Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Blink Charging Co. third quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be opened for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Aly Bonilla, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Blink Charging's third quarter 2021 investor call. On the call today, we have Michael Farkas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Brendan Jones, President, and Michael Rama, Chief Financial Officer. Please note that there is a slide presentation accompanying today's earnings call, whereby viewers can follow along. The slides can be accessed on the investor relations section of the Blink Charging website. I would like to take a moment to read the safe harbor statement. This conference call contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended.
These forward-looking statements and terms such as anticipate, expect, intend, may, will, should, or other comparable terms involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Blink and members of its management, as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, including those described in Blink's periodic reports filed with the SEC, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Except as required by federal securities law, Blink undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed conditions. I will now turn the call over to Michael Farkas, CEO of Blink Charging. Go ahead, Michael.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Let me start by highlighting some of our achievements in Q3, which was a very strong quarter for Blink. As you can see, revenue grew to $6.4 million, a record for the company, fueled by strong performance in both product sales and service revenues. This was a 607% increase. I'm going to repeat that. 607% compared to the same quarter last year, and a 47% increase sequentially from Q2. We are making tremendous strides increasing our network of property partners and signing exclusive multi-year contracts as we continue to gain traction in the ever-growing EV infrastructure market.
In the quarter, we contracted, sold, or deployed over 3,000 commercial and residential chargers and have grown the number of commercial Blink-owned charging stations by more than 100% compared to the same quarter last year, which aligns with our strategic focus on expanding our Blink-owned charging footprint. We continue to target deployments in high density, high volume venues like municipal locations, mixed-use centers, hotels, multi-family residential and healthcare facilities. This will best position us to maximize the utilization rates of our chargers as more individual drivers and fleets transition to greener transportation. Our international growth strategy remains on track, highlighted by Blue Corner's most recent contract with KU Leuven to expand our charging stations to various locations across Belgium.
Throughout the quarter, the company has also been very successful winning new grant and rebate awards from various government programs, bringing our total award to $25 million this year alone. Lastly, we continue to add the most talented people in the industry to support our expected growth with over 20 new employees added in this quarter. As we see in the next slide, the EV industry is in its early stages of massive growth for the foreseeable future, and we are well positioned at the forefront of this industry expansion. The International Energy Agency projects global EV sales to grow from three million vehicles in 2020 to about 25 million vehicles in 2030, a 24% CAGR growth rate in this period alone. With sales of EV transportation segments expected to grow exponentially, there will be an ever-increasing need for additional charging infrastructure.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the country reached a milestone with its 100,000th EV charging station earlier this year. Industry analysts at Guidehouse Insights forecast that we will need a total of $120 million. I'm going to repeat that, $120 million chargers globally by 2030. This industry hasn't even started. This is providing tremendous opportunity for us to greatly expand our charging footprint. A key driver of this anticipated growth has been and will continue to be the favorable legislative environment surrounding EV adoption on both a national and global scale.
As I'm sure many of you are aware, just last week, U.S. congressional lawmakers passed a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill of which $7.5 billion is just focused and targeted on EV charging build-out and infrastructure. This bill aligns with the president's aspirations to have half of the vehicles sold in the United States in 2030 to be zero-emission vehicles and to have 500,000 EV charging stations in place that same year. You know, the Biden administration looks at charging stations as one looks at gas stations where you have many pumps or chargers at those locations. So those 500,000 charging stations actually translates into two to three million individual chargers.
We believe this legislation is a game changer for our industry and will provide opportunities to significantly accelerate the development and deployment of an expansive EV charging network in the U.S. Looking at slide six, we believe Blink is uniquely positioned to deliver shareholder value driven by four competitive advantages. First, our products are built with the most advanced technology in the industry. We design our products with future innovation in mind, so they employ cutting-edge technology and can be utilized for many years to come and not become obsolete like many competing chargers on the market today. Again, we have a different model. We own and operate our charging stations. We build our charging stations to last in the field for a very, very long time.
Our competitors are driven by upgrades, and for their customers to have to put new chargers in the ground every couple of years. We build a better box because we own it and want it to be in the field for a very, very long time. Second, we offer our customers multiple deployment methodologies to choose from, providing them with the ideal solution to match their specific needs. In addition to the flexible model options for our customers, we provide best-in-class products through long-term exclusive contracts with automatic extensions. These agreements allow Blink to establish a market presence at our customers' locations and add charging stations at our discretion when usage increases and demand requires. We largely focus on charging stations that are Blink-owned because that enables us to benefit from and take advantage of valuable recurring revenue streams for many, many years to come.
