ChargePoint - Earnings Call - Q1 2026

Executive Summary

• Q1 FY2026 revenue was $97.6M, down 9% YoY, with GAAP gross margin at 29% and non-GAAP gross margin at 31%; subscription revenue grew 14% YoY to $38.0M while networked charging systems declined 20% YoY to $52.1M.
• Against S&P Global consensus, Q1 missed on revenue ($97.6M vs $100.6M*) and EPS (-$1.306 vs -$1.143*), and materially missed on EBITDA (-$46.9M vs -$19.1M*); Q2 ultimately beat on revenue ($98.6M actual vs $95.4M*) but missed EPS and EBITDA again. Values retrieved from S&P Global.*
• Management guided Q2 FY2026 revenue to $90–$100M and reiterated the goal to achieve positive non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA in a quarter during FY2026, citing Eaton partnership and new AC architecture as growth drivers and margin tailwinds later in the year.
• Strategic catalysts: industry-first partnership with Eaton to deliver integrated EV charging/power management solutions and co-develop V2X technologies, and a new AC hardware architecture expected to drive volume and improve hardware margins.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Non-GAAP gross margin reached 31%, up 7ppt YoY; GAAP gross margin improved to 29% on subscription mix and margin improvements.
• Subscription revenue grew 14% YoY to $38.0M, with GAAP subscription margins reaching a record ~60% per management remarks.
• Strategic progress: Eaton partnership operationalized; new AC architecture announced to broaden market coverage and lower costs, positioning for revenue and margin uplift later in the year.

Quotes:

• “Non-GAAP gross margin continues to increase quarter over quarter, reaching a new high of 31%. Notably, our GAAP subscription gross margin climbed to a record 60%” — CEO Rick Wilmer.
• “We anticipate that the [Eaton] relationship will drive incremental revenue growth for ChargePoint” — CEO Rick Wilmer.

What Went Wrong

• Top line contraction: total revenue down 9% YoY; networked charging systems revenue down 20% YoY, reflecting hardware demand headwinds.
• EBITDA and EPS misses vs consensus; Q1 non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss of $22.8M and GAAP net loss of $57.1M highlight profitability challenges despite margin gains. Values retrieved from S&P Global.*
• Europe weaker-than-normal due largely to Germany; tariff uncertainty persisted (though management expects minimal COGS impact), and “Other” revenue was lumpy and significantly lower due to fewer one-time projects.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Kate, and I'll be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ChargePoint first quarter fiscal 2026 earnings conference call and cebcast. All participants' lines have been placed in listen-only mode to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to John Paulo Canton, ChargePoint's Vice President of Communications. JP, please go ahead.

John Paulo Canton (VP of Communications)

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss ChargePoint's first quarter fiscal 2026 earnings results. This call is being webcast and can be accessed on the Investors section of our website at investors.chargepoint.com. With me on today's call are Rick Wilmer, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mansi Khetani, our Chief Financial Officer. This afternoon, we issued our press release announcing results for the quarter, which ended April 30th, 2025, which may also be found on our website. We'd like to remind you that during the conference call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including our outlook for the second quarter of fiscal 2026. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control and could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations.

These forward-looking statements apply as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements after the call. For a more detailed description of certain factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 28, 2025, and our earnings release, which posted today on our website and filed with the SEC on Form 8-K. Also, please note that we use certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call, which we reconcile to GAAP in our earnings release and for certain historical periods in the investor presentation posted on the Investors section of our website. Finally, we'll be posting a transcript of this call to our investor relations website under the Quarterly Results section. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Rick Wilmer.

