EVgo Misses Estimates. The Beaten-Up Stock Rises Anyway.

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Electric-vehicle charging company

EVgo

reported first-quarter results that missed Wall Street expectations. Shares were rising anyway. They have been beaten up badly.

EVgo (ticker: EVGO) reported a loss of 21 cents a share from from $7.7 million in sales. Wall Street was looking for a loss of 12 cents on sales of $8.8 million.

Shares were up 1.6% in premarket trading. A couple factors appeared to be helping.

Coming into Wednesday trading, EVgo stock was down about 18% over the past three months and down about 23% year to date. Shares are down about 61% from their November 52-week high of almost $20 a share. A lot of bad news has been discounted by investors.

Second is the guidance. EVgo reaffirmed its previous guidance for 2022. Management still expects between $48 million and $55 million in 2022 sales. Analysts are currently projecting about $50.7 million in sales. That takes a lot of the sting out of any first-quarter sales shortfall.

By year-end, EVgo expects to have 3,000 to 3,300 direct current, fast-charging stalls operating or under construction. The company ended the quarter with 2,110 stalls and 375,000 customer accounts.

Management sounded pleased with the results.

“EVgo delivered a strong start to 2022, posting our strongest-ever quarter for new stalls in operation along with continued growth in customers and impressive growth in sites and stalls in our pipeline,” said CEO Cathy Zoi in the company’s news release. “We continue to work with a number of partners to develop, and in some cases accelerate, plans for new EV charging stations across the U.S.”

EVgo recently signed a deal with Chase Band for fast-charging stalls at 50 of its retail locations.

Fast-charging stalls are the kind of charging setup that can deliver 50-plus miles of range to an EV in minutes, depending on how fast the software allows and EV to charge.

EVgo owns and operates its charging stalls. It’s like a gas station operator for EVs. Drivers “filled up” with 8 gigawatt-hours of energy from EVgo stalls in the first quarter, up about 95% year over year.

The company hosts a conference call at 10 a.m. Eastern time to discuss results. Analysts and investors will be eager to hear more about the charging network build out and any problems associated with rising interest rates and inflation.

Write to Al Root at [email protected]