ChargePoint Holdings, Inc.
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 11 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Good morning, my name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Chargepoint Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. All participant lines have been placed in listen only mode, to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there'll be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Rebecca Chavez, General Counsel. Rebecca, please go ahead.

[Rebecca Chavez:]

Good afternoon. And thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Chargepoint Holding Inc.’s, fourth quarter and fiscal 2021, financial results. I'm Rebecca Chavez, the company's General Counsel.

[Pasquale Romano:]

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining. And welcome to our first earnings call, as a public company. We are very happy to be here. As a category creator, Chargepoint sees electric mobility having come into its own. We're operating across nearly all segments of EV charging, including commercial, fleet and residential and we believe, we are well positioned to take advantage of the growth in the market. We're very happy to have begun trading on March 1st on the New York Stock Exchange. We've raised $480 million in net proceeds as a result, and have $650 million in cash on our balance sheet to fund growth. I will point out, that that is more cash than we have net spent in our 13 year history to get to this point.

[Rex Jackson:]

Thank you, Pasquale, and thank you all for joining our first earnings call. As Pasquale said, we are very pleased to be here. To start, I'd like to offer a few baseline comments. First, my comments are non-GAAP, as we defined in our earnings release. The primary exclusions are stock-based compensation and the effect of the valuation of our preferred stock warrants. Second, after quick review of our results, I will provide revenue estimates for Q1 and for this fiscal year, which ends January 31, 2022. Third, as you can see in our earnings release, we report revenue along three lines

[Pasquale Romano:]

Thanks Rex. In closing, I'll reinforce the ChargePoint has focused on our vision to move all people in goods and electric power since 2007 and that still drives us today. The company has never pivoted. This shift to electric motor mobility is accelerating. We have a great opportunity here that is still in its early innings. Charging infrastructure is now expected by Bloomberg New Energy finances measure to be a $190 billion market by 2040. Aligning with that, our business model is designed to scale proportionally to the adoption rate of vehicles in the geos we serve. We have a 13-year foundation to build on and I will remind you that our business model is capital-light. As a leader in EV charging, ChargePoint is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing market with great technology, a large customer base, and a business model that has been pressure-tested over more than a decade. We are the only EV charging company with solutions across segments on two continents. We have operating expense leverage across geographies. We have cost structure scale benefits and our products and services. And we are excited to be a public company and are committed to continued strong execution across functions. We are also committed to providing our shareholders with timely and transparent investor communication. In closing, I would like to thank our team at ChargePoint for their incredible effort and dedication to getting us to this point. And as I shared with the employees on our listing day on March 1st, I described this moment in our company's history as a semi colon, in the sentence that is ChargePoint. It's a brief practice as we continue the journey with most of the growth, ahead of us. With that'll be joined by Rex, and we'll open it up for your questions. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our first question comes from Shreyas Patil from Wolfe. Shreyas, please go ahead.

[Shreyas Patil:]

Hey, thanks so much. Just wanted to dig into the revenue guidance a little bit though. You're maintaining the guidance for fiscal 2022, but can you give us some of the underlying assumptions either around industry EV demand for North America and Europe and new charging installations? And then, also around gross margin, I'm curious if I think previously talked about 31% for this year, this will be fiscal 2022. Is that what you're expecting and how do we think about those drivers as well?

[Pasquale Romano:]

