EV Notes: ChargePoint Announces Second Round of Layoffs This Year
ChargePoint Holdings Inc. will lay off 15% of its workers as well as trim “non-personnel expenses,” executives said on September 4 while reporting quarterly results highlighted by a year-over-year drop in revenue of nearly 30%.
This is the second round of layoffs this year for ChargePoint, following a 12% reduction in January that was concentrated in the hardware engineering department. The newly announced cuts will largely affect the company’s sales and marketing teams.
“This is an offensive move,” said CEO Rick Wilmer. “These reductions will enable us to move faster by streamlining operations.”
The reduction is expected to save ChargePoint roughly $40 million after a quarter in which revenue fell to $109 million from more than $150 million in the prior-year quarter. The company’s network charging systems were responsible for all of that decline, with sales coming in at about $64 million, a 44% drop from last year. Subscription revenue, ChargePoint’s highest-margin product, was up 21% year over year to $33 million.
A few recent announcements could help reverse the top-line slide: ChargePoint is pairing its technology with LG’s EV charging hardware and its Omni Port EV connector, which allows all EV drivers, regardless of their charging port, to still charge at the company’s stalls. And on the software side, the company has partnered with Porsche to allow drivers access to ChargePoint stalls across North America; that integration is expected to debut later this year.
Early this month, ChargePoint also announced its new in-app, AI-powered driver support tool, a first for the EV charging space, which Wilmer explained during the call.
“If the driver reports a hardware problem with our app, AI analyzes images to identify the issue, often without needing a site visit,” he said. “This approach reduces downtime and ensures our stations are reliable, solving one of the biggest challenges in our industry.”
Looking forward, ChargePoint leaders are targeting $85 million to $95 million in revenue for the company’s third quarter, which CFO Mansi Khetani called “prudent.” It’s $23 million below the guidance for Q2, which had a range of $108 million to $118 million.
“While Q2 revenue was down 28% compared to the prior year, Q3 is expected to be 18% lower at the midpoint of our guidance range as compared to Q3 of last year,” she said.
Wallbox’s growth and big deal
ChargePoint's latest layoff announcement follows developments in August by two other EV ventures. Home charging venture Wallbox N.V., which reported its Q2 results on Aug. 1, grew its revenue nearly 50% year over year to $53.2 million. Operating expenses decreased 11% for the same period and gross margins remained steady at 39%.
CEO and founder Enric Asuncion attributed most of the improvement to increased sales in the U.S. market for the Spain-based company and product diversification in Europe, both of which resulted in 65% and 44% growth in each region, respectively.
The Wallbox team also announced it had secured $45 million in strategic investments over the summer, with the bulk of it coming from energy technology company Generac Holdings Inc.
In exchange for its $35 million investment, Generac will receive one seat on Wallbox’s board of directors and a global commercial agreement to provide Generac’s customers with Wallbox’s full suite of EV charging solutions, such as its L2 AC chargers and bidirectional charger, Quasar 2. Wallbox will also buy Generac’s batteries for its chargers.
“Generac is a great partner to have. They have almost 9,000 installers nationwide, and the idea is that many of them take advantage of our products and our products become part of their ecosystem,” Asuncion said.
Aaron Jagdfeld, Generac’s president and CEO said the joint effort will “accelerate” the company’s entrance into EV charging.
“We plan to continue to integrate across Wallbox and Generac technologies and leverage our collective brand strength to extend a broader line of residential and business solutions,” he said.
Atom Power expands in products and reach
Wallbox isn’t the only EV player scoring big deals. North Carolina-based Atom Power Inc., a private start-up, announced its E100 Series of chargers in early August. The Level 2 chargers are capable of charging multiple vehicles at once and come with a slew of technology upgrades.
Atom Power’s main claim to fame is its Atom Switch, a solid-state circuit breaker that centralizes all power at a panel rather than individual parking spots, making maintenance and installation easier. Kash Sethi, head of sales, said Serial production of the E100 chargers is expected to begin this month with the first deployments coming in October.
Sethi also added that the charger had been in development since shortly after its first charger, the E50, was released.
“We heard from our customers that they want to pack even more Atom charges with the same infrastructure, and the E100 does that. We were already thinking about it when we launched the E50,” he said. “Things like metering, accuracy and certifications were also already on the list; it just needed more research and development time more testing and validation. Given how happy our customers are with the E50, we did not want to rush into the E100 and take a risk and then ruin our reputation.”
The chargers are NEVI-eligible, unlike the E50 line which lacked some compliance components. Leaders also expect that upgrade to net them more customers.
Looking forward, Sethi says Atom has plans for expansion into Canada within the next few months, with one project already identified.
“There’s a lot of appetite in Canada. It’s a much smaller country, about one-tenth of our population and economy, but there’s a lot of potential,” Sethi said, adding that there are a “lot of strong mandates and incentives” in the country.
“We are bullish about our growth opportunities in Canada,” he said.
