EVgo Inc.

Good day and welcome to EVgo's third quarter earnings results call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. I would now like to turn the call over to Heather Davis, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to EVgo's third quarter 2022 earnings call. My name is Heather Davis, and I am the new head of industrial relations at EVgo. Joining me on today's call are Kathy Zoi, EVgo's CEO, and Olga Shevrenkova, the company's chief financial officer. Today, we will be discussing EVgo's financial results for the third quarter of 2022, followed by a Q&A session. Today's call is being webcast. and can be accessed from the investor section of our website at investors.eveco.com. The call will be archived and available there, along with the company's earnings release and investor presentation after the conclusion of this call. During the call, management will be making forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties including expectations about future performance. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations are detailed in our SEC filings, including the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and in the quarterly report on Form 10-Q that we will be filing soon and which will be available on the investor section of our website. These forward-looking statements apply as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements after the call. Also, please note that we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Information about these non-GAAP financial measures including a reconciliation to the corresponding gap measures, can be found in the earnings materials available on the investor section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kathy Zoe, EVGo's CEO. Kathy?

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining today. Before I begin with an update on the quarter, I'd like to take a moment to recognize a few new additions to our team at EVGo. First, I'm pleased to welcome Heather Davis, our new head of IR, who kicked off our call today. Heather brings more than 20 years of investor relations and corporate finance experience. I know you all will enjoy getting to work with her. Second, we recently hired a new chief revenue officer, Tanvi Chaturvedi, who joins us from Google. Tanvi will focus on turbocharging our retail revenue growth by transforming the fast-charging user experience. As CRO, Tandy will lead our go-to-market functions, including all consumer revenue growth initiatives, marketing, advertising, and expansion and use of the PlugShare app. Prior to joining EVGO, Tandy held numerous leadership positions at Google, most recently responsible for delivering growth and monetization of the Google Nest smart home product portfolio and services business. Previously, she also held leadership positions at Procter & Gamble's consumer businesses, and served as a technology investment banker at JP Morgan. Now, turning to the quarter. EVgo experienced a solid quarter as we continue to harness our technology-driven approach to lead the ultra-fast EV charging marketplace. On today's call, I'll focus on a few themes from the quarter that we see as key drivers of growth. One, the strength of our operational foundation. Two, Our strong commercial progress as we make headway with existing and new partners. Three, our commitment to technology as a source of advancement and innovation. And lastly, some important updates across the regulatory front, which we expect will drive substantial investment in the EV charging space in 2023 and beyond. Today, nearly 140 million Americans live within 10 miles of an EVgo charger, which is a testament to the foundation of operational excellence we established in order to now accelerate our growth. Our footprint continues to grow across the country, and we're excited to see accelerating momentum as more and more Americans adopt EVs. In fact, we recently announced that we have surpassed 500,000 customer accounts on our platform. The third quarter of 2022 saw a record number of EVs sold in the U.S., with more than 210,000 new fully electric vehicles purchased during the three months, according to EV volume. The market share for EVs continues to increase every quarter, and we expect these trends to only accelerate as we head into 2023. Reuters recently calculated that the world's top automakers are planning to spend nearly $1.2 trillion through 2030 to develop and produce EVs. This is a 2x increase over the estimates that they had projected just a year earlier. The market is coming, and EVgo is at the forefront. A major component of this effort is the work we are doing on the commercial side of the business, as we continue to build out our partnerships across all aspects of the ecosystem. On the fleet side, we signed a new behind-the-defense deal with MHX Solutions, which is a full-service logistics operation based in California, and our first EVgo Optima deployment for a Class 8 truck fleet. This comes on the heels of the agreement we signed with a major investor-owned utility last quarter. Additionally, EVgo signed a new agreement for a dedicated fast-charging hub with an existing autonomous vehicle fleet partner, as well as an agreement with a different AV fleet partner to repurpose a former dedicated site to meet its own growing needs. We're really excited about the progress in our fleet business, which we believe is driven in large part by our technology advantage, and more on that in a few moments. Building on the momentum created in July with the announcement of the EVGO extend