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On Wednesday, 12 March 2025, Evgo Inc. (NASDAQ: EVGO) presented at the 2025 Cantor Fitzgerald Global Technology Conference, unveiling strategic insights into its growth trajectory. CFO Paul Dobson highlighted the company’s robust plans to expand its fast-charging network, backed by a substantial Department of Energy loan, while acknowledging challenges such as range anxiety and competitive pressures.
Key Takeaways
- Evgo secured a $1.25 billion loan from the Department of Energy to build 7,500 charging stalls.
- The company aims for adjusted EBITDA breakeven this year, focusing on operational efficiency.
- Expansion plans include geographic diversification and retrofitting chargers for Tesla vehicles.
- The EV market is growing, with diminishing barriers like price and range anxiety.
Financial Results
- DOE Loan and Charger Expansion: Evgo received a $1.25 billion loan guarantee to increase its charging stalls by 7,500 over five years. This expansion will more than triple its current count.
- Revenue and Utilization: Each stall generated $12,000 to $13,000 in Q4, with top performers reaching $50,000 per year. The average utilization rate stands at 24%, with a long-term target of 23%-26%.
- Liquidity and Capital Needs: Evgo reported $200 million in cash as of January, following a $75 million drawdown on the DOE loan. The company plans a CapEx program of $160 million to $180 million this year, supported by the loan and additional financing.
- EBITDA Outlook: The company expects to achieve adjusted EBITDA breakeven this year, focusing on increasing operational stalls and throughput.
Operational Updates
- EVgo Extend and Autonomous Vehicles: While de-emphasizing the EVgo Extend model, the company is enhancing its owner-operated model. It operates 110 stalls with autonomous vehicle operators using a fixed rent per stall model.
- Geographic Expansion: Evgo is broadening its footprint across the U.S., with more chargers now outside California.
- Tesla Connector Retrofitting: Plans are underway to retrofit chargers with NACS connectors to accommodate Tesla vehicles.
- Impact of Wildfires and Tariffs: The impact from California wildfires has been minimal, with no long-term damage. Tariffs have had limited impact, with chargers sourced from Taiwan.
Future Outlook
- Charger Growth: Evgo plans to add 800 to 900 owned stalls this year, with further growth supported by new technology.
- Site Selection and Grid Connectivity: The company uses algorithms considering EV density and utility partnerships for site selection. Chargers are directly connected to the grid, with utility hookups being the longest part of the process.
Q&A Highlights
- Electricity Margins and Solar Batteries: Evgo enjoys margins of over 50% on electricity. While not currently using solar batteries, it may consider them in the future.
- EV Supply and Demand: Demand for chargers is outpacing the supply of EVs, indicating a growing market opportunity.
In conclusion, Evgo is strategically positioning itself for growth in the evolving EV charging landscape. For further details, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.
Full transcript - 2025 Cantor Fitzgerald Global Technology Conference:
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Alright. Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome. This is track two. My name is Andres Shepherd.
I’m the lead covering analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. And joining us today is Paul Dobson. He is the chief financial officer of EVgo. In case you have been living under a rock, EVgo is one of the leading charging, companies in The United States. And we’re excited to have a very constructive conversation.
Paul, thank you for joining us.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Thank you.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Maybe to get started, just wondering if you could maybe help paint a picture on how you would maybe characterize the current status of both the EV industry and the EV charging industry.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Sure. Yeah. So on the EV side, think about EV cars. I think people have really moved beyond the early adopters have moved beyond buying an EV for environmental reasons, right? So people love EVs.
You talk to people who have them, they absolutely love them. The technology, you know, the performance, everything about them, they love that. So we see now in The U. S, there’s almost like almost 100, 90 seven different models and that was like 40 not too long ago. Now it’s 97.
It’s going to continue. So there’s lots of choice across the whole spectrum of price points as well from very expensive ones down to entry level ones as well. And the price is coming down to parity with ICE vehicles. And of course, the maintenance cost is is much less as well. And and they last much longer.
