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

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Stephen Gengaro : Okay. No, that’s it. The other question I was curious if you could add some color to is any thoughts on the NEVI program and your strategy and how you benefit from that over the next couple of years and how you’re positioned there?

Pasquale Romano : So as we look at the NEVI program, not unlike how we approached many other programs that are similar in color. It’s a very corridor-oriented program. It’s implemented by each state. So each state has its own take on the federal guidelines and we’re quite used to that. Our policy team has been instrumental in commenting and helping to shape the program. So it offers what we think is a good platform for a broad range of our customers to be able to take advantage of it, and that’s the key there is the broad range of our customers. So how do we approach it? Because we don’t own and operate stations ourselves and how we have approached similar programs in the past. So this is not a departure and approach it all is we look into our current customer base and our potential future customer base — we do deep analysis.

We have this capability internally, deep analysis on the state’s requirements of where exactly they want chargers — we look at the correlation between available utility capacity, availability of partners that we have that are in good locations, spacing, et cetera, construction ease or lack thereof of construction. And we put together a set of partners and jointly bid into the programs. And in many cases, there are multiple bidders that are based on our technology. We’ve already seen that in Ohio in — because that — those bids we already do, and we expect to see that on a go-forward basis. And that’s not unlike how we’ve accessed previous programs that, again, have had similar structure in the past. So we’re sort of kind of the bones behind the organization of the collection of players sites, technologies, et cetera, that can go into a bid.

So that’s how we approach it. We think the formula works for us. We think most importantly, formula works for drivers. What we’ve advised states on and the federal government is that these things need to be in good locations. There has to be good alignment, not 100% across the board because you could have some or locations where this statement isn’t appropriate, but it needs to be well aligned with quick-serve brands, both food services and retail, et cetera. So we create a vibrant and enjoyable experience for EV drivers because that enables more and more EV adoption to accelerate, which enables the balance of our business. So we care about it deeply.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Matt Summerville, D.A. Davidson.

Matt Summerville : Just a kind of follow-up on the Q4 to Q1 kind of seasonality and realizing we don’t have a huge amount of historical data to kind of work with here. But Q4 to Q1 last year was actually higher. I know a little bit of that would have been acquisitive related prior year, down slightly, maybe acquisitive nuance there, too, maybe helping. But moving from the 153 or whatever it was in Q4 down to 127 at the midpoint, I guess I’m just having a hard time really understanding why there’s roughly a $25 million sequential reduction there? Maybe a little more help.

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