupon leapt 16 percent after the online daily discount site reported first-quarter revenue that exceeded analysts’ expectations.

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The roof would not be fully retractable, at least not in the way that most fans understand the term. Instead, an angled portion of the new roof would slide away to reveal more daylight.

The plan calls for demolishing the entire east side of the structure and re-routing a portion of Broadway. When rebuilt, the east section would enhanced seating, lobbies and entrances.

The plan also would reconfigure existing seating to allow more flexibility for non-football events and to add seats for some football games, including a Super Bowl.

“The facility design should allow the seating bowl to be economically expanded to accomodate a Super Bowl event,” according to the plan. “A minimum of 6,000 additional seats will be required to meet the NFL requirements.”

The May 1 plan was a closely guarded secret until this morning, when it was made public by the office of Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster.

The plan does not appear to include cost estimates for the extensive upgrades detailed in the plan, nor does it seem to indicate how much, if any, the Rams would be willing to contribute to the project’s financing.

The Rams are in the 17th year of a 30-year lease of the Dome that’s set to expire in 2025. However, an escape clause puts a heavy burden on the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, which operates the Dome and the America’s Center convention hall that’s attached to it.

According to the lease, the Rams are free to terminate the lease as early as 2015 if the CVC fails to keep the Dome a “first-tier” stadium, or one that’s better than three-quarters of all National Football League venues in 15 categories. If the Rams and the CVC can’t agree on a renovation plan satisfying the lease requirement by June 15, the matter goes into arbitration.

On Feb. 1, the CVC unveiled its $124 million plan to overhaul the Dome. The Rams rejected it, and delivered a counter-proposal to the commission on May 1. Citing a confidentiality provision in the franchise’s lease, both the CVC and the team would not make the Rams’ plan public.

In its plan, the CVC had proposed adding new windows, club seats, a video scoreboard and a three-story structure on Baer Plaza that would serve as an entrance for fans in club seats and suites. It wanted the Rams to cover $64 million of the cost. The CVC plan did not specify exactly where the remaining $60 million would come from but listed higher fees for parking and tickets as one possibility.

The secrecy surrounding the “first-tier” process became a legal dispute this month, after the CVC and the Post-Dispatch filed lawsuits against each other.

The Post-Dispatch contends that the Rams’ proposal — as well as other Dome-related documents — are subject to the Missouri Sunshine Law, the state’s open-records law for governments and public agencies like the CVC. The commission maintains that the requested documents are exempt from the law.

The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Bryan Hettenbach.

The CVC gave the Missouri Office of Administration a copy of the Rams’ plan because the state is a part-owner of the Dome. The state is not subject to the lease’s confidentiality provision, according to the CVC, and it was therefore free to make the plan public.

The Dome, which opened in 1995, was largely financed with $256 million in bonds, and the repayment of that 30-year debt will be $720 million. Every year, Missouri spends $12 million to pay off the debt, and St. Louis and St. Louis County each pay $6 million.

Check back for frequent updates to this breaking news story.

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Express Scripts gained 1.4 percent to $55.10 in New York trading Friday. The stock has declined 6.8 percent in the past 12 months.

The volume of adjusted prescription claims Express Scripts handled during the first quarter increased 3.6 percent to about 193 million from a year earlier, the St. Louis County-based company said Thursday. Revenue increased 9.4 percent to $12.1 billion, beating analysts’ estimates of $11.5 billion.

“They reassured everybody that everything’s on track” with the merger, analyst Dave Shove of BMO Capital Markets in New York said in a phone interview. “And the quarter on scrip metrics was good. The stock’s lifting on all of that.”

The company shipped 14 million prescriptions to customers by mail, a 6 percent increase from a year earlier that was helped by Walgreen Co.’s decision to withdraw its drugstores from Express Scripts’ network, Chief Executive George Paz said on a conference call with analysts Friday.