So there were really two two barriers to adoption. One was, you know, price and I don’t, you know, new technology. And I think we’re over that. So the the other barrier, of course, is range anxiety. So where am I gonna charge this thing?
Right? Is it gonna fit in with my typical patterns? And what people are saying now is, you know, you can certainly charge at home, but there’s a large population, you know, who live in apartments or condos or, you know, run around town or whatever. They don’t have access to that. And so our business is fast charging only.
So you can charge up your vehicle now with our chargers in like twenty minutes. Right? And you see that the battery technology of cars as well is improving, is continuing to advance. And so the latest car, even even the entry level models can charge up, you know, that quickly. So you can go to a grocery store or bank or whatever, park your car in a really good parking spot, charge it up in twenty minutes and be on your way, right?
And that sort of fits with your pattern. Whereas level two chargers don’t do that. Right? If you went to a slow charger or level two charger, it you would go to the bank, do your grocery and, you know, you might get an extra 5% or something. Right?
And go, what did I and still spend the same amount of money and go, what did I just do? So the value proposition is just totally different.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: I guess, obviously, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the markets at the moment. There’s all these talks about tariffs. How do you see the electrification of vehicles progressing over the next few years in your opinion?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: I mean, I think there’s some turmoil now, although I just saw Heather was showing me that there was apparently a Tesla car show on the front lawn of the White House. So EVs, you know, I’m not sure which way the current administration is going to fall on on EVs and electrification. But like I said, people love them. They they love them. You can see the technology not only in entry level cars, but you get companies like, you know, Ferrari.
Even the highest end cars are coming out with all electric vehicles. Right? Automakers have invested billions and billions of dollars in EVs and battery technology. So I don’t think and I haven’t talked to anybody who says EVs are going away, that it was a fad. And so if you believe that, then you add what I was saying earlier about, you know, range anxiety and chargers and fast charging, then there is a place, for what we do.
And right now, there is a very big gap between the growth rate of EVs, even if you think that’s going to modulate a little bit, and where fast chargers are now, right? And that gap is just going to continue to widen. So there is we’ve got 4,000 stalls today, if you go. We, you know, as we look across The U. S.
And think about, you know, what are the best places to put these chargers, we see anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 potential sites that will perform as well as and even better than the ones that we’ve already have in the ground. And if you look at our numbers we posted over the last several quarters, you’ll see that our utilization, just the absolute amount of cash that these chargers generate continues to go up and up and up. So we think there’s just plenty of opportunity there. I think electrification though, like to answer your question, I think it’s here to stay. Be interested in anybody want to have a take the other side of that argument, but I haven’t heard.
I haven’t heard.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Yeah. I would just maybe add, just to quantify it a little bit further. So last year in The United States, there were roughly 1,300,000 passenger EVs sold. That accounted for about 8% of all vehicle sales, which was marginally up from the the year before. Right.
And to your point, right, the prices of EVs is starting to get much closer to parity with ICE vehicles. Yeah. Although now there’s the likely scenario of the EV tax credit potentially going away, which would potentially make EVs a bit less competitive on price. But overall, we are seeing these OEMs start to introduce lower priced vehicles, and we also expect that to continue. Let’s maybe switch to EVgo specifically.
We touched on a few things, but just maybe for those that aren’t as familiar, what do you see as your key differentiators for EVgo maybe relative to competitors?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: So EVgo, we’re in the business of owning and operating fast chargers. So not level two chargers. We don’t make the equipment and sell the equipment and try and make a margin. So we want to own and operate, pick the best sites, own and operate and get that recurring revenue stream from those charges. That’s all we do.
So the biggest players in the market of course is Tesla. We’ve got 29,000 almost 30,000 chargers out there. They’re in the business of selling cars, right? And there’s not very little information about what their strategy is going forward in terms of chargers. They’re going to be focusing talked about autonomous vehicles.