Hi, Shreyas. I'll provide some color on that and then I'll have Rex get into some specifics on the numbers. Thank you for the question. First of all, I believe, you'd asked the question about penetration of EVs into the GOs that serve. And I think that's a very -- that's a bright spot in what has been a challenging auto industry for sales numbers. What you're seeing in the industry is an overall decline in auto sales, but an overall increase in the percent of sales that are EVs that offsets that decline in our particular market, that's driving essentially demand for our products and services. So, we expect that strength to continue for a very long time. And if you look at the new makes and models that are being introduced, I talked about that in my remarks, you got 20 new EV models in this year alone coming out in both the passenger car space and the fleet space, it should drive demand. I'll remind you that our revenue has been historically and is predicted to continue to map directly to vehicle penetration in both the consumer segment, the residential -- excuse me, commercial segment, residential segment and the fleet segment. They're all -- we're all vehicle attached across the board. And so, if you believe, which we do, that the vehicles will continue to come in greater and greater percentages and greater and greater numbers, our revenue should follow suit. In terms of gross margin, I'll make one comment and then I'll hand it over to Rex. Our gross margin, we believe as COVID begins to subside, our revenue mix will return to a pre-COVID revenue mix that will be a favorable trend with respect to gross margin and also as our overall volumes increase on both the hardware and software products that we sell into the market, we expect that the trend that we have in gross margin will continue nicely. Rex?

[Rex Jackson:]

Thanks, Pas. So, Shreyas, first of all, nice to see you at one of our first earnings calls, so thank you for joining. Secondly, from a revenue guidance perspective, first thing I would say is, we're embracing the number that's out there as we look out over the next four quarters. Secondly, there's some seasonality, so that's why we put Q1 where we put it, we're typically down Q4 to Q1 that will tell you mathematically we're looking at a strong second half. I think there's two things there. One is, that's very typical from a pattern perspective for the company and secondly, we do think that people are going to get back to work sometime later this year and that will have the beneficial effects, but off the top line in gross margin that Pas just mentioned. From a competence perspective, as Pas said, there are a lot of vehicles coming out this year. I think the percentage is up and actually the unit count is up as well. So we directly correlate to that, as you know our model is 100% built on our attach rate to new vehicles. So that's how we build our outlook. We do have a pretty good pipeline. And in terms of pipeline visibility, so we have a great pipeline, but the visibility is pretty good, sorry. And so, that's how we have constructed our view of the year. One thing you'll note in Q4 is that, fleet really picked up. Fleet had its best quarter from a buildings perspective in history of the company. And the one place in our business where nobody fell asleep in COVID is fleet. Fleet has really picked up from an RFP perspective to get the total cost of ownership and they're just -- it really comes down to vehicles with those guys. So that's how we constructed our model to begin with. And we're comfortable saying, we think that will execute against that. Lastly on gross margin, I’m not going to guide on gross margin. I don't think that's makes sense, because we're so heavily mixed dependent. As you know, our commercial business has different products and different risk margin profiles, fleet is very different as well. So I really want people to think about us on a blended basis. And I think we're going to see margin expansion, as Pat said, as we go through the year.

[Shreyas Patil:]

Okay. Great. And then wanted to maybe touch on Europe, you mentioned 7% of revenue in 2020. Looking out I think by mid-decade, roughly mid-decade, you're thinking about, it looks like it's supposed to be roughly a third of the revenue. Can you maybe just help frame what some of the expectations are around either L2 market share, where would that be today and by 2025? And wanted to better understand the partnership with the leasing company that you mentioned, because I think they are talking about pretty aggressive growth in terms of BEV penetration. I think they recently talked about increasing that mix in terms of vehicles they lease to 30% by 2025 and maybe 50% by 2030. So I'm just trying to understand how that would flow through to ChargePoint either from the residential and then commercial perspective?

[Pasquale Romano:]

So, thanks for the question. All components of that I think were insightful. The way – so first of all, I want to establish a couple of things. We based our long-term model on the Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates for vehicles, and any revisions that might happen or any changes that might happen in the future can move that vehicle number up or down. We think that there is a lot of positive sentiment in momentum, especially in Europe with respect to makes some models, especially given the automakers, all have – the automakers that serve that market at all, made broad statements about fully electrifying their product lines as they move forward through the decade. So I think what you'll see is continued for us, continued penetration into Europe. Europe's a very fragmented market right now, and we think we can be a tremendous consolidating force in that market to provide the same driver experience that we have here there. And as you mentioned, with the lease COs, they're serving the employer provided vehicles as part of compensation that phenomenon doesn't exist here. So it actually provides a nice concentrated way for us to establish market share quickly in Europe. And so we're leaning in heavily there, because obviously, it's a great way in a coordinated method to get a new customer up and running at their workplace. And then also, there's a home component there as well where that lease CO bundles that home charging solution optionally into the contract with the employer. Rex?

