Andrew Littlefair
Analyst · Craig-Hallum
Thank you, Tony. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. I’m pleased to review our first quarter 2014 operating results with you today. We reported 59.3 million gallons delivered for this quarter, compared to 49.9 million gallons in the first quarter of 2013. Gallons delivered were up 24% when excluding the 2.2 million gallons delivered in the first quarter of 2013 by our former Peruvian joint venture which we sold in March of 2013. We also generated $95.3 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2014, which was up from $66.8 million a year ago or 43%, when excluding the VETAC revenue which we had in the first quarter of 2013, but didn’t have in the first quarter of 2014. As you know we build up our fueling infrastructure and in-house capabilities over the past couple of years to get a jump start on our competition in anticipation of the 12 liter engine coming to market and demand increasing. And we know it was the right loop. As a result today, we have 96 trucks–friendly fueling stations open which is four times as many as our closest competitor. In doing so, we have put some pressure on our numbers. From an adjusted EBITDA perspective we were negative by $7 million this quarter. If you were to take out – take a rough average of about $0.30 margin per gallon that we’ve seen recently we need to add about 23 million gallons to close this gap. So to think about it in another way, this is a roughly a 10% volume increase from where we are today on an annual basis. And if you look at our historical volume growth rates of closer to 20%, we believe this is well within reach. We are extremely focused on getting this company to profitability and we are close. Keep in mind we have already deployed the capital to build out the base station infrastructure and scale up the capabilities of the company. So our CapEx spending going forward is essentially discretionary. Last quarter I said that our CapEx target for 2014 was approximately a $135 million. After a quarter under our belt and having raised capital at the subsidiary level to fund our R&D capital needs for the year, we believe a more accurate CapEx figure for 2014 is between $75 million and $85 million. We are committed to being disciplined with our capital to align our investments with the pace of the market. Additionally, our cash SG&A has come down 8% as a percentage of revenue excluding VETAC between periods and it is something that we are continuing to work to reduce. As I mentioned on our last call, the release of the Cummins Westport 12 liter engine has been the catalyst for the heavy-duty trucking industry to begin this transition to natural gas fueling. I was pleased to hear Westport announce last week that sales of the engine are doing well. In addition to the new engine availability, we are pleased to see the introduction of new natural gas sleeper cab options from Kenworth and Freightliner at the Mid-America Truck Show in March. These sleeper cab options are well suited for the many fleets that drive longer distances. Just two days ago executives from Kenworth, Volvo, Mack and Freightliner were on the panel at the ACT Expo and all gave glowing reports about the sales and performance of the 12 liter. I was fortunate enough to be a key note presented at the ACT Expo which is the largest alternative transportation conference in the country. I was incredibly impressed with the turnout, 3,000 people and hundreds of companies in the natural gas space. There were literally 12 heavy-duty trucks on display which is a dramatic increase from a couple – from two a couple of years ago. While we are excited with the natural gas engine and model developments, we recognize that our fleet customers are taking necessary amount of time to properly test and get comfortable with the 12 liter both CNG and LNG. And, all of us would do the same. And as I see this market unfolding, we wanted to make sure all these fleets know that we have a very robust network of stations that can fuel heavy-duty trucks. So as I mentioned a moment ago, it is important for everyone to understand the real scope of our national truck station network, America’s Natural Gas Highway. Today we have 96 stations across the country that are open and are truck friendly, no other company could come close to making that claim. I’m pleased to highlight this week’s announcement that Kroger, the country’s largest grocery retailer has chosen to partner with Clean Energy as they begin to transition their large fleet to natural gas. Kroger has placed in an order for their first 40 LNG trucks which will fuel at a private station we’re building for them in Clackamas, Oregon. These trucks will serve their network of stores in that region and are expected to use 1 million gallons annually. Additional trucking fleet announcements we made during the quarter include the signing of EPES Transport Systems, one of the preferred carriers for Lowe’s home-improvement centers. EPES will be deploying a fleet of LNG trucks to haul goods for Lowe’s out of their Valdosta, Georgia distribution center and will be fueling at our Valdosta station. We opened our station in London, Ohio to support the growing national presence of our customer Raven Transport who continues to prove their leadership through their commitments of sustainability. We signed on Cardenas Markets, a California-based supermarket chain who has ordered 15 CNG trucks and fuels throughout our Southern California network to serve their stores in the region. Our long time partners, Saddle Creek Logistics which continues to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability is working with us double the size of their Lakeland, Florida CNG station so we can accommodate an additional 25 CNG trucks [on work] [ph]. Saddle Creek already operates one of the largest fleets of CNG trucks in the country with over a 115 trucks in their fleet and have announced they will have up – they will have over 200 within a year. We are proud to be their fuel supplier. We are pleased to continue to sport UPS and their growing fleet of natural gas trucks. With our announcement on Tuesday that we’ll be fueling 15 additional heavy-duty UPS trucks between our stations in Jacksonville, Florida and Los Angeles. We are now fueling 230 UPS trucks daily at nine of our stations across the country. And lastly we are proud to support U.S. Foods, one of the nation’s largest food distribution – food service distributors who has ordered 19 CNG trucks to be based in San Antonio, but will be fueling throughout our station network in the Texas Triangle. Switching gears to the more established markets, we continue to see strong growth in transit, refuse, airports, fleet services during the first quarter. I’ll quickly touch on some highlights from each of these markets. In transit, a few months ago we announced our award for operations and maintenance contract of the four CNG stations we built for Dallas Area Rapid Transit. We are pleased to report that these stations fueled over 1.3 million gallons in the first quarter of this year. DART is currently operating a 186 CNG buses and a 112 light-duty CNG vehicles. They expect to take delivery of another 185 CNG buses during the second quarter. Again DART should consume approximately 6.5 million gallons