EVgo Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Gilles and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EVGO fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings 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. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Heather Davis, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to EVGo's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. My name is Heather Davis, and I am the Vice President of Investor Relations at EVGo. Joining me on today's call are Badr Khan, EVGo's Chief Executive Officer, and Kiefer Lehner, EVGo's Chief Financial Officer. Today, we will be discussing EVGo's fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results followed by a Q&A session. Today's call is being webcast and can be accessed on the investor section of our website at investors.edgo.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 risk 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 in the risk factor section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The company's SEC filings are 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 measures, including a reconciliation to the corresponding GAAP 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 Badr Khan, EVgo CEO.

Thank you, Heather. When I first joined EVgo as CEO at the end of 2023, we set a goal to be adjusted even to break even in 2025. And I am pleased to say we achieved that goal in the fourth quarter. This significant milestone demonstrates the growth, scale, operating leverage, and durability of the EVgo business and the dedication and hard work of our team. As I'll touch on later, we're now focused on our next milestone of achieving the real operating leverage inflection point, which will allow us to further accelerate adjusted growth and margin expansion. EVGO delivered another excellent year of results, with total revenue of $384 million, a 50% increase over last year, and record charging network revenues. We ended 2025 with 5,100 stalls in operation, following a very large stall deployment of 500 new stalls in the fourth quarter. Total energy dispensed in our public network increased over 30%, which is more than our stall growth. Our pilot, approximately 100 J3400 connectors, also known as NACs, during 2025 was successful and will be rolling out over 400 more NACs connectors in 2026, both at new sites and retrofits at existing sites. with the goal of effectively doubling our addressable market over time. Given the returns we expect to generate from new stalls, we've tried to increase our public stalls deployed by over 50%. This increased pace with deployment significantly increases the number of next connectors and our next generation charging architecture represent real investments in 2026 to drive longer term value creation. EVGO continues to offer drivers more choices on where to charge their EVs as our own public network and extend network expands across the U.S. Today, drivers can find over 1,200 EVGO operated stations across 47 states. EVGO is the third largest and second fastest growing network in the U.S., serving all EV models with key OEM, rideshare, and site host partnerships. And I look forward to expanding our network even further in 2026. Our network stands at over 5,100 stalls and is one of the most highly used EV charging networks in the United States. While we know charging station deployments have grown significantly over the last several years, the reality is that the usage of America's EV network is disproportionately concentrated amongst three largest charge point operators, or CPOs. EVgo, Tesla, and Electrify America. This is according to an independent third party. The concentration of consumer demand among these top three operators demonstrates the importance of network effect, an already established customer base, which in our case encompasses 1.6 million customers, and scale as a driving force behind this unmatched network utilization. EVgo's fourth quarter utilization was 24%, which is higher than the average of the top three and nearly five-fold higher than the large group of subscale CPOs, most of whom see usage in the single digits. Personal demand growth for EVGO's charging network continues to outpace the industry. Since Q1 2024, EVGO's utilization has grown four percentage points, while the rest of the industry, excluding the top three, has actually declined by two percentage points. In other words, according to this third-party data, EVgo has emerged as a clear leader in the EV charging space in the United States, representing outsized consumer demand for our network as compared to the competition. It's clear to me that EVgo has a strong competitive moat that is enduring and continues to strengthen over time. We've developed superior AI-driven and scalable site selection algorithms and host partnerships that allow us to build charging stations where drivers want to be, conveniently near where people shop, eat, and run their daily errands. We're continuing to scale with strong grocery and retail partnerships, including an expanded partnership with Kroger, which we announced earlier this year. Vigo now has almost 14 times the average number of stalls of the rest of the industry outside the top three CPOs. We have partnerships with rideshare companies such as Uber and Lyft, who we believe partner with EVGO in part because of our enormous scale advantage versus the dozens of smaller operators and the value drivers get with discounted rates on the EVGO network. As you may have seen recently in the news, EVGO and Uber are in discussions to expand our partnership to meet rising demand for our services from rideshare drivers. We've developed and are continuing to deploy leading customer engagement tools and capabilities to enhance our customer experience. The investments we're able to make in our EVGO app and other technologies are only possible given we have the scale, network effect, talent, and capital to build the tech stack. Of note is Auto Charge Plus, where eligible drivers enroll their vehicle and payment method, and when they pull up to a charger, they simply plug in and charge. It's a seamless customer experience and 30% of our sessions are now initiated with Order Charge Plus. Indigo continues deploying more 350 kilowatt or faster chargers that now make up the majority of our network, offering a full charge in under 15 minutes, compared to just 19% for the rest of the industry, excluding the top three. Our products and hardware teams work tirelessly to improve the charging experience, including ongoing maintenance campaigns targeted at improving reliability on our existing chargers and to our next generation charging architecture. Finally, unlike many in the industry, we have the non-diluted financing in place to build at scale. This competitive advantage is not solely driven by EVGO's superior site selection, but rather the combination of all the factors I've described, built over 15 years of doing what we do. In the second half of 2026, We expect to reach a critical milestone in the evolution of the business, achieving a key operating leverage inflection with gross profit from our charging operations without any contribution from our non-charging business covering adjusted G&A. At the same time, we're intentionally investing in three key areas that we believe will strengthen the long-term competitiveness, resilience, and value of the ELEGO platform. We will build on our already significant scale advantage by wrapping up our deployment teams to meet