[Rex Jackson:]

Yes. So focusing on Europe, last year, Europe was – sorry, Q4, Europe was about 8% of our billings. We're looking at a meaningful increase over the next – this next year on a percentage basis something on the order of 50% increase percentage-wise. Obviously, the company's going to – we're anticipating will grow next year, and therefore, the actual dollar values will grow as well. So I think we're in good shape. You mentioned market share, our market share in Europe is in the low to-mid single-digits. Hard to project what that might look like at the end of the year, but I can tell you we're putting a lot of wood behind the arrow in Europe this year and would expect meaningful growth both on dollar and percentage basis.

[Shreyas Patil:]

Okay, great. Thanks so much. Great and congratulations on the quarter.

[Rex Jackson:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer & Co. Colin, please go ahead.

[Colin Rusch:]

Thanks so much guys. Can you just give us a sense of trends on sales conversion rates and cycle times particular really related to the commercial customers in North America as you've kind of gone through the back half of 2021 and are looking into the first half of fiscal 2022?

[Pasquale Romano:]

So Colin, thank you for the question. So, obviously, things are converting as EV’s penetrate and as it becomes abundantly clear to facilities managers in all segments that this trend is here to say, the conversion rates, obviously, and the pipeline improve, we have a very strong pipeline going into the year. And one of the things that we are -- one trend that we are seeing in our Salesforce is the ability to -- on an increasing basis closing win business. In our sales, telephone contact centre, which I think is an interesting indicator to us. It's a leading indicator, a significant part of our sales right now. But it will continue to grow and I think it's a leading indicator in the conversion, the ability to convert the pipeline to real sales. With respect to our business in terms of how much pipeline at the beginning of a quarter or how much of the quarter is visible at the beginning of the quarter. It is roughly, roughly in the half maybe a little less perspective in terms of how much we see at the beginning of the quarter versus how much is closing one and this is in the highly granular commercial segment. The fleet segment is a bit different, we get more visibility there. So what does that tell you, that tells you that it's moving pretty fluidly, and we expect that to increase and will give us confidence in our numbers on a go forward basis is just because historical attach rate model that we've developed that shows that as long as we're in a geography and serving it well with support and sales coverage, good deed channel coverage, well-trained installers, etcetera that we've got the ability to convert the demand that those cars generating sales.

[Colin Rusch:]

All right. That's super helpful. Thank you so much for the detail. And then within the fleet segment, looking at the competitive dynamics of depot design, and some of the software offerings in terms of operating multiple chargers and being able to manage multiple charging having technical development. Could you talked about where we're sitting in terms of the competitive landscape and how important that is in terms of some of those fleet -- that fleet backlog that you're looking at developing over the next call it year, year and half?

[Pasquale Romano:]

Yes. So, we -- Colin, we view ourselves as a very complete solution provider in the fleet segment. We have very comprehensive software solutions. And the engagement with a fleet customer really starts there. It's a software conversation from the beginning because of the need, especially in very large fleets to integrate with their route planning and telematics business systems that determine when a vehicle needs to leave the next day, and also what it’s mileage for its routes will necessarily be. And also the energy economics depending on where the depot's situated, may have some fluctuation as to when or how best to optimise the dispensation to minimize the cost of the energy. So, our software focuses on that problem set. And as a result, we have built our support operations, which with our Assure Pro product has all of the necessary options to engage with different kinds of fleets that like to be -- like to support their depots in different ways, some wanted fully turnkey, some may want to do some of the support themselves and stock spares. So, we can engage in that way with fleets. And then lastly, we have the charging solutions. The hardware itself that we build its very flexible and it's completely designed with our software in mind. They're also completely designed with uptime in mind for mission-critical applications like fleet. So, we're pretty confident that our package is very, very, very competitive there on the fleet side from a functionality perspective.