Profit excluding one-time items was 73 cents per share, missing analysts’ average estimate of 77 cents.

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A gallon of diesel costs just over $4 a gallon, off the record high of $4.85 hit in 2008. Yet natural gas is around $2.30 per million British thermal units, nearly one-seventh its record of over $15 per million Btu reached in 2008.

With prices for natural gas so low, and prices for oil-based fuels so high, the idea of building plants to convert natural gas directly into liquid diesel and jet fuel is something more companies are looking into.

"The abundance and affordability of natural gas in the United States provides opportunities to use the fuel in new ways that can enhance our nation’s energy diversity and offer environmental and economic benefits," said Kelly op de Weegh, a spokeswoman for Royal Dutch Shell ().

Shell is currently considering building such a plant along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Last September, South African energy firm Sasoil () said it is considering a similar plant on the Louisiana coast.

But both companies will need to weigh their options carefully.

Gas-to-liquids plants, as they are known in the industry, cost billions to build. And they need access to cheap natural gas, not only for the 4 or 5 years it takes to construct the facility, but over the 20 or 30 year timeframe the plants would operate.

"The one cause of concern is the economics of the industry," Leslie Palti-Guzman, a natural gas analyst at Eurasia Group, wrote in a recent note. The high cost to build a plant, combined with the need for natural gas to stay cheap, could constrain the growth of this emerging fuel source, she said.

Reporting of fracking and drilling violations weak

The U.S. Energy Information Agency says that with oil at $100 a barrel, natural gas needs to be priced below $6 per million British thermal units for the process to be economic.

But the price swings in this industry are huge. For example, natural gas has swung from over $15 per million Btu to around $2 now business cards. Oil prices are another big variable — they were in the $30-a-barrel range as recently as 2009.

"How the economics will work is a key driver and one we will continue to evaluate," said Shell’s op de Weegh.

The technology is quite similar to making liquid fuels out of coal — a process developed nearly 100 years ago and used heavily by oil-strapped Germany in W.W. II and, later, by South Africa. But it’s only recently been applied to natural gas, which results in a fuel that’s cleaner than if it’s made out of coal.

In a very basic description of the process, natural gas, oxygen and water are fed into a reactor, which uses heat, pressure and catalysts to make a wax. The wax can then be upgraded to diesel, jet fuel and a variety of other refined products.

An apology to most American motorists: The process cannot easily produce gasoline.

But the diesel production might help lower prices for truckers and others that use the fuel.

Will gas crowd out wind and solar?

And finding a use for the country’s rising natural gas production is essential to avoid a steep slowdown in the natural gas drilling industry, which has generated thousand of well-paying jobs over the last few years.

To be sure, the impact on the price of diesel or natural gas is expected to be modest.

Eurasia Group lists just over 400,000 barrels a day of production capacity at both proposed and operating gas-to-liquids plants worldwide. EIA says at least 1 million barrels a day would be needed to significantly impact prices.

Still, any boost in demand would be welcome for U.S. natural gas producers.

Plus, there’s always the chance the technology will improve as more plants get built, lowering costs and leading to bigger production amounts.

"This is a nascent technology, and breakthroughs can always happen," said Palti-Guzman. "There’s room to grow."  

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Benchmark U.S. crude fell by $1.96 to $96.52 per barrel in New York while Brent crude lost 98 cents to $112.20 per barrel in London.

The prices for both declined after voters in France and Greece rejected incumbent leaders that supported austerity measures to fix the region’s economy, where unemployment and recession are spreading need a personal loan with bad credit.

Analysts warned that the election results could derail the eurozone’s plan for recovery. That could further disrupt an economy that consumes 18 percent of the world’s oil.

In the U.S., retail gasoline fell 2.5 cents over the weekend to a national average of $3.777 per gallon.

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Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn’t always work everywhere.

In other words, Lee Linthicum, a market researcher, says: “It can’t be some generic mix of spices that might fool an American.”

