ChargePoint plunges despite staving off NYSE delisting

ChargePoint plunged roughly 20% Monday after the EV charging company announced a 20-for-1 reverse stock split in an effort to stave off delisting from the New York Stock Exchange. (The average price of the shares was under a dollar for 30 straight days, putting the company at risk of being booted from the exchange, per NYSE rules.)

A reverse stock split essentially packages up a number of super cheap shares to create a single one with a respectable-looking price. In ChargePoint’s case, 20 of them became one, and presto! A higher-priced stock — more than $9.50 a share at last glance — avoids delisting.

Unfortunately, solving the company’s business challenges is a different matter. Since going public via SPAC in March 2021, ChargePoint has done nothing but lose money. Seriously, it hasn’t had a single profitable quarter on either a GAAP or adjusted basis. The market has taken notice.

For a moment in late 2021, there was some optimism surrounding ChargePoint and other EV charging stocks as the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill was set to pump $7.5 billion of government money into the country’s charging station infrastructure.

But those days are long gone, as President Trump made pausing spending on charging infrastructure a priority from his first day in office, along with a raft of measures aimed at de-incentivizing the EV industry.