Due to the breadth and depth of our offerings, Blink is the only fully vertically integrated EV charging infrastructure company in the U.S. today. Third, our company is laser-focused on expanding our charging footprint both domestically and internationally. We are intent on finding partner locations in high-density areas that will not only meet the needs of current EV drivers, but will position us also to capitalize on the steady transition away from gas-powered vehicles to EVs. Europe has more quickly adopted the shift to EVs, and our recent acquisition of Blue Corner is already extending our presence on the continent. We look forward to the continued expansion of our footprint through both organic efforts and M&A opportunities.
Finally, as EV adoption accelerates throughout the world, combined with our expanding footprint of strategically placed charging stations, we believe utilization will continue to improve at a faster growth rate, leading to higher recurring service revenues in the future. Altogether, these four key advantages are what sets us apart from our competitors and provides Blink with attractive long-term economics for our stakeholders. In summary, we're excited to have achieved record revenues in Q3, and we're making great progress on many aspects of our business, thanks to the tremendous efforts made by all of our dedicated employees. Our employees are what Blink's made of. It's important to remember that we are at the beginning of the EV transition with much more to go, which is why we're strategically investing across our business to ensure we capitalize on all of the opportunities we're seeing in this amazingly booming market.
2021 has been a busy and exciting year thus far, and we look forward to finishing the year strong and carrying our momentum into 2022. Now I'll turn the call over to Brendan Jones, President of Blink, to discuss some of our recent developments. Go ahead, Brendan.
Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to speak with everyone today. We are seeing consistent and growing interest in our company's products and services, resulting in many new contract wins in Q3. Slide eight shows you some of our notable U.S. wins, which include partnering with the city of San Antonio to deploy 202 Blink-owned Level Two charging stations and 3 DC fast charger stations throughout the city, with the first deployment taking place a few weeks ago at the San Antonio Zoo. We are also expanding Blink Mobility via our BlueLA car sharing program with the city of Los Angeles to deploy and operate 300 additional charging stations, bringing the total under the program to 500, which will be placed at 100 locations throughout Los Angeles.
We've entered into a five-year agreement with Greenlight Communities to deploy 58 Blink-owned charging stations within their multifamily residential communities across Arizona, and we are looking forward to providing them with additional charging stations as new communities are built and expanded. Now, turning to slide nine, we've entered into three new reseller agreements that allow us to access the distribution channels of our partners and increase our market reach. We entered into a supplier contract with Sourcewell, a self-sustaining government organization that offers contract purchasing solutions, capturing the potential buying power of over 50,000 organizations. We signed a reseller agreement with Rudy's Performance Parts, an online North Carolina-based leading automotive provider, for the resale of Blink chargers across their distribution channels.
We also partnered with Traffic and Parking Control Co., Inc., known as TAPCO, a Wisconsin-based custom traffic safety and parking solutions provider, for the distribution of Blink chargers. Now if we turn to slide 10. Within the last 12 months, Blink has contracted, sold, deployed, or acquired over 12,000 chargers, both domestically and internationally, bringing the total charger count for the company to over 28,000 since Blink's inception. We have a healthy mix of deployments in the United States and abroad, with 63% of total Blink chargers deployed in the United States and 37% deployed internationally, predominantly in Europe through Blue Corner. In addition, as of the third quarter, Blink provides service to over 250,000 registered members and unique users throughout the world.
We expect the increasing demand we are seeing for our charging stations, as well as the expansion of our footprint on a global scale to drive strong revenue growth, both near and long term for Blink. Now, if we move on to slide 11, there we are aggressively deploying charging stations in key geographic locations throughout the United States and Europe. Locations are strategically determined based on several factors, including EV penetration and driving habits, population and density figures, historical and forecasted traffic patterns, and future market growth potential. This quarter, we deployed charging stations across seven U.S. states and territories, working with both local and state government agency and numerous companies.