deal with the pilot company, we are pleased to report that pre-engineering work has already begun at certain Pilot Flying J sites. we also received our first extend workplace purchase orders to deploy and manage L2 and some DC fast charging stalls for General Motors employees at four different company facilities. This highlights EVgo's ability to partner with large commercial organizations for workplace solutions. As we've shared previously, we're open to both owning sites or managing them on behalf of others. And in many cases, it's better for us and our partners for them to own the chargers. In this case, GM is able to provide a unique benefit for its employees, relying on EVgo to install and operate the chargers. The key to winning the land grab for charging infrastructure is site control, and we secured multiple new agreements with national brand names, which will provide EVgo with access to high-quality properties in prime locations across the U.S. Among these is our agreement with home improvement powerhouse Vogue, Additionally, we expanded our existing site footprint at several large grocery chains, including Kroger, Safeway, and WinCo. We also energized the first of many sites in development at Target, which are now available on the EVgo app and PlugShare. The addition of new national retail site host partners in the home improvement, grocery, and restaurant sectors, complemented by deepening engagements with a number of our existing portfolio partners, has significantly increased EVgo's pipeline for station locations to every corner of the U.S. In fact, when we overlay specific store locations of these well-known brands with EVgo's own proprietary network planning tool that accounts for the numerous factors that make charging infrastructure pencil, we've added nearly 10,000 potential charging cells that pass our internal investment hurdles today and could be added to EVgo's development pipelines. This rapidly expanding pipeline of premium station locations with strong unit economics combined with the cost-sharing potential arising from forthcoming federal funding provides EVGO with the opportunity to widely invest capital to expand our footprint to new places. With this in mind, after we file our third quarter 10Q, EVGO is planning to file a prospective supplement to our recently filed S3 in order to facilitate at-the-market sales of up to $200 million of our common stock. We plan to use the proceeds of this ATM program to opportunistically raise additional capital in order to take advantage of this robust and accelerating EV infrastructure sector. Turning to our performance. Once again, the theme is about growth and execution. During the quarter, stalls in operation or under construction increased to 2,625. We added a record 188 stalls during this quarter, and year-to-date, we have energized 487 new stalls on our network, 2.4 times more than the same period last year. Additionally, our active engineering and construction development pipeline reached its largest point ever at 4,534 stalls. As a reminder, while we want to invest in growing our networks, we also remain laser focused on overall profitability in the business and building sites that clear our internal rate of return or margin hurdles. The biggest issue we're facing on the installation front right now is timing on the utility side. At the end of the quarter, EVGO had installed over 130 stalls that were still awaiting utility power, with more than 100 of those being delayed more than six weeks. Unfortunately, persistent utility labor shortages and transformer supply chain constraints exacerbate utility work backlogs at the front and back end of the charger development process. We expect utility-related delays will continue to be an issue as power companies gear up for transportation electrification and work to make power systems resilient to the effects of climate change. EVGO will continue to work cooperatively with our utility partners and local governments to address these issues. We believe these challenges can be addressed working side by side. Throughput this quarter was 12.1 gigawatt hours, an increase of 51% over the third quarter of 2021, driven by ongoing EV adoption across the US and increasing rideshare electrification. While the rebound in rideshare electrification was a bit slower than anticipated during the first part of 2022, due to the dearth of EVs available to rideshare drivers, both Uber and Lyft have indicated that their electrification plans will be accelerating going forward. Uber recently stated that the company is focused on doubling the number of EVs on the road over the next year, from 25,000 to 50,000, as it strives to be fully electric by 2030. Remember, EVgo sees an outsized impact as rideshare drivers convert to EVs, given that they drive about three times more than average. On the retail side, we're encouraged by recent developments on the OEM front. Despite the challenges some of our OEM partners have had supplying cars to the market earlier this year, the future is bright. Cadillac has begun shipping its new Lyric model. Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV sales have recovered following resolution of their battery recall. And Toyota and Subaru reopened sales for the BZ4X and Solterra following their recall. We expect to see greater contributions from our preferred partners moving forward. and we continue to see growth in Tesla drivers charging on the EVgo network. Which brings me to the topic of technology. Simply put, EVgo is a technology powerhouse. This is our key differentiator and sets us apart. Our investments to create a seamless integration between EVgo's hardware and software aim to create a differentiated experience for our customers, as well as high value margins for our investors and other stakeholders. We often hear from our B2B partners that EVgo has pioneered functionality that no one else has cracked. One example of this is Auto Charge Plus. Launched in September across the country, Auto Charge Plus sets a new bar for a streamlined EV charging experience by simplifying the process between a charge and a payment session. Once EV drivers self-register to the EVgo app, they can start a charging session at an EVgo station without a credit card, RFID, or even swiping the app on their phone. In the few weeks since we've launched, we've seen enrollment skyrocket and positive feedback from both new and existing drivers taking advantage of this faster and more convenient program. Notably, as Auto Charge Plus is also available for Teslas, EVgo is looking forward to welcoming even more Tesla drivers to our network. On the fleet side, as I mentioned earlier, our technology here is truly a game changer. EVGO Optima is our homegrown proprietary cloud-based software platform that helps ensure fleet EVs are charged in a manner that optimizes fleet logistics needs and operating costs. The user-friendly interface provides fleet managers with easy access to the most important data, while integrated customer service provides seamless communication. helping to ensure fleet uptime and service-level agreements are met. The early feedback from fleet managers has been extremely positive, as EVgo Optima has been built from the ground up as a fleet-centric application, rather than a repurposed adaptation of software meant for retail drivers like that being offered by some of our competitors. On the OEM front, we continue to work with our partners to leverage EVgo Inside's APIs, which are designed to seamlessly integrate into an automaker's branded app. This provides an automaker with the ability to offer its customers a fully integrated EVgo charging experience without switching between apps. We believe we're truly ahead of the market here. And finally, we're really proud of our efforts to lead the EV charging industry forward in terms of global standards and interoperability testing. EVgo is on the board of Charin, the leading global association promoting global charging standards, with CCS, MCS, and 15118 emerging as a de facto fast charging standard. And our EVgo Innovation Lab is a go-to for OEMs developing new EVs and for manufacturers developing new equipment to charge those EVs. In fact, in addition to a principal EVgo Lab location in El Segundo, California, We also have three remote testing locations set up at OEM facilities. This distributed approach enables automakers to test vehicles much earlier in the process, sometimes even before a prototype has been officially released. EVGO retains access to the testing software and remotely manages the process in support of the OEM design and commercialization process. Turning to slide eight. you'll find a brief update on the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program, or NEVI. In late September, the U.S. government approved all 50 state plans, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, meaning that states are now eligible to start the process to award their fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2023 allocated funds. The first round of investment in fiscal year 2022, which totaled $615 million, will help to build EV chargers covering approximately 75,000 miles of highway. We anticipate the first solicitations from the states this quarter or in Q1 2023 with initial funds deployed during the course of the year in 2023, which will be based on state procurement, RFP processes, and finalization of federal minimum standards. Additionally, the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, And in particular, the changes to U.S. Code 30C represent tailwinds for our industry and our business. We are pleased with these developments and believe they will serve to reduce carbon emissions as the world continues to embrace electric vehicles. That said, we expect it to take some time for the benefits to be recognized in our financial performance, as the Treasury Department is conducting requests for information prior to issuing guidance on the specifics of how the 30C tax credit will be applied. Other key provisions in the IRA, including the revisions to the Consumer EV Tax Credit 30D, First Ever Used EV Tax Credit 25E, and Commercial Vehicle Tax Credit 45W, should also support acceleration of EV adoption, with some key implementation questions also pending IRS guidance. We believe 30C and the other tax credits in the IRA will benefit EVgo, but we're not expecting to realize those benefits financially in the very near term. As one of the longest running, largest, and most reliable public fast charging operators in the US, EVgo's mission is to expedite mass adoption of electric vehicles for everyone. This quarter, in service to that mission, EVgo launched the Connect the Wants national EV charging recognition program. This program will celebrate leaders in the EV charging ecosystem for their achievements in driving the electrification of transportation. By recognizing these leaders, EVGO hopes to bring awareness and inspiration to the community working to electrify our transportation system. And with that, I will turn the call over to Olga to talk more about our financial results.

