Electric-vehicle charging stations provider ChargePoint could make a massive recovery, according to UBS. Analyst Robert Jamieson initiated the stock with a buy rating. He assigned a price target of $9, implying shares could gain 85.6% from Tuesday’s closing price. UBS said the worsened sentiment around ChargePoint has created an “attractive risk/reward” profile for investors. Shares have lost more than 49% this year. Earlier this month, the company missed fiscal second-quarter revenue estimates and announced it would cut about 10% of its global workforce. ChargePoint currently has the largest market share of level 2 charging ports, which provide a greater charge in less time than their level 1 counterparts. The company has 33,000 charging stations, UBS noted. And the firm sees L2 charging ports, such as ChargePoint’s Home Flex port, eventually accounting for over 90% of the installed base in 2030, up from roughly 80% now. “L2 chargers, in our view, will play a critical role in the United States and enabling EV adoption,” Jamieson wrote in the Tuesday note. “This charging type leverages dwell times of cars and are therefore deployed in settings where EVs will be parked for several hours.” UBS expects EV charging deployments to accelerate in order to meet future expected demand, given the Biden-Harris administration’s goal to build 500,000 public EV chargers across the nation and have EVs make up at least 50% of new car sales by 2030. UBS forecast that port demand will grow at a 40% compound annual growth rate through 2030, saying that deployments would need to more than double to roughly 45,000 annually through 2030, compared to the 20,000 average annual deployments between 2019 and 2022. — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
