What happened
Shares of natural gas fuel supplier Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE -1.75%) jumped in Tuesday afternoon trading, and are currently up 7.6% as of 1:40 p.m. EST.
The pop follows Clean Energy's announcement this morning that it has signed contracts with new and existing customers to supply more than 58 million gallons of Redeem renewable natural gas (RNG) over various periods of time.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
The duration of the contracts, and the amount of time they will be spread across, will determine whether today's pop in stock price is truly deserved. In a long press release, Clean Energy named several of its customers -- Linden Bulk Transportation, Food Express, Adopt-A-Port, CR&R Environmental Services, and the Denver International Airport -- and gave more or less precise periods for execution of its contracts for some of them: anywhere from mid-2021 for Food Express to "multi-year" for Linden Bulk.
Now what
No value was given for any of the contracts featured in the press release, however, and without knowing that, and the precise time for fulfillment of each contract described, it's hard to say exactly how big of a deal "more than 58 million gallons" of fuel contracts is for Clean Energy stock, or how much it will translate to in terms of revenue and profits.
On balance, I fear what we're looking at here is more in the nature of a puff piece, than actual, investable news. And with Clean Energy Fuels stock still priced at about 24.5 times earnings, with a projected earnings growth rate of only 15%, the stock still looks a bit on the pricey side to me.