On the international front, we continue to grow our charging footprint overseas through our European subsidiary, Blue Corner, which most recently won a multi-year contract with KU Leuven, one of Europe's leading research institutes, to provide and operate charging stations at their campuses across Belgium. While we have broad and diverse coverage across the U.S., we continue to remain focused on expanding our charging footprint in various countries throughout the world. Turning now to slide 12. In the third quarter, we were awarded five government grants at the local and state levels, totaling tens of millions of dollars. A case in point is the $12.5 million grant we received from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Now, this award is for the deployment of 5,275 KW DC fast chargers with battery and solar-powered PV shade systems at 25 locations along Florida's major interstate highways.
We are very excited to have won this award from our own state and are happy to see that more and more government officials are placing a higher priority on building out EV infrastructure and choosing Blink as their partner of choice. Grants and rebates provide an excellent opportunity to significantly expand our charging footprint across a larger geographic region while minimizing Blink's total cash outlay for deployments, thereby decreasing the payback period and improving the return on investment. We placed a greater emphasis on securing grants and rebates to help fund the deployment of our chargers while simultaneously assisting these agencies to promote EV adoption. To make sure we win as many of these opportunities out there, especially as the incremental funding is set aside for EV charging stations as part of the new infrastructure bill, we are expanding our in-house grant and rebate team.
This will enable us to have additional resources necessary to capture increased available funds to widely deploy EV charging stations across the country. Wrapping up, we experienced significant sequential and year-over-year growth in the third quarter of 2021. The consistent growth in our deployment numbers, product sales, and revenues are excellent indicators of what's ahead for both Blink Charging and the industry as a whole. We remain confident in our ability to be a leader in the global EV charging infrastructure industry. Thank you, and I will now turn it over to our CFO, Michael Rama, to run through some of the specific results for the quarter. Go ahead, Michael.
Thank you, Brendan, and good afternoon, everyone. Now turning to slide 14, you'll see that total revenues in the third quarter of 2021 grew to $6.4 million, a record for the company, and an increase of 607% compared to the third quarter of 2020. Third quarter revenues were up 47% sequentially over the second quarter, primarily driven by increasing demand for our global EV charging infrastructure and higher service revenues. Product sales in the third quarter of 2021 were $4.8 million, an increase of 766% over the same period in 2020 as customers purchased greater volumes of our commercial chargers, DC fast chargers, and residential chargers, as well as revenues generated through our Blue Corner acquisition.
Third quarter of 2021 service revenues, which consist of charging service revenues, network fees, and ride-sharing revenues, were $1.4 million, an increase of 425% compared to the third quarter of 2020. This year-over-year growth was primarily driven by greater utilization of our chargers, an increased number of chargers on our Blink Network, revenues associated with the Blink Mobility Rideshare program and revenues from the Blue Corner acquisition. We feel combining these three service lines into the total service revenue amount makes it easier to differentiate between the product and service aspects of our business and aligns with our company's strategic goal of increasing the service component of our revenue mix and growing our recurring revenue base.
In time, as EV adoption accelerates and the utilization of our charging stations improve, we anticipate seeing a larger mix of revenues come from services. Gross profit for the third quarter of 2021 was approximately $900,000, an increase of 143% over the same period in the prior year, and up 39% sequentially from Q2. Margins remain healthy, and we continue to look at ways to reduce our component costs, especially in light of the ongoing supply chain disruptions occurring globally. Operating expenses in the third quarter of 2021 were $16.7 million compared to $4.3 million in the prior year period. The $12.4 million increase year over year was primarily due to three factors.
First, as I've discussed on previous calls, we continue to make investments in hiring new talent in order to meet the ever-increasing demand for our products and services. We are strengthening our sales, operations, marketing, IT, and customer service functions, as well as growing our in-house grant and rebate team, as Brendan just mentioned, so we can capitalize on many EV infrastructure opportunities that lie ahead. Second, we recognized $6.1 million in higher share-based compensation expense, mostly related to a special performance option equity award. We anticipate a similar non-cash share-based compensation amount to be recorded in the fourth quarter, with this special performance option equity award to be fully expensed by January 2022.
Third, the full operating expenses from our three most recent acquisitions, U-Go, BlueLA, and Blue Corner, are included in the third quarter 2021 results, whereas these expenses were predominantly absent in the prior year's numbers. I do want to reiterate that we will continue to invest in new technology and talent across the business, but we'll ensure expenses are closely watched. This quarter, we are also introducing a new financial metric, adjusted EBITDA, going forward. Our management team believes this non-GAAP measure is useful in evaluating our company's core operating performance because it excludes items that are either significant non-cash or non-recurring expenses.