Rick Wilmer (CEO)

Good afternoon, and welcome to ChargePoint's first quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call. Today, I will walk you through key results for the quarter, provide insights into recent market and policy developments, and highlight the progress we've made on our two major priorities for the year: delivering innovation and driving growth. In addition, I'll cover two significant announcements that directly support these priorities and positively influence ChargePoint's path to achieving positive non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA in a quarter of this fiscal year. Let's begin with our Q1 financial results. Revenue for the first quarter came in at $98 million, right within our guidance range. Non-GAAP gross margin continues to increase quarter over quarter, reaching a new high of 31%. Notably, our GAAP subscription gross margin climbed to a record 60%, underscoring the strength of our SaaS-focused business model. We built momentum across the business in Q1.

Our DC fast charging program with General Motors has been a success, with a pace of site openings accelerating and over 500 additional ports signed off by GM for deployment. We extended multiple agreements with Mercedes-Benz, reinforcing our long-term relationship. Our theft-resistant charging cable was met with strong market interest. It will go into production this summer for our own hardware models. be.ENERGISED, our software management solution for CPOs, is now actively managing over 700 charger models from over 85 different vendors of charging hardware. This is a testimonial to the scale of our third-party hardware integrations. In total, ChargePoint now has over 352,000 ports under management, of which more than 35,000 are DC fast chargers, and more than 122,000 are located in Europe. With our roaming partnerships, we enable access to more than 1.25 million charging ports globally.

Our business is proving to be resilient on the top line despite U.S. macroeconomic conditions and market uncertainty, as well as the bottom line through the cost and operational actions we took last year. Looking ahead regarding U.S. tariffs on our products, we expect only a minimal increase in the cost of goods sold. We also expect cost reductions to exceed the impact of the current tariffs. Therefore, we still expect margin improvement later in the year. The limited impact reflects the swift and effective execution of our mitigation plan. We see positive momentum on two fronts: one, EV adoption, and two, utilization rates. EV adoption continues on a steady upward trajectory, a trend which has held for more than a year. Despite political turbulence dampening consumer and capital spending, North American EV sales were up 16% year-over-year for Q1, according to Rho Motion.

In Europe, EV momentum rebounded strongly, with the same dataset reporting 22% EV sales growth year-over-year for Q1, a significant surge. The European Green Deal mandates all new cars sold there be zero emission by 2035, reinforcing the EU's trajectory of EV adoption. All of this forms a strong leading indicator for the charging industry. The trends we observed last quarter remain intact. The market is actively planning and inquiring, but widespread purchasing is being impacted by economic uncertainty. Inevitably, with more EVs on the road, existing infrastructure is under mounting pressure. A recent report by Rho Motion concluded that many U.S. cities are approaching maximum charge utilization during peak hours, with five major markets past or approaching a staggering 40% utilization rate. This strain is a positive signal for our customers who monetize charging, but it is a growing concern for EV drivers facing long waits at occupied stations.

We believe this will lead to the installation of more chargers, and ChargePoint will be ready to capitalize on that demand. Despite the growth to come, the market has recently seen attrition and the voluntary exit of major players, even Chinese competitors coming under the scrutiny of the federal government. These developments, while natural for a new industry at our stage, create a meaningful opportunity for ChargePoint to gain market share. We are not waiting for the growth to come to us. We are actively pursuing it. This brings me to the most exciting announcement of the year so far: our new partnership with Eaton, one of the world's largest intelligent power management companies. The cornerstone of this partnership is innovation, which will drive growth. Our goal is to make electrified transportation simple and economically a no-brainer.

Charging deployments are increasingly complex, with a significant portion of them requiring grid upgrades. We are integrating charging and electrical equipment into a single solution which addresses a major gap in the market. Together, ChargePoint and Eaton will deliver EV charging, electrical infrastructure, energy management, and engineering services as the market's only end-to-end EV charging and power management solutions. These fully integrated solutions will get our customers up and running faster, simultaneously lowering their costs and are available for order now. The next phase of partnership will offer co-developed future technologies to further drive down costs, improve efficiency, and advance bidirectional power flow technology to fully optimize V2X capabilities. This will enable customers to use EVs as another distributed energy resource that they can integrate into their energy infrastructure to help power operations. The first innovations from this effort are set to be announced in September.

