Capstone Turbine (CPST), whose fiscal year ended March 31st, once again has found a way to disappoint investors, and that's before it has even reported its full year losses. It has not been the first time, and based on the events of the past year, it is unlikely to be the last time. A brief recap of the disappointments over the past year include:
- A dreadful first fiscal quarter. Not only did the revenue decline from the fourth fiscal quarter of 2013, an expected occurrence, but it was also a year over year decline for the first time in nearly 6 years. That broke a string of 23 consecutive quarters of Y-o-Y growth in revenue. The shortfall was attributed to shipments that were held up in the last few days of the quarter.
- Driven by a boost from the shipments held back at the end of Q1, Capstone should have had a blowout second quarter of more than $40 million. This was based on management's prior comments and an assumption that the $8 million of orders held up at the end of Q1 would be shipped and additive to a "normal" Q2. Instead, while Capstone had record revenue of $35.3 million in Q2 and barely beat the Q4 record of $35.1, it was far less than the $42 million I had expected. More importantly, if the company had not benefited from the unshipped orders at the end of Q1, it would have had a revenue decline from the prior year's Q2. One other item of note was the backlog at the end of Q2, which had only increased to $149.8 million, barely up from the $148.9 million at fiscal year end 2013 (more on this later).
- When Q3 revenue came in at $37 million dollars (another record), and brought the year to date