As such, adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2021 was a loss of $8.4 million compared to a loss of $3.7 million in the prior year period, largely due to the higher operating expenses, as I just mentioned. However, third quarter 2021 adjusted EBITDA improved sequentially from Q2 as we continued to make progress towards scaling the business. Now turning to slide 15, you can see that both our revenue and gross profit have performed quite well over the last several quarters, with the trend showing an upward growth trajectory. As we drive our owner-operated strategy, combined with greater demand for EV infrastructure and increased utilization rates, we have the opportunity to dramatically improve both revenue and gross profits even further over time.
Moving to our cash position, we ended the quarter with approximately $187 million of cash and marketable securities compared to $22 million we ended with last year. We believe we have sufficient cash on hand to fund our strategic initiatives. These initiatives include building innovative product and software platforms, onboarding additional talent, extending our market reach globally, and potentially acquiring businesses that could either accelerate the company's growth or expand Blink's vertical integration within the broader EV infrastructure ecosystem. Summing up, I'm pleased with the record revenues in the third quarter and the direction many of our financial metrics are headed. We're still in the early stages of the EV evolution and still have much work to be done, but we believe Blink is well-positioned to take advantage of the EV infrastructure growth the industry is poised to deliver.
I will now turn the call back over to Michael Farkas with some final remarks.
I would like to end this call emphasizing that our primary focus at Blink has been and will always be on securing the best locations and extending our relationships with property partners and location managers. We've always known that there would be multiple opportunities to monetize our trophy locations that we've developed over the last 12 years, more than just EV charging services. We're excited to announce at this time another way of monetizing our portfolio of locations. We're unveiling new innovative products at CES in early January this coming year. These new products feature state-of-the-art technology with large, high-resolution screens that will allow Blink and its property partners to monetize locations immediately by generating advertising revenues.
These revenues will be in addition to the charging revenues received, unlike others in our space who give away charging services, which will now create yet another valuable recurring revenue stream potential for Blink and for our stakeholders. We look forward to rolling out this new product globally in 2022, so I encourage everyone to come see our booth at CES this year. With that, we will now open the call for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone now. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may press star two to leave the queue. We do ask that if you are listening via speakerphone to please pick up your handset for optimum sound quality. Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one now. Please hold for a moment while we pull for questions. Our first question today is coming from Matt Summerville at D.A. Davidson. Your line is live. You may begin.
Good afternoon. This is William Jellison on for Matt Summerville today. I want to begin by talking about charging service because it saw a pretty impressive ramp from the second quarter. I was just wondering if you could provide any color as to where that charging service number came in relative to what you were expecting nine days ago. As well, if you can provide any color on the mix between what incremental revenue was generated from new stations themselves versus an increase in utilization.
Hello, this is Michael Farkas. You know, again, obviously we're seeing more people traveling today, and that's going to impact charging station revenues considerably. You know, there are more people on the roads, and as you can see from EV sales, you're seeing more EVs specifically on the road. That's been pretty impactful. Michael, you wanna grab the second part of the question?
You need to repeat that?
Yes. Yeah.
Can you repeat the question?
We saw a strong third quarter growth in our charging stations, you know, QoQ from the third quarter of last year. You know, part of it was the ramp up because of the because of obviously lower utilization from COVID, you know, in 2020. But we have a lot more, you know, there's a lot more chargers that are also in the ground that we own and operate. And also, a contribution to that is Blue Corner. Remember their mix. They are also owner operator business like we are in selling as well as selling chargers. There is a contribution that comes. We've had a mix.
It came from all over the place. We're very encouraged with the continuous growth in that charging revenues, obviously very excited. We expect that, you know, obviously as more and more chargers are put in the ground that we own and operate to see that continued trajectory.
Understood. Okay. Then for my follow-up, pivoting to supply chain, which I'm sure you felt to some degree along with most everyone else in the world, this quarter. Could you provide any commentary as to where you might have felt those challenges? You know, thinking about either logistics versus component sourcing, and where you expect those challenges to take you in fourth quarter and into 2022.
