Shares of Seal Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which runs natural gas fueling stations for fleets of taxis, buses and other vehicles, rose Thursday a day after the company reported a smaller than expected quarterly loss.
Clean Energy’s shares were up more than 8% in midday New York trading on a down day on Wall Street.
The company, about 40% owned by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, has a market value of $1.2 billion.
On Wednesday, Clean Energy reported a fourth-quarter loss of $1.9 million, narrowed from $23.7 million a year earlier and better than the $2.4 million anticipated by Wall Street analysts.
Revenue rose 49% from a year earlier to $42.2 million. That topped the $40.3 million analysts were looking for.
Higher natural gas sales and lower costs boosted Clean Energy’s results.
The company sold 9.5 million gasoline gallon equivalents of natural gas in the quarter, up 58% from a year earlier.
Operating expenses fell 15% from a year earlier to $44 million.
Clean Energy develops and runs natural gas stations near airports, utility companies, universities, city yards and other places they’re likely to see a lot of use.
The company runs 196 stations across the country. It plans to add another 40 this year.
Clean Energy didn’t offer a first-quarter or 2010 outlook but said “we are well positioned to continue to grow our business in 2010.”’
Legendary oilman and corporate raider Pickens started Clean Energy as a tiny part of his Dallas-based Mesa Petroleum in the late 1980s. He split it off in the late 1990s.
The company is part of Pickens’ push toward alternative sources of energy.
In 2008, he called for $1 trillion in government and private investment in windmills to cut dependence on foreign oil.