They’ve talked about other things. Of course, EVs, like I said, they’re going to continue to sell EVs, but how they’re charging strategy evolves and that is elusive. I don’t know what that looks like. It hasn’t really been clear. The number two player is Electrify America, which was came out of the sort of VW settlement.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Private, right.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Private, yes. So they’ve got more chargers than we do, I think around 5,000 or so. Their funding is due to come to an end. So the VW funding is coming to an end this year, I believe it is. They’ve said they’re adding, I don’t know, 500 or more chargers.
And what they’re doing beyond that and what happens with that company beyond that, not sure. Not clear, right? That hasn’t been publicly stated either as far as I know. And then you get a company like ChargePoint, who’s pretty well known. They’re more in the business of making a margin on equipment, right?
That is sort of how they’ve got they’ve also got subscriptions now. And I think they’re going more starting to look at what we do and thinking that might be something that they want to get into. But making a margin on equipment, it means a thin margin business and it’s not a recurring revenue stream. So very, very different than what we
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: do. You mentioned funding. You recently closed in on a $1,200,000,000 loan from the DOE. Maybe just remind us what was the purpose of that loan? What will you be using it for?
How do you see that
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: working out there? So yes, we have a $1,250,000,000 loan guarantee from Department of Energy. The proceeds are going to be used to build 7,500 stalls over the next five years, which will take us to that 4,000 stalls to 11,000, 12 thousand stalls over that period of time.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: I want to just clarify. So it will almost triple your current charger account, which is significant.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: And each of these charges generates cash on its own. So our business model is about scale. So getting more charges in the ground generates a lot much more cash, overcomes our fixed costs and everything else falls to the bottom line. Right? So our fixed costs are not growing nearly as fast as obviously our charger costs and everything else.
So this is very much a scale play. Get more charges in the ground. So when we what we that loan will, you know, help us get to that point as we add 800 to 900 owned stalls this year and that will continue to go up to get to that 7,500. We’re also looking at new technology working on next generation charger technology, which is going to lower the cost of charges by about 30%. So we’ll get another maybe 1,500, 16 hundred chargers on top of that.
So now you’re talking 9,000 chargers. So when we’re up at about, you know, 12,000, stalls out there, we’ll be generating quite a bit of cash, more than enough to pay down the loan. So the loan is a build period of five years. You don’t have to pay anything back, capitalize the interest. So you build over the first five years and then it’s twelve years of pay down the loan.
That’s how it works. And it’s a 1.2% spread on that money. So by the time we build all of these loans, we’ll have enough cash to not only pay down the loan, but to continue to grow on top of that.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Because what is roughly the CapEx per stall?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: It’s about $8,500 or sorry, $8,500 CapEx, net CapEx per stall. So each stall on average today, our network generates just in Q4 generates about $12,000 or $13,000 per stall. Okay. And that’s a mix of older stuff and as well as the new stuff. The top 15% which are the ones that we’re putting in now, the fast chargers, they’re generating today $50,000 per stall per year.
So you buy the put the thing in the ground for $85,000 and it generates $50,000 each and every year. So you can quickly see scale that up, pays for your fixed costs, corporate costs and growth costs and away you go.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Way to go. So you mentioned as of Q4, you have a little over 4,000 stalls in operation. You mentioned that your utilization rate was about 24% on average. Maybe for people that aren’t familiar, first of all, what is utilization rate and how will you compare that 24% with maybe the rest of the industry?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: So it’s basically 24% like the number of hours in the day that the charger is being used. Right? So you’d want to you would think you would want maximum utilization, but there’s kind of a sweet spot because you want to make sure that the charger is available as well when people drive up. If it’s always being used, people will not like that experience too much and go somewhere else. So there is a sweet spot.