Okay. We've been fortunate enough not to be heavily impacted today by some of these component shortages other than releasing newer technology. There's a protocol that's being implemented throughout the industry that's Plug & Charge. You don't need mobile applications, and you don't need RFID cards. Unfortunately, that's being impacted right now. For us getting our charging stations out there without some of that newer technology, we're doing okay. Shipments do take a bit longer than we expect. That is impacting us a bit. We hope that it's gonna be cleared up by, you know, mid to late second quarter of 2022.
Understood. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Craig Irwin at Roth Capital Partners. Your line is live. You may begin.
Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. Guys, you've been at this game for quite a while, right? You've been a public company for a number of years. There was another company that reported in the last couple days that gave guidance based on a holiday season maybe causing a contraction in the miles driven with EVs and maybe demand for charging. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the historic trends you've seen in the holiday season and whether or not you think that people are actually starting to drive longer distances with their EVs, use them more, you know, and want to show them off to their family members when these holiday events come around?
We're not experiencing the same issue as some of our competitors. I mean, you are correct. We are doing this for a long time, a very long time. We've been doing this longer than pretty much any of our competitors, especially from an own and operate position. You know, we kind of invented the space.
Yes, you did. The second question, I know you guys are always a little bit shy about talking about.
Increases in a-
Sorry, Michael, I was just gonna ask. My second question is, I know you guys are always a little bit shy talking about utilization on the network. So if we could maybe talk in generalizations here. It looks like you are more than double the utilization this past quarter than any preceding quarter. Actually, I would say closer to 2.5% above the utilization peak that you had in any preceding period. Is that approximately accurate?
I'm not sure we lost Michael.
Well-
This is
Go ahead, Michael or Rama, why don't you answer the question?
Yeah. No, yeah, you're right. We're seeing the increase in utilization. You know, obviously, you know, we're still, you know, in general, you know, as we've mentioned before, you know, EVs, the percentage of EVs to all vehicles is still low, right, in the ecosystem. But we're seeing that trajectory start to increase. More OEMs, more vehicles on the road, and we are seeing that increase in utilization with many of our chargers. And yeah, the increases as you noted, Craig, you're seeing it as well. By the way, back on. Sorry for that technical difficulty. I guess the phone gods don't like me on these calls.
Both you and me, I think, were cut off last time, so.
Exactly. I guess, I'm the unlucky one, and you're still on.
Well, yeah, maybe, I guess, but it's this time. Last question, right? You're clearly investing for growth here. How should we think about the expense burden in the next few quarters? Should we look at similar sequential growth over the next couple quarters? You know, what factors do you consider in your hiring programs and your investment in market development?
We see growth increasing across the board for the next little while in this space. Will we have, you know, 600%-700% growth, you know, in parts of our business? Could be. You know, again, we're more conservative in our approach. If we, you know, over excel and do better than we expect, that's great. The growth is gonna be in this industry. As I mentioned in what I said earlier, you know, we're talking about reaching a benchmark of about 100,000 units earlier this year. Globally, you know, we need $120 million chargers by 2030.
We believe that we're gonna be able to participate in deploying a lot of those charging stations, whether we own them and operate them through our Blink Owned model, or we sell our hardware to third parties. We believe we're gonna participate. We've been getting some tremendous validation within the industry. You know, as people see more and more of our chargers, you know, on the streets, in trophy locations, in the buildings they live in and the buildings they work in, they'll be more and more familiar with us, and I think it'll accelerate our growth as well. This industry is gonna grow for the foreseeable future, and everyone really needs to take into consideration. Remember something, it's inevitable. Probably Monday sometime, our president is signing the bill.
You're talking $7.5 billion being invested in deploying charging stations throughout the United States. You know, just historically, looking at how we've been able to participate on these grants and rebates, we should be able to extract a lot of that money, whether it's our customers using that capital to deploy charging stations or us getting as much of it as possible for us to deploy charging stations that we own ourselves. Right now, you know, historically, we've never seen, you know, a business that is in such a growth phase and also being showered with massive capital by the government. That's the position that we're in. Everyone who's in this industry right now is gonna be able to take advantage of these opportunities.
It just so happens that Blink is, I believe, better positioned than most because of our experience, because of our team. You know, put our team against any company out there today, and hands down, I think, we're the clear winner. We have tremendous amount of experience. Look at our team from Brendan to Michael to Rich Arch. The experience that we have and is just second to none.
Great. Well, congratulations on that revenue result. I'll hop back in the queue.