Thank you. As Kathy mentioned, we experienced a solid quarter with strong momentum on the execution side as we rapidly build out our network. EVGO increased our active engineering and construction stall development pipeline by 82% year-over-year, reaching a record 4,534 stalls at quarter end. The noticeable increase includes the addition of the stalls from the Pilot Flying J deals we announced last quarter. We added 188 new stalls to our network during the quarter, and stalls and operational under construction totaled 2,625 at quarter end. Customer accounts increased by 60% year-over-year, and year-over-year throughput growth of 51% continued to exceed year-over-year operational stall growth of 33%. We delivered 10.5 million of revenue in the third quarter, representing an increase of 70% year-over-year. Growth was driven by increases in retail charging revenue, up 62% year-over-year, and increased ancillary revenues, start of pre-engineering work on PFJ contract and growth in plug share, and regulatory credit sales. As expected, we experienced a sequential decline in regulatory credit sales following the accelerated monetization efforts in the first half of the year. Regulatory credit sales totaled $1.2 million, a year-over-year increase of 72%, but a substantial sequential quarter-over-quarter decline. This, combined with the seasonal impacts of summer rate electricity tariffs and lower LCFS credit prices, contributed to an anticipated decline in adjusted gross margin. Decline of adjusted gross margin from 22.2% in Q3 2021 to 19% in Q3 2022 is cost primarily by low LCFS prices this year. While EVGO experienced high energy costs in 2022, This was largely offset by improved leverage of network fixed operating costs. As a reminder, our business model has significant built-in leverage that is realized with increased charging volumes. We reported adjusted EBITDA of negative $22.2 million versus negative $14.3 million in Q3 2021. which reflect our investment in the people and infrastructure required to capture the growth in front of us and expand our moat. CAPEX was $61.6 million this quarter as we accelerated charging deployments and execute against our long-term strategic plan. As a reminder, all of our charging infrastructure deployments goes through rigorous underwriting process and pencil to low double-digit pre-tax unlevered IRRs at the project level. EVGO has been putting public charging stations in operation since 2010. And while that created an unparalleled expertise and track record, it also places ongoing demands on EVGO to ensure we're meeting and exceeding our customer expectations through appropriate level of investment in maintenance and network upgrades. EasyGo is actively expanding its current network maintenance and reliability program, which we call EasyGo Renew. The goal of this program is to both improve charger uptime and to enhance the customer experience in our continued pursuit of EVFAS charging leadership. We have upgraded 125 stalls year to date and are working with site hosts to evaluate additional stalls in 2023. We're largely focused on our legacy 50 kilowatt chargers, some of which are reaching the expected end of life. We apply a rigorous analytical approach to this program with a focus on upgrading and or expanding sites in high demand and future growth locations. In some cases, we will seek to upgrade the charges with high power models or even expand the site. We may also opt to retire a particular charger, removing an underperforming site from our network. Before we open up the call for Q&A, I would like to share our updated full year 2022 operational and financial guidance. First, we are reconfirming full year 2022 revenue guidance of 48 to 55 million. This range is driven by the timing of pilot flying day equipment deliveries. We're narrowing full year 2022 adjusted EBITDA guidance to negative 85 to negative 80 million as we've been actualizing the hiring pace throughout the year. We are revising our network throughput guidance for the full year of 2022 to 42 to 45 gigawatt hours. This revision is associated with permitting delays on a couple of dedicated stations in the San Francisco Bay Area. EV delivery delays by our OEM partners, and the recovery of ride shares starting later than expected in the year. With respect to stalls, we expect to have a total of 2,800 to 3,100 ZCFAS charging stalls operational or under construction as of year-end. As Cathy mentioned, the resource challenges at municipalities and utilities across the U.S. are giving rise to delays in approving and energizing fast charging stations. Hence, we are adjusting stall guidance to reflect this persistent sector realities. It is important to remember that such delays don't have any material near-term financial impact on EVgo's business. Our existing network has the capacity to accommodate the growing traffic.

