EVgo, Inc. (EVGO) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the EVgo Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Heather Davis, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to EVgo's Second Quarter 2026 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 Badar Khan, EVgo's Chief Executive Officer; and Keefer Lehner, EVgo's Chief Financial Officer. Today, we will be discussing EVgo's second quarter 2026 financial results and our outlook for the year, followed by a Q&A session. Today's call is being webcast and can be accessed on the Investors section of our website at investors.evgo.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 in the Risk Factors 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 Investors 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 definitions and applicable reconciliations to the corresponding GAAP measures can be found in the earnings materials available on the Investors section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Badar Khan, EVgo's CEO.

Thank you, Heather. EVgo delivered solid results for the second quarter, in line with our expectations, while continuing to build a durable nationwide infrastructure network. We have a proven track record of growth in both operational stores and revenue. Since 2021, the year we went public, our operational stores are expected to increase nearly fourfold by the end of 2026. We've delivered consistent growth year in and year out. Total revenue is expected to increase even faster at 19x by the end of 2026. Revenue growth is driven by a combination of store additions, increasing daily throughput per store and our non-charging revenue tied to extend and autonomous vehicles lines of business. What's really impressive is through 2025, our revenue compound annual growth rate has exceeded 100%, putting us in the top 1% of U.S. public company revenue growth rate and around 3x higher than our public charging peers. We are thrilled to announce that EVgo and Tesla have entered into an agreement to deploy EVgo branded superchargers. Through this agreement, EVgo will own these EVgo branded superchargers, select their location and set pricing, while Tesla builds and operates the chargers under a long-term arrangement. We expect to deploy EVgo superchargers in dozens of cities across the U.S. starting this year. Together with the NACS connectors we're rolling out across our existing network, this more than doubles our addressable market by reaching both Tesla and non-Tesla NACS drivers. This enables EVgo to accelerate our deployment of NACS connectors with the goal of all 2023 vintage and newer sites having a NACS connector within the next 2 years. These V4 superchargers are 500 kilowatts and equipped with Tesla's Magic Dock technology, enabling effortless charging for all EV drivers, serving both NACS and CCS vehicles with no adapter needed. Consistent with our existing strategy, these sites from the EVgo network will be located near the retail shops, restaurants and everyday destinations where drivers already spend time with up to 20 stalls per site and longer cables, so every driver can easily plug in regardless of in location on the vehicle. EVgo Supercharger locations will be available in Tesla's NAV and Trip planner and all EVgo stations with NACS connectors will also be available in the Tesla NAV once the driver enables third-party stations. Importantly, we expect to deploy these assets with little to no incremental growth G&A, at a gross capital cost per stall broadly equivalent to our current bills, and we expect to finance these stores through existing EVgo financing sources. Buying these V4 superchargers from Tesla also diversifies our supply chain toward more U.S. made chargers. In addition to EVgo superchargers, we continue to make progress on our next-generation charging architecture being developed at EVgo's innovation lab with the first units expected to be installed by the end of the year. EVgo is among the top 3 largest fast charging operators in the country, along with Tesla and Electrify America and is around 14x larger than the average of the rest of the industry. We built our network at great sites near amenities that EV drivers are looking for. We believe our real estate relationships and site selection process, together with our rideshare partnerships with leading companies like Uber and Lyft are key sources of competitive advantage for EVgo. Our focus on customer experience includes faster charging with almost 70% of our stores being 350-kilowatt compared to only 23% for the rest of the industry. The combination of industry-leading scale and partnerships and best-in-class customer engagement and experience supported by our next-generation charging architecture is what drives fivefold higher utilization at our sites versus the rest of the industry. With almost 5,400 stores, including 4,000 EVgo owned and operated, EVgo is the third largest public fast charging network in the U.S. We have over a 15-year track record, identifying and deploying over 1,200 utility connected sites at optimal urban and suburban locations across the U.S. Our sites -- our existing sites have approximately 600 megawatts of connected power capacity, including approximately 45% unutilized capacity at current utilization levels. Over the next 5 years, our installed base is expected to quadruple