Sacramento’s Pacific Ethanol reduces third-quarter losses

Increased year-over-year sales helped Sacramento’s Pacific Ethanol Inc. to significantly reduce its losses in the most recent quarter ended Sept. 30.

In its third quarter financial report released Tuesday, the local company said net sales totaled $445.4 million, up about 6.6 percent from $417.8 million in the third quarter of 2016.

PEI’s quarterly net loss available to common stockholders was $521,000, or a penny per share, compared with a loss of $3.8 million, or 9 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

In a statement, PEI President and CEO Neil Koehler said: “For the third quarter 2017, Pacific Ethanol reported improving financial performance in light of challenging commodity margin economics…We now operate nine plants with a total annual production capacity of 605 million gallons.”

Through nine months this year, PEI net sales totaled $1.23 billion, compared with $1.18 billion last year. The nine-month net loss was $22.6 million, or 53 cents per share, compared with $12.6 million, or 30 cents a share, in 2016.

This story was originally published November 7, 2017 at 4:40 PM with the headline "Sacramento’s Pacific Ethanol reduces third-quarter losses."