What happened
Shares of eponymous fuel cell stock FuelCell Energy (FCEL -2.43%) crashed after the Q4 earnings report this morning and are down 15.2% as of 10:25 a.m. ET.
Analysts had forecast that FuelCell would lose $0.04 per share in its fiscal fourth quarter on sales of $21.9 million, but FuelCell missed on both the bottom and top lines. Its $0.07-per-share loss was nearly twice as bad as feared, while its $13.9 million in quarterly sales missed the revenue mark by nearly $8 million.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
FuelCell's numbers didn't just look bad relative to expectations. They were objectively bad relative to the company's performance one year ago.
Year over year, sales declined 18%. Operating losses grew 33%, and net losses rose 28%. About the only "good" news FuelCell had to report was that its loss per share shrank from $0.08 to $0.07 -- but that was only because the company issued 110 million more shares over the past year among which to divide up the net losses.
Now what
The fourth quarter being the final quarter of FuelCell's fiscal year, we also have the tally for FuelCell's fiscal 2021 in hand. For the full year, FuelCell's sales declined 2% to $69.6 million. Operating losses for the year grew by 65.6% to $64.9 million. The total net loss for the year was $101 million -- up 13.3% year over year.
Losses per share were $0.31, down from last year's $0.42-per-share loss -- but again, only because there were so many more shares outstanding this year than last.
Against the backdrop of all this bad news, though, FuelCell CEO Jason Few pronounced himself "pleased with the continued advancement throughout the year of our strategic agenda," and insisted that "our solutions are increasingly sought after to help solve energy and environmental challenges."
The numbers, unfortunately, tell a different tale.