We haven’t quite experience too much and go somewhere else. So there is a sweet spot. We haven’t quite found where it is because we’ve got some performing at 60% and some less than the average. But yes, 24% is where we are now. We think that sweet spot is probably north of 30 where we would want to be just to make sure that there’s availability when people sign.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: But that 24 number, I think it’s fair to say it’s on the higher end of the industry on average.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: We believe so. We believe it is. There isn’t a lot that’s published about it, like specifically with the bigger competitors. But we know like part of what we really focus on and are continuing to hone is around where we put these chargers. And we have a whole AI and data and data scientists who spend all day learning about what’s going on with our network, why some are outperforming others and applying that to the next tranche of chargers.
So we’re getting continuously better and learning about where to put them to get utilization up to that 30% or so range. We put guidance in our some of our investment materials that say our long term target is 23% to 26%, but I we’re now rethinking that’s probably low. That’s right. Because we’re
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: at 24% today. Today. And just to add some context there, remember that in The United States, Seventy to 75% of all charging is being done where? It’s being done at home. Yeah.
So for a 24% utilization rate of a public location for a charger, that is considered on the higher end.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Yeah. But it’s about where they are and it’s super convenient for people to use it. That’s the key, right? It can’t just be anywhere and they got to go and try and find it. It’s got to be super convenient and it’s part of their daily or weekend pattern of how they live.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Right. Let’s switch gears for a second, maybe talk about your EVgo extend business model. So what is that and how has that been material to the business over the last maybe year, year and
Unidentified speaker: half? Yes.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: So we started that business a few years ago. And that’s a business where with our partners, we install the charger and equipment and actually run it gets a little bit of revenue for running it. But we make a margin on not the construction cost and the charger, the equipment as well. That’s not a business model that we’re pursuing. Now we’re going to fulfill the contracts that we have.
We’ve got a large contract with PFJ to put in 2,000 stalls with them. Having more charges out there is just great for EV adoption. So we’re fine with that. But it’s not a business we’re going to be emphasizing going forward. There’s more recurring revenue and more money to be made in the owner operated model.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Got it. We’ve had a lot of talks yesterday on autonomous driving technology, right? Obviously, we have Waymo’s operational. Tesla is going to be unveiling their robo testy segment. There’s also commercial autonomous vehicles looking to enter into service later this year.
How are you thinking about the EV charging opportunities for autonomous vehicles? And is there an opportunity for EVgo to maybe capture some market
Unidentified speaker: share there? Yes. We already have about 110
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: stalls with autonomous vehicle operators. So I don’t know how many people have tried a Waymo or a Zoox or anything like that, but it’s quite the experience to get in a vehicle and nobody’s driving it and it works. I’ve tried it a few times. It works great. When you drop, when you pull into places like an airport or hotel, people take pictures of this thing coming in with no driver.
It’s kind of a freaky experience. But, yes, we’ve got relationships with the biggest names you can think of. It’s going to be a bit of a different operating model for us. It’ll be we put the sites in and they pay us basically a rent like a fixed amount per stall or per charger. So we don’t take any kind of utilization risk or pricing risk or anything else.
So it’s enough to make the economics work very much in our favor. And so that is something that we’re going to be pursuing. We’ll meter those investments. It’s not going to be the main thing we do. But we’ll meter those investments as those companies decide to invest more.
But it’s having charging in great location for those companies, you can imagine is like critical to their success. They have to have it or their business model doesn’t work. Makes sense.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: I want to maybe, and by the way, let’s make this obviously as interactive as we can. So if anyone does have any questions, please feel free to jump in starting in the five minute mark. I’ll probably be calling out on folks randomly. You know, I want to touch on something. We’ve had some investor questions on our side about this.
It’s obviously not an exciting topic, but I think it’s one that is worth mentioning. Given the recent wildfires in in California that took place a few months ago, obviously, California has stayed with the highest EV penetration. How impacted were you by those wildfires? And from a EV adoption and maybe EV charging perspective, did that have a material impact in the business? And what was done to try to maybe mitigate some of that impact?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: So our headquarters is also in LA in the area, quite close to the area with all of the fires where we have roughly half of our team is there. So it very much hit home when it was happening and impacted some of our employees directly. Luckily, nobody lost a home, but power outages and evacuations and luckily everything’s starting to rebuild there. In terms of the business side, we had some charges where the power went out, and so they couldn’t be utilized. Of course, utilization in the whole area was impacted.
