Plug Power (NASDAQ:PLUG) shares fell more than 9% in pre-open Thursday after the company reported weaker-than-expected profit numbers for its second quarter.
The company reported net revenue of $260.2 million, a 72% increase compared to the same period last year. Analysts had estimated the net revenue to be around $236.7M.
The major driver for Plug Power’s strong performance was its sales of fuel cell systems, related infrastructure, and equipment, which reached $216.3 million, easily ahead of the analyst estimate of $183.4M.
Additionally, the company reported $8.70M in sales from services performed on fuel cell systems and related infrastructure. This was slightly lower than the estimated $10.9M.
Sales from power purchase agreements amounted to $16.1M, surpassing the estimate of $11.8M. However, sales from fuel delivered to customers and related equipment fell short of expectations, amounting to $17.9M instead of the estimated $21.5M.
However, despite the overall strong performance, Plug Power reported a loss per share of 40 cents, compared to a loss per share of 30 cents in the same quarter last year. Analysts had estimated a loss per share of 27 cents.
“The second quarter marked a milestone for the company, with record revenue that underscored the escalating demand across our diversified product platform,” the company said in a shareholder letter.
BTIG analysts said top-line figures were better than expected.
“Despite margin challenges during the quarter, PLUG continues to build out its hydrogen network, which should drive significant margin improvement as PLUG starts to source fuel internally,” the analysts said in a note.
Truist analysts added:
“While we continue to appreciate the scale/complexity of the fully integrated hydrogen model PLUG is looking to ramp, updates out of the 2Q release largely amounted to further delays to project startups/consequently a likely push-out of achieving positive GM. We'd expect shares to underperform tomorrow on the GM miss/further delays to Georgia's green hydrogen production ramp.”