Food makers long have tinkered with their products to appeal to regional tastes, but getting the recipe just right is becoming more important than ever. That’s partly because people in developing nations such as China and India are gaining more of an appetite for American-style “on-the-go” foods as they work longer hours and have less time to cook. But it’s mostly because snack makers increasingly are looking for growth in other parts of the world as sales slow at home.

Growth in the snack food industry has been virtually flat in the U.S. for the past two years, according to market research firm Euromonitor. Meanwhile, combined sales in China, Brazil and Russia _ three major developing markets _ rose 15 percent in 2010 and 11 percent last year to $17 billion. That’s half the size of the U.S. market but it’s growing.

SNACKS IN A DIFFERENT LAND

The challenge for snack makers is that people in other countries have different tastes. Consider the Oreo, which Kraft Food Inc. introduced in China in 1996. Sales of the vanilla cream-filled chocolate cookie sandwich were respectable there, but the Chinese didn’t completely take to it.

So Kraft decided to tweak the Oreo. But executives of the Northfield, Ill.-based company knew that they had to proceed with caution. “When you have a brand that’s 100 years old, you don’t mess with the recipe thoughtlessly,” says Lorna Davis, head of the company’s global biscuit and cookies business.

In 2006, Kraft began offering the Oreo as a wafer, a popular cookie throughout Asia. It is made up of cream sandwiched between crispy wafers. The plan was to help familiarize more Chinese customers with the brand. Three years later, the company decided to go a step further.

Kraft worked with a panel of consumer taste experts from around the world to identify the characteristics of the Oreo _ including color, crunchiness, bitterness, color _ that were likely to appeal to Chinese tastes. Executives learned through research that the Chinese don’t like their treats as big or as sweet as Americans do. So the company rejiggered the recipe to create a cookie that was a tad smaller and a touch less sweet.

To test the new recipe, hundreds of Chinese consumers tasted the new Oreo. It was a hit. “It made us realize the smallest of details make a big difference,” Davis says.

But the company wasn’t finished. After noticing sales of Oreos were lagging in China during the summer, Kraft added a green tea ice cream flavor. The cookie combined a popular local flavor with the cooling imagery of ice cream. The green tea version sold well, and a year later, Kraft rolled out Oreos in flavors that are popular in Asians desserts _ raspberry-and-blueberry and mango-and-orange.

The result? Over the past five years, Kraft said sales have grown an average of 60 percent a year, although it declined to give revenue amounts. The Oreo now is the top-selling cookie in China with a market share of 13 percent. The previous top cookie was a biscuit by a Chinese company.

Kraft, which operates in more than 80 countries, is taking a similar approach with other snacks. In Saudi Arabia, Kraft offers its Tang powder drink in a lemon-pepper flavor. In Mexico, it comes in tropical fruit flavors like tamarind and mandarin, and a hibiscus version fashioned after the flower. Sales have nearly doubled to $1 billion worldwide since Kraft rolled out the localized versions in 2006.

Kraft’s ability to adapt to local tastes is increasingly important as it looks for growth overseas. The rise in international revenue at Kraft was more than double the increase in North America last year.

Kraft also plans to split into two separate units by the end of the year. The largest will be a global snacks company called Mondelez International, pronounced “mohn-dah-leez,” to sell its Trident gum and Cadbury chocolates in fast-growing countries worldwide.

CAFFEINE WITH YOUR CEREAL?

Kellogg Co., the world’s largest cereal maker, also has intensified its focus on catering to local tastes as it attempts to grow its snack business overseas.

Last year, the company’s revenue in Latin America topped $1 billion for the first time. And in February, Kellogg said it agreed to buy Pringles chip brand from Procter & Gamble for $2.7 billion. The deal will nearly triple its international snack business, making it the world’s second-largest snack maker behind Pepsi.

