Greetings and welcome to the Clean Energy Fuels Third Quarter Fiscal 2012 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tony Kritzer. Thank you, Mr. Kritzer. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Earlier this afternoon, Clean Energy released financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2012. If you did not receive the release, it is available on the Investor Relations section of the company’s website at www.cleanenergyfuels.com, where the call is also being webcast. There will be a replay available on the website for 30 days. Before we begin, we’d like to remind you that some of the information contained in the news release and on this conference call contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Words of expression reflecting optimism, satisfaction with current prospects, as well as words such as believe, intend, expect, plan, anticipate, and similar variations, identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that the statement is not forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance, and the company’s actual results could differ materially from those contained in such statements. Several factors that could cause or contribute to such differences are described in detail in the Risk Factors section of Clean Energy’s Form 10-Q filed August 6, 2012. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release, and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements or supply new information regarding the circumstances after the date of this release. The company’s non-GAAP EPS and adjusted EBITDA will be reviewed on this call and exclude certain expenses that the company’s management does not believe are indicative of the company’s core business operating results. Non-GAAP financial measures should be considered, in addition to results, prepared in accordance with GAAP and should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, GAAP results. The directly comparable GAAP information, reasons why management uses non-GAAP information, a definition of non-GAAP EPS and adjusted EBITDA, and a reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP figures is provided in the company’s press release, which has been furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K today. Participating on today’s call from the company is President and Chief Executive Officer Andrew Littlefair and Chief Financial Officer Rick Wheeler. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Andrew.

Thank you Tony, and good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us. Before I begin the official part of our call, I’d like to take a quick moment to say a few works about Hurricane Sandy. As everyone knows, one week ago this historic storm ripped through the East Coast, causing immeasurable destruction, and I’m sure some of you listening on this call have been impacted. I would like to report that we had 49 stations on the East Coast that were in the path of the storm, and because of the around the clock effort from Clean Energy’s station technicians and other employees, as soon as the water subsided, all of those stations, including ones in incredibly hard-hit areas of Long Island and New Jersey, were up and running. This enabled our refuse customers in that area to fuel up and begin the critical relief effort of clearing debris and damage caused by the storm. And it also enabled many of the critical public transit buses and other shuttles in the area to transport people in those communities who depend on them to get around, whether it be to work, to the grocery store, or other necessary destinations. I’m proud of our operations group who amassed in the Northeast, slept in sleeping bags in pickup trucks. They organized standby generators and got the stations online by Wednesday. We here at Clean Energy send our thoughts and prayers out to the communities in which we operate, and the millions of people who have been affected by this devastating storm. Moving on to our results, today we reported record revenue in the third quarter of $91.5 million, up 27% from $72.1 million for the third quarter of 2011. We also delivered a record 50.9 million gallons in the third quarter, up…

Thanks, Andrew. Before I review our financial results, I would like to point out that all my references for our results will be comparing the third quarter of 2012 with the third quarter of 2011 and the first 9 months of 2012 to the first 9 months of 2011, unless otherwise noted. Volumes rose to 50.9 million gallons during the quarter, up from 40.9 million gallons a year ago. For the first 9 months of 2012, volumes increased to 143.2 million gallons, up from 115.6 million gallons. For the quarter, revenue increased to $91.5 million, up from $72.1 million. For the first 9 months of 2012, revenue increased to $234.9 million, up from $206.5 million a year ago. Keep in mind, when comparing the numbers between periods, the first 3 quarters of 2012 did not include any volumetric excise tax credit, or VEETC, revenue as the VEETC expired on December 31, 2011. VEETC revenue was $4.5 million, and $13.4 million, respectively, in the third quarter and the first 9 months of 2011. One big item contributing to our increased revenue this quarter was we completed and sold 2 large CNG fueling stations to a transit customer in Dallas during the period. Our fuel sales are also up about $4.5 million between periods. On a non-GAAP basis, for the third quarter of 2012, we reported a loss of $0.19 per share. This compares with a non-GAAP loss of $0.11 per share in the third quarter of 2011. For the first 9 months of 2012, we reported a non-GAAP loss of $0.52 per share, compared to a non-GAAP loss of $0.26 per share in 2011. Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter of 2012 was minus $3.1 million, compared to $1.8 million in 2011. For the first 9 months of 2012, adjusted EBITDA…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Rob Brown with Lake Street Capital.