to over 2 gigawatts of utility connected capacity with approximately 1 gigawatt of potential usage expansion. We are beginning to evaluate whether there are complementary revenue streams available to us to monetize this excess capacity, whether that is utilized as demand response, battery energy storage systems or capacity for a distributed edge AI inference network. Our network strategy has always been to locate sites in urban and suburban locations close to where drivers go about their lives and therefore, by definition, in close proximity to energy demand, which is potentially very attractive. EV vehicles in operation have grown at a 40% CAGR since 2021 and are expected to grow another 17% annually through 2030 to reach nearly 13 million by the end of 2030 according to S&P's latest forecast from June 2026. Our total VIO is expected to be lower than previous forecasts, still represents a car park that is expected to more than double over the next 4.5 years with an underlying growth rate that remains highly supportive of our business model and one that is highly attractive even when compared to other high-growth sectors. EV market appears to be stabilizing after the loss of federal incentives at the end of Q3 '25, with higher gas prices, pinching American lots and global instability since the start of the Iran war, there is positive momentum in EV sales with Q2 new sales volumes 247,000, up 15% from Q1. About a dozen states are offering EV incentives to consumers to spur EV adoption. Most notably, California has recently announced consumer incentives, rideshare incentives and charging incentives for rideshare drivers. Consumer incentives aim to backfill the expired federal tax credit and will have a total budget of $270 million, including $3,500 for new EVs and $1,750 for used vehicles. Rideshare drivers, the California incentives expected to go live in Q3 are even stronger with incentives of $20,000 for new EVs and $14,000 for used EVs for income qualifying drivers. The used market remains a bright spot for EV sales with both new drivers trying out fully electric cars at cheaper price points and for EVgo because used vehicle owners are less likely to have charging at home and more reliant on public fast charging with over 1.5 million vehicles coming off lease between 2026 to 2028, this used vehicle supply not only helps meet consumer demand, but also provides a significant tailwind for EVgo. With our updated view of the underlying market, we're showing what an illustrative owned and operated EVgo network could look like by 2028 and by 2030. Despite near-term market noise, we continue to expect EVgo to be generating recurring adjusted EBITDA of approximately $0.5 billion by 2030. The economics of our business are driven by 3 things: number of stalls in operation, daily throughput per stall and operating leverage. These 3 factors combined to deliver compelling unit economics and returns. With the financing we have in place, we are increasing store growth from the net 500 to 600 average level, that's net of removals over the past 3 years to around 700 to 900 in 2026 to 4,000 to 5,000 by 2030. This result in a network that is around 4x larger than the end of last year by 2030. Daily throughput per store has already grown nearly fivefold between 2022 and 2025, driven by the growth of electric vehicles on the road together with EVgo's meaningfully higher utilization than almost all our peers and with a store underwriting process that we continually review and update. We are particularly excited about our latest 2026 vintage and especially 2027 vintage, which we are expecting to be our best ever focused on key metros with top-tier site locations and site post partnerships. Over the next 5 years, we're conservatively expecting a smaller increase in daily throughput per store that we've experienced over the past 3 years. Underscoring our confidence in this illustrative forecast is the fact that our mature 350-kilowatt stores are already delivering daily throughput per store at the mid-350 level, which is what we assume by 2028. Today, almost 70% of our throughput comes from these stores. And by 2030, it will be over 95%. Operating leverage exists in 2 places, and we can see the track record very clearly in our actual results. We have operating leverage in charging gross margin, where 25% to 30% of charging cost of sales is fixed like site rent, resulting in higher gross margin as throughput rises. We've seen charging gross margin rise from near 15% to nearly 40% last year and is projected to be around 50% by 2030 as throughput per store rises. And we have significant operating leverage in adjusted G&A, where around 2/3 of G&A is largely fixed overhead and the cost of growing the network. As you can see, adjusted G&A has only grown by around $35 million in 3 years, whereas charging revenue has grown 5x as much. In fact, the charging network, excluding fixed overhead and growth G&A has been profitable since late 2023 and just becomes more and more profitable over time. Going out to 2030, adjusted G&A barely doubles over 2025, resulting in $0.5 billion in charging gross profit dropping straight to the bottom line. By 2028, EVgo has the potential to be generating triple-digit millions of adjusted EBITDA with EBITDA margins in the mid-teens. And by 2030, this grows to the low to mid-30% range. As you can see, all of this is without any contribution from our non-charging businesses, including AV that has historically generated meaningful additional gross profit and for which we are not yet providing an illustrative forecast. To summarize the story, EVgo has spent the past 15 years building a business model and a competitive moat 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. EVgo 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 our 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 nondilutive financing to accelerate our growth further separates us from our peers. Our focus on building 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 underpinned by equally compelling operating leverage. 