market demand. Further separate ourselves from the dozens of smaller operators and significantly increase the number of new owned stalls we bring online in 2026 with even higher growth planned in 2027. We'll roll out more next connectors this year, doubling our addressable market in the long term. This represents an investment in 2026 as we're trading highly productive CCS stalls with NAX stalls, where performance is lower than CCS initially, but growing over time as NAX drivers discover these stalls through our customer marketing campaign. And our investment in next generation charging architecture improves the fundamentals of the business as we scale. It simplifies the hardware, reduces failure points, improves reliability, and lowers operating costs over time. but also giving us the flexibility to support higher-powered vehicles and standards like MAX, and ultimately delivering a better customer experience. That combination is critical to sustaining high utilization and expanding margins as the EDGO network grows. Over the last two years, we've deployed over 1,200 stalls on our network each year, including our Xtend network. In 2026, we expect this will increase to 1,650. And importantly, we plan to increase the number of new owned and operating stalls deployed by over 50%. Approximately two thirds of these stalls will be deployed in the second half of 2026. We are targeting cash on cash paybacks of three to five years with our highest performing top 15% of stalls achieving paybacks in as little as one to two years. These strong returns support our ability to continue accelerating stall deployment, enabled by the non-diluted financing we have in place that positions us to further scale our build-out in 2027 and beyond. Our autonomous vehicle partnerships remain an important source for further growth and potential upside to these forecasts. And as discussed before, new stalls from our existing extend partnerships are expected allowing us to transfer build capacity to our owned and operated business. The industry transition to NACs is an exciting opportunity for EVgo. Over half the EVs on the roads today have NACs inlets. Mainly Teslas today, but new models from other OEMs are being launched with native NACs. We expect to add over 400 NACs connectors to the EVgo network by the end of 2026, allowing drivers to charge at our stores without an adapter. and effectively more than doubling our addressable market. In 2025, we deployed about 100 NAX connectors in our existing sites on a pilot basis with the goals of validating the technology and determining how to grow NAX throughput as quickly as possible. I'm pleased with how the NAX connectors are performing from a technology perspective. I do want to thank our hardware team who worked tirelessly to make these liquid-cooled cables happen for our fast charger. EV drivers can find our NAX locations through EVGO mobile app or from the distinctive yellow signage at these sites. Throughput for NAX stalls is currently lower than our CCS stalls at the same site, but we are clearly seeing it grow, driven by increasing numbers of Tesla drivers charging at these stalls. Over the course of this year, we expect to grow NAX per stall usage through our customer communications efforts driving awareness. This is an important medium to long-term goal as native NAICS vehicles' share of overall VIO grows. I've highlighted a number of company-specific sources of competitive advantage, and now I want to turn to some of the industry-wide tailwinds we continue to see driving the share of public fast charging that EVgo also benefits from. Today, we are beyond the early adopter phase of EVs, with almost 6 million EVs on the road. American drivers are choosing to go electric, and EV prices continue to fall relative to ICE vehicles. making EVs more affordable, which in turn makes EV ownership more accessible to more Americans, including to those that live in multifamily housing. These drivers often don't have access to a garage or private driveway, and therefore are more reliant on public fast charging. In fact, they charge approximately one and a half times more on the EVgo network than those drivers that live in single-family homes. The electrification of rideshare is another key tailwind has been and is continuing to drive the share of public fast charging. Rideshare drivers are adopting EVs five times faster than regular motorists and are more likely to live in multifamily housing or otherwise not have access to home charging and charge significantly more on a UDOS network than the average retail customer. Companies like Uber and Lyft have their own targets and incentive programs to help rideshare drivers make the switch. And on the policy side, New York City and California both have policies in place to encourage increased rideshare electrification each year through 2030, which other states like Massachusetts are also considering. Over the last three years, commercial rideshare throughput as a percentage of total throughput on EVGO's network has almost doubled and is roughly a quarter of EVGO's public network throughput today. We are pleased to have reached an initial agreement with Uber they will guarantee a minimum level of utilization that incentivizes indigo to build a number of new larger charging stations in key urban locations in san francisco la boston and the new york metro areas this expanded partnership with uber is designed to address a key concern amongst electric rideshare drivers which in turn we expect will continue to accelerate the electrification of rideshare i'm excited to share more details of this expanded partnership once it's finalized. More portable vehicles, increasing number of drivers living in multifamily housing, accelerating rideshare electrification together with faster vehicle charge rates are all driving the growth of public fast charging. And we remain very focused on capitalizing on these exciting tailwinds to fuel EVGO's continued growth. Finally, EVGO is well positioned to benefit from the growth in autonomous rideshare. Autonomous vehicles are electric, and just like human-operated rideshare, vehicle downtime when an EV is charging is lost revenue. So fast charging is key to maximizing their utilization and revenue. Given the amount of technology in these vehicles, they consume more kilowatt hours per mile driven, and as a result, are even more reliant on fast charging. The EV market is poised for tremendous growth over the next five expected by 2030. EVGO has been operating dedicated charging stations for autonomous rideshare fleet since 2020. Today, we have 140 dedicated charging stalls for autonomous vehicle companies. We're proud to be Waymo's charging partner in San Francisco and LA, and we operate charging sites for another AV company as well. While this is a small part of the EVGO business today, our track record, partnerships, competitive strengths, positioned us well to support the rapid expansion of the AV market, which should in turn provide meaningful upside to our business plans over the medium and long term. Before Kiefer shares more detail on our fourth quarter and four-year results, I want to take a moment to introduce him to our investors and analysts. We are thrilled with the nearly two decades of operational and financial expertise Kiefer brings as a public company CFO, former investment banker, and private equity investor. He's a great addition to the Madison team, and I look forward to partnering with him to try and share value. Now, I'll turn it over to Keith.