I wondered if you could give us a little more color on both the Frito Lay and the FedEx agreements. Are those part of the Natural Gas Highway? And was the Highway instrumental in signing those agreements?

The Highway, and I think most people in the industry would agree that until we really launched the highway last year and announced that we were going to do it, we’d have these conversations with OEMs and others -- it’s kind of hard for our friends in the trucking industry, and frankly our friends that ship goods, to get their head around how exactly this was going to work. And so until we launched the Highway, I think people were skeptical. And right at about Thanksgiving time, you’ll be able to drive from L.A. to Atlanta and then from Atlanta to New York City. By the end of this year we’ll be able to go border to border and coast to coast. I think this has been very compelling for contracted carriers such as Frito Lay and also certainly FedEx and UPS. Now let me just say a couple of things. FedEx is fueling at what we would consider America’s Natural Gas Highway stations in the Texas triangle and in Dallas. That’s a test. And what you’ll see with a company like FedEx is you’ll have less over the road, coast to coast stuff, if you will, using local, regional networks. And we have in Texas, certainly for those test fleets, a very nice regional Texas triangle that’s up and running and works well. Frito Lay is a little bit different in that they are running, and very satisfied with -- and that big truck order they’re talking about in the 13 stations, they do a smaller number of miles, and it’s really distribution and of course to move potato chips. So they really cube out before they weigh out on these trucks, and they’re very satisfied with the 9-liter engine. So I would say with Frito Lay, probably our Highway is a little less important, just because of the way they go about their business. I think for FedEx, though, and for many others, the Highway’s been very important.

And then Rick, could you let us know how much of the Dallas station revenue hit this quarter and how much are you expecting in Q4? I think that was a $40 million contract.

It was about $17.6 million this quarter.

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Dyer with Craig-Hallum.

So the $17.6 million, should we expect, because you’ve done 2 of the 4, a similar number in Q4?

Yes. We’ll get them done and all that, but they seem to be on track, and that should hold.

And then I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about capacity utilization at the Boron and Pickens plants, and at what point you may need to start thinking about adding some liquefaction capacity, either there or other places.

It’s a good question. Of course, the Pickens Plant is down right now, so we have a lot of unused capacity there. But just as the highway begins to roll out, certainly with the Texas triangle the Pickens Plant will come up, it’s still underutilized. I think 35% was the utilization. We’ll see that move up. Boron has hit higher volumes than that, and I think we’ve seen times when it’s been at 65% or so utilized. We, as you know, can expand that. We slowed up on doing it this year just because we felt like we had a little bit of time. We did spend several million dollars to acquire the long lead items. We’ll go ahead and start that. That will be a project that will begin in the first or second quarter. I’m now talking about the Boron Plant in California. So we’ll increase that capacity by 1/3 for next year. Now, when we look out at the future, and we look out at 2013 and 2014 and we go beyond that, and, as you’ve heard me talk about before, we begin to use similar adoption rates as we’ve seen in the refuse industry, the industry will need more LNG. And we are very mindful of that. We see a time in 2017 when you’ll need several billion gallons of LNG, and the industry doesn’t have it. And we don’t have it. And so we are mindful of it. We’re working on it. We have a 2 or 3 pronged approach of more capacity at existing locations, new capacity, and also working with our friends in the gas patch to bring and make modifications to cryogenic plants to add capacity. That’s something that’s very important for not only our company but for the entire industry. You need to start seeing announcements on that in 2013 and 2014, otherwise you won’t have enough volume. So watch for that. I think it’s important. We’re all over it. We have a new vice president of LNG supply, and we’ve lined up a lot of fuel, but more will need to be done.

I’m wondering if you have an expectation you could share on volume growth in 2013, just on the current station footprint, setting aside what you’re going to roll out again next year.

