ChargePoint Earnings Are Today. What to Expect.

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ChargePoint

has had a flurry of good news. That raises the bar for the electric-vehicle charging company’s quarterly numbers, which come out after Tuesday’s closing bell.

Shares of C

hargePoint

(ticker: CHPT) are up about 15% in the month since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, both Democrats, announced a surprise deal—the Inflation Reduction Act—that advanced part of President Joe Biden’s climate change agenda, including tax credits to buy EVs. In those four weeks, the

S&P 500
is up about 2%.

More EVs means more demand for EV charging.

The new law isn’t the only bit of good news for ChargePoint. California has moved to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035. That is faster than goals set by the federal government and auto makers. Both want about half the cars sold to be all-electric by 2030. California’s 2030 goal amounts to about 68%.

All that good news means that investors will expect a positive update from ChargePoint, when it reports fiscal 2023 second-quarter numbers later Tuesday. The company is in fiscal 2023 because its year ends in January.

Wall Street expects a 25-cent loss per share and $103 million in sales. A year ago, the company lost 13 cents a share and had $49 million in sales.

Sales, at this point in ChargePoint’s history, are more important than earnings. The company has managed to beat sales each quarter since it went public in 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.

ChargePoint has grown sales faster than it expected to when it company proposed its SPAC merger. In late 2020, when ChargePoint announced its deal with a SPAC, the company expected to generate about $350 million in sales in calendar year 2022. The company expects to generate calendar year 2022 revenue closer to $450 million.

Higher sales revenue, though, hasn’t helped the stock. Shares are still down about 30% over the past year, while the S&P 500 and

Nasdaq Composite
are down about 12% and 22%, respectively.

Rising interest rates have sapped some investor enthusiasm for high-growth companies that don’t generate profits yet.

Options markets imply that ChargePoint stock will move about 7%, up or down, after earnings—a little higher than volatility seen after the past two quarterly reports.

ChargePoint management hosts a conference call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time to discuss results.

Write to Al Root at [email protected]