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 2030. The 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 of fully electric autonomous vehicles that will need to charge at fast charging locations will just add to the growth we expect to see on our network. This is a capital-efficient, accretive growth model that positions EVgo to compound intrinsic value as we continue to scale our network. Taken together, our differentiated approach, the accelerating demand environment and the strong returns of new investments give us deep confidence in the long-term value creation opportunity ahead. Beyond the core charging business, there is considerable upside in EVgo that we are beginning to evaluate and are likely to generate material additional EBITDA by 2030. We already generate revenues and margins from serving autonomous vehicle partners, which we have been doing for 5 years. While this is a small part of EVgo today, the AV market is poised for tremendous growth, and we believe our track record, partnerships and competitive strengths position us well to deliver meaningful upside over the medium and long term. The U.S. charging landscape is littered with companies that are not performing well. However, there are some with attractive site locations and high-quality assets that are failing to attract customers or lack the ability to scale. As a result, there will likely be compelling inorganic opportunities for EVgo in the future as the only pure-play U.S. charging company that has successfully attracted non-diluting financing at scale. EVgo has the potential to generate $0.5 billion in adjusted EBITDA in the next 5 years. And given that, we are now planning to start exploring adjacencies on top of our core charging business. Today, we provide charging infrastructure for passenger vehicles, but we can see various segments, both within passenger vehicles and beyond with needs that we may be able to serve over time given our relationships and expertise. Similarly, today, EVgo is a U.S. only business. Over the next 5 years, we may choose to expand geographically. And finally, EVgo has an impressive track record building distributed connection capacity at over 1,200 urban and suburban locations in close proximity to both EV drivers and energy demand more broadly. That utility connection capacity will broadly quadruple over the next 5 years, and there may be opportunities to monetize any excess capacity to serve the market more broadly beyond charging infrastructure like edge AI compute capacity, battery energy storage systems or other potential opportunities. Over the course of this year, we have formed a small but dedicated corporate development team to begin evaluating these opportunities, and I look forward to providing more details over the coming quarters. EVgo offers differentiated growth at an attractive valuation. Based on 5-year consensus estimates, we're growing EBITDA faster than every comparable industry we benchmark against by a wide margin. And yet we trade at a fraction of the multiple those industries command. That's not a small gap. That's the kind of setup that often gets re-rated once the market catches up to the growth curve. And why do we benchmark against digital infrastructure, renewable energy, waste management, fuel distribution, energy infrastructure and utility because structurally, these are all businesses where you spend the capital once, you build the towers, the pipelines, the substations, the roofs and then you monetize that fixed asset base over a long horizon with high incremental margins as utilization climbs. They're essential service networks with highly visible demand and meaningful barriers to entry once they're built out. That's exactly our model with our public fast charging network. We're building infrastructure America needs and every dollar of CapEx we've already put in the ground gets more profitable as utilization scales and that shows up on the right side of the slide. Within our own EV charging category, our EBITDA margins are projected to be among the best in the peer group. So, it's not just that we're growing faster than the broader infrastructure peers that are trading at many times our multiple. Within our own competitive set, we're also one of the most profitable operators with a superior business model. Put those 2 things together, infrastructure grade growth at a fraction of the infrastructure grade multiple with margins that are expected to lead our direct peer set and you get why we think EVgo is mispriced today. Now I'll turn it over to Keefer to share financial details for the second quarter and EVgo's 2026 outlook.