What does this do for ChargePoint business? In addition to a compelling and highly differentiated offering, we now have access to Eaton's formidable go-to-market engine, which does nearly $25 billion in annual sales across more than 160 countries. We anticipate that the relationship will drive incremental revenue growth for ChargePoint. This partnership cements ChargePoint as the enabler of the entire EV ecosystem, from the grid to the dashboard of the vehicle and everything in between. Our second major announcement of the quarter, once again aligned with our goal of delivering innovation, was the announcement of our new AC hardware architecture. This is the first product line developed utilizing our lower-cost co-development structure, and it will enter the market at a highly competitive price point while still increasing our margins.

This new architecture underpins a range of upcoming models that will roll out over the next year, serving home, commercial, and fleet use cases. These products will represent a major portion of our hardware volume. By bringing a generational leap in our technology to market at an affordable price point, we anticipate greater volume in the U.S., where we have the number one AC market share, and considerable market penetration in Europe, where we have not had a product in this category to date. The first charger, part of our European take-home fleet solution, is expected to begin production in July. Growth and innovation remain the year-two priorities of our strategic plan, and we are making progress on both. We entered year two ahead of schedule, positioning us to realize the benefits of our streamlined cost structure and revitalized product portfolio in year three.

Our partnership with Eaton unlocks immediate growth opportunities by combining our EV charging leadership with their complementary solutions and their commercial scale. Our new AC hardware architecture is the first of several high-impact innovations planned for this year, designed to expand market share, drive volume, and improve margins. Combined with our operational excellence, we are laying the groundwork for meaningful financial upside as the year moves on. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Mansi Khetani, to cover our financials in more detail.

Mansi Khetani (CFO)

Thanks, Rick. As a reminder, please see our earnings press release where we reconcile our non-GAAP results to GAAP. Our principal exclusions are stock-based compensation, amortization of intangible assets, and certain costs related to restructuring and acquisitions. Revenue for the first quarter was $98 million within our guidance range. Network charging systems at $52 million accounted for 53% of first-quarter revenue. This was almost flat sequentially despite Q1 typically experiencing a seasonal dip and was down 20% year-on-year. Subscription revenue at $38 million was 39% of total revenue, essentially flat sequentially, mostly due to fewer days in Q1, which impacts prorated revenue recognition, and up 14% year-on-year due to the recurring revenue generated from a higher installed base. Other revenue at $8 million was 8% of total revenue, down 31% sequentially and down 8% year-on-year.

Other includes various revenue items, which tend to be lumpy and were significantly lower this quarter, primarily as a result of lower one-time project revenue, which is recognized based on completion rate. Turning to verticals, which we report from a billings perspective, first-quarter billings percentages were commercial 71%, fleet 13%, residential 12%, and other 3%. From a geographic perspective, North America made up 85% of revenue, and Europe was 15%. Europe was lower than normal due largely to weakness in Germany. This was partially made up in North America, which was slightly higher compared to last quarter, even though the first quarter is typically seasonally lower and despite significant macroeconomic headwinds. Non-GAAP gross margin was 31%, improving by one percentage point sequentially and up seven percentage points year-on-year.

This is attributable to higher margins in both hardware and subscription, as well as subscription revenue growing as a percentage of total revenue. Hardware gross margin increased sequentially despite the impact of incremental tariffs and freight incurred in Q1. Subscription margins reached a record high of 60% on a GAAP basis and were even higher on a non-GAAP basis due to economies of scale and continued optimization of support costs. Based on currently available information, we expect the financial impact of tariffs on our COGS to remain minimal and expect gross margins to continue around the current range and to further improve later in the year. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $57 million, up 9% sequentially and down 15% year-on-year. As mentioned previously, this quarter's OpEx included the impact of annual raises and investments in certain key areas of the business. We will continue to manage OpEx closely.