With this, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question on the phone lines today, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, you can press star 1 again. As a reminder, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you have additional questions, please feel free to re-enter the queue. We'll take our first question from Gabriel Dowd with Cowan.

Hey, everybody. Good afternoon. Thanks for all the prepared remarks. Olga was maybe hoping to just dig into just the guide a bit more. I understand that there's maybe a decent contribution from Flying J, and that's kind of what helps you get to full year. But is there any way to maybe just quantify what the Flying J impact would be this year at all?

Sure.

Sure. Gabe. So we, the reason why we give still give the same guidance and the range is 7 million is that the exact contribution from pilots Y and J will depend on the timing of hardware units delivered to our warehouse. Um, and we right now scheduled to take that delivery over the month of December, which has holidays in it. Um, and we, um, The short answer is that that's going to depend, and that's going to drive the difference between the 48 and 55. On an exact pilot fly-and-jay contribution, this year I would restrain from giving the exact number because that's not the number we report separately. But what I would say, what I think would help you is that vast majority of PFJ revenues will come in Q4. And in Q3, it was still, we recognized some of it. It was still small. And I think that by doing the simple math, that would probably lead you to the answer. But we will not disclose that exact number.

Okay. Okay. Thanks, Olga. That's helpful. And then just overall, curious to hear trends on the fleet side. Kathy, you obviously hit on this. in your prepared remarks quite a bit. But can you just talk about maybe the partnership with MHX and like what revenue model did they go with? Was it the charging of the service or customer-owned? And since it's Class 8, I'm assuming they went with 350s. Is there even an interest in a megawatt charger? So just kind of curious how that partnership, you know, I guess if you could share details there and then generally what you're seeing on the fleet side. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Gabe. What we're generally seeing is, first of all, it's still really early innings in the fleet being able to access the vehicles, right? So there's lots and lots of interest in every fleet we know. You know, the last mile delivery, the middle mile, and now the class eights, they're all thinking about how they're going to do this. So this is like, you know, sort of a first truck off the rank, rather than the first cab off the rank for MHX. Again, the business models vary, and as we've said to you many times, we are happy to own the assets or we're happy to have the customer, in this case, own the assets. So we're finding, generally speaking, that the fleets are at this point wanting to own the chargers and it is a charging as a service model that we provide where we actually build and operate the chargers for them and guarantee uptime.

Got it. Got it. Thanks, Kathy. That's helpful. All right.

I'll keep it to two and a half again. Thanks. Thanks, Dave.

We'll take our next question from Bill Peterson with J.P. Morgan.

Hi. This is Mahima Kakani on for Bill Peterson, and thanks so much for taking our questions. To start, can you elaborate on EVGo's current timeline for the replacement or upgrade of older chargers? Approximately, like, how many chargers would that be, and at what pace will they be replaced at? And then maybe a follow-up.

will that impact the rate of new charging installations overall thank you hi thanks so much for for this question so we are currently evaluating how many stalls we will be upgrading or replacing or maybe even retiring next year we are not ready to give the exact number but it's going to be in hundreds and we will update the market as that program is coming along That program will be focused on our older charges, our older 50 kilowatt charges. We want to just also make a remark that not all of our old 50 kilowatt charges are underperforming. A lot of them are functioning greatly and have no issues, but there is a cohort of really old ones which are near to their end of their life, and those are the ones which are giving us problems, and those are the ones which we are mostly focusing on but what we also want to say that our new program and our kind of a customer experience or a customer enhancement improvement program doesn't just focus on replacement or retiring of charges or upgrading the charges which it is but it also is being focused on improving overall end-to-end customer experience including a convenience of an app convenience of notifications and a variety of different things our cross-functional teams are focusing on. And we would also like to remind a challenge we experience as an industry on its own, that we have various equipment on our network, which is charging various car models. So the match, and sometimes the problem is not the hardware, sometimes the problem is not the software, but sometimes the problem is the compatibility between innovative first time new cars on the market, innovative first time new chargers on our network and our competitors' network. And what really sets EVGO apart is that we have our lab where we're able to test various equipment in combination with various EVs. And that already has given us quite a lead way and will continue to do it and even reinforce next year the importance of overall customer experience, which is being helped, again, by a variety of things. It's a new hardware, upgraded hardware. It's operational maintenance practices. It's software convenience and overall customer experience convenience. And it's lab tests and allowing for that compatibility to be high class.

Thanks so much for that, Kala. Maybe if I can speak in another one. Are you still experiencing inflation on the supply and labor side?

We... I'm still experiencing some of it. We would like to probably say that it has abated in H2 versus H1. We're still seeing some of the labor costs experiencing inflationary pressure, but it's not to the level we observed in the first half of this year.

So we are remaining hopeful for next year. Thank you.

We'll take our next question from David Kelly with Jefferies.

Hi, this is Gavin Kennedy on for David Kelly. Thanks for taking my question. Can you just provide more info on the installation issue that you mentioned in the prepared remarks? How many stalls were affected this quarter? And can you quantify it all the expected increase going forward of stalls affected? And how should we think about labor and transformer constraints generally into 2023?

Yeah, hey, Gavin. Kathy here. I think when we reached the end of the quarter, we had 130. Just to go back, it takes an EVGO about four to eight weeks to actually do the construction of a charging station. And as I've said to you guys many times before, at the moment, it's kind of an 18-month all-in, end-to-end cycle time from an idea of building a charging station to getting it energized by the utilities. We started to see that decline a bit, getting it closer down to 12 months, but now the long hole in the tent is utilities. So the utility work backlogs associated with transformer shortages, like when we're building with the configurations that we're building now, which is ultra fast, 350 kilowatt chargers, more stalls, that almost always requires a transformer upgrade. So we are at the behest of the utilities having those. And, you know, we have a couple of the utility folks on our boards. And at our board meeting last week, they said, gosh, it is just, you know, it's taking very long lead times to get those transformers these days. So in a nutshell, I mean, in summary, I guess I would say we're thinking that that may continue to be an issue. What we are doing to help out with that is we are proactively providing our utility partners where we want to build with our own 18, 20 more, 18 months, 24 months forward-looking plans overlaid with their grid so we can say, okay, which ones are going to be easy, which ones are going to be harder? Can you guys go ahead and place orders for the transformers now because this is the configuration? And that's been very well received where we've been doing that. So we're hopeful that by working side by side, as I said in my remarks, we'll be able to get all of this stuff moving and help the utilities do what they need to do to make sure that they can accommodate all of the growth on the grid.

