Margins are at a five-year high; net loss has almost disappeared. But inexplicably, battery-swapping revenue is shrinking, average selling prices are collapsing, and the cash balance has gone backwards despite a fresh equity cheque.
Gogoro reported its second quarter on 24 August, and the press release is the most confident document the company has issued in three years. This was a good quarter on many accounts.
First, The Numbers
(Mostly) copied from the Press Release
Gogoro reported second-quarter revenue of USD 70.6 million, up 7.3% year-over-year. Within this, battery swapping service revenue was USD 37.4 million, down 0.6% year-over-year. Actually, they were mostly flat and went into negative territory due to the forex effect.
In Q2, Gogoro’s revenue from sales of hardware (scooters, motors, controllers, etc.) was USD 33.2 million, up 17.8% year-over-year.
Did you see what happened? The trend has been reversed. The sales of hardware, which have been constantly declining to date, have gone up this quarter, while the battery-swapping revenues have come down slightly.
How does that happen, considering that the vehicle parc has been going up constantly, battery swapping revenue should have been increasing. They have not in this quarter. Are the Taiwanese riding less? Did Gogoro run some fancy promotion?
We don’t know.
But this trend reversal does put a big question mark on the company’s original business plan.
Meanwhile, there are improvements elsewhere. At 22.6%, this was the highest gross margin in more than five years, even improving over Q2 2025 by 0.3%. Scratch that, the numbers are even better. Till Q4 2025, Gogoro was undertaking a voluntary battery improvement program. USD 10.9 million of last year’s cost of revenues was attributable to that. Remove that, and the margins have improved from 17.0% to 22.6%.
Gogoro’s EBITDA improved from USD 12.5 million in Q2 2025 to USD 19.3 million in Q2 2026.
This resulted in the company coming very close to breaking even on a net basis. In the second quarter, Gogoro reported a net loss of USD 4.9 million, a huge improvement from the USD 26.5 million net loss in the same period last year.
The Energy Business Is Going the Wrong Way
When we asked whether Gogoro had a future, the concern was a company whose brand had outgrown its business. The company’s swapping revenues were rising while vehicle sales fell, an energy company in which only the energy was working. We attribute this to the company’s focus on energy sales more than vehicle sales and its decision to share its platform, hardware, and technology with competitor brands in the same market.
This quarter inverted that, and its persplexing. Battery swapping revenue was USD 37.4 million, down 0.6% year-on-year. Hardware was USD 33.2 million, up 17.8%. The gap between the two has closed from USD 9.4 million to USD 4.2 million in a year, and it has closed for the wrong reason.
Subscribers grew 4%, as expected, to 677,000. However, swap revenue fell. That is an ARPU problem: USD 55.25 per subscriber per quarter against USD 58.06 a year ago, down 4.8%. Gogoro attributes it to an entry-level product mix. We find it unconvincing: the entry-level scooters also take two packs, same as the premium scooters. Swapping revenue should be constant across the range.
Whatever the cause, the subscription business that was supposed to compound is now adding users and losing revenue per user faster than it adds them. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s population and two-wheeler sales trends will ensure that the increase in users hits a close ceiling.
The hardware number deserves the same scrutiny. Gogoro-branded registrations rose 50.8%; hardware revenue rose 17.8%. That implies an ASP decline of roughly 22%, and that is before stripping out the one-off WeMo fleet delivery recognised in the quarter. The market share recovery has been bought with price, though it is in line with the changing buyer trends in Taiwan, where users are preferring cheaper scooters.
The Cash Question
The operating cash flow of USD 26.0 million in the first half is genuinely better. However, cash and equivalents fell from USD 70.6 million to USD 68.8 million over those same six months, even after USD 16.7 million of new equity from Gold Sino in March. If we remove the new share issue, then the corporate cash position went down by roughly USD 18 million, with USD 25.4 million of debt repayment accounting for most of it.
Talking of debt, the net debt sits near USD 262 million against a total equity of USD 112.3 million and an accumulated deficit of USD 641.5 million.
The Gold Sino commitment runs to roughly USD 80 million, of which USD 16.7 million is drawn. That is the buffer. It is not a large one. When we wrote that things were getting more difficult, the argument was that Taiwan could not grow and that international expansion required capital Gogoro did not have.
The Outlook
Guidance is unchanged at USD 285-305 million. The first half delivered USD 133.5 million. The midpoint therefore requires USD 161.5 million in the second half, or 21% more than the first, from a company that describes the market as soft in the same paragraph. Even the bottom of the range needs 13.4% half-on-half growth. Luna and the EZZY range will have to do considerable lifting.
Our Take
This is the best quarter Gogoro has posted since listing, and that should be said plainly. Costs are controlled, the battery upgrade pain is over, and losses are approaching zero.
But the improvement is almost entirely a cost story. First-half revenue is up 3.2%. The energy business is shrinking. ASPs are falling faster than volumes are rising. Cash went backwards with an equity injection inside it. Gogoro has stopped losing money quickly. It has not started making any, and it is still not clear what will get it there.
