Energy Vault (NRGV 5.88%) stock soared 20.5% through 10:40 a.m. ET Tuesday morning, even though the "grid-scale energy storage solutions" company apparently missed on its earnings report last night.
TheFly.com reports that Energy Vault improved year over year, with Q3 losses declining to $0.16 per share and sales up dramatically to $33.3 million. However, Yahoo! Finance says Energy Vault still reported a loss twice as big as Wall Street was expecting, per generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).
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Energy Vault Q3 earnings
Q3 revenue surged 27 times in comparison to Q3 2024, when quarterly revenue was just over $1 million, and backlog more than doubled to $920 million.
Gross profit was positive, but insufficient to offset the substantial operating expenses. On the bottom line, Energy Vault still lost money.
Operating cash flow turned positive, and capital spending slimmed by about a third. Regardless, $921,000 in operating cash flow minus $30.6 million in capital spending left Energy Vault deeply free-cash-flow-negative, and with nearly $30 million in cash burn.
NYSE: NRGV
Key Data Points
Is Energy Vault stock a buy?
So why are investors excited about all this? Well, for one thing, because Energy Vault is growing like a weed. With revenue growth firing on all cylinders, management doubled down on guidance to deliver between $200 million and $250 million in revenue this year. Management also promised that gross margins will remain positive.
What management most decidedly did not promise, however, is that it will earn a profit on the bottom line. And there, analysts agree -- forecasting continued GAAP losses and negative free cash flow for Energy Vault as far out as anyone is willing to make estimates, to 2029 at least.
Until that changes, all the revenue growth in the world can't make Energy Vault stock a buy for me.