But we didn’t have any damage, any long term damage at all. But we’re also we started because you said penetration in California has been the highest, continues to be, but we’re also expanding right across The US. We’re in 40 states. Right now, it used to be even last year this time, we have more charges in California than anywhere else. And now that’s flipped.
We’ve got more charges outside of California than in California. And so markets like Texas, Florida, all the way up the East Coast, we put in, somebody was telling me the other day, we just put in some chargers in the Detroit area, you know, where all the automakers are and you think, okay, is that a good market or not? I mean, these chargers, the utilization right out of the gate just went right through the roof. They were like starving for these chargers. So having diversification in multiple markets, I think is a good business practice for us.
Interesting. Maybe
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: on consumer behavior, without getting into politics too much, I think safe to say Elon Musk has had some polarizing impact in the market. Yeah. Are you finding any changes in consumer behavior? Are there Tesla owners who are maybe opting not to use the Tesla networks? Are you seeing any material changes in the demand for your chargers maybe as a result of the political landscape?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Well, I mean, I can’t talk to the politics, but we certainly do see utilization continues to grow. And so why that politics is part of the reason that’s happening, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say so, but we really haven’t seen any kind of specific thing. What we are seeing though is what we are doing is putting retrofitting a lot of our chargers with the NACS or the Tesla connector cable so that Tesla owners then, which is 50%, sixty % of the EV market can use our chargers. And again, I think our chargers are better located in many instances than where the supercharger stations are.
So that just opens up a whole other market, right? We started to do the testing. These are liquid cooled, you know, expensive cables. We’re gonna make sure charger, you know, the chargers where we think there’s, you know, Tesla’s, we, you know, really like to use them. They go in there first.
If we’ve got chargers that have got high utilization already, we don’t really need to retrofit them because they’re already high. We don’t need even more if they’re already highly utilized. So but it’s a big opportunity. Right? You think if if all of our chargers can also, you know, take a Tesla charge, they can today with an adapter.
But having it just native on the thing is going to be a great opportunity for us. So
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: And just to be clear, your chargers are available to all vehicles. And then with the connector, you can also do the Tesla vehicles as well. Exactly. Maybe two quick questions and then we’ll go to the audience. Obviously, there’s all the talks about tariffs going on in the industry as of late, the implementation, you know, the obviously, the subject, I think we’d all fair to say is quite fluid and it’s quite dynamic.
But what impacts are you seeing in turn you know, for the EV charging industry and or or, you know, how should we be thinking about that as these tariffs get implemented?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Yes. I mean, all could have changed by the time we walked in this room to the time we had who knows where it’s going to be, right? So but tariffs are going to impact if they eventually come to fruition, whether it’s on vehicles or on the input steel and aluminum, etcetera, it’s going to impact all vehicles, right? So why it would impact one more than the other, I don’t know. So I don’t know that it’s going to necessarily directly impact EVs.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see. For our own business tariffs though, we don’t think have much of an impact so far. It depends on where they go, but most of our chargers are sourced from Taiwan with a company that also has operations in The U. S. So they can move manufacturing and spin up manufacturing, more manufacturing in The U.
S. As well. So we think that’s a good defensive place to be. A lot of the components are also sourced in places that are not China, War Canada, very little in Mexico as well. So we’ll just have to see how expensive these tariffs get.
But if it’s a broad brush, it’s going to impact everything, not just us specifically.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Got it. Maybe my last question, I think I’d be doing us a disservice if I didn’t ask the CFO maybe a financial question. So maybe just remind us what is your current liquidity status and what are your capital needs?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Yes. So in January, we had about $200,000,000 in cash. That’s after taking a $75,000,000 drawdown on the DOE loan. We’re expecting adjusted EBITDA this year to be breakeven. So our operating cash flow is roughly flat, a little bit of working capital, but roughly flat.