[Colin Rusch:]

Okay, helpful. And then final question for me is just around supply chain, I'm sure there's a lot of lumpiness within various industries in terms of components and being able to deliver full solutions on time. Can you guys just touch on any sort of inefficiencies in the supply chain, expediting fees, component charges, and how you're expecting that to impact gross margins here in the first, second quarter of fiscal 2022?

[Pasquale Romano:]

Yeah, that's a great question subject to a lot of conversation inside of ChargePoint. Obviously, on the operation side, we're trying to stay very, very focused on this, especially given that we're in a high growth market. And so a couple things, first of all, last year, we did not miss shipments based on supply chain issues. We -- and as you see by the numbers, the mix -- as Rex has mentioned in his remarks, the mix shifted pretty substantially between segments, which means the hardware mix, which is affected by those circumstances that you're outlining changed and we were -- we managed to be resilient against that through a whole lot of hard work on the part of our operations team. As we move forward and I'll remind you that we use -- we have three contract manufacturing relationships in the company, so these are our large CMs that have good supply chain mechanisms of their own right. But we are actually putting in mitigation strategies and have been with respect to safety inventory. I can't say that we're perfectly going to be able to avoid whatever comes around the corner, but we did I think, Yeoman's work in in the past year and on a go forward basis, we're really focusing on it to keep ourselves as insulated as possible from this. We obviously -- last year, you asked specifically about expedite charges. We saw some. I don't think they were massively materialized. But they were -- but they -- but you always will get that to some degree when you have mix shift around and the business scale beyond with our initial models were for the beginning of the year.

[Rex Jackson:]

Hey, Colin. What you might expect that you think this will happen is our inventory is probably going to trend up a bit because there's some silica stuff you want to make sure you don't have exposure to and some other components. And obviously, we want to plan for growth. The good news is that I think our obsolescence risk is really low. So, we're going to try to take a risk out of the supply chain by bulking up a little bit.

[Colin Rusch:]

Okay. Thanks so much, guys.

[Operator:]

Our next question in the line comes from Gabe Daoud from Cowen. Gabe, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

[Gabe Daoud:]

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Congrats on getting the deal done and on your first quarter here. Maybe I was hoping to start or just go back to Europe. Could you maybe just remind us – in your last comment, you did mention that the three contract manufacturers you do have, but could you – so could you maybe just give us an update on the Europe strategy and whether you're now 100% on contract manufacturing for the AC products in Europe? I think you guys were anticipating to the 100% on a -- on your AC products using contract manufacturing, but just curious if you had an update there?

[Pasquale Romano:]

So our products almost across the border are built by contract manufacturers now. If we may do some small things with local manufacturers for new product introduction and early engineering or very, very, very early customer engagements, but nothing – no major supply now comes from anything but our contract manufacturing partners. The contract manufacturing partners have global supply chains. And they have the ability to cover us globally and also along with supply chain partners, our distribution partners that we're using for logistics. So your specific question with respect to Europe, we are currently using some white-label products in Europe that has been generally customized for us on the AC side because your question was specifically on AC. And that will -- that, you know, obviously we will continue to evolve our product line on the AC side in Europe. And you know, stay tuned.

[Gabe Daoud:]

Okay. Thanks, that’s helpful. Maybe just a follow-up. Do you feel at this point, you know, the team and the human capital that you have behind the effort to expand in Europe is sufficient. I know you were building out the team and you've made a number of expansions in IR, but just curious if you think from a people standpoint, you're well staffed now for the growth initiatives you had?