Thank you, Badar. As mentioned, EVgo has 2 debt facilities to draw upon to finance our infrastructure build-out, and we have over $630 million available capacity on our DOE and commercial bank facilities, both at attractive financing rates. Combined with our cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash as of June 30, EVgo has approximately $835 million in available liquidity. We ended Q2 with 5,380 stalls in operation, an approximate 3x increase compared to the end of 2021. We added 280 total new stalls to the network in Q2 2026, including 120 new public EVgo-owned stalls. We also continued our renew program, decommissioning and removing 175 legacy chargers from the network in the second quarter. Our customer base continues to grow and is now over 1.8 million strong, and we look forward to welcoming more native NACS drivers to our app and network on the back of the announcement to deploy EVgo superchargers. We have 240 NACS stalls today across approximately 100 sites, and we plan to deploy even more through the year at our 350-kilowatt sites and our new EVgo supercharger sites. Total energy dispensed on EVgo's network was 384 gigawatt hours for the trailing 12 months, a 16% increase from the TTM period ended Q2 2025. Charging gross margin was 39% over the last 12 months, expanding by 2 percentage points over the prior year's TTM. Adjusted EBITDA margin was flat on a trailing 12-month basis. Our throughput on the public network during the second quarter was 99 gigawatt hours, a 13% increase compared to last year and a 9% increase sequentially. Daily throughput per stall was 2% lower year-over-year, but 7% higher sequentially, though softer than originally expected as we entered 2026. Sequentially, we grew daily throughput per stall, partially offset by ongoing softness in our lower power legacy equipment and lower contribution from OEM charging credit programs that are winding down through the end of 2026. Revenue for Q2 2026 was $83 million, which represents a 16% year-over-year decrease driven entirely by our non-charging business. In our core charging business, charging network revenue was $61 million, a 19% increase versus the prior year, driven primarily by a larger operating network with a 13% increase in the public network and modestly increased charging revenue per kilowatt hour, representing our 18th consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year charging revenue growth. Throughput and charging revenue per kilowatt hour drove approximately 75% and 25% of the year-over-year revenue growth, respectively. eXtend revenue was $18 million, down $19 million from the same period in 2025, driven by lower equipment sales and construction revenue. A reminder that eXtend will continue to largely trend lower over the next 6 quarters and by 2028 will be a $5 million to $10 million per year revenue business. AV ancillary revenue was $3 million, down $6 million versus the prior year. There were no new deployments in Q2, and this revenue line remains episodic as it's driven by deployment timing of long-duration projects with our AV partners. With that said, we do expect 2 additional projects to go operational in 2026. Charging network gross profit was $22 million, a 15% increase compared to the prior year of Q2. Charging network gross margin was 36% versus 37% last year, with slightly higher energy costs and non-energy costs compared to last year, driven by rent and maintenance. Second quarter adjusted gross profit was $26 million, down 7% versus the prior year, driven by lower contribution from eXtend and AV this year. Adjusted gross margin was 32% in Q2, nearly 3 percentage points higher over the same period in 2025 due to greater contribution from our higher-margin charging network activity. Adjusted G&A for the quarter was $37 million, an increase of 22% compared to the prior year, but a 1% decrease compared to Q1 2026 and in line with expectations as we are investing in network scale, accelerating cell deployment and latest generation architecture. The above resulted in an adjusted EBITDA loss of $10.6 million in the second quarter of 2026, in line with the guidance we provided. Turning to our outlook and guidance for 2026. As Badar discussed, we remain highly confident in and excited by the long-term opportunity of the owner-operator business for deploying fast charging in the United States. As shown, we are building a scalable and durable business that is generating solid gross margins today and expected to scale to very attractive EBITDA-generating business by 2030. For the full year 2026, we expect to add 1,350 to 1,625 new stalls of 950 to 1,175 new public and AV stalls and 400 to 450 eXtend stalls. We have the ability to see and respond quickly to performance trends in our stall deployments. Given the slower ramp in daily throughput per stall from our 2025 cohort and further reduced EV sales forecasted for 2026, we have adjusted our underwriting to ensure that capital is being allocated to what we believe will be the best sites from an economics and returns perspective. As a result, we have removed some stalls from our 2026 build program at no material cost. Our site pipeline today is as healthy as it's ever been, and the team is laser-focused on maximizing our opportunities to allocate capital at the highest quality locations. Stall builds in 2026 are heavily weighted to the fourth quarter, including the energization of EVgo superchargers with approximately 60% of the full year's build now anticipated in Q4. Given the pace of new stall lease signings since at least Q4 2025, which remain around 3x higher than the past, we expect 2027 new additions around 2.5 to 3x the number of new owned and operated stalls added in 2025. Turning to the income statement. EVgo anticipates total 2026 revenues in the $400 million to $430 million range. This top line view reflects up to 30% year-over-year growth in the charging business and encapsulates the impact of downward revised BIO forecasts, a slower ramp for our 2025 vintage stalls, 2026 cohorts sliding to later in the year than originally expected and slightly fewer overall stalls deployed. Daily throughput per stall is expected to grow through 2026, partially offset by customers rolling off low-margin OEM charging credit programs, the majority of whom are not converting to EVgo retail customers at the rates we originally projected, a transition that will largely be complete by year-end. Additionally, performance from our lower power legacy equipment continues to soften, but this fleet becomes an immaterial portion of the network within 2 years. Any upside from the deployment of EVgo superchargers and the placement of our EVgo NACS stalls on the Tesla navigation system that we expect will double our addressable market is likely to have a bigger impact from 2027 onwards rather than 2026. Total charging network revenue is still expected to be roughly 2/3 of full year revenue and deliver robust year-over-year growth. Regarding our non-charging revenue, we are increasing our guidance for 2026 eXtend revenues to be in the $90 million to $95 million range, with about 2/3 of the remaining revenue expected in Q4. AV and ancillary revenues are anticipated to be $40 million to $45 million. The fourth quarter is modeled to be the largest quarter of the year for AV revenues given the timing of 2 new AV sites being operationalized. Adjusted G&A is expected to be $148 million to $152 million for the year, a slight improvement in G&A from our prior guidance as we expect to incur lower growth costs given the slightly lower stall deployments, while still executing on our internally developed latest gen architecture. 2026 adjusted EBITDA is now anticipated to be a loss in the range of negative $25 million to negative $5 million. For Q3, we anticipate negative adjusted EBITDA and Q4 adjusted EBITDA is anticipated to be positive as we have a large number of stalls to be operationalized in the fourth quarter. I want to reiterate our excitement about both the near-term and the long-term opportunity for EVgo to organically expand our network, continually enhance the customer experience and drive shareholder value creation via the realization of the EBITDA potential of this business. With that, we will open the call to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Chris Dendrinos with RBC Capital Markets.