I don’t know that we’re going to provide that exact guidance on this call, but all things being equal, and I don’t think they should be going forward in the latter half of 2013, we’ve been growing at about 25%. Eventually when the truck, and you’ve heard me say this before, that these trucks, the very important 11.9 trucks will begin to make their way into the market in February or March. Then it will go to the OEMs, and you’ll begin to see some adoptions and testing in the latter part of the second quarter. We hope we get on track with the 11.9s, and believe we will, to where we’ll have a few thousand trucks sold next year. And we hope, in the fourth quarter, you’ll begin to see that ramp up significantly. And so our America’s Natural Gas Highway will see increased volumes, but I think 2013’s going to be a year really of testing and adoption. There will be some significant volume growth, I think, company-wide, you’ll see our core markets grow probably similar to a little bit higher than we did this year. But the America’s Natural Gas Highway will be back-loaded in 2013, and I think the significant growth you’ll see in probably the beginning of 2014.

And then I’d just like to touch on BAF for a minute. You’ve talked in the past about there were some large opportunities in the second half of the year. Any visibility into those? Are they still out there? Maybe even up-fits for the quarter? Anything new on BAF?

Well, we’re proud of BAF. I will say this, they’re struggling a little bit right now, just in terms of the big major orders that we see out there for some of our big friends, the AT&Ts, the Verizons, and some others. We have lines in the water with a lot of large, significant fleets. I can’t name all of them here today that are testing, that have the wherewithal to really make big orders. So we like that. I think BAF has done a good job expanding its dealer program with Ford dealers across the country. We’re seeing some traction there on that. They’ve done a nice job broadening out their vehicle availability and also their customer base. So we’re down from where we were last year. We’re still working like heck to try to land some of the big, the 500-1,000 orders. In the meantime, were down a little bit, but we’re kind of holding our own as we broaden the customer base. So I don’t have any big announcement for you with them yet. We haven’t given up hope. So there’s just a lot of blocking and tackling. We have now a very robust offering for Ford. Really, we have almost everything that they’ve got in terms of fleet vehicles. We’re starting to see some really good penetration with that program.

Our next question comes from the line of Graham Mattison with Lazard Capital Markets.

Looking at the revenues, there was a big jump in the construction revenue. But if you pull back the construction revenue and take out the VEETC contribution from last year, your core revenues are only up less than 4%. I was wondering, is there anything specific that goes into that, or can you give us a sense on a like-like basis?

Yes, Andrew alluded to, BAF is off from where it was last year. So that’s kind of one that’s heading down. Northstar’s off. We made a business decision to not have them pursue outside sales and just to work on our highway stations. So just kind of through the effect of that, their revenues, in theory, are down from where they were. But if you look at all the other stuff, DCE, our fuel sales, all that good stuff, it’s heading in the right direction. So I think you’ve got some things that are going down that may be masking how well some of the other pieces of the business are doing.

Can you give us a sense of what the core business, the fueling, revenue was?

Yes, it was about $37 million in the quarter. And as I said in my comments, it was up about $4.5 million from similar quarter in 2011.

Do you have any plans to open any stations up in Canada? Particularly with the growth of the 15 liters predominantly coming out of that region. Is there any plan or outlook on that?

You’re talking about a mini natural gas highway type program up there?

Right.

We are looking at some stuff in the eastern part of the country, in that important Toronto corridor. So we’re working with some folks up there on that. We’ve opened some stations in Canada, but it’s really focused on our refuse clientele. And we’ve got a couple of new deals in the works there that you’ll hear about. But I don’t have anything to share with you that’s concrete right now on a 12 station plan running down a particular interstate or corridor there in Canada yet.

And Graham, the other thing I wanted to say on the revenue, keep in mind there’s $4.5 million of VEETC revenue that was in the third quarter of ’11 that’s not in the third quarter of ’12. So we were starting from a $4.5 million hole, in theory, when you’re looking period to period.

Okay, was the VEETC included -- do you count that as fuel revenue?

No, it’s just a revenue number.

And then can you just give us a sense on the LNG plant when you expect that to be up online?

The Pickens Plant should come back -- we’ve got our fingers crossed here, but we’re making some good progress on it. It’s supposed to be back up November 20. So we’re close. And that was just one of those kind of freak accidents. We had a shaft, basically, a turbine, that disintegrated on us. We had a backup --this was a specialized piece of equipment, and we had a backup shaft and we did what was standard procedure, we went ahead and x-rayed it, the backup shaft, and sure as heck there was some fractures in it, and some problems with it, and so we had to go back from scratch and have this thing purpose-built. So that was a real shame. It should be back online November 20.