Got it. Thank you. And then as a follow-up, since announcing your first major partnership with Pilot GM, can you talk about any additional traction your company is seeing with your EVgo Extend offering specifically? Are you or your customers showing more interest in pivoting toward this asset light model? Thank you.

You bet. So we're excited to be able to accelerate EV electrification transportation how we can and where we can deliver double-digit return. And, you know, hence the provision or the creation of the EVO Xtend business and the launching of our big pilot project, we're very pleased about that last quarter. We have a number of very active, live, interesting, significant conversations happening to do more of that across the board. And as soon as we get those deals inked, we will be so excited to share them with you.

All right. I'll leave it there. Thank you. We'll take our next question from Alex Brable with Bank of America.

Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on the call. I'm just curious. I mean, when you guys think about, you know, some of these software issues or initiatives that you're putting through here, I'm thinking specifically on Auto Charge Plus. Can you quantify, I mean, I guess any sort of financial uplift you see, you know, on a customer basis where that, you know, customers are coming more often or on a more recurring basis? I mean, how do you quantify some of these initiatives into profitability, if that makes sense?

Well, Alice, what I would say about Auto Charge Plus is that this is primarily about creating a seamless customer experience in charging. Let's make it easy. Let's grow the market more quickly by making it just a delightful experience to charge. And we've been out there for a few weeks with this, and the response we've had so far has been pretty fantastic. that people that are both new EV drivers and then existing EV drivers are beginning to take advantage of it are saying, oh my gosh, this is fantastic. I just drive up and I plug in because like EVGO has my VIN of my car and it's just simple. Like, so for us, it's about making sure that the drivers have a great experience and that will in turn create more interest in drivers to use the EVGO network. So we haven't quantified it specifically, But we feel like we've got a responsibility to provide a great customer experience, and that will deliver great financial results for us, for our company.

Got it. No, it makes sense. And then I guess just kind of looking forward, you know, I guess a little bit higher level here. You know, when you think about, you know, some of the policy tailwinds that you'll see here, whether 4Q or 1Q when we see some of the NEVI solicitations, as well as IRA, I mean, how do you think about repositioning your footprint, you know, whether that's you know, your counterparties or customers you're aligned with or geographically to best capture those possible credits or funding that are in the pipeline here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have like we have a really cool network planning tool that is ours. And what drives it is where can we deliver, where can we pass our own internal thoroughbreds for making investments? And what the big giant pots of money coming to the federal government, whether it's grant money through NEVI or whether it's 30 fee tax credits, are going to enable us to have more locations penciled profitably for us and for our shareholders. And so we're literally like taking a look at the different grant programs that have been now approved, all 50 of them, by the federal government. Where do we want to be? Where are good EV markets? What are the structures of those programs? And we put that into our own planning tools. And then we say to our site host team, okay, let's go find some great sites there. So it actually juices the economics and it allows us to extend our footprint profitably more quickly.

Got it. Thanks. I'll take the rest offline.

We'll take our next question from Andre Shepard with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter and thanks for taking my question.

I'm trying to maybe just Understand, so revenue guidance is unchanged for the year. So in order to, let's say, meet the bottom end of guidance, you'd have to have over 20 million revenue in Q4. So just help me understand what the thinking around there is. I know usually Q4 is a little bit heavier weighted, but do you still remain confident in achieving that guidance just given where things are currently? Thanks.

Thanks for the question. So just to clarify, the big difference between Q4 and Q3 will be the execution on PFJ contract full speed. And that will add the revenue. So our core business, we do not expect to double quarter over quarter. We do expect a healthy growth, but it will be in line with what you've seen in prior quarters. But the key contributor to the expected Q4 over Q3 growth will be the execution of the pilot line J contract. And namely, we're going to be taking a delivery of equipment pieces coming out of our supplier. And that's the moment where they get transferred to our customer. So we do, as of now, we remain confident that we will get those pieces here in the United States. They're on the way. The deliveries are scheduled today. over the month of December, as I mentioned in my response to Gabe's question. And as of now, we don't have any information which will tell us that that won't happen. So that would give us confidence that we will be able to meet the guidance.