Maybe just start out, and there's a lot to unpack here, but maybe just speak a bit more on the Tesla integration strategy and that's pretty interesting that you all are kind of expanding, I guess, that partnership. So, maybe speak to how this kind of came about why sort of an own business model but not operate here? And then is there an opportunity to expand that beyond just the initial, I think, 35 superchargers?

Sure. Yes. I'm not sure I caught the very last part of that. But look, we are thrilled with this agreement with Tesla, really, Chris, for 3 reasons. First, it essentially doubles our addressable market. I've been saying for the better part of the last couple of years that the standardization of NACS cables allows us to reach customers that we really aren't reaching today. We've grown 19-fold over the last 5 years by serving less than half the market. And with this agreement deploying EVgo superchargers, we're able to reach Tesla drivers and the NACS drivers. Our goal is for all sites from 2023 vintage onwards to have a NACS cable within the next couple of years through retrofitting our existing sites together with the EVgo superchargers. Second reason I'm really excited why it's because we're able to use turnkey sites that have already been developed by Tesla and essentially generate revenue from those new deployments without incurring any material growth G&A. As you know, we're really ramping up our growth. Our growth in our own network is, what, 40% to 70% up this year versus last year. This year, we'll be incurring growth G&A for a 2.5 to threefold increase in new stores in 2027 versus 2025. And so, growth G&A has been a big part of our very near-term story. Of course, we're building a business for the long term here. But with these EVgo superchargers with Tesla, we're able to really grow revenue without any material G&A costs, which I think is very attractive. I think the third thing is that, look, this agreement demonstrates that EVgo and Tesla are actually aligned on our goal to accelerate EV adoption. Rather than just trying to maximize share of each other charging over one another, we're really actually just focused on growing EV adoption, which I think benefits everybody. So, we're really thrilled with the agreement. We're expecting to deploy, as you see from our long-term forecast here. We've updated these forecasts on this call, 10,000 to 12,000 fast charging stalls over the next 5 years, and we'd expect some proportion of that to be these EVgo superchargers.