So most of our funding needs been for our CapEx program. So that’s about between $160,000,000 to $180,000,000 this year. So we have $200,000,000 in $160,000,000 to $180,000,000 CapEx program. We have the DOE loan to help fund that. And we’re also pursuing other financing, project type financing, been approached by a number of banks who are very interested like see the cash flow potential of these assets, like the fact that we can go faster or slower.
It’s not like building a big data center where it’s all or nothing. It’s like go fast So we’ll have complementary financing to sit alongside the DOE loan, which we’ll announce in due course at some point this year. So we feel like we’ve got we’re in a pretty good position. You know, all of it’s non dilutive. So we’re not looking to issue any equity to fund our growth.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Got it. Super helpful. All right. So we got about ten minutes. So we’re turning it over to you.
First question here. Yes.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: So I’m curious, are
Unidentified speaker: the charging networks, are they plugged directly into the grid? And what sort of the margin So I’m curious, are the charging networks, are they plugged directly
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: into the grid? What sort
Unidentified speaker: of margin do you get on when you buy electricity or?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: So yes, they are plugged into the grid. So there is a, you know, hard connection when we put them in. And there each site has got about six to eight stalls. So there’s some equipment to transform the energy and then spread it out to the chargers that are on the site. Our margin is roughly a little more than 50% on the energy.
So our price, our average price is about across the portfolio, different markets and whatever else. But on average, it’s about 0.55 a kilowatt and the price, the energy cost, including demand charges and whatnot are is about 24 a little less than 24. Are there ways to
Unidentified speaker: potentially add solar batteries to these stations where you can get a sense of arbitrage pricing,
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Not since I’ve been around. We haven’t. No. That’d be something we might look at in the future, but that’s not something that we have looked at. We’re very focused and I’m very focused as new CFO is that we stick with what works right now without trying a whole bunch of new things because like I said, this charger in Michigan or wherever else, like if we can put more of those in, that’s what we should focus on.
Just focus on that. Other opportunities when we’re hugely profitable will come our way. But that’s something that I’m pretty adamant about. Question over here. So there’s a lot of things that go into the algorithm to pick a site.
So how many EVs are in the area? What do we think are in the area? What’s the growth like? Who’s the utility? How owners is it going to be to get a connection?
Are there any of our partners in the area, grocery store partners, you know, that because we know that that model works rather than one off stations sitting somewhere else, right? So there’s a lot of data that goes into selecting which sites and why. So we’re in 4,000 locations today, 3,500 are owned and operated. We think across The U. S, we have anywhere between 80,000 sites that pencil that we know we apply our algorithm, we’ve got pretty good feeling that those are going to be profitable sites, right?
So how do you pick then between that, you like put the probabilities in your favor, make sure that you know who the utility is and you can get that connection. The utilities have got like waiting lists about everybody who wants to make a connection. And so do you have a good relationship? Can you get on that list in time? So many things go into it that we might as well pick off the low hanging fruit where we know it’s going to be successful and it’s easy to do and we can scale rapidly and then we can come back over and see whatever we missed.
That’s the approach we take.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Yes.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: We’ve got lots of information in our investor materials on our website that goes through the unit economics per charger. But the basics of it are that the utilization rate on average is about 24%. I said we set a target, a long term target of 23% to 26%. I think it’s probably going to be more like 30% by the time we’re done. And then there’s the charge rate, which is the amount of power that a vehicle can take.
Right? What’s the one on average? Because you’ve got a mix of slow, older vehicles and the newer vehicles, which can take, you know, a lot can take whatever a fast charger can give it. Right. And it’s got everything in between.
So that charge rate, which is about 47 or so kilowatts today, we think it’s going to continue to go up as the EV stock battery technology improves and that’ll go to about four fifty to 500 or so kilowatt hours per charger per day. From today, that’s two thirty ish, roughly two seventy, sorry, two seventy. And that’s going to go up this year to over 300 on average, we think. Right? So then you take that’s how much each one makes per day, three sixty five days times $0.55 for the revenue equals the revenue.