And when did it go down?

Right about the beginning of the quarter. It’s been down about 100 days. A little longer.

Our next question comes from the line of Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

First, as you look at the product revenue margins, is the main factor driving the sequential decline the BAF? And then as you look at the BAF order patterns, I think into year end, should we see the margins recover in the first half of next year?

Keep in mind VEETC falls to my margin line, so it’s hurting us to the tune of the $4.5 million, the revenue we lost. Yes, BAF is certainly hurting us from a margin perspective as well. But the nice thing is IMW bounced back, comparatively from the third quarter of ’11 to ’12. They’re up. Northstar, as I mentioned, we’ve kind of got them working on our Highway, so they’re not out producing third-party sales that show up in our numbers. So that’s down. Station margin stuff. One thing to keep in mind on DART is we priced it pretty aggressively to make sure we got the business, because we were hoping to parlay that into a long term O&M fueling type arrangement. So we went in pretty good on the pricing there, so that’s kind of pulling down our station margins, because it’s such a big chunk of it. So there’s kind of a lot of things going on there. As I mentioned, our fueling margin’s down $0.01 from what it was last quarter. But in theory, it’s up from the prior quarter. So our actual fuel margin is up when you kind of look quarter to quarter. So there’s kind of a lot of things going up and down in there that kind of shake out, maybe not looking as attractive as you think. But there’s a lot of good things going on in our margin line.

Just to clarify, as you look at it sequentially, those various items that are shaking out by first half of next year, the 24% margin that you had in Q2 should be back in reach? There’s nothing ruling that out? There’s nothing that’s changed structurally?

Correct. We don’t give guidance, but in theory, yes, there’s nothing fundamentally that has changed that would cause us to think that we couldn’t replicate historical type margins. And in theory we’re hoping that they ultimately go up once the Highway and more of our sales get up into our retail market.

We’ll bring on higher margin sales. So as soon as we begin to see those trucks come on the road, those are higher-margin sales for us. And these airports, while the sheer volume of them are not as -- start out a little slow, they’re very high-margin as well. So as you bring on more of these trucks on America’s Natural Gas Highway, that margin, as we’ve said before, should continue to tick up.

One thing to keep in mind, if you’re looking sequentially, remember we had about $2 million of carbon credits we recorded in the second quarter of this year as we kind of caught up our carbon credits once the courts lifted that injunction. So that’s skewing your numbers as well.

And then just a somewhat convoluted question, but you might have a short answer, is have you seen in any of your areas where you have fueling stations other people put fueling stations in as well in anticipation of fleet orders? As a result, while we’re in this lull before the fleet orders show up, you’ve actually seen a little bit more of a hit to utilization rates, and therefore that would imply a faster pickup and better incremental margins once the fleet orders show up. Are you seeing that dynamic? Or are you right now not running into that?

I lost you on the latter half of that question, but the first part of your question was have I seen, during this period, other people build stations where I’m building stations? The answer is no. Like zero.

Our next question comes from the line of Shawn Severson with JMP Securities.

I was wondering, as the installed base starts to expand here, and you’re getting a wider network out there, just trying to get an understanding of the fleet sizes you’re talking to. This mix between the 5-10 truck guy and the 50-100 truck guy, and what the mix is there?

I’m not going to use some names, but you’re talking about on sort of the over-the-road trucking, the truck piece, right?

That’s correct.

Well, for instance, we have nondisclosure agreements with about 150 shippers. These are the people that hire the trucks. One of them has a $3 billion a year fuel buy. So just run that at dollar for gallon, and think about how much fuel that that one fleet is buying. Now, they hire many of the trucking companies that you would be familiar with. So we have some very significant customers, some who have hundreds of trucks that move goods on a daily basis. And one of them has 56 different companies that haul goods every day. [Audio Gap] But when you boil all of that down, you kind of get back to where you have dozens or hundreds of candidates that are all in this 2013 period going to begin to try out, test these vehicles. And they’re not going to buy hundreds at a time. They’re going to test a dozen, and then they move from there.