Great. And maybe as a follow-up here, just sticking on the topic of NACS charging. And can you speak to some of the, I guess, call it, early deployment data with those NACS cables? And I think you previously spoke to was either a slower initial ramp rate or a bit lower charge rate versus the rest of the network right now? And how are those charging rates trending? I'm just trying to get a sense for, I guess, the decision to lean more heavily into the NACS network here.

For sure, Chris. I mean, look, I think as we said, there are -- there's more than half the market today are NACS drivers. And as we look into the future, we're not building a business here just quarter-to-quarter. We're building and developing a business to generate very material value creation long term. As we look into the future, pretty much most new models that are sold will have native NACS ports. So this is an important strategic objective for us. We've already got about 240 NACS stalls operational. We're expecting 500 this year and everything from 2023 vintage sites to have at least 1 NACS cable. But in terms of your specific question, throughput on our NACS stalls that we deployed since the last call has now more than doubled. We've got now double the number of Tesla drivers than we've ever had before, which is super exciting. These -- the usage on these stores are still -- well, they're below the usage that we see in our CCS stores, which is why I said all year that this NACS transition is a very important investment for us. Without this choice, we might see slightly higher throughput per store, but it's one that we think is a super important effect in the long term. And I think that the important thing here is that with this agreement with Tesla, we expect all of that to just motor up. We're deploying EVgo superchargers and importantly, the NACS stores that we have retrofit, the EVgo stores that are not superchargers that we've been retrofitting they will appear on the navigation for vehicles for Tesla drivers. We know from our experience that Tesla drivers tend to rely on their NAV a lot more than non-Tesla drivers. And so this is a really important unlock for us. And in terms of how we compare our utilization on the stall that we deployed in Q2 is about 3x higher than pretty much the average of everybody else other than, of course, Tesla. So, we're -- we just continue to reinforce the point that we've got great utilization on our network. And really this deal, I think, is a really great sort of source of momentum for the business.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Andres Sheppard with Cantor.

This is Anand on for Andres. Congrats on the quarter. So, firstly, I wanted to touch on today's announcement of the Supercharger rollout, building a little bit off the last question, but more on the financial front. With Tesla building and operating the chargers, but EVgo owning them, can you walk us through maybe how that affects your CapEx, throughput, utilization or other aspects of your financials and unit economics?