Thank you. Before I begin, I want to share how thrilled I am to be at EVGO as we build the infrastructure this country needs. Since joining in mid-January, I've been working closely with that RN team to transition into the role, and I'm excited about the substantial organic growth runway in front of us. My focus is clear. building on the strength of our balance sheet to accelerate profitability as we continue to scale the business for accelerated long-term growth and value creation. With that, let's jump into our fourth quarter and full year results. Operational stall growth is one of the key components of growing EVGO's revenue. We ended Q4 with 5,100 stalls in operation, a three times increase compared to the end of 2021. We added over 1,200 new stalls to the network in 2025, including 500 in just the fourth quarter, representing our largest stall deployment in a quarter ever. Our customer base has grown almost five-fold over that same period, which contributes to the network effect, driving increased brand loyalty and usage across our ever-expanding network. We've grown the total energy dispensed on EVgo's network in 2025 to 366 gigawatt hours, a 14-fold increase over that same period since 2021. 2025 revenues of $384 million have increased over 17 times from 2021 levels. Charity network gross profit margin expanded over 2,500 basis points from the mid-teens to the upper 30s, reflecting the meaningful operating leverage of fixed cost of sales on a per stall basis as throughput and revenue per stall continue to rise. Importantly, we again delivered improving profitability with adjusted EBITDA growing at a meaningfully faster rate than revenue, and we achieved a positive adjusted EBITDA margin in 2025 for the first time in company history. Total throughput on the public network during the fourth quarter was 99 gigawatt hours, an 18% increase compared to last year. Revenue for Q4 was $118 million, which represents a 75% year-over-year increase with growth in all three revenue categories. Total charging network revenue was $64 million, a 37% increase versus the prior year. Extend revenue was $24 million, delivering growth of 33% over the same period. And ancillary revenue of roughly $31 million was up about 9x. Q4 ancillary revenue benefited from a $26 million contract buyout from a former AV partner that exited space. Charging network gross profit and margin in the fourth quarter were $29 million and 46% respectively, up 56% and 560 basis points respectively. This is slightly higher than our run rate given the higher than usual network OEM revenues resulting primarily from branding revenue associated with our GM contract and higher charging credit breakage. Since 2021, charging network gross profits have grown over 32 times. Fourth quarter adjusted gross profit of $60 million was up over 2x versus the prior year. Adjusted gross margin was 51% in Q4, an increase of over 1,700 basis points over the same period. Adjusted G&A for the quarter was $35 million, an increase of 14% compared to the prior year, but as a percentage of revenue improved from 46% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 30% in Q4 of this year. Adjusted EBITDA was $25 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, a $33 million improvement versus the fourth quarter of 2024. Importantly, if you exclude the impact of the $24 million ancillary contract buyout, we were still positive adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter. Moving to key highlights for full year 2025. Total throughput on the public network in 2025 was 366 gigawatt hours, 32% increase compared to last year. Revenue for 2025 was $384 million, which represents a 50% year-over-year increase with growth across all three revenue categories. Total charging network revenue, $218 million, a 40% increase compared to 2024. Extend revenue was $116 million, delivering growth of 34% compared to the prior year. And ancillary revenues, $49 million. We're up 239% year over year, again benefiting from a $26 million contract buyout from a former AV partner that exited the space. Charging network gross profit and margin in 2025 were $86 million and 39% respectively, up 46% and 170 basis points respectively versus the prior year. 2025 adjusted gross profit of $141 million was up 86% versus the prior year. Adjusted gross profit margin was 37% in 2025, an increase of over 700 basis points. Adjusted G&A as a percentage of revenue also improved from 42% in 2024 to 34% this year, further demonstrating the scalability and operating leverage intrinsic to our model. Adjusted EBITDA was $12 million in 2025, a $44 million improvement versus the prior year. Full year net capital spending for 2025 was $76 million, a 64% increase versus the prior year. Sixty-one