And then just lastly, along those lines, trying to figure out the pricing and I know you’re not going to get into exact pricing structure and contracts and such, but just as a large fleet. I know how it works for diesel and traditional fuels, and I’m just trying to understand how hard a bargain they’re driving, for lack of a better terminology, in terms of fuel prices and length and really what the dynamics there are. How hard are they pressuring you for pricing?

Well, these are very sophisticated people that are used to squeezing every penny out they can get. So we have our eyes wide open with some of our trucker friends. I would say this right now, the good news is there’s good economics to go around. We have a very big differential between the cost of our fuel delivery to the nozzle, and the savings we can provide our customers, and the margins we can have for ourselves, to recoup our investment in either our plants or our stations. And they still save right now. We’re still savings close to $1.50 a gallon. So I’m sure that people will begin to work over time to get the best fuel prices possible. Right now we’re fortunate that we have very nice differential, and the economics are on our side for really everybody to do pretty well.

Our next question comes from the line of Caleb Dorfman with Simmons & Company.

When we spoke last quarter I noted that you had mentioned there were a number of America’s Natural Gas Highway stations that you had completed but not yet opened, because you were waiting on customers to get their fleets ready. Have these stations opened yet? And what type of progress are you seeing on connecting your station buildout and completion timeline with actually having the trucks ready to utilize the stations?

Let’s review that again, because I thought I was kind of clear on that. A lot of our customers are waiting for the 11.9. And that engine is not available yet. And that engine, the first bunch of them are going to be available in February. And I would say most truckers in America want to use a 12-liter to 13-liter engine. So this is a key product for us. So we have our stations really up and ready, a little bit ahead of when at least the 12-liter will be ready. And that’s okay. If it were the other way around, then people wouldn’t order trucks. So are we 4-6 months ahead? Yes. We are. And we’ll have a coast to coast situation of stations that are ready to go when those trucks really begin to make their way into the customers’ hands after March, April, May and June. So I think we all have to keep our eye on that ball and certainly in the second half of 2013. So we have stations completed, and they’re not open. And many fall in that category. As soon as we get either a combination of the 9-liter and the 15-liter to justify a station opening, where the station will work correctly, we’re opening them. But we’re ahead with many of these stations, to where I think that they’ll remain shuttered, if you will, until the early part of next year, when we really begin to see these trucks going forward. You don’t want to dump 10,000 gallons of fuel on a station and have it vent. So we’re ready, and I think it’s really going to be the latter part of the first quarter next year when you’ll begin to see a lot of these stations open.

That makes complete sense. So I guess of the completed America’s Natural Gas Highway stations, how many are actually being actively used by your customers then?

Some we’re opening right as we speak. We’ve got a couple of other truck deployments that are underway. I don’t know that I have the exact numbers, so don’t hold me to it exactly. I think there’s about 20 LNG stations open. And there would be a like number that would be not open right now that are completed and ready to open.

What type of cost do you see on a quarterly basis for these stations which are completed yet not open? Is there some sort of cost that we should think about to factor in?

Not really. It’s pretty de minimis. We consciously don’t put fuel in and we do some things so that they would start incurring more costs from a utility perspective, or a venting perspective or anything. So we try and manage that down to obviously as little as possible so we can obviously not incur a bunch of expenses before they start selling fuel and generating revenue.

Once we’re really commissioned, where the station’s been accepted and passed all the permits, I think we begin to have a little bit of rent we share with our partners. But it’s small scale. We don’t have maintenance men out there and everything. It’s pretty low maintenance in general, anyway, and certainly when we’re not using them.

And I guess my final question is now we’re really close to the election, and I know that you had talked about previously maybe you could get something done where there was like the VEETC credit or something on the legislative side post the election. Have you heard any talk around that? Or have you seen any possibilities for that post this November to January timeframe?

We never give up and the natural gas industry has some things in a couple of pieces of legislation that could end up being taken up in a lame duck. So we’ve got our eyes on that. I don’t know that I’d put any money on it right now, but we’re working it. Anything more meaningful than that, that would be a couple of these different tax extension type bills, I think you’re going to have to wait until another Congress. But I’m kind of glad you bring it up, because I don’t know that we’re in a position right now -- sure, I’d love the government to show some leadership, and I’d love for the president or a new president to talk about how the government and private sector should work together to use our own domestic natural resources, and those kind of things. I don’t know that we, as an industry, any longer, really needs some silver bullet piece of legislation. We have good economics. Now, I think the country would be well-served to do some things to move using our own domestic resources ahead, but our business doesn’t require it. So we just kind of keep our head down. I think our customers now are seeing the lifecycle savings and that the trucks work well. I think we’ll be fine even without legislation.

