What happened

ChargePoint Holdings (CHPT -1.45%) stock tumbled Friday morning and slumped 12.1% within minutes of the market's opening before regaining some ground. The electric vehicle (EV) charging network company released numbers for its fourth quarter (which ended January 31, 2023) yesterday, and although its revenue grew exponentially, that growth momentum is about to die down.

So what

Here are some numbers from ChargePoint Holdings' fourth-quarter earnings report that you must know (all changes year over year):

  • Revenue up 93% to $153 million
  • Gross margin flat at 22%
  • Net loss up nearly 30% to $78 million

It was a record quarter for ChargePoint Holdings, but the company fell short of its own revenue guidance of $160 million to $170 million. For the full year, too, revenue of $468.1 million came in at the lower end of its guidance range.

CEO Pasquale Romano explained why this happened: "ChargePoint delivered its largest sequential revenue growth to date and another record quarter, although below our guidance range as supply challenges for our DC solutions and quarter-end shipment challenges at this growth rate persisted."

What's miffed investors, though, is ChargePoint Holdings' outlook: It expects only 56% growth in revenue for its first quarter. That's a surefire sign of decelerating growth, considering that the company has consistently delivered more than 90% year-over-year growth in revenue in each of the past four quarters at least.

Now what

ChargePoint Holdings' lackluster outlook attracted at least two analyst downgrades today:

  • R.F. Lafferty analyst Jaime Perez cut the EV charging stock's price target to $19 per share from $28 a share.
  • JP Morgan analyst Bill Peterson cut the stock's price objective to $15 per share from $16 a share.

ChargePoint Holdings sells charging hardware, software, and service subscriptions and operates one of the largest EV charging networks in the world. Also, the Biden administration is pushing for EV infrastructure with multibillion-dollar funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. Given the growth opportunities, investors expect ChargePoint Holdings' revenue to grow even faster, not to slow down.