percent of 2025 CapEx net of capital offsets was spent in Q4 as we deployed over 500 stalls in the quarter and began laying the groundwork for accelerated growth in 2026. For our 2025 vintage, net CapEx per stall was approximately $70,000, a slight increase from 2024 vintage, which had an elevated amount of capital offsets. On the financing side, we also borrowed an additional $6 million under our commercial bank facility in December 2025. As mentioned in last quarter's call, we received the latest DOE loan funding of $41 million in October 2025. In total, that brings our commercial bank and DOE loan balances as of December 31st, 2025, $66 million and $141 million, respectively. Turning to our outlook and guidance for 2026. As we've outlined earlier, we see an opportunity to build the top-tier charging network in the United States. While EV sales in 2026 are expected to be flattish to slightly up from 2025, that still means at least 1.2 million new EVs will be on the road, and VIO is expected to expand 20% plus year over year. with new EV sales expected to account for less than 10% of our total 2026 revenue. We're investing in scale, density, and deepening our network advantage, all focused on capturing strong returns on capital deployment. We expect to accelerate our deployment of EVgo public and dedicated stalls this year, with 1,050 to 1,250 new stalls being added in 2026, with the majority of these additions coming in the second half of 2026. order to facilitate our accelerated future growth we're making investments in gna to support this growth engine our expectation of the number of extend stalls operationalized this year is 350 to 400 stalls which will get us through approximately 70 percent of the contract with the pilot company we anticipate building the remaining extend stalls under this contract in 2027 at which point the contract will primarily be tied to operations and maintenance of pilots networks Overall, we plan to deploy 1,400 to 1,650 total stalls in 2026, a significant step up from 2025. And we expect the rate of deployment to continue to increase as the company grows in 2027 and beyond. For the full year 2026, we expect total revenues of $410 million to $470 million with adjusted EBITDA and the range of negative $20 million to positive $20 million. We also expect significant shape in second half waiting to the year as approximately two-thirds of the 2026 stall deployments will go live in the second half of 2026. The adjusted EBITDA range is informed by variability of expected throughput on our network. The incremental benefit of each kilowatt hour sold has a big bottom line impact. Roughly 2.5 gigawatt hours of retail throughput equates to approximately $1 million of adjusted EBITDA impact. We expect second half 2026 run rate to be well above full year guidance, given the significant shape to the year. We expect second half annualized adjusted EBITDA to be up to $40 million. We do anticipate Q1 and Q2 adjusted EBITDA will be negative, given the growth investments we are making and the second half weighting of our new stall additions in 2026. Charging network revenue should be around 70% of 2026 total revenue. Charging revenue is expected to increase each quarter on a year-over-year basis. In the first quarter, growth is expected to be softer as our new stalls added in Q4 are still ramping up and we had significant weather impacts from winter storms. Extend revenues for 2026 are expected to be down on a year-over-year basis as we are constructing fewer stalls under the program this year as we get closer to completing the contract of pilot. Beginning in 2028, this will drive lower revenue solely tied to O&M activity, which frees up our team to focus on further accelerating the expansion of our owned and operated network. Given our strong unit economics and paybacks, we are investing in G&A in 2026 for accelerated future stall deployment and improving the customer experience. These near-term investments are expected to position EVgo to accelerate revenue and profit growth into the future. Adjusted G&A for 2026 expected to be $150 million to $155 million for the full year, which is approximately 35% of 2026 revenue guidance. This is largely in line with 2025 SG&A expense as a percentage of revenue, but on a full year basis is burdened by the backend growth of the 2026 plan. 2026 will be an exciting year of transition for EVGO as we augment our foundation to support sustained profitability and set the table for an accelerated go-forward growth trajectory, which should drive improved incremental margins and sustainable profitability on a go-forward basis. With that, I'll hand it back over to Baddard to dive deeper into EVgo's differentiated value proposition for our shareholders.

