ChargePoint Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CHPT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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James West : Okay. Okay. Got it. That’s very helpful. And then another question maybe for Pas is with your customer and the customer engagement right now, do you have a sense for how much of your business is new customers, putting up charging stations versus existing customers adding to their charging networks?

Pasquale Romano : Yes. I mean I think that’s just a different way of asking the same question that Colin asked previously. About 30% of the quarter was new customers, and there was no deal size anomaly in that. So if the revenue split percentage is very consistent with historical norms, the new customer add rate is consistent with that.

Operator: Our next question is Gabe Daoud, Cowen.

Gabe Daoud : Maybe just starting on the margin side. You obviously showed sequential improvement on a non-GAAP basis. Could you, Rex, maybe just give us a little bit of color on the trajectory there and maybe what some of the puts and takes are with respect to margin. Is it fair to assume maybe you continue to turn out like 100 basis point improvement sequentially throughout the rest of the year?

Rex Jackson : Yes. So if you look at the year we were at 17, 19, 20 and 23 non-GAAP, of course, through the year, and we’re hard at work in terms of driving that forward. The supply chain thing has been as high as 6 or 7. Now it’s more like 4 that helps. We bank through the fact that mix shifted this year meaningfully in favor of DC, which is one good from a resilience standpoint, but it’s not the highest margin product that we do. So we manage to bank through that and those margins have come up nicely here upstream delivering meaningful cost downs and then the price increases that we did last year. So mix makes it hard for all these other factors are contributing to being able to add to the number. As you look to next year, you will note in my prepared remarks, I gave , we had lower revenue in Q1.

Therefore, the operating expense leverage is going to go the wrong way for Q1, but the next go back the right way in Qs two, three and four. But I did say sequential improvement in gross margins throughout the year next year. So I wouldn’t put a number on it, like is it 1 or is it 2, don’t know or can’t guide, but I do think there’s going to be a steady progression next year.

Gabe Daoud : Okay. Okay. That’s helpful. And then maybe, Pasquale, just going to your comment around seeing a little bit less demand in December. I mean is that just seasonality? Obviously, been setting up a seasonally weak 1Q? Or are you concerned at all with like a lot of your maybe tech giant customers in California kind of tightening the strings a bit on spending. Is that creeping into demand issues as well? Could you maybe help us think about that?

Pasquale Romano : Yes. So I think the easiest way to put — get some overarching color on that is the revenue diversity has increased meaningfully over time in the company. I made some comments in my prepared remarks about the increased percentage on fleet and Europe overall as a percentage of revenue. And I’ll remind you that it had to outpace what was already a blistering year-over-year growth rate for the company. So it’s just fundamentally very hard for sub-segments like that to overcome a growth rate in the core business, which is very mature in North America, and we managed to do that. And so what that’s leading to is we do see some softness in effectively businesses that have more of a discretionary stance with respect to when they — the timing around when they put in charging, and I want to emphasize this, eventually, the attach rates prevail.

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