[Pasquale Romano:]

Yeah. So we're -- you know, we're at about 100 people or so in Europe maybe higher and now – and we're going to be increasing now pretty significantly over the -- this year. In fact, it's a big focus for us on the hiring side. I'll remind you where our locations are. We have our European headquarters in Amsterdam. We have collection individuals also in the Munich, Germany area. And then we have QC sized facility in Redding, right outside of London in the UK. We are putting -- we are positioning pretty much all functions that we – all corporate functions in Europe. So we have; finance, legal, R&D, sales, marketing, etcetera. So we're essentially multi-local and that we need to make sure that we have the functional coverage in the region to operate quickly in the region. Also make sure that we can deal with all the nuances of selling and building products for local regions. Now, with respect to R&D, I want to point out something that's incredibly important. The product line is a generally world product line. There are some areas where the hardware product line may have things that are specific to a region overtime even that will be a world product line and the software, while it has its language nuances, support nuances, things like that in different – in different regions. It is a world platform. Therefore, the R&D operating expense leverage in being in Europe and North America is very high and that we do not have to have a separate product line with separate software and very separate processes and procedures for Europe. This also helps us greatly in fleet, where there's a lot of commonality in product line as well. So the real, we – so the people that we have positioned in the European market now, and as I said, it's going to be a big, big headcount growth area for us. That's just the tip of the iceberg, because our R&D team and lots of other functions in the company are operating, producing intellectual property and products for the – for the world essentially.

[Gabe Daoud:]

Got it. Thanks so much for the color guys.

[Operator:]

We have a question now from Craig Irwin from ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead, Craig.

[Craig Irwin:]

Good evening, and thanks for taking my questions. So I wanted to ask a little bit about the guidance for this year. Obviously, you're expecting strengthening into the end of the year. Can you maybe describe for us the contribution from people returning to work? Are you assuming something related to sort of taper down of this COVID effect and benefit from your strength and workplaces as people do return to the workplace? And I guess, there's a second part in there is, is there activity going on right now with your customer base, preparing for obviously, additional charging spots, given that EV fleets are growing quite nicely? While everybody stuck with work from home.

[Pasquale Romano:]

Yeah, great question. Our expectations with – we expected for return to work in a – and now probably have a new, a new twist, set a twist to it, and the kind of work styles and methodologies that have evolved during COVID. We expect that to be back and loaded in the year, the second half of – the second half phenomena, and we'll be coming out of it over Q1 and Q2, we expect that fully to show up in the – in the numeric's towards the back half of the year. With that said, we've had an incredible resilience in the business where the mix is moved around, as evidenced by the overperformance relative to our expectations for the last year. So going into the year, we see fleet being really strong on a year-over-year basis, even within last year it grew substantially in percentage over the year. We see workplace coming back. We see residential staying strong. We see the sub-segment of multifamily inside of residential, really getting a lot of attention. We have now the – the plans aren't fully hashed, of course, but we have the Biden administration providing potentially some stimulus in the form of support for infrastructure. And our little corner of that will be charging infrastructure, and how that plays out, we don't exactly know yet. But we're participating in the discussions with the – with the administration. So, hopefully that will also be a tailwind. So we see a lot of general tailwinds. The specific question with respect to our people prepping for the return to work, we do see construction happening during -- throughout the COVID period, where people with an eye towards long gain in real estate were preparing and renovating properties, given that there was limited occupancy, in those segments we did see plenty of activity. You also have a backbone of utility programs. You noticed in my remarks that the available funds on a go forward basis are climbing. These utility programs are multi-year. I want to make sure you get that clarification from my comments. But we -- those programs have time fuses on them typically. And so, if there's a program in force in a particular geography, that's providing some subsidy for either the make-ready or even beyond that on things that -- on sites that have been more largely affected by COVID, that will put counter pressure on the business erosion there, the temporary business erosion due to COVID.

[Craig Irwin:]

Thank you for that. The next question I want to ask is about, the new product roadmap. So you did touch on the new AC product allowing you to move away from third-party products in Europe, maybe into the end of the year. I believe there's also a fleet product that's in the roadmap for this year. Can you update us on the status of these two products? Do we have a specific quarter or time point where these are expected to be launched? And what sort of margin implications does this have? Both, I guess, on European opportunity, and then, your success you're seeing in fleets these days.