Non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA loss was $23 million. This compares with a loss of $17 million in the prior quarter and a loss of $36 million in the first quarter of last year. Stock-based compensation was $18 million, up from $15 million in the prior quarter and down from $22 million year-on-year. Our inventory balance increased by $3 million-$212 million due to the impact of foreign exchange rates on inventory held by our international subsidiaries. However, we saw a decrease in inventory units across most products as we continued to sell through. We anticipate that inventory balance will reduce gradually throughout the year, helping to free up cash. Speaking of cash, we ended the quarter with $196 million in cash on hand. Q1 tends to be the quarter with highest cash usage due to the timing of some large annual payments.

We will continue to rigorously manage cash, and we have access to a $150 million revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn. We have no debt maturities until 2028, and we have existing capacity on our ATM. Turning to guidance, for the second quarter of fiscal 2026, we expect revenue to be $90 million-$100 million. We are guiding with caution due to the continued changes in the macro environment, including tariff uncertainty, as well as our near-term focus on operationalizing our partnership with Eaton. While there is always a possibility of headwinds from deterioration in macro conditions, we expect revenue upside later in the year from the introduction of our new AC hardware that Rick outlined, better performance in Europe, and growth from our new partnership with Eaton.

We continue to focus on revenue growth, gross margin expansion, and cost management to achieve our stated goal of being Adjusted EBITDA positive in a quarter during fiscal 2026. We will now open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask the question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We request that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director)

Thanks so much, guys. You know, with this Eaton partnership and what you're seeing in terms of the market and the new AC product, can you talk a little bit about the pipeline of activity and how we should be thinking about a return to growth here on the top line for the new systems?

Rick Wilmer (CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Colin. I think there's a variety of forces at play, some positive, you know, some causing caution, obviously, the macroeconomic conditions, tariffs, and general uncertainty. You know, we're seeing, you know, some customers get conservative with spending in cash. There's obviously uncertainty around, you know, policies supporting electrification of transportation, particularly in the U.S., which I think are also, you know, headwinds. On the other hand, very excited about our partnership with Eaton. We fully expect that to drive incremental growth, and there's a lot of work to do this quarter in particular to operationalize this relationship. We fully expect to hit our stride and have this, again, fully operationalized as we enter our fiscal Q3. A variety of factors at play.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director)

Okay. And then in terms of international expansion, you know, ex-Europe, you know, is Eaton able to help you guys get into some incremental geographies where you have not been operating to date? And how should we think about the potential for, you know, the opportunity in Central South America, other parts of North America where you are not maybe fully loaded? You know, it seems like you have got pretty good coverage in the U.S. and Canada, but maybe you are missing something. And then, you know, potentially places like Australia and others where you could see some incremental sales.

Rick Wilmer (CEO)

Yeah, Eaton definitely has the capabilities to do that. At this point in time, we're focused on North America and Europe. We believe with the combined product portfolio, what we have to offer in Europe and North America, we've got plenty of TAM to address in those two geographies. The possibility definitely exists to penetrate new geographies as we move forward in the partnership.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director)

Thanks so much. And then just a final one on the cadence of the inventory reduction, Mansi. You know, should we be thinking about that as kind of low single-digit millions, mid-single-digit millions of inventory consumption on a quarterly basis? Just want to get a better sense of kind of how to get that number, you know, on a trajectory basis and what's the right target for you guys in terms of, you know, kind of the right inventory that you want to be carrying on an ongoing basis?

Mansi Khetani (CFO)

Yeah, so, you know, obviously there are a lot of factors that inventory balance will depend on. It depends on the mix of sell-through, you know, the mix of production, et cetera. So, you know, all we can say right now is that we expect gradual reduction probably in the second quarter, with, you know, a more meaningful reduction coming in the second half as we see revenue growth.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director)

Okay. I'll hop back in queue. Thanks, guys.

Mansi Khetani (CFO)

Thank you.