Thank you, Kiefer. Our unit economics we've shown over the last two years and the details for Q4 are in the appendix of our investor deck, highlighting the growth we are driving in cash flow per store. Throughput restored growth results from EVGO's competitive moat and rising EVBIO. We believe our superior site selection, top tier partnerships with OEMs, site hosts, rideshare and AV companies, our leading customer engagement and customer experience offerings, including faster chargers, and our growing customer base that is now 1.6 million customers, all combined to create a moat around EVGO's business that is hard to replicate and one we spent 15 years building. This is what drives our recurring and ever-expanding cash flow per stall. Daily throughput per stall, whether for the average of the network or the top 15% of stalls, continues to rise. Our 350 kilowatt stalls are currently comprised of over 60% of our network and will comprise around 90% of the network within a few years, are now generating almost 350 kilowatt hours per stall per day. Annualized cash flow per stall for our entire network in Q4 was $21,000. If you look at our 350 kilowatt chargers, that is $28,000, proof that our network will scale to our longer-term target. The top 15% of our network was over $65,000, which represents a payback period of just over one year for new stalls performing at these levels. Top 15% of stalls clearly shows the operating leverage within charging gross profit, where these stalls generated 54% charging gross margin, a full 8 percentage points higher than the average of the network due to the higher throughput per stall. EVO reached a critical milestone this quarter, delivering positive adjusted EBITDA for the quarter and for the full year. This achievement relied in part on our non-charging lines of business. extend, and ancillary. Because of the growing number of old and operate stalls and the growth in stall profitability due to rising throughput per stall, the real growth in the company comes from our charging business. Revenue growth since our IPO is over 74, and we've moved from an adjusted EBITDA loss to a profit. As we've said before, nearly two-thirds of our total G&A is largely fixed, growing much slower than the growth in the charging business. Therefore, the real operating leverage inflection with the gross profit from our charging business alone without any contribution from the non-charging businesses covers our G&A occurs in late 2026. From that point, we expect a significant increase in our already strong incremental margins with a significant portion of our charging gross profit falling straight to the bottom line, further accelerating the growth in adjusted EBITDA and driving significant adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. This is on top of the operating leverage that exists within charging gross profit that I just discussed earlier. Over the next four years, we are targeting charging network profits to grow at a CAGR of 50% to 60%, with adjusted G&A growing at a CAGR of approximately 15%. This operating leverage results in 105% to 130% CAGR in adjusted EBITDA. We are confident that over the course of the next few years, we'll have a business that goes from break-even to triple-digit millions in adjusted EBITDA. EVGO has spent the past 15 years building a business model and a competitive mode that is hard to replicate and benefits from a number of growing megatrends and tailwinds that have already translated into strong financial results and will deliver even stronger results over the coming years. EVO operates a highly differentiated, industry-leading charging platform that has meaningfully higher utilization than almost every one of our peers. This is not only driven by proprietary site selection capabilities, but also best-in-class customer experience and customer engagement to a large and growing customer base, combined with leading partnerships across the broader industry. Our ability to attract non-dilutive financing to accelerate our growth further separates us from our peers. Our focus on owning and operating our network, especially in the high density urban centers where drivers need fast charging the most, results in a business model with strong and growing unit economics with equally compelling operating leverage. And all of this benefits from a compelling macro backdrop that will propel the business for many years to come. Vehicles in operation are expected to more than double by 2029. share of public fast charging continues to rise due to the electrification of rideshare more affordable vehicles and faster charge rates standardized cables will double evgo's addressable market over time and of course the rise fully electric autonomous vehicles that will need to charge at fast charging locations will just add to the growth we expect to see in our network by the time we end 2029 we are targeting to have an enduring infrastructure business with over 12,500 public owned stalls. Charging network revenues model to grow at 40 to 50% with adjusted EBITDA margins in the 25 to 30%. This is a capital efficient, creative growth model that positions EVO to compound intrinsic value as we continue to scale our network. Taking together our differentiated approach, the accelerated demand environment, and the strong returns on new investments gives us deep confidence in the long-term value creation opportunity ahead. Operator, we can now open the call for Q&A.