The company, based in Battle Creek, Mich., already sells products in more than 180 countries. It’s learning that on-the-ground insights can pay off. In Europe, for instance, Kellogg for many years had marketed its cereals there just as it did in the U.S. But it failed to take into account that many in the region don’t drink cold milk in the morning.

Now, an American traveling in Spain might find it surreal to see TV ads showing All-Bran cereal floating in a steaming cup of coffee. Kellogg, which makes Keebler, Cheez-It and Kashi bars, declined to give details on how well the cereal is selling there, but it said the marketing has resulted in “great results.”

A similar story played out for PepsiCo. Inc. For the first time last year, revenue from the company’s international food division surpassed revenue in North America. To achieve that, Pepsi has had to adjust its recipes.

In 2005, Pepsi’s food division began a quest to make its Lay’s potato chips more appealing to local tastes in Russia. It wasn’t easy. Russians still like packaged versions of a Soviet-era snack _ stale bread slathered in oil and baked to a crisp.

“Potato chips were not big in the Communist time, so it’s something we’re gradually building,” says Marc Schroeder, who heads Pepsi’s food division in Russia.

To get a better sense of what Russians like, employees traveled around the country to visit people in their homes and talk about what they eat day-to-day. That was a big task. Russia has nine time zones and spans 7,000 miles, with eating habits that vary by region.

The findings were invaluable for executives at the company’s Purchase, N.Y. headquarters. In the eastern part of the country, Pepsi found that fish is a big part of the diet. So it introduced “Crab” chips in 2006. It’s now the third most popular flavor in the country.

A “Red Caviar” flavor does best in Moscow, where caviar is particularly popular. “Pickled Cucumber,” which piggybacks off of a traditional appetizer throughout Russia, was introduced last year and is already the fourth most popular flavor. Other favorites include onion, bacon and “sour cream and herbs,” which is a bit sweeter than the American version.

The chip translations are paying off; sales of Lay’s have more than doubled in the past five years. As for the classic Lay’s _ an American favorite _ Russians still aren’t biting.

“They find it a very boring flavor,” Schroeder said.

____

Follow Candice Choi at http://www.twitter.com/candicechoi

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The loss stems in large part from a $401 million charge related to the restructuring. First Solar () plans to reduce 30% of its workforce, or 2,000 jobs, in order to save money.

Most of the cuts will take place in Europe, with some 1,200 positions lost in Germany alone as it closes a factory in Frankfurt. Some 120 job cuts will occur in the United States, mostly to corporate and administrative staffers. The Tempe, Ariz.-based company will also idle production lines in Malaysia.

As a result of the restructuring, the company expects to save between $30 and $60 million in 2012 and an additional $100 to $120 million annually going forward. First Solar blamed "deteriorating market conditions in Europe" for its need to implement cost-saving cuts.

The company also announced Thursday that James Hughes will take over the reins as chief executive officer, replacing founder Mike Ahearn, who had been serving as interim CEO since October. Hughes joined First Solar in March as chief commercial officer. Ahearn will continue in his role as chairman.

The company’s net sales were $497 million in the quarter, a decrease of $70 million from the first quarter of 2011, due primarily to lower average selling prices and lower sales volume no teletrack payday loans. The net loss was $449 million.

The results drove First Solar’s stock price down about 1% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

But the company also reported some brighter news. It increased its 2012 earnings guidance to $4.00 to $4.50, compared to prior guidance of $3.75 to $4.25, excluding restructuring and impairment charges and costs in excess of normal warranty expense. It also increased its operating cash flow guidance by $50 million to $850 to $950 million.

Solar-panel companies have been hit hard by plummeting prices, even as installation of solar panels in private homes doubled last year. The U.S. solar-panel industry may also have been impacted by cheap competition from China. The U.S. Commerce Department announced in March that it would impose tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels that it said had benefited from unfair subsidies by Beijing.

First Solar has received guaranteed loans from the Department of Energy to build power plants for three separate projects.

Staff Writer Aaron Smith contributed to this report. 

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