Nuvve Holding Corp. (NVVE) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good evening, and welcome to the Nuvve Holding Corporation Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. On today's call are Gregory Poilasne, Chief Executive Officer; and David Robson, Chief Financial Officer of Nuvve. Earlier today, Nuvve issued a press release announcing its Q4 '25 and FY '25. Following prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements. While these forward-looking statements reflect Nuvve's best current judgment, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied by these forward-looking projections. These risk factors are discussed in Nuvve's filings with the SEC and in the earnings release issued today, which are available on our website. Nuvve undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Gregory Poilasne, Chief Executive Officer of Nuvve. Gregory?

Thank you, and good afternoon to everyone here today. Welcome to our Q4 '25 and Full Year '25 Results Call. 2025 has been a transition year where we have been pivoting from vehicle-to-grid deployments to stationary storage. Stationary battery were not new to Nuvve. We have been managing batteries for a few years in the U.S., for example, at the University of California, San Diego and in Japan with our partner at the time, Toyota Tsusho. Nuvve's platform has been designed to manage batteries from the ground up, either on wheels or stationary with the benefits of aggregation, second by second control and advanced stacking services, including behind-the-meter energy cost optimization, distribution grid support and ancillary services. We also started to integrate artificial intelligence-based functionalities 3 years ago with a focus on forecasting for battery usage and market values. Nuvve has now moved on into a full end-to-end AI-based product development cycle and is currently integrating AI-based project management, sales support and finance functionalities in order to scale our business while we are reducing our cost base. Though we are not stopping our current activities in school bus and fleets, all the market signals we are receiving are confirming that our pivot towards stationary battery deployments is the right path. In Europe, we have recently announced a partnership with OMNIA Global, a Zug Switzerland-based family office. The partnership with OMNIA is really a meeting of the minds as OMNIA has developed a 1 gigawatt plus battery pipeline across multiple countries in Europe that will be deployed over the next 24 months. The purpose of the partnership is to deploy batteries across Europe, batteries that will be owned by Nuvve. We have already announced 3 projects, a 50-megawatt 75-megawatt hour project in Sweden, a 40-megawatt 80-megawatt hour project in Austria, and a 60-megawatt 120-megawatt hour project in Romania. Different process are underway in order for Nuvve to ultimately own these batteries. The combination of these 3 battery projects represents 150 megawatts. Compensation for such battery projects can vary between $250,000 per megawatt per year to more than $500,000 per megawatt per year. This is an extremely exciting opportunity with tremendous upside for Nuvve and our shareholders. In Japan, following the termination of our partnership with Toyota Tsusho, we have then started our own entity, Nuvve Japan. The Japanese market is a less mature market, and therefore, we are pursuing different business models. We recently announced the sale of a 2-megawatt 8-megawatt hour battery for $3.35 million battery in Niigata Prefecture. We have already received a little less than $1 million as a down payment while we are targeting a battery delivery by November 2026. More recently, we have also announced that Nuvve Japan had been selected as the aggregator platform for another 2-megawatt battery projects. Outside of selling and managing batteries, other business models in Japan also include tolling, which is basically a rental agreement with a battery owner, receiving a fixed income on these assets while our advanced platform can generate high return with the battery. Our pipeline of opportunities in Japan has a similar size to our European project pipeline, but over a slightly longer period of time, about 36 to 48 months. Finally, we have similar battery opportunities in the United States, such as Kit Carson in New Mexico, driven by a New Mexico subsidiary. The U.S.-based battery projects don't seem to be moving as fast as projects in Europe and Japan. The exposure of these geographies to the conflict in Iran is making this project even more valuable. This effort to pivot the company started more than a year ago and is now on the verge of paying off. The future of Nuvve in the stationary battery space looks bright. Our partnership with OMNIA Global is absolutely transformative. Our team in Japan is doing an extraordinary job developing the business, and we are looking forward to sharing more with you on our progress very soon with a tight focus on battery deployment and reducing our operating costs. Now I will let David take you through the financial details of the quarter and the year. David?