You got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Sameer Joshi at Wainwright. Your line is live. You may begin.
Good afternoon, guys. Congratulations on the great progress. Michael, you mentioned investing across the business. When you step back and look at your priorities, is it more along and acquiring more companies similar to Blue Corner? Is it next generation product development? Most importantly, activities around making sure you have a seat at the table when the $7.5 billion starts getting deployed and distributed.
Okay. When it comes to our M&A plans moving forward, you know, we plan on growing organically and through acquisitions. This company's main focus has really been always to bolster their portfolio of locations. And then we've done some other acquisitions as well. But our main focus is really to how are we gonna get more customers, and how are we gonna drive down the price of our fuel to get to those customers? That's our business, is really fueling customers with electricity and bringing down the cost of our equipment while building a tremendously amazing box. That's what we work on. Our acquisitions are gonna be structured around that. Again, first and foremost, is really expanding our portfolio of locations. I've been saying this for over a decade.
This is a land grab. This is still a land grab. We have 100,000, you know, chargers, as I mentioned earlier, that we achieved earlier this year, and there's a few more since then. But there's tens of millions that need to be installed here. Globally, as I mentioned, 120 million by 2030. Our objective and our goal is to have as many locations that we can have that we own and operate, that we have long-term recurring revenue streams on an exclusive basis. Again, it's not about whether it's a Level 2 charging station or a DC fast charging station. I think a lot of people miscategorize us and say, "Hey, you're the Level 2 guys." No, it's not about that. It's about getting the land. You know, it costs us.
Yeah
Let's say $5,000-$6,000 to put a Level 2 charging station there. Today, it may not warrant a DC fast charger, but that's now our location, right? Our competitors are investing in putting DC fast chargers, and some of them who have put DC fast chargers in over the last five, six, seven, eight years, almost all of their entire portfolio of DCs are gonna be thrown in the garbage. Most people don't realize this in this space. What we've done is we've invested in a location at the smallest entry point as possible, and when utilization increases and it warrants spending $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 to outfit a location with DC fast chargers, we could always pull that Level 2 out and put in whatever we want.
In our contracts, when we own and operate, it's not about a piece of equipment, it's not about technology. It's about us having the exclusive right to provide electric vehicle charging services at that entire location. That location consists of, if you're on a scooter, I know it gets that granular. If you're on an e-bicycle, e-motorcycle, an EV that you're driving in or one of these drones that you're gonna be flying in in a few years, that is our exclusive domain at that entire address. It's not about a Level 2 charging station or a DC fast charging station. It was about us being wise enough at that point in time to spend as little amount of money to gain access to that location on an exclusive basis. I hope I answered all your questions.
Yeah. Well, yes. I mean, we have always appreciated you as a company that has built itself on land grab. I'm sure you will continue to do so. One part of the question was about how to get a seat at the table for the $7.5 billion. I know-
We're there.
You can debate.
We're there. Remember, it's about experience and history. You know, you have new fly by night companies that just came in, and they have this thing and that thing and that thing. How many companies out there have actually developed hardware, have their own network, and have actually put in thousands upon thousands upon thousands of units actually in the ground, and has the portfolio of properties that we have? I don't care if you're talking EVgo, I don't care if you're talking Electrify America. Look at the numbers of properties we have versus them, versus any of them. Nobody is even in comparison to us, but nobody's valuing the portfolio of properties that we have. They're just looking at EVgo or Electrify America or even ChargePoint. ChargePoint doesn't own anything. They sell a charging station.
I can't tell you how many locations we go in there and pull out an old charging station, an old ChargePoint, and we now have a long-term exclusive contract with them. Because our contracts are sticky, and we want, when we own a location, it's not about that one charging station. We have the entire parking lot. Every single parking space in that facility is ours. So, when EVs are 5%, we could have five or 10 units in there, and when they're at 100%, we could have 200 or 300 and 400 units in that parking slot, in the parking lot. We have locations that have 13,000 and 14,000 and 15,000 spots, and you may need 20%, 30% or 40% of them lit up. That's ours already.
Because of that gives us a seat at the table because we've done this longer than anybody, we have more access to locations than anybody, we have amazing legacy customers, and there's nothing you can compare to the experience.
Yeah. No, certainly. Just one more. Sort of along the same lines of having land grab and stickiness. You have around 250,000 registered members. Are there any plans to increase that or
We're cons-
Yeah.