per year once their bus fleet is fully in service. Additionally, we just opened our first of three CNG stations for Sun Metro, the large El Paso’s Texas Transit Agency, we acquired to our partnership with Mansfield. This station will serve the city’s transit, peer transit and rough use fleets. The other two sides will begin fueling in May. In total these sites should consume approximately 4 million gallons a year. The AMC also extended its LNG supply grant with Clean Energy for the next two years. We are selected to build an LNG station and supply LNG fuel for Anaheim Resort Transit which operates in existing fleet of 35 LNG buses for Disneyland and the surrounding area. The five year contract is expected to add approximately 500,000 gallons annually. In the East, we completed construction of a CNG station for Hillsborough Area Regional Transit in Tampa, Florida. Over the next five years HART will replace the entire diesel powered bus fleet to CNG. In Canada, we completed and commenced operations of BC Transit to new CNG station in the Nanaimo, British Columbia. The station will fuel the 50 buses currently operating from that transit depot. We have a 17 near operation and maintenance contract for the Nanaimo station and also TransLink ordered an additional 45 transit buses to fuel at their Clean Energy operated station here at Vancouver, British Columbia. And now on to refuse. Nationally our refuse market continues to thrive and expand. We will build or upgrade a dozen or more stations for Waste Management and Republic Services this year. Important the two largest solid waste companies in the U.S. combined Republic and Waste Management are now operating approximately 5,500 natural gas refuse trucks. This quarter we execute an agreement with progressive ways that makes us third largest solid waste company to design build and operate a new private time-fill CNG station on their property in Tampa, Florida. In California, longtime customer CR&R is adding 24 new CNG trucks to its fleet in Perris, California, where we also signed a low carbon fuel credit management contract. Other California customers adding CNG refuse trucks to their fleets included Vertec Waste, the City of Glendale, County of Sacramento, Recology, South San Francisco Scavenger and Ware Disposal. All together these independent solid waste customer orders on the West Coast were expected to add half a million new gallons with these purchases. And in Arizona, we finished construction of a private CNG station for the City of Mesa’s new fleet of CNG refuse trucks. Scottsdale, Tempe and Tucson all Clean Energy customers continued to add trucks. All in all our refuse trucks customers deployed 230 new trucks in the first quarter. In our airport and fleet services market, we just celebrated the grand opening of a new station at New York’s JFK airport. The station will provide fuel for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New York City Department of Sanitation and numerous other fleets operating at around the airport. The Port Authority recently ordered 58 medium-duty trucks to operate at the three New York area airports JFK, LaGuardia and Newark; importantly with the addition of the JFK station we now have CNG stations at each of those airports. We began construction of the new CNG station under Orlando International Airport and the station is expected to be completed late in the second quarter of 2014. We recently purchased six existing CNG stations from PECO Philadelphia Regional Gas Utility and are making strategic upgrades to those sites to fuel the growing number of fleets in Pennsylvania transitioning to CNG including PECO’s own fleet. In late March, Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Corbett announced the awarding of 25 grants to $7.7 million to fleets converting to natural gas. Of the funds granted over $3 million was awarded to Clean Energy customers using our stations both CNG and LNG. Our long time customer AT&T has taken delivery of approximately 900 CNG vans, trucks and sedans bought last year, vast majority of these vehicles fuel with Clean Energy at our public stations. We anticipate well over 1 million new gallons from AT&T this year. SuperShuttle one of our very first customers in the nation’s largest shared-ride van operator continues to expand their use of natural gas with an additional 70 CNG vans that will operate at Northern and Southern California airport. In Las Vegas, customers have ordered over 100 new CNG vehicles including 40 limousines and black cars for MGM resorts and 65 new taxies and buses from Bell Transportation that will fuel our public stations. Bell impressively currently operates a 180 natural gas vehicles as expected to have over 300 in its fleet by the end of the year. And finally the State of Colorado, ordered 81 light medium, light and medium-duty CNG vehicles that will fuel on our Denver area network public stations. We’ve had a long history of starting new markets. We were the first company to develop the refuse market, the first to build natural gas stations at airports and the first to develop stations with the heavy-duty trucking market. Now I would like to mention two attractive new markets that we are presuming. The ready-mix truck market and bulk fuel hauling market. Into the economic downturn and resulting slowdown within the construction industry a few years ago, there is a large pent up demand for new cement mixture trucks now that the economy and construction activity have rebounded. Many ready-mix fleets across the country exploring CNG trucks. We’re already fueling several of these companies and we expect this market to flourish as these companies continue to replace their old fleets. We’re also expanding our relationship with our partner Mansfield Energy to form a joint venture which will focus on the bulk fuel hauling truck market. Currently have two fueling sites in development near their fueling terminals in Georgia and Tampa and hope to have at least a half dozen locations in development by the end of the year. Coupling to support our growing CNG market is our compressor subsidiary IMW. The first quarter has been, seen a success with IMW strategy to accelerate growth in proven international markets by establishing in country sales resources across four continents and seven countries. Early results when these efforts include delivering the world’s largest mother-daughter station offsetting a significant portion of a large mine diesel requirements in Western Australia. IMW also manufactured installed and commissioned largest compressed natural gas mother station site in China and signed the contract to produce the country’s largest daughter station. In addition IMW has had its best quarterly margin since we purchased the company four years ago. In our biomethane business, we achieved a significant milestone in March with the first production in sales from our third biomethane facility located outside of Memphis, Tennessee. We also now entered into agreements like cover eight additional biomethane production facilities that will be flowing Redeem to our stations in the coming months. And as a reminder Redeem is the first commercially available natural gas vehicle fuel that is 100% renewable and up to 90% cleaner than diesel. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Rick.