EVgo, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVGO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Cathy Zoi: We build in the best we can the pace at which new chargers are going to come on with the intelligence that we’ve got. So, we’re constantly sort of – we have a very cool detailed network plan – national network plan that goes down to the census block. And so what we’re doing is we’re overlaying at any given time and we update it continuously at any given time, how many charges there? What are the EV penetration there? What are the sales forecast we think for those metropolitan areas and down to the census block levels? What’s the density of multi-unit housing? And it’s kind of this big mashup to forecast what’s the need for the next incremental marginal fast-charging station in that location. And it turns out historically, we’ve been pretty darn good at forecasting what’s going to work out.

Chris Pierce: Okay. I appreciate the detail behind the model. Thank you.

Cathy Zoi: Thanks Chris.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Alex Vrabel from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Alex Vrabel: Hey guys. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats to you Cathy and I guess, Olga, as well given her recent announcements.

Cathy Zoi: Yeah. Thank you.

Alex Vrabel: Yes. Thank you so much. I guess, just taking some of the comments are you talking about there Cathy relative to some of these NACS movements, just curiously as we see the other day, right this sort of consortium of automakers talking about investing rather directly, it when I thought about it, it actually sounded a little bit like a large eXtend partnership. Just curious as far as like, your positioning or thoughts around this, standardization or sort of being more of a partner if you will to the OEMs given these, these sort of gyrations? And have a quick follow-up to that. Thanks,

Cathy Zoi: Alex we bet you to hire you and James West. No, it’s exactly right. Look, the macro backdrop is that if we are going to go to hundreds of thousands of chargers by 2030 and the OEMs have an imperative to sell the EVs if they’re investing trillions of dollars in manufacturing then we need more fast-chargers more quickly. So they’re coming together and putting at least $1 billion on the table to accelerate that deployment. And we are excited about helping them do that. I mean, we are – as you point out, we’re ideally suited. We got it and what to do is either as a sort of a joint owner and be in the consortium with them or do it as an eXtend partner or anything. So we’re excited about it and we’re having conversations with them to keep them excited about it. But we see this as an opportunity to accelerate transportation electrification and get more people into EVs more quickly. I think it’s all good for us.

Alex Vrabel: Yeah, makes perfect sense. Just a little bit more, maybe of a mechanical question, congrats on the eXtend revenue, big jump there. I guess, a little unfortunate with the BABA requirements that it’ll get choppy here. But just, as I’m looking in the Q, I see that the, the COGS in eXtend seem to be kind of a line with the revenue. I’m just curious as far as the margin you guys expect in that business, how you sort of see that gyrating around between equipment sales, that are more construction, if you can elaborate on that a little bit through the rest of the year?

Cathy Zoi: Yeah, so Al, I think, during the last call, Olga might have broke down the sort of the different buckets of revenue that we get from eXtend. And we don’t talk explicitly about the margin from each, but we can give you some directional indications. And I’ll turn it over to Stephanie to talk a little bit about why it’s – how it’s going to bounce around for the remainder of the year perhaps.

Stephanie Lee: And you know, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, currently the vast majority of the PSJ sales is really the hardware portion and we expect the second half will really be more of a construction part of the PSJ contract. And so, overall, in terms of our eXtend contract, it’s going to be profitable. And, it’s really just timing based and it’s really going to be dependent on when the BABA chargers are going to be available.

Alex Vrabel: Got it. Thanks, Cathy.

Cathy Zoi: Thanks.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Bill Peterson from JPMorgan Chase. Please go ahead.