Our next question comes from the line of Carter Driscoll with CapStone Investments.

You did mention approximately 20 LNG stations that you would qualify as operating. Can you update us as to whether those are located roughly in the areas that you hope to build out in terms of the long distance lanes? Or are they kind of concentrated in specific areas where you’ve tried to build almost like a regional hub, before you start to build a national? I guess what I’m trying to get at is, have you changed your plans in terms of which stations on the highway are going to get your next attention, or has that really stayed fairly similar?

No, I don’t think we’ve changed anything really on that. Part of this is due to permitting and entitlements, and I won’t bore you with the gory details of that. So we can’t always fine-tune whether or not the City of Midland will require us to put in a fire hydrant or something; because they do, and that throws a 4-month wrench into the permitting. But we always knew that these trucks and certainly the ones that are first out of the gate are probably more regional in nature. So while we talk about coast to coast and border to border, we always have to remember, 85% of the trucking is really regional in nature. 15% of it goes from L.A. to New York. So we always knew the Texas triangle, and Southern California, and up the coast of California, and L.A. to Phoenix, and Phoenix to Vegas, that those kinds of pieces and corridors up into the Midwest were important. And so they did get an early priority. And based on the lane data that we have from some of our early customers, we always tried to bring those on. So if you look at our station map today, you’ll notice that Texas has got a disproportionate share, and the Texas triangle is done. And not every single station in the Texas triangle is open, but there’s a huge amount of trucking that goes between Dallas and Houston, and Houston and San Antonio, etc. So we haven’t changed our thing. By the end of this year, all the pieces fit together. A lot of the stuff that got opened up early was for what you would imagine would be corridors that we always knew would be important corridors.

And then last quarter I think you talked about some of the lead times, or some of the equipment maybe loosening up a little bit. Maybe you could talk about whether that’s changed in either direction. I think that would be helpful.

My sense and I haven’t had anybody come in and darken my doorstep about telling me his problem is we can’t get tanks. I know that on cryogenic tanks, the capacity has come online. One of our big suppliers doubled the size of their plant. So that’s good news and I’m sensing that on the truck side, I think Chart Industries is making the tanks. I think there’s been some additional capacity brought there. So I don’t see any bottlenecks. We bought a bunch of stuff. We’re ready to go. I’ve always believed that if you’ll put a purchase order out there, you’d be surprised how quickly you’ll be able to get people to make stuff. So I don’t think there’s a constraint, or at least certainly not right now, on being able to build this stuff.

It does seem as though the CWI 11.9 is an extremely important engine, especially for maybe when you populate from your 20 to 48 stations in terms of putting fuel there. You’ve heard a lot of differing launch dates. Some still believing it’s the first quarter, maybe having slipped to the first month of the second quarter. How would any type of slippage, if it’s that short, affect your plans, if at all, for 2013? And are there other engines that are anywhere close to the 11.9 liter in terms of their importance for the natural gas highway buildout?

Our team is still very much focused on the 9-liters and the 15-liter. I don’t want to say that people don’t want that. But those engines are very good for certain types. Like, for instance, Frito Lay, 9-liter is perfect. Some fleets like that big 15-liter. And so our sales team is working to try to load our stations with the available product. Now, we just happen to know that a lot of the over-the-road trucking market is really liking 12 and 13 liters. I know I told you in my prepared remarks that the Volvo one. Yes, we think the Volvo 13-liter, which I don’t believe comes on the market until 2014, that’s an important piece to the puzzle. And we know the 11.9 comes with Westport support. So whether or not the 11.9 slips a month or so, it doesn’t really impact -- sure it will impact our volumes a little bit, but I think the die is cast, and I think the industry is going this way. And so as I communicated with my board, our management staff, it’s not like you just flip the switch and build a network of stations across the country. So I feel good that we’ve shown that we can do what we said we were going to do, and meet our goal of building these stations, and basically take the fact that there isn’t infrastructure across the country out of the equation. If we were here in March or April or May next year and we didn’t have stations every 250 miles, then people would be right in saying that the infrastructure was not ready. But the infrastructure will be ready. And so we’re doing everything we can to support Cummins Westport and helping the tests, and doing the education and training, and mobile fueling, you name it. We’re doing everything we can to make sure that this test phase goes as smoothly as possible.

