Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) Income Statement

Top-line growth has oscillated between roughly 1% and 12% year over year across the ten-quarter window, with no discernible acceleration trend; the 12.1% 2026Q1 print then decelerating sharply to 3.1% suggests the stronger quarter may have been non-comparable rather than a new run-rate. For an industrial energy distributor, mid-single-digit growth at best implies the business is largely tracking sector volume, which limits the opportunity for operating leverage to emerge organically.

Excluding the 2025Q1 anomaly, gross margin still ranged from 12.2% (2025Q3) to 28.3% (2026Q2), indicating COGS volatility rather than a stable structural margin. That variability, versus UGI's consistent 49.9% and OPAL Fuels' 30.4%, suggests CLNE has limited ability to insulate gross profit from feedstock or commodity swings, and the recent improvement to 28.3% may not prove durable if input prices revert.

SG&A has stayed in a narrow $24.5M–$30.7M band regardless of revenue level, meaning the cost base appears largely fixed and management has not demonstrated meaningful expense reduction despite ten consecutive loss-making quarters. Operating losses persisted even in the best margin quarter (2026Q2, -4.8%), implying that at current gross profit levels the business would need either a structurally higher gross margin or a lower overhead base to approach profitability.

Every subsequent quarter's margin and EPS growth rates are measured against a depressed or inflated base, which mechanically flatters the recovery narrative; 2026Q1's 90.6% EPS growth, for instance, is arithmetic rather than operational. The lasting impact appears to be a reset in how the market reads CLNE's quarterly prints, placing weight on gross margin durability rather than year-over-year growth percentages.