Newport Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp. reported lower annual revenue and income and its stock declined in trading Friday.
Shares in the country’s biggest builder and operator of natural-gas fueling stations rose about 7% in after-hours trading Thursday to a market cap of $335 million as it surpassed some Wall Street expectations.
The market focused on its losses Friday and shares swung to a 4% decline and a $297 million market cap.
Clean Energy’s annual revenue declined about 10% year-over-year from $429 million to $384 million. Its net loss increased to $134 million in 2015 from $90 million in 2014.
Chief Executive Andrew Littlefair said the lower cost of natural gas and lower construction revenue fed the losses. Littlefair also noted the continued softness in Clean Energy’s global compressor business due to low oil prices and a strong U.S. dollar.
Adjusted results for the company’s fourth quarter that included tax credits showed some positive results.
Quarterly revenue of $119 million declined about 10% but beat analyst estimates of about $103 million; the excise tax credits for alternative fuels that can be utilized through this year accounted for $31 million of that revenue.
Adjusted profits hit $33 million, down 11.5% from a year earlier. Wall Street expected a $9 million loss.
The company said it delivered 78.3 million gallons of liquefied and compressed natural gas in the quarter, up 8.1% from a year earlier.
Clean Energy entered 2015 with hopes it could sustain long-term profitability—a longtime knock on the company—as it reined in construction costs of a nationwide plan it started four years earlier to dot major highways with natural-gas fueling stations.
Speculative buildouts were largely eliminated this year as the company focused on existing fleets and big, longer-term customers that fuel up at its network of more than 535 stations in 42 states.
Legendary oilman and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens co-founded Clean Energy about 25 years ago as a tiny part of his Dallas-based Mesa Petroleum. He split it off in the late 1990s.