Thanks, Gregory. I will start with a recap of fourth quarter 2025 results. In the fourth quarter, we generated total revenues of $1.93 million compared to $1.79 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase was primarily driven by higher product sales and increased grant revenues, partially offset by lower service revenues due to the absence of management fees earned related to the Fresno EV infrastructure project versus the same period last year. Total revenues year-to-date through December 31, 2025, were $4.79 million, which compares to $5.29 million for the prior year period. The year-over-year decrease in revenues was driven by lower service revenues due to the absence of management fees earned related to the Fresno EV infrastructure project this year versus last year, partially offset by higher product revenues and grant revenues. Margins on products, services and grant revenues were 24.2% for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to 15.8% for the year ago period. Year-to-date margins through December 31, 2025, were 39.1% compared with 33.1% for the year ago period. Margin was positively impacted quarter-over-quarter by a higher mix of grant revenues and improved pricing on product revenues this quarter compared with last year. Excluding grant revenues, margins on product and service revenues increased to 16% for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to 11.5% in the year ago period. Year-to-date margins, excluding grant revenues through December 31, 2025, was 31% compared to 27.5% in the year ago period. As a reminder, margins can be lumpy from quarter-to-quarter depending on the mix. DC charger gross margins at standard pricing generally range from 15% to 25%, while AC charger gross margins are approximately 50%, but in dollar terms are a small fraction of the revenue of the DC charger. Grid service revenue margins are generally 30%, while software and engineering service margins are as high as 100%. During the fourth quarter of 2025, we determined that certain 125-kilowatt V2G DC Chargers held in inventory and purchased from our former third-party supplier were not conforming to our commercial product reliability standards, and they would no longer be offered for sale domestically. Given the commercial reliability issues of those DC chargers, we recognized a total inventory impairment charge of $3.47 million, reducing the carrying value of those inventories to zero. This inventory impairment loss is presented as a separate line item in the consolidated statements of operations due to its significance. Operating costs, excluding cost of sales and inventory impairment was $3.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $5.9 million for the third quarter of 2025 and $5.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. The decline in operating costs during the quarter was primarily driven by lower payroll expenses. Cash operating expenses, excluding cost of sales, inventory impairment, stock compensation and depreciation and amortization was $2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 versus $5.4 million in the third quarter of 2025 versus $5.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. This represents a decrease of $3.4 million in expenses over the same quarter last year. Other income was $0.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $0.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Both periods benefited from noncash gains from the change in the fair value of warrants and debt, offset by interest expense. Net loss attributable to Nuvve common stockholders increased in the fourth quarter of 2025 to $6.1 million from a net loss of $5.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase in net loss was primarily a result of onetime inventory impairment charge, partially offset by lower operating expenses previously mentioned. Now turning to our balance sheet. We had approximately $5.5 million in cash as of December 31, 2025, excluding $0.3 million in restricted cash, which represents an increase of $5.1 million from December 2024. The increase during the fourth quarter was primarily the result of capital raised through the issuance of preferred stock and the exercise of warrants totaling $8.1 million, $0.9 million from the sale of its equity investment in DREEV, primarily offset by $4.5 million used in operating activities. Inventories were $0.8 million at December 31, 2025, compared to $4.3 million at the end of the third quarter of 2025. The decline of $3.5 million relates to the $3.47 million impairment charge for 125-kilowatt V2G DC Chargers held in inventory, reducing the carrying value of this inventory to zero. The impaired DC chargers were subsequently transferred to property, plant and equipment at zero carrying value and will be used to support our business development efforts in Taiwan. During the quarter, accounts receivable was flat at $1.1 million at December 31, 2025, compared to the third quarter of 2025. Accounts payable at the end of the fourth quarter of 2025 was $3.4 million, an increase of $0.5 million compared to the third quarter of 2025 of $2.9 million. Accrued expenses at the end of the fourth quarter of 2025 was $1.8 million, a decrease of $3.8 million compared to the third quarter of 2025 of $5.7 million. Now turning to our megawatts under management and estimated future grid service revenues. As a reminder, megawatts under management is a metric we use to quantify the aggregate amount of electrical capacity from the deployment of our V1G and V2G chargers, which are primarily deployed in the electric school bus market in the U.S. and in light-duty fleet deployments in Europe in addition to stationary batteries. Currently, these chargers and batteries are located throughout the United States and Europe. Megawatts under management in the fourth quarter increased 7.5% over the third quarter of 2025 to 28.3 megawatts from 26.4 megawatts and decreased 7.6% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. In terms of its composition, 0.2 megawatts were from stationary batteries and 28.1 megawatts were from EV chargers. The quarter-over-quarter increase relates to the deployment of DC chargers, while the year-over-year decrease relates to the decommissioning of stationary batteries we managed in California and Japan, offset by the deployment of DC chargers. We continue to expect further growth in our megawatts under management in 2026 as we commission our backlog of customer orders we have earned in addition to new business we anticipate winning, which we have visibility to in our pipeline for both EV chargers and stationary batteries. Now turning to our backlog. At December 31, 2025, our hardware and service backlog decreased to $3.3 million, a decrease of $15.7 million from $18.3 million reported at December 31, 2024. The decrease primarily relates to the termination of the Fresno EV infrastructure project in early February 2026. As we look out to the next several quarters, we expect to see more developments from our Europe and Japan stationary battery projects. We also anticipate improvements in our cash burn resulting from the benefit of lower operating costs compared with last year. That concludes my portion of the prepared remarks. Gregory, back to you to conclude.

Thank you, David. We are confident that our pivot towards stationary storage was the right choice. And we know that moving forward, our success is going through battery deployments, especially in Europe and Japan. Expect to hear more about our deployments soon. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Showing no questions, this will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Gregory Poilasne for any closing remarks.

Thank you for listening to us today, and we're looking forward to sharing more with you in the near future. Bye-bye.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.