Earnings Previews: ChargePoint, Costco, Nordstrom

In late morning trading on Wednesday, Dow Jones industrials were down 0.45%, the S&P 500 down 0.76% and the Nasdaq down 0.90%.

After U.S. markets closed on Tuesday, AMC Entertainment reported mixed results, beating the consensus earnings per share (EPS) estimate but missing on revenue. The company’s coming vote related to increasing share count is considerably more important than AMC’s results. But isn’t everything? Shares traded down 8.6% shortly before noon.

Rivian Automotive also reported mixed results. It beat bottom-line expectations while missing on revenue. Another recall stings but does not change the company’s story. Shares traded down 17.7%.

HP met Wall Street’s EPS estimate but missed on revenue. The company does not expect 2023 to be a year of recovery for the personal computer industry. In fact, industry sales for the year may fall back to pre-pandemic levels. The stock traded down 2.2%.

Before U.S. markets opened on Wednesday, Kohl’s missed estimates on both the top and bottom lines. And the numbers were not even close. In its outlook, Kohl’s also came up short, issuing downside earnings and revenue guidance for the 2024 fiscal year that ends in January. Shares traded down 1.9%.

Lowe’s beat the EPS estimate but missed on revenue, although revenue was up 5% year over year. Fiscal 2024 EPS guidance was in line with analysts’ consensus estimate but revenue guidance was a bit short. Same-store sales are forecast to be flat to down 2%. Shares traded down more than 6%.

Nio missed estimates on both the top and bottom lines and issued downside guidance for the first quarter. The stock traded down about 5%.

After U.S. markets close on Wednesday, Plug Power, Salesforce and Snowflake are scheduled to report quarterly results. Then, Kroger and Macy’s are on deck to report first thing Thursday morning, with Broadcom, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Marvell following later in the day.

Here is a look at what to expect from three more companies set to report quarterly earnings after Thursday’s closing bell.

ChargePoint

EV charging network provider ChargePoint Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CHPT) has seen its stock price drop by nearly 21% over the past 12 months. The stock won back about half its losses in just three months. The bounce higher began in late December and shares have added more than 18% since then. ChargePoint’s shares did well until Tesla announced that it would make all its charging stations compatible with other EV makers’ vehicles. The company’s recently announced partnership with Fisker gave shares another bounce.

Analysts remain bullish on the stock, with 14 of 19 brokerages having a Buy or Strong Buy rating and the other five rating it at Hold. At a recent share price of around $11.00, the stock’s implied upside based on a median price target of $18.00 is 63.6%. At the high price target of $46.00, the implied upside is more than 300%.

Revenue is forecast to reach $164.53 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, up 31.3% sequentially and by 103.0% year over year. Analysts are expecting a loss per share of $0.16, a one-penny improvement sequentially and year over year. For the full fiscal year that ended in January, ChargePoint is expected to post a loss per share of $0.72, worse than the prior year’s per-share loss of $0.61. Forecast full-year revenue of $479.01 million is up 97.7% from last year’s actual revenue.

The company is not expected to post a profit in 2023, 2024 or 2025. ChargePoint’s enterprise value to sales multiple for 2023 is 7.9, dipping to 5.0 in 2024 and 3.3 in 2025. The stock’s 52-week trading range is $8.07 to $20.99, and the company does not pay a dividend. The total shareholder return for the past year was negative 21.06%.