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. If you are called upon to ask a question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Would you request for today's session that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, and you may re-queue for any further follow-up questions. Your first question comes from the line of Stephen Gingaro of Stifo. Your line is open. Hi, Stephen.

Thanks. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Congrats on the progress. Can you... This might be an odd question, but when you look at the customers, I forget the number you mentioned, but 1.3 or 1.5 million customers. Can you tell us, do you have a sense for the percentage of usage that a certain piece of the customer base has? Like if you have 1.6 million, I think was the number you gave. Are the repeat users driving... Are 25% driving 75% of the business? How do those numbers look?

Yeah, Stephen, I've been saying on a pretty much regular basis over the last several quarters that around half of our usage comes from companies like Uber and Lyft, cities like New York City, states like California, you know, are all focused on encouraging the electrification of rideshares. So that's really a big component there.

Okay, great. Thank you. And the other one was, how do you participate? And I know you mentioned on the autonomy side, like what, are there incremental changes Are there folks at the EVgo charging station? How does that ultimately work in your mind?

Yeah, well, I think that, as we said on the call, I think the autonomous vehicle space is, I think, a very significant source of potential upside for the business. We have... quite a while. We are adding, maybe doubling the number of stalls. It's still ready this year, 2026, so it's still pretty small. But I do think that just like in human rideshare, EVCo will become the partner of choice for the third-party industry data. And, you know, these sites do have, you know, human operators who are plugging the cables in, they're cleaning the vehicles, if that was your question.

Great. No, that's helpful. Okay. Thanks. I'll get back in line. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Laura Deng of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Hi, Laura.

Hi. Thanks for taking the time this morning. Thanks for taking my question. I think last quarter you all mentioned those charger tech enhancements. Just wanted to know if there's an update with that and when you expect to have that second enhancement completed and then have a follow-up.

Yeah, we're thrilled, very pleased with the work that's going on actually with our supply chain partners. That's Cigna and Delta. You know, we've been systematically, you know, re-qualifying, reinstalling the tech on the And the effort that we have with Delta continues through the course of this year. I expect that we'll be well past the majority of that program by the middle of the year. So going really well.

Got it. Got it. Thanks. And then on NACs, what have you all seen with the initial performance on the connectors installed so far? And then what gives confidence to accelerate that deployment this year?

Yeah, so the throughput per stall on our NAX stalls has nearly doubled since the fall. And that's really giving us the confidence to accelerate the rollout this year. The throughput here on these NAX case But, you know, we do expect that over time through our engagement efforts, our customer communications, and really also because our stalls are charging our network without an adapter. It is an investment in 2026 that I expect will pay off quite materially in the future. And so that's why we're talking about rolling out over 400 more NAICS stalls over the course of this year.

Great. Thank you.

And again, if you have a question, it is star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Bill Patterson of J.P. Morgan. Your line is open. Hi, Bill.

And really appreciate all the color thus far on the call. First, it looks like you lower your build schedule targets now through 2029. Trying to get a better understanding of what's driving the revision. You know, is it higher CapEx per stall? I mean, less demand. I presume it might be less demand. But, you know, can you define like what your expectations are? I think you were talking about industry expectations OF VIO DOUBLING BY 2029, BUT I MEAN, WHAT IF GROWTH REMAINS FLAT OR EVEN DECLINES APPLYING LOWER VIO, WOULD YOU SUBSEQUENTLY LOWER YOUR DEPLOYMENTS OR DO YOU FEEL CONFIDENT IN A REVISED GUIDANCE? I UNDERSTAND THE VALUE PROPOSITION OF EVs, BUT THE NEAR-TERM GROWTH PROJECTIONS ARE CERTAINLY FAR FROM ROSIE.

YEAH, BILL, I MEAN, I THINK THAT AS WE LOOK AT OUR BUILD PLANS FOR our owned stalls, which is really what we're focusing on here. capital. That's what guides our decision making. We're generating payback that's as fast as capacity, over to the owned operation, owned fleet without causing too much disruption. So that's how we think about it in terms of the underlying VIO. I mean, look, we've seen these forecasts, you and I, we've seen these forecasts, it's been slashed in the last couple of years. And, you know, and yet, you know, we say it's a muted environment, demand environment, and yet it's

that we're seeing. Yeah, thanks for that color. I'd like to maybe double-click and unpack on the kind of relatively wide EBITDA guidance range, maybe understand better what drives it closer to the lower end of the range versus positive. You talked about a pretty significant ramp in the second half. Is there anything else that we should be thinking about? For example, you know, how much does the removal of the 30-DE tax credit have an impact? maybe the extend, how much shows up in 26 versus 27, just anything you can do to help us better understand the guidance range.

Yeah, good morning, Bill. This is Kiefer. I'll jump in on this one. To your point, well above the full year guidance range. The shape for the year is really driven by the deployment cadence of our 2026 capital spending, plus some near-term investments at the front end of the year from a G&A perspective as we work to make sure we have the foundation in place to support the more rapid build-out of our owned and operated network. Uh, so those are really the key drivers there. I think, you know, the operating leverage around, um, the charging business and our charging margin is really what drives that. Uh, two-thirds of the range within the $110 to $140 million forecast that we showed in the slides.