Got it. Thanks, Olga. I really appreciate that. And maybe just as a follow-up, I just want to clarify in regards to NEVI. So it looks like you're targeting initial funds being deployed in 2023. You know, I'm wondering, can you give us, are you able to quantify how many programs or projects you have applied for grant funding so far? Or just any particular color there would be helpful.

Yeah, Andres, it's just starting. And I guess we have learned by doing the appendix became over the past four years to try to pinpoint timing of state programs and procurement processes is a fool's errand. So we will be applying for NEVI funds wherever it makes sense with our network planning model and where we can make money. We cannot predict exactly when those checks will get cut. In some cases, the money won't necessarily even be delivered until the stations are energized. It depends on the structure of each of the programs. So we will plan on it, but again, in terms of the cash flows, it's going to be very unclear for a while.

Understood. Okay. Thanks, Kathy. Thanks, Olga. Congrats again on the quarter. I'll pass it on. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Maheep Mandeloy with Credit Suisse.

Hi, this is David Benjamin. I'm from Maheep. Thanks for taking our question. I was wondering if you talk about uptime and how that's tracking in light of recent criticisms on the industry lately. especially considering the high uptime requirements for incentives like NEVI?

Yes, so the uptime, we actually are still tracking to our high 90% uptime that we make commitments to. One of the reasons that we are actually really excited about our EVGO Renew program, though, is that we can actually, like we rigorously are watching what's happening with our chargers. And when we start to have problems, we get out there and we will be replacing chargers that are being particularly problematic on that. So we're quite, quite conscious of making sure that uptime is maximized and not simply because it's a reporting requirement, but we make money when our chargers are operating.

We have a built-in incentive to ensure that we have the highest uptime possible. Great. Thanks so much. We'll take our next question from Noel Parks with TUI Brothers. Hi, good afternoon. Hi.

Thanks for all the detail, some really fascinating points. Just as an example for one, you were talking about your planning with utilities and giving them sort of like an 18 or 24 month forecast for installations you can envision overlaying it with their grid and helping to identify easy and difficult points of installation. It sounds like it's sort of a classic help them, help you situation. I just wonder, how do you look at it as you get experience with different utilities as far as the ones that are pretty responsive, doing pretty well, and the markets where the utility in charge is pretty sluggish? I just wonder, do you weigh that into the balance of whether you're going to try to avoid certain areas or try to get a foot in the door earlier maybe in flow areas, just the sooner the better? Just curious how you analyze that.

Yeah, well, it's funny. I had a meeting earlier today on this very topic. Early is always better because utilities are large organizations and they have a lot of things that they have to worry about. So you want to give them as much information as early as possible. So we do that everywhere. There are places, however, where you might have two utilities side by side. And if we have discovered that one of the utilities is actually pretty switched on and quite responsive and is a great partner and a mile away, there's a different utility that's much less responsive, you bet that we will look to be building and working with the one that's more collaborative. It's a practical reality. Because, like, frankly, EV drivers are not going to care. What they want is reliability, convenience, right? And the one-mile difference, you know, getting more out there more quickly is absolutely what we want to do. I mean, there is a case example of this where Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is basically the city of L.A., and Southern California Edison, the big investor in utilities, is all around it. And SDE is probably best in class in America in terms of EV – charging infrastructure collaborations. And I think our competitors would say the same thing. I mean, they're very, very good and very switched on. And they're responsive and their lead times are much quicker on their planning, pretty sophisticated, than their fellow municipal colleagues at LADBP. It's just a reality.

Right. Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. And I wanted to turn towards, you brought up your testing, your testing lab. And I'm real interested in the whole topic of reputational issues, reputation of a charger brand, reputation of individual vehicles. So I guess if you could maybe just talk a little bit more extensively about what's involved in the charging effort, it sounds like already at this early stage, it's probably a really big task. And also, if you're getting any sense of whether EV buyer sophistication is getting to the point that they're looking critically at, well, you know, what I'm hearing about this vehicle, its ability to charge its own EMS software is making me lean towards one vehicle or another, or are we still just so early? Just getting your hands on a vehicle is still the name of the game.

