A ChargePoint Inc. charging plug sits connected to an electric vehicle (EV) at a station in Los Angeles, California
Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg
Electric vehicle charging company ChargePoint Holdings reported a solid end to its fiscal year Wednesday evening. Shares are rising Thursday morning.
ChargePoint (ticker: CHPT) stock is up almost 6% in premarket trading to just under $15 a share. S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are both down about 0.1%.
ChargePoint reported a 17 per cent share fourth quarter loss. Wall Street was expecting a 16 cent shares loss. Earnings, however, don’t matter as much as sales at this point in ChargePoint’s existence.
Sales came in at $80.7 million for the quarter. That’s better than the $75.9 million Wall Street projected. It’s also better than the $78 million upper end of management’s guidance.
What’s more, sales guidance for the upcoming year looks strong. ChargePoint’s fiscal year ends in January. So the year just completed was fiscal year 2022. For fiscal year 2023, ChargePoint expects to generate sales of $450 million to $500 million. Analysts are currently projected about $418 million in sales.
The $475 midpoint of ChargePoint’s fiscal year 2023 guidance implies 96% growth from the $242.3 million in sales recorded for fiscal year 2022.
“ChargePoint delivered another outstanding quarter….advancing our technology leadership in our commercial, fleet and residential verticals,” said CEO Pasquale Romano in the company’s news release. “We had numerous successes in our first year as a publicly traded company, including a 65% year over year increase in annual revenue, two strategic acquisitions, expansion of our activated [charging] port count by over 60%.”
ChargePoint has 174,000 EV charging ports active in the U.S. and Europe.
It’s a solid earnings report. Investors could use the good news. Coming into Thursday trading, ChargePoint stock was down about 26% year to date. Shares are off about 62% from their June 2021 52-week high of almost $37 a share.
Inflation, rising interest rates and the Russia-Ukraine conflict has sapped some investor enthusiasm for small capitalization growth stocks such as ChargePoint.
The company has performed well through the stock market volatility, however. The company’s fiscal fourth quarter was the sixth consecutive quarter the company exceeded Street sales estimates, according to FactSet data.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
