Legendary oilman and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens, who cofounded Clean Energy Fuels Corp. some 25 years ago, said he believes the Seal Beach-based company may have finally turned the corner.
Clean Energy, the nation’s largest natural-gas station builder and operator, recently posted its first quarterly operating profit since going public in May 2007.
“You can see the direction we’re going,” the 85-year-old Pickens told the Business Journal late last month. “I hope it’s a trend.”
The company delivered nearly 50 million gallons of compressed, liquefied and renewable natural gas last quarter, up 14% from a year earlier. Sales topped $93 million, up 26.3% but missing Wall Street expectations of $99.1 million. Adjusted profits hit $2.65 million, beating estimates of a $6.1 million loss.
Clean Energy is in the midst of building out “America’s Natural Gas Highway,” with transportation arteries in California, Texas and the Midwest pegged for natural-gas stations spread out every 250 miles or so when the multiyear project concludes.
Its commercial-fleet customers operate more than 30,000 natural-gas-powered vehicles.
The company saw revenue of $334 million last year, up 14% from a year earlier, but lost about $101.3 million due to high costs of infrastructure build-out. It delivered some 220 gallons of natural gas, up 46.6% from 2011.
“When you’re building infrastructure, it takes a while,” said Pickens, a Clean Energy director. “We’ll have a better year this year. I think the whole thing’s tipped.”
The Business Journal caught up with Pickens at the St. Regis Monarch Resort in Dana Point after he delivered a keynote speech late last month at the Latitude business conference hosted by Aliso Viejo-based software maker Telogis Inc.
Pickens, a frequent OC visitor, rattled off dozens of talking points on energy independence during the 60-minute talk, while blasting Congress, President Obama and what he considers America’s diminishing work ethic.
The billionaire started Clean Energy in the late 1980s as a tiny part of his Dallas-based Mesa Petroleum before splitting it off about a decade later.
Netlist Shares Rise
Irvine-based computer memory products maker Netlist Inc. got another favorable court ruling in its ongoing court battle with a competitor over patents.
The U.S. District Court earlier this month ruled against a preliminary injunction motion Calif.-based Smart Modular Technologies Inc. filed seeking to halt sales of Netlist’s flagship HyperCloud products over patent infringement claims.
The products are designed to handle large memory capacity and are billed to improve performance by 25% compared to the industry standard.
Netlist shares, which are typically thinly traded, shot up more than 68% in heavy volume to a market value of about $32.7 million in the weekly trading session following the June 3 announcement.
The latest development follows a December U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruling that rejected Smart Modular’s claims that Netlist infringed on its patents. Netlist’s shares surged 32% in intraday trading after that disclosure.
Netlist was among several Orange County-based technology companies slated to benefit from a line of Intel chips that were released last year and touted to boost performance while lowering operating costs in servers and data centers.
The company has yet to see mass adoption, with sales sliding 39.2% in 2012 to $36.8 million. Netlist lost $13.9 million last year compared to a loss of $5.5 million in 2011.
Chris Casacchia can be reached at casacchia@ocbj.com.