[Pasquale Romano:]

So, obviously, I can't comment on unannounced product launches. I wish I could tell you. I'm really excited about a lot of the things that we're doing in the R&D team, but I really can't comment on specifics of dates and markets that we'll be launching product into. What I will tell you is that with your gross margin question, obviously, it's a big focus for the company. And as we continue to evolve our product line and work our supply chain, move up the scale ladder as more and more volume ensues on the hardware side, specifically, I would expect the gross margins to continue on the trends that we've indicated in the past.

[Rex Jackson:]

And I can certainly say -- add to that, that we've factored in new product introductions to our planning this year. So, when you look at our model, we knew -- excuse me, we know when we're planning on doing X and Y. As Pas said, we can't say what X and Y is. But, they are in the plan. And so, it's not a surprise kind of thing. We just need to get our launch COGS right.

[Craig Irwin:]

Understood, that makes sense. My last question is directly about gross margins on the DC fast charging products? So, the skeptics out there have been critical about the margin progression of ChargePoint over the last two years. And, people that unpack the margin progress obviously understand this is a business mix issue. And it's also the DC fast charging product coming into the market quite nicely. Can you maybe comment a little bit about margin progress on the DC fast charging units? Where are we versus your plan? Is there room for that to continue improving over the next few quarters?

[Pasquale Romano:]

So, I'll have Rex speak to the specifics on the trajectory there. I want to just provide a bit of color, which I think is important. Our fast charge product line is not a product line, but it is a modular architecture, that is going to continue to evolve into derivative products over time, and so we made a very ambitious investment in the initial set of products built on that architecture and are continuing to evolve it. And when you start out with ambitious products like that in, what is low volume because the market is a low volume market there. In general, as you start up those product lines and you get contract manufacturing moving and you invest in all the test infrastructure you need, you're going to have as a first time through the system, you're going to have gross margin impact on the company. It's just a result of investing. And then, but obviously, we have good plans in place to continue to evolve and move that. Rex, I'll let you comment on the specific numeric.

[Rex Jackson:]

Yeah. So Craig, the margin as you know on the fast charge product is currently very thin, shall we say, so it's a very thin I think by the end of this year, we're going to -- we've made great progress last year, this year we'll break into meaningful flat to positive territory on the gross margins. One of the things about DC fast charge architecture, which Pat just mentioned, yes, we've made investments but there's also an element of market education, customer education and ultimate acceptance, not all products are created equal. So we did manage to -- I think we taught the market something from an AC product perspective, which is why I think we've been as successful as we've been in the US. And, you know, hopefully, increasingly so in Europe on that side. Our DC fast charge product is a better product than anything else in the market. It's not all about a single number, but the number in terms of output is strong. It's all the features functionality, reliability, et cetera. So we have some additional market education to do. So I think that will help us from an ESP perspective. And then, we're going to take the cost curve down notably this year and we'll be fine by the end of the year.

[Craig Irwin:]

It sounds like a great plan. So congratulations on the successful listing and thanks for taking my questions.

[Pasquale Romano:]

Thank you.

[Rex Jackson:]

Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

So we don't have any further questions on the line, so then I hand back over to the management team for any closing remarks.

[Pasquale Romano:]

Certainly. So first of all, thank you to all that are attending our first earnings call here. We're very excited to be here and to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Thank you to the folks that asked questions. I think it helps a lot. The questions help a lot to educate investors out there on the dynamics of what is a very new and exciting market. We're happy, very, very happy to finally have this market after a 13-year journey with the company that’s been on to finally see all the pieces coming together in the market, vehicles, battery technology, consumer user experiences for charging, just in a myriad of things plus all the secondary things that have to get integrated there with respect to energy and policy, and all those pieces. So on a go-forward basis, I think, there's just a lot, there's going to be a lot of excitement in this industry. What we're going to do is we are going to keep our head screwed on straight and execute. And for us, it's all about execution. We know exactly what we're doing. We've been in this space for a very long time. And it's not theoretical for us, right now it's all about practical execution and we hope to turn in good results for our shareholders. Thank you so much for attending.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thanks for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.