First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) reduced its full-year sales guidance for 2011 from a range of $3 billion to $3.3 billion to a range of $2.8 billion to $2.9 billion. The reduction comes as the company reorganizes under the leadership of interim CEO and Chairman Mike Ahearn.

The company is projecting much higher sales of $3.7 billion to $4 billion in 2012, with a majority of modules already under contract.

For 2011, the company anticipates full-year earnings per share of $5.75 to $6, on operating income of $575 million to $600 million. First Solar attributed the lowered figures to weather and other factors.

For 2012, the company projects lower earnings per share in the range of $3.75 to $4.25 per share. It also projected lower operating income in the range of $425 million to $450 million. It also plans to spend between $375 million and $425 million in capital investment in 2012. In 2012 the company also will start executing on a plan designed to reduce First Solar’s dependence on subsidy-based solar markets, according to Ahearn.

The company was impacted by an imbalanced solar market, according to Ahearn.

“The solar industry is structurally imbalanced. Production capacity is uncapped and growing. Installation capacity is limited by subsidy levels and declining,” he said during a webcast on Dec. 14. “We believe large open markets that allowed the market to achieve the current volume are shrinking and that these markets will not be replaced by similar programs in the future.”

Part of the issue is more competition and a shrinking incentive bases for PV.

“Either we continue to play the Wack-a-Mole game, where an oversupplied supply chain waits for the next subsidy market to pop up, so it can quickly descend and battle it out for a limited share of volumes, or we can find another game to play. We've decided to move to another game,” Ahearn said.

Ahearn said the key to First Solar’s success is adapting to an entirely new marketplace for solar.

“We're shifting our revenue base from subsidies to sustainable markets starting in 2012. It won't happen overnight and we'll have to transition out of the subsidies we currently depend on,” Ahearn said “But our goal is to shift progressively over the 2012 to 2014 timeframe so that by Q4 2014 we derive virtually all our new revenues from sustainable markets.”

Such markets will include immediate needs utility-scale projects and will include markets like Africa, the Middle East and China.