Thanks, Kiefer. Thanks, Dada.

Thanks, Bill. Your next question comes from the line of Craig Irwin of Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Actually, my question is very much on the same line of what the last person just asked. So I was hoping you could get a little bit more granular about incrementally how much G&A dollars you're investing in 26 versus 25. And if you could maybe give us color on, you know, where you're spending these dollars. You know, is this, you know, in primarily rideshare support and multifamily? Or is this in, you know... education and other things with, you know, used EV buyers. I mean, there's many different ways you could approach organic growth on the network. If you could maybe just share with us a little bit about, you know, where you're spending the money.

Yeah, great, great, great question. And thank you. So as you think about 2026, compared to full year 2025 and up about 8% from where we exited 2025 on a Q4 annualized basis. So GNA spending will be up year over year, albeit at a much more muted level than what we're expecting from a top line and margin expansion standpoint. Our GNA remains kind of two thirds fixed as you think about the fixed and variable split. And where we're really making investments software and firmware over the course of 2026. Yeah, great.

Maybe if I just jump in here a little bit, just to add a little more to that. If you just take a step back, we are generating paybacks as fast as one to two years. We've got a network that's now nearly 15 times larger on average than almost everybody else in the space. The demand on our network on a personal basis is five times higher. And so many of our top leverage this strength by growing faster. So where Kiefer was talking about increased resources, it's really to grow faster. Grow faster, solidify that competitive advantage, really separate ourselves from the rest, which gets us to that triple digit millions in adjusted EBITDA. Really in less time, it took us to get from negative 80 to break even. We could choose to not go that fast. And we might be 20, maybe $25 million forward.

Understood. That makes complete sense. So my next question is about the charging network gross margins, right? So I definitely appreciate the detail that you've been sharing with us over the last several quarters. 600 basis point improvement year over year. That is fantastic. There's quite a lot of volatility out there around electricity prices. And, you know, several investors have been asking about your ability to pass through a some of the short-term volatility that shows up in the market. You know, many other large buyers of electricity actually this last quarter had contracting margins and you've had expanding margins. Can you maybe just discuss how you purchase and make your commitments for electricity and, you know, your visibility on expanding these margins like you share for your top 15% of the network?

Sure. I mean, look, So there is this embedded operating leverage as usage per store rises. We've got real scale relative to everybody else in this industry, almost everybody else. We've got real scale. We're able to engage in active energy cost management in certain areas. that next round of questions.

Pardon the interruption. We seem to be experiencing technical difficulties. I'll place you back on music hold until we get this resolved. Thank you.

Can you hear us? Hello?

We have the speakers back. Please go ahead.

Okay. Can you guys, I will assume that you can hear us. So look, Craig, just to summarize, we feel pretty excited about our pricing sophistication. I will say that we are in the foothills of a multi-decade journey. And so, you know, our long-term unit economic gross margins are really not different from where we are today. So I think that might seem to be a conservative assumption. Great. Well, congratulations on the healthy quarter there.

Thanks, Frank. Your next question comes from the line of Chris Pierce of Needham. Your line is open.

Hi, Chris. Morning. First question, I guess, is can you hear me after that? Are we live? We can hear you. Okay, perfect. You know, you've talked about moving faster. You talked about the network effects and network advantages. I guess if we think about You know, this long tail of substandard operators, is there a chance for, you know, M&A to maybe some areas where it's a desirable geographic location and you've got a competitor there that is maybe a local-only competitor, and that would sort of grow the install base even faster? Or is that not quite something that's possible given the DOE loan or how you guys think about installing and using electricity for 350, et cetera?

At the highest level, Chris, we want to ensure that we are deploying capital that is generating the best returns. Deploying capital organically, as we can all clearly see, is generating very strong returns. If we're able to deploy capital inorganically that can compete with that, then, of course, we will take a look at it. It is our view that our – really quite material difference, superior performance on demand in terms of usage per store is due to the site location, but also all the other things that you were just alluding to, our network effect, you know, our investments in customer experience, customer engagement, the reliability, the charger speed. And so, you know, there may be a scenario where, you know, our know-how on top of somebody else's assets, as long as they're in good locations, could generate much more attractive returns. But these are all hypothetical. At this point, we're just very focused on deploying capital organically.

Okay. Thank you and good luck.

Yes, your next question comes from the line of Andrew Shepard of Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open. Hi, Andres.