And then the cost of power $0.24 And then we’ve got costs for, the stall dependent costs for things like maintenance. We have also got what we call sustaining costs, so to sustain the network, so all the network operating costs, call center, that sort of thing. So you take all of those costs and we put them all in a per unit basis. And like I said, today, that comes out to about $12,000 net cash per stall across the whole network. The top ones, which are more look more like what their future is going to look like are already making $50,000 per stall per year.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Okay. Other questions?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Sorry, say that again? Just the gap. Right. Oh, between supply and demand. Yes.
So the EVs, some of like the data people’s projections are changing. But I’ve seen some projections that say we’re going to get to about 30,000,000 EVs on the road by 02/1930, something like that. Is that roughly what you’ve seen as well?
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Yes. I can help quantify that. I’ll let you talk about maybe the charging component. Maybe I’ll just weigh in quickly. So remember, Tesla last year did 1,700,000 vehicles globally.
This year, they expect it to grow. So they said they haven’t quantified. Rivian is going to produce about 41,000 to 43,000 this year. Lucid is going to produce they’re guiding 20,000. So the point that I think we’re trying to make is that the demand for these EV chargers is far outpacing the supply of electric vehicles.
So we’ve had a slowdown in EVs. There’s been supply chain disruptions. There’s been higher interest rates. And so another reason, and please correct me if I’m wrong, for the higher utilization of these chargers has been a result that there are just not enough chargers for the amount of vehicles that are out there. Is that a fair assessment?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: That’s exactly right. So there’s about 53,000 fast chargers. So we don’t think there’s more chargers that I cover two and a quarter or 220,000 chargers out there. But the fast chargers are the relevant ones for our business model and there’s about 53,000 of those. So that’s like about 100 or so per vehicle.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Unless you want to wait twelve hours and use a slower charger.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Yeah. Probably different proposition from
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: what we’re doing. Other questions? Yes.
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Yeah. I mean, we’re getting much better. Again, I was saying earlier, like, understanding who the utilities are, how receptive they are to EV charging, fast charging coming into their space, and what the wait list is and how onerous of process that is to get the permitting. It is definitely, you know, by the time we say that’s a site we want, do we get it in? It could be twelve to eighteen months.
The longest pull in that tent is the utility hookup. The permitting and getting the hookup and everything done, that’s the longest that takes can take the longest amount of time. So some but we’re doing it. I mean, we’re adding, you know, four or 500 stalls a quarter. So we are getting through.
But it’s part of the data analysis and the kind of secret sauce that says where we’re going to put a charger to make sure that that doesn’t become a problem late in the process.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: We’ve got about a minute and a half left, unless there are any other questions. Paul, I want to maybe give you a chance to, you know, what are some key catalysts that you think investors should be aware for this year and any other closing remarks you’d like to share?
Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer, EVgo: Well, continue to watch our results. We posted pretty good results and our growth has been fantastic quarter over quarter. So keep looking at throughput. You see throughput average throughput per stall continuing to go up. That’s an indication that the cash is being generated in these chargers.
Keep looking at the number of stalls that we’re putting in. So the more we put in, the faster we will scale and get to breakeven. This year, we’ve said we’re going to be adjusted EBITDA breakeven. So we put out guidance of between minus $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 EBITDA. So we are aiming to be positive EBITDA this year.
So seeing that as a good sign, it’s a stepping stone to becoming free cash flow positive a few years after that. And then look for the financing, like the new financing, the DOE, not only the DOE loan, but complimentary financing to sit alongside it. Because then we’ve got all the ingredients that we need to scale up and to become a very profitable company. Wonderful. Just on time.
Thank you very much. Paul Dobson, CFO of eBgoat.
Andres Shepherd, Lead Covering Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Okay, Dan. Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you.
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