Capstone Price Falls on Stock Sale Plans

Capstone Turbine Corp., the Chatsworth-based developer of small generators and turbines for hybrid electric vehicles, may have cut its own share-price rally short this week with an announcement about fresh stock sales.

Capstone filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday to sell 7 million shares of stock. The company will offer the public 1 million shares, while selling shareholders will offer 6 million shares.

Capstone didn’t identify the selling shareholders or their individual stakes in the filing.

The company already has about 75 million shares outstanding. It went public in June at $16 a share; it has traded as high as $98.50.

The stock (CPST) slumped $14.88 to $43.25 on Nasdaq on Wednesday. It had rallied from under $40 last week to $58.13 at Tuesday’s close.

Capstone’s generator, called the MicroTurbine, can run on a variety of fuels, including natural gas, diesel and propane. The generators are used in prototype buses running in Los Angeles and Nashville, as well as in garbage trucks in Japan.

Capstone is growing rapidly, though it is still in the red. The company said Tuesday that its sales totaled $6.2 million in the third quarter, compared with $759,000 a year earlier. The company had a net loss for the three-month period of $8.1 million, compared with a net loss the year before of $6.3 million.