Hey, everyone. Good morning. And again, thanks for taking our questions and congrats on the quarter. I think a lot of our key questions have been asked. I wanted to maybe touch on autonomy and autonomous vehicles since that's a big, you know, area of emphasis going forward. Just curious, how should we think about KPIs in that industry and what would you recommend we look for in terms of seeing progress there? Should we expect a major increase in utilization rate? Is it just an increase to the stall count, network throughput? What would be the key lever to focus there for autonomous vehicles? Thank you.

yeah andres i mean i think as i said before i think this is a space that's really very exciting and it's a potentially very significant source of upside uh in the medium to longer term we we do have 140 of the 5 100 stalls that are operational 140 today that are dedicated to autonomous vehicle partners we separated them out in our disclosure at the beginning of 2025 We added 30 to that count last year. This year it'll be maybe a bit double, maybe kind of 50 to 75 stalls. So maybe that's a metric to look at. I will say it is pretty early in the game in terms of the autonomous vehicle space. Our contract structures, are ones where we, current contract structures are ones where we don't have any utilization exposure. In other words, we're just getting a fixed monthly fee for these stores. So these are kind of like contracted cash flows over a long period, long term. We are still working out with, you know, between our partners and ourselves, what are the best contract structures that make sense for everyone in the long term? But, you know, just like a human rights share, as I said, I expect that EVgo will become the partner of choice for these companies, just given the scale, the balance sheet, you know, and the track record that we've built here over the last many years. And we've been on the AV space. We've been serving AV partners for five years now.

Got it. That's super helpful. Appreciate all that color. Maybe just as a last and quick follow-up, can you maybe just remind us capital needs, you know, going forward, you know, with roughly $211 million in liquidity, you also have the DOE loan. You know, how are you thinking about capital needs, and particularly if you're planning on being active in the M&A market? Thank you.

Well, just to be clear, we are very focused on growing the company organically. So if there are opportunities to deploy capital that compete with that, we'll look at it. But today we're very focused on growing organically. I will say, I'll ask Kiefer just to comment on the capital leads, but we've got one of the, at this point, I think the strongest balance sheet we've had in my time, certainly as CEO and prior to that. And we've got this, I consider kind of superior and lower cost access to non-dilutive financing through the DOE and the commercial bank facility. And so we feel very good about those. But I'll ask maybe Kiefer just to comment on how you think about the capital needs this year.

Sure. Good question. So to jump in on 26 capital spending right now, we're estimating a range and kind of a high 100 million up to approaching 200 million dollars of spend for 26 capital. Approximately two-thirds of that would be year marked for 2026 deployments. So the wiggle room there is just related to future capital spending and when that hits from a timing perspective. On a net basis, that was a gross number I just gave you. On a net basis, we're expecting offsets this year to be approximately 17%. So on a per stall basis, we do believe we'll be able to drive down spending per stall somewhere in the low single digits on a year-over-year basis as we look from 25 to 26. wonderful super helpful as always thanks so much and congrats again on the quarter thanks everybody thank you and your last question is a follow-up from the line of stephen jingaro of stifle your line is open uh thanks thanks for taking the follow-up i uh this was

In reference to the margins and the pricing side, this came up a little bit in an earlier question, but have you implemented or how do you handle sort of the dynamic pricing model? Like how aware is the system of alternatives and how do you sort of adapt to changing environments with pricing? Is that real time? Can you give me an update on how you handle that?

yeah um students we rolled out our first set of dynamic pricing algorithms uh back in 2020 late 24 uh so they've been running now for uh for about you know 12 to 18 months um and these are these are really algorithms that are uh you know optimizing uh pricing for us uh to generate you know absolutely you know to maximize absolute gross margin um and so the you know these algorithms are resulting in different prices Certainly throughout the day, over a 24-hour period and across different locations where prices might be going up or down. We expect to roll out a new level of algorithms this spring. We were hoping to do that at the end of last year, but with a We had the record deployment of new stalls. It was the largest deployment of new stalls in the company's history ever in Q4. We wanted to just sort of manage the operational bandwidth here. And those new algorithms just take us to another level of sophistication in terms of frequency of change and sort of disaggregation in terms of price and combinations across our entire network.

Great. I appreciate all the details again. Absolutely.

With no further questions, that concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Badar Khan for closing remarks.

Great. Well, thank you, everyone. EVGO, as you can see, reached a critical milestone of adjusted EBITDA break-even, and we had just a fantastic fourth quarter in terms of new stalls deployed. We can see from this third-party industry data that EVGO's competitive moat that we spent 15 years building is really paying off with far superior customer demand versus almost everybody else on the network. In 2026, we are choosing to leverage this position of strength and make investments that both secures this competitive advantage and results in adjusted EBITDA reaching or in the triple digit millions within reach. I look forward to sharing that progress with you over the course of this coming year. Thanks all.

this concludes today's conference call you may now disconnect