For your last question, I think it's getting your hands on a vehicle. What we hear from the OEMs, notwithstanding their own chip shortages and the recalls or whatever, every EV that gets made gets sold. And that's kind of good news. We're delighted about that. With respect to the EVs and the charging infrastructure, so right now there are 47 different EV models on American roads. EVgo charges all of them. There's also a bunch of different charger types. which EVgo is used and deployed and tested in our lab. Every single one of those EVs has a different sort of battery signature, a different baseline firmware and software underneath it. And our chargers that we deploy have to be able to talk successfully to every single one of them. So we invite the OEMs and all of the vendors to bring their kit to our labs and our labs, and as I mentioned, lab locations, so that we can actually test it. And it's not just about UL certifications. It's about continuing to improve the user experience to be able to identify if there's a problem, what sort of problem, where's that problem coming from? And look, it's a young sector, but we are all working. I mean, our view, EVGO's view, is to work collaboratively with the charger manufacturers and with the OEMs. We are going to create that driver experience over the next couple of years that the drivers deserve.

Progress, and we're completely and utterly committed to it. Great. Thanks so much. We'll take our next question from Oliver Hong with TPH.

Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. Just had one on the cost side of the equation. I think you all highlighted some higher energy costs that may have impacted adjusted gross margins for the quarter. Wondering if you all might be able to expand on the magnitude of impact in Q3. what sort of increases year over year, if any, you all are budgeting on this front when thinking about 2023, and if any of this is being passed off to customers and how you all are positioning yourself to mitigate such impacts as we move into 2023 and throughput kind of scales from there. Thanks.

Yeah, thank you for that question. So when we're comparing Q3 2022 to Q3 2021, there are two reasons for why we're seeing slightly higher energy costs per kilowatt hours, and we're seeing like a few cents higher. One is that some of the California utilities did increase the energy portion of their tariffs earlier this year. And the second one, because we continue to open new stations in the rest of the US and very often in new geographies where we haven't yet have been successful in working with local utilities to create EV rates, and they still have demand charges. As a reminder, California, the major utilities in California do not have demand charges, and partially they don't because we were part of the group which advocated for that not to be the case, as it doesn't make sense for EV charging use case. But in the rest of the U.S., you still have geographies where they exist, and they're quite high. And so as we expand into those geographies, that does affect our energy costs. On 2023, we're actually working right now with my team on a very detailed forecast and trying to understand and bake in on the conservative side on how that's going to look next year. We will not share that with the market just yet. All the guidances will be issued during the next call, but that's something we're working on and paying attention to. And we haven't passed that on a consumer just yet this year. But conceptually, this is how we're thinking about it. But when we're thinking about passing it on to a consumer, we're not just thinking about the margin. We're thinking about it holistically. Are we still generating the target return or not? And simultaneously, if we have high utilization in certain places and we expect that we in the future will be able to cut equipment costs and so on and so forth, that might by itself solve the issue of a rising energy cost and we don't have to pass it on to the consumer. But it might not, and that will be the time when it will pass it on to the consumer. And just a reminder about our pricing, we're not marking up, we're not a gas tank, right, where you have like a one price per gallon and that changes daily and it generally follows the overall fossil fuel prices. This is not how we're approaching it. We're approaching it a little bit from a consumer side and supply-demand side. And there are various consumers with various price sensitivities, and there are various consumers with various appetites for subscription or pay-as-you-go types of tariffs, which we're addressing and continue to innovate around it. So again, even if we say we're passionate on the consumer, it doesn't necessarily mean as a market up two cents at every single pump. Our pricing scheme is more sophisticated than that, and it's only going to get more sophisticated over time, including fair location and time of use pricing. So we do have certain levers to pull. Let's say we could make more expensive 6 p.m. charging and cheaper 8 a.m. charging. So that's how we're approaching it, just to really give some context about how the pricing is set and what actually it means to pass on the consumer. It's a little more sophisticated than what it might sound like.

Awesome. Thanks for the call.

And that does conclude the question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Kathy Zoy for any additional or closing remarks.

Thanks.

Look, our commitment to technology-enabled innovation powers our customer relationship. And whether it's AutoCharge Plus for drivers on our public networks, whether it's our APIs for automakers or fleet software for commercial customers, EVgo is positioned to deliver an exceptional and reliable fast charging experience and expand our leadership across the market. We're excited about the growing momentum across the EV landscape. I think you can hear it in Olga's and my voice. And we believe that EVgo is exceptionally well positioned to benefit from the electrification of travel. So thanks to all of you for joining us.

Great questions. Love that you love our sector like we do. And that concludes today's presentation. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.