For sure. Yes. Look, the gross CapEx per store is pretty much in line with our gross CapEx per store for our existing sites. The Tesla will own and will operate -- I'm sorry, we will own, Tesla will operate and maintain these stores. And those costs are also broadly in line. We would expect to see utilization and throughput on these stores to be broadly equivalent to our existing network. Indeed, I think that you could make the case that over time, because these stores are serving both the Magic Dock technology, both CCS and NACS that you might see an increase. We don't, of course, assume that our forecasts are always conservative. And so in every respect, the economics -- we set the pricing in line with all of the rest of our pricing programs. So, in many -- in every respect, the economics are really broadly the same with potentially some upside. And I think importantly, and I think I just want to reemphasize is with this agreement, the EVgo non-supercharger stores that will have NACS that sites that will have NACS cables will be appearing on the Tesla navigation. So that just expands our reach, provides more options for Tesla drivers to charge their vehicles. And as I said before, these sites of 350-kilowatt sites versus Tesla supercharger network is generally slower, and they're very conveniently located to where drivers live, work and go [ other actions ].

Got it. Appreciate the color. And maybe as a follow-up, relatedly touching on that utilization you mentioned. I was wondering maybe are you seeing stronger utilization on your newer or more mature stalls? And maybe have there been any surprising trends based on geographies? And how should we maybe think about that in the future with the mix of retail versus AV and fleet/rideshare changing, especially in 4Q, as you mentioned in the call?

Yes. Look, I think that there's a really a ton of momentum in the business that we're seeing. We're just super excited by it. Of course, the deployment of the EVgo Supercharge is one. But I think a couple of other points I do want to make sure that we bring out, which is that the usage, the throughput per store per day that we see on our 350-kilowatt -- our mature 350-kilowatt machines, which is now the majority of our network and will be, in fact, 95-plus percent of the network by 2030 are already operating at the 2028 levels. We provided you with a long-term forecast here just to give you a sense of why we're so excited about the growth of the business. But we also gave you a midpoint, the 2028, just to give you a sense that going from where we are today to $0.5 billion in EBITDA recurring is entirely achievable if you just take it one step at a time. 15% of our network is now already generating 600 kilowatt hours per store per day. Our entire mature 350-kilowatt network is now averaging in the mid-350s, which is what we're projecting for 2028. So, we're really thrilled about where we are in terms of our throughput. Some of the equipment that's frankly holding us back will be pretty much gone. We've got about 500 low-power kind of 50-kilowatt machines, which we've said for many years, we've been on a program to renew. They all have gone, all of it upgraded by 2028. I think the second thing that I think I want to make sure we bring out is that with the nondilutive financing that we have in place, we're really scaling the business. And so we're in dialogue with site host partners to really scale up the business. And we announced a partnership with Brixmor a couple of days ago, which really reinforces just the quality of site host agreements, the scale and quality. We're signing up stores with new site hosts about 3x the level we were in 2025, which is why you get this enormous operationalization of new stores in this fourth quarter, but also 2.5 to threefold increase in new stores in 2027. So, it's a huge scale up, but with a great quality site hosts. If you aren't already familiar with Brixmor, we're talking about one of the, I think, the largest wholly owned grocery-anchored shopping center owner in the United States. These are brands like Kroger's, Publix, HEB, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, these are great locations. We love the grocery store anchor because Americans, on average, go to grocery stores 2 to 3 times a week, and they typically spend 25 minutes, which is just a perfect fit with our superchargers. So, in terms of nuggets of insight, there's some really -- I think there's some really exciting momentum that we feel that we have in the business.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Chris Pierce with Needham.

Keefer, could you go into a little more detail? I believe you talked about the 2025 cohort of installed sites. I'd just love to hear kind of what you were referencing. I think you said it wasn't performing in line with expectations.

Yes. So, what we mentioned was the '25 cohort has just been ramping a little bit slower than original prediction and compared to the '23 and '24 cohort, which those on average took roughly 12 months to reach maturity. With that said, the 2025 cohort is only 8.5 months in from a median age standpoint. So, it still has time to season and mature. I think most importantly here, to Badar's point, as you look ahead to '26, '27 and beyond, we're about as well positioned as we've ever been from a site pipeline quality standpoint. So, as we look forward to this year and the deployment in Q4 and into '27 and beyond, we're really excited about the future cohorts are coming here.