When you add up all of the different customers or users that we have on our network, it's considerably higher than that. I'm not sure what I don't remember what was posted in the latest Q. I know we were discussing it not too long ago, but
It was just mentioned on the call today, someone in the call prepared remarks.
Okay.
Just wanted to see if there are like concrete efforts or plans to increase that stickiness.
Without a question. There's no question about it. We are going through a phase of growth that is beyond my dreams. The addition of Harmeet as our CTO, what you see today and what you're gonna see happen over the next quarter, the following quarter, and the quarter after, you're gonna see a Blink that no one can compete with or compare to. The experience and the knowledge that Harmeet brings to the table and the team that he has, it's nothing short of amazing what we're doing, and it's touching every single aspect of our business. Whether it's the IT in our company, whether it's the hardware itself, you know, the services, the systems, the functionality, the features. You're gonna see a different Blink over the next six to 12 months.
You guys are gonna be very, very surprised. There's not one thing in this company that's not gonna be completely revised and taken up to levels that are not in the rest of the space.
Yeah. No.
I know people say, "Hey, wait, maybe Michael's being a little bit aggressive." But you want to know something? For 13 years I've been pitching EVs when everybody thought I was nuts, and everybody thought I didn't know what I was talking about. But the bottom line is, I'm telling you, the team that was built over the last little while and the outcome of their efforts are now starting to be felt. What we're gonna see over the next little while is just incredible. I can speak of this because I know what my competitors are working on. I know what their products are. You could see what we're gonna have over the next little while. It's gonna be very, very impressive.
I'll just tell you, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. Congratulations once again, and all the best. Yeah. I'll take my other questions offline.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You've got it.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Gabe Daoud at Cowen. Your line is live. You may begin.
Thanks. Good afternoon, guys. Was curious if you could maybe talk to or maybe guide us to a little bit of what you have in the backlog in terms of stations that Blink owns and operates that are maybe in some kind of construction queue that you intend on getting to over the next couple of months. Is there like a number that you can maybe talk to in terms of stations that are in progress?
I don't think we've ever publicly, you know, disclosed information like that, so, you know, we weren't really prepared for that here. The best thing I could tell you is, if you haven't downloaded our app, download our app. Without me disclosing any names or having to say anything, scroll in on the entire United States on that map, and then press the list button, so you could see them written out by names. Then start scrolling through those names. Then you'll understand the industry validation that we're now receiving. Without tooting our own horn, do that on your own and it'll speak for itself. The bottom line is we haven't ever detailed and outlined our pipeline before.
I'd have to speak to legal, and I don't know if this is the time to do it right now. Ultimately, again, this industry is at such a massive growth phase. We're gonna see massive activity now with the Biden dollars. None of us have even felt any of that activity coming. Without a question, you're gonna see major growth in this industry across the board, whether it's us or any of our competitors because of what's just going on legislatively and the amount of money that's available globally.
Thanks, Michael.
I hope that answered your question.
Yeah. No, we could certainly take a look at that. I guess just following up, the new product that it looks like you'll outline or unveil in Vegas in a couple of months here, could you maybe talk a little bit about that, how that changes?
Yes
just the strategy, these advertising stations and if you have any like demand or orders for anything like this so far?
Yes. We have a tremendous amount of interest in having a product like this available. We're very interested in having the product because it allows us to monetize locations that we've developed over the last decade plus, where in the past we relied solely upon charging station revenues or obviously our hardware sales. This really allows us to incentivize property owners to put the hardware in today, because, you know, there's instant gratification, and with charging stations it's a little bit further down the road. We're looking at this product both as in our own and operate model, as well as, being able to provide this to those that buy chargers from us, and then being able to participate on the advertising side. We're extremely excited about this.
I'm sure most of you guys over the years if you've heard me, I've always talked about different ideas and concepts that we're gonna hopefully, once we reach a certain scale, start releasing and trying to monetize all these locations that we have. There's quite a few different ways to do so. This is something where, you know, we believe we could make a very big impact on the market. We're not looking to give away free charging as some of our competitors do. We're looking to go ahead and have the property owner be able to participate and share in the advertising revenues as well as charging station revenues.
We believe that it's an amazing product that's gonna be really very well received by property owners across the globe.