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Blair with Macquarie.

Could you give us a sense of what the same-store volume growth was at your existing stations? So stations that were open for more than a year?

We actually don’t really track that. I will say that in general I think things have been going pretty well with our same-store sales, because we’ve made a conscientious effort to try and load up our existing infrastructure. A certain aspect of our sales force has been out aggressively targeting fleets within x miles around our open stations, looking at whatever fleets are around. They’re trying to go out and package deals, or financing packages or fuel deals, or whatever, just to try and incentivize people, a, to switch to natural gas vehicles, to load those up, or just to kind of help grow the markets around those stations. So I know they’ve been very successful in that. We don’t really, at this point, keep track of those types of metrics or statistics. We’re kind of more focused on getting other stations up and going and growing. So it’s not a great answer, but we’re doing our best to load what we have, because obviously that helps our returns.

The only thing I would correct my chief financial officer on, a little bit. We do pay attention to what volume is at our stations. So we do track internally if the station’s going up, or the volume’s going up or down. And we have hired 15 new people to do nothing but look at same-station sales. So we do have a little bit of a sense for that, and I think Rick’s right on that. We haven’t broken that down for you. And it’s something that we’re looking at to see if there’s a way for us to make that available in the future as we begin to maybe provide different levels of guidance and provide that to you. Because frankly, we do have capacity at a lot of our stations. And when we take a station from 1,000 gallons a day to 2,000 gallons a day, boy, that all drops to the bottom line. So same-store sales growth is important, and maybe in the future we’ll try to see if we can break something down for you on that.

Also, just on the natural gas highway stations, if you have less than 50% of these new stations open, I’m just wondering if it makes sense to purposefully slow down the progress of building these stations to conserve capital, if it looks like the CWI engine isn’t going to be out until second quarter or third quarter. How much sense does it make to be rushing to finish stations by the end of 2012?

Let me be clear on that. We’re not doing that. We’re not incurring overtime. But to all of a sudden lay off your construction staff, and then start it back up, I don’t know that that makes sense either. So we have a lot of stuff underway. We think it makes sense to track this. However, having said that, we have let a few things slip. But we think it’s prudent to get these stations done. I was trying to provide the best guidance I can. I believe that those first engines are going to be put out in February. So it’s not a third quarter story. It’s a February story. Now, those engines will go to the OEMs, then the OEMs are going to upfit them and get it done. So it will take a little while. But I agree with you. If I thought we weren’t going to see 11.9 until the third quarter, then we would go about this differently. But we have to have these stations ready to go as these trucks begin to show up in March. So you’re talking about 3-4 months. And it’s a little too hard to calibrate, to hold up for 3 months and then go ahead and start up again and put another 250 people back to work.

Just curious what kind of contribution your 2 LNG liquefaction plants make to the company, and can you talk about what kind of synergies… I guess how much sense does it make for Clean Energy to own those facilities?

I’ll let Rick muddle around with the contribution problem, but let me put it this way. If we didn’t control our own destiny and have that Boron plant, we wouldn’t have ever launched the trucks in the Port of L.A. Because otherwise, we still would be bringing product in from Wyoming, and it wouldn’t be economic. And you never would have had the first 1,200 or 1,300 trucks, and we wouldn’t be sitting here talking today about a national truck rollout, because you wouldn’t have proved out that it works here. So I think it makes a lot of sense for us to control our own destiny and make sure that we have supply. I would be really nervous if I sat here believing, like I do, that in 2016, 2017, you need 3-4 billion gallons, knowing that you’re 4 billion gallons short, and not doing my dead level best to make sure that either we’re going to bring on supply or make sure supply is being created, and make sure that I can control as much of it as I can. So do I want to necessarily be building every single LNG facility or plant that ever comes on in the United States? I don’t know about that, but I want to make sure that we can control our own destiny as this market develops, and have the LNG where and when we need it.

From a contribution perspective, I would just say it enhances our margins from the perspective of our liquefaction charges or basically the actual costs we’re incurring to produce the LNG, as opposed to if we get it from a third-party supplier, we’re in theory paying their return on capital and profit and all that good stuff. So it’s just a margin-enhancer for us to have them, as well as the other strategic advantages that are probably more important, that Andrew alluded to.

Our next question comes from the line of Pavel Molchanov with Raymond James.

As I look at your volumes year to date, I think they’re up 26%. Do you have any sense of what overall industry volumes have done over that timeframe? In other words, are you grabbing market share? Are you losing market share? Or is it fairly stable?

It’s a good question. My sense is that in the heavy duty market, where we have 85-95% market share, and the refuse market, where we have 60-some odd percent market share. In the airport market we have 80% market share, and transit it’s something less. I don’t know that one off the top of my head. So we get the lion’s share of the deals. I don’t know exactly what percentage rate the industry grew at. Do you, Rick?

No. The other thing that just makes it a little more difficult to calculate, a lot of the markets are growing, like refuse and trash. It’s not like we’re splitting up the pie and exchanging market share with whomever else might be trying to compete with us, because there’s a lot of the Republics and Waste Managements that are all adding new stations. And that market is growing. So that just makes the percentage calculation just a little tougher. I guess the transit one is the one that in theory is a little bit more, perhaps, just more of a set market whereby our percentage is probably a little more stable. I think we’ve just been kind of hanging in, adding a few here and there, with our competitors. So I think overall, the general theory is our market share is very high in pretty much all of the markets. And in theory, in the heavy duty trucking market, that’s the big one we’re going after, we pretty much have the vast majority of it and we’re hopeful that once we get these stations and engines and everything and all the stars aligned, that we’ll continue to have a healthy share of that one.

I think at the beginning of the year you were guiding to SG&A at around 30% of revenue, and it looks like it’s averaging about 35% so far. Should we assume a reversion to that 30% level? I know you don’t give formal guidance, but is that realistic as revenue ramps up? Or is it going to stay mid-30 level?

The word “guide” is a little strong. I believe we said we were trying to get that same percentage. But that being said, I think the issue is our revenues have just been off a little bit from where we thought. So obviously percentage-wise, the math would suggest it’s going to be a little higher, just because your denominator is smaller. But it should kind of hang in dollar-wise, kind of where it was at this quarter. Again, with the caveat that that excludes any one-time things that may not show up down the road that we decide to invest in, be it a legislative thing or a marketing campaign or a big tradeshow or something like that. So the magnitude should kind of hang where it’s at, with that caveat. And again, we’re continuing to add people as we ramp up for building more stations and construction and sales activity and all that good stuff. So it will probably tick up some, but the rough magnitude should hang in there.

Our last question for today is a follow up question from the line of Steve Dyer with Craig-Hallum.

Just a follow up on the model. The SG&A continues to ramp up. How should we think about that going forward? Is there a point where that maybe moderates a little bit? Or how should we think about that number going forward?

Roughly it should kind of stay where it’s at, ticking up maybe slightly just as we continue to add people and grow and expand and ramp up for the coming growth and all that good stuff. And again, with the caveat that it just depends on if something pops up that we want to pursue from a business perspective, we’re probably going to do it, be it a legislative thing or trying to get VEETC back, or another big deal like in Pennsylvania or Virginia, working with some states. There’s all kinds of things, with the industry growing and people looking at it and starting to commit. It’s just there’s a lot of stuff out there. And I guess that’s kind of the best answer. We try and watch it, but we don’t want to be penny wise and pound foolish. We want to make sure that we capitalize on the greater opportunity that’s out there, and we’re trying to do that and manage that the best we can.

I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

Thank you. While 2013 and 2014 will be key years in the deployment and rapid expansion of natural gas for America’s trucks and other vehicles, I’m very pleased and encouraged by the record revenue, the record gallon volume, the record truck deployment, and record number of stations we have brought online. As has been the message over the previous few quarters, we will continue to remain focused on the execution of our station buildout and growing our core markets. I fully expect that we will be well-positioned with our network of stations and suite of customer services to meet the anticipated demand and continue to stimulate the adoption of America’s commercial fleet. So thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to reporting to you on our full year progress when we report our next quarter. Thank you very much.