And are those 350-kilowatt sites, or is it something about the location or just the moment in time with EV adoption changes there? I guess I just kind of want to get a broader picture of that cohort.

Yes. First, as we talked about quite a bit last year and early part of this year, if you remember, a good portion of our 2025 cohort came with very high capital offsets. When you run the NPV on these things, a higher CapEx offset means you really don't need as strong throughput level. And so it's a little different from what we've been doing over the last several years. We've had very good offsets, but that's partly because we've had these OEM funding programs and a variety of other capital offset sources. Last year, we had a much higher level of state and utility incentives. And what we're, Keefer was just saying that we're finding is that the ramp of a bunch of that cohort is actually a little bit slower. We didn't need a particularly high ramp in throughput for the NPV to be fine. And so what we've done is we've kind of adjusted our underwriting so that we are focused on not just the long term, but also the near term -- and that's leading us to these phenomenal site hosts and scale that we're looking at over the next couple of years.

Got it. Perfect. And then if I look at the illustrative scenarios for 2028 and 2030 that you have out there now, I know you had a prior run rate scenario for 2029. I just -- it looks like it's a little steeper ramp to '29 and '30. I guess, if I'm reading that correctly, I just want to make sure I'm understanding what's changed or what you're trying to communicate that's different versus what you were communicating prior to the extent there is a difference. It's just -- I just want to make sure I'm on the same page basically.

Yes. The ramp -- so first of all, I think there's a few things that we're communicating. One is that all of the -- we call the mega trends and tailwinds are very much intact. So, we've had forecasts change for VIO. But even with the forecast for VIO that we have today, which is, as you know, 60% lower than the forecast 3 years ago, there's still a doubling of VIO. We're still seeing growth in the share of public fast charging of total charging that's driven by rideshare, by more affordable vehicles being driven by people who don't have charging at home, this enormous tailwind of used leases that are due to roll off 1.5 million vehicles. Again, that will attract people, we expect who will be charging at public fast charging at high rates. All of those factors are very much in place and help us to support the growth in throughput per store per day. You can see that throughput per store per day has grown almost fivefold in the last 3 years. We expect -- we're conservatively assuming a much slower rate of growth in throughput per store despite all of those tailwinds. And the operating leverage, I think, is proven. You can see that we've got great operating leverage in both gross margin and in G&A. And what we're saying is all of those things remain true. The difference between our last forecast and this forecast actually is very little. We're still generating a business that's generating about $0.5 billion in adjusted EBITDA. We've given you the 2028 number and the sandbites I've just provided on the call and just now to give you a sense of really how much of our network is already operating at the 2028 level. And so that's not really much of a stretch at this point. And the difference between our last forecast is a slight reduction in the throughput per stall per day. We were assuming 450 to 500 kilowatt hours per store per day. And here, we're conservatively assuming 425 to 475. Of course, the agreement we've just announced this morning where we expect to be able to open up more than half the market that hasn't been charging with EVgo should provide some considerable upside to this forecast already. And in terms of your ramp question, no, the ramp is in terms of new stores, if you kind of look back at it, it's pretty much the same. We've actually toned down the ramp in that '28 to 2030 period versus what we had said last year. But we're still talking about 4,000 to 5,000 new stores deployed by 2030.

And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Badar Khan, CEO, for any closing remarks.

Well, great. Thank you, everyone. Our agreement with Tesla to deploy EVgo superchargers that effectively doubles our addressable market, the nondilutive financing that we have in place to continue to scale the network, our industry-leading scale and strong utilization and the fact that our mature 350-kilowatt chargers are already performing at the levels we forecast by 2028, all give us tremendous confidence in our growth, and we believe represents a growth profile that is at a very attractive valuation for shareholders. Thank you for joining, and we'll see you all next quarter.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.