Great. Looking forward to more details on that. Last one from me, Michael. Is there an updated station count? I didn't get the number on the conference call. I was curious of the stations that are on network, what's the percentage, what's the update on the ones that you do own and operate at this point?
Michael, do you have that on you?
Yeah. We have about and we'll be releasing in the queue tomorrow when we file. We couldn't file today 'cause the SEC was closed. As part of the slides of the combined over 28,000 of what's on the Blink Network, 7,200 are on the Blink Network and 4,430 are L2 publicly accessible commercial chargers. We've been running about half and half, you know, between what's owned and operated and some of the host sites.
Got it. Okay, thanks Des. Good.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Stephen Gengaro at Stifel. Your line is live. You may begin.
Thanks. Good evening, gentlemen.
Good evening.
Two things for me. I wanted to ask you. One is, can you give us an update on the Blue Corner transaction? Just maybe as part of that, I'm curious, is there anything that you have learned from them that is applicable to the U.S. market that you hadn't thought of or that could be-
Okay. I wish I was on video because when you ask me about Blue Corner, I just have this massive smile on my face. You know, one of the things about Blink is, you know, most don't know, but we've grown through consolidation acquisitions. I think we're a combination of about 11 or 12 companies to date. I used to think the Ecotality acquisition, where there was about $200 million-$300 million invested in the company, and we bought them for $3.35 million and all their assets and the Blink name and the Blink technology. I used to think that was the best transaction that Blink ever did. Most people are like, "How you know, what's wrong with Blue Corner?
How is it possible you bought those guys for, like, EUR 25 million? There must be some major issues with that company. I have to tell you, without doubt, as of today, Blue Corner was the best, most unbelievable transaction this company has ever done. The growth that they're having, the impact that they have is just off the charts. The amount of exchanging between us and them from every facet of our businesses is across the board.
You know, if you took that company and looked at it on its own merits and it was a standalone company and it was trading on its own, I would tell you the company would probably be worth $1 billion on its own, based upon obviously these, you know, beautiful valuations that we have today in this space. I don't think this company has received any value for that acquisition as of yet, because I think everybody is underestimating or doesn't realize what we've accomplished with that deal. It is off the charts for the company. We're seeing it and feeling it every single day. What we're working on right now is completely internationalizing Blink because today we have, you know, a Blue Corner network.
We have another Blink international network, and then we have the Blink Network. In very short order, you're gonna have one Blink Network that handles all of these charging stations across the globe, multi-currency, multi-language, and we're gonna see some amazing savings to our businesses and those that we acquired because of those advancements to our network and everything and all the technology around it. The Blue Corner transaction was just off the charts for us.
Great. Thank you. The other question I just wanted to ask about, as I know you're not gonna give any specifics about the fourth quarter, but when you think about the fourth quarter from a seasonality perspective, do you tend to see more installations and more sales? I mean, I imagine maybe more sales just because of the auto sales in general tend to be up late in the year. But is there any
The third quarter, typically, because you have Thanksgiving and Christmas and the end of the year and all that kind of stuff, typically, as you can see historically, we went public through a bunch of different quarters, so you can see the trends. Historically, the fourth quarter is slower than the rest of the year. Again, we'll see how that goes. You know, it hasn't been too bad, but you know, it's definitely without a question, you do see some seasonality. Also remember we're storing equipment, you know, throughout the country. There are certain cold areas that makes it a little bit more difficult to install. We definitely do see some seasonality in our space.
Would that just suggest slower growth but growth sequentially, or do you not wanna comment on that?
Again, you know, just if you look at our prior year periods, you know, over the last year and then the prior periods, we're showing exponential growth from prior year periods. As a quarter of the year, it's slower than, let's say, other quarters of the year because of the seasonality and the weather and so on.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
I appreciate the color. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Yes. Our next question today is coming from Noel Parks at Tuohy Brothers. Your line is live. You may begin.
Hey, good afternoon.
Hello.
You know, one question I wanted to ask you about, and you touched on it a little bit earlier, is that we do have a bunch of international players in the EV charging space without a big U.S. presence who are in the process of entering. In contrast to your business model, most of them are just OEMs whose business does not extend to installations. Generally you think, you know, more competition, not a good thing. I'm just wondering, does the wider hardware variety that's on its way to getting offered in the U.S., is there actually an opportunity or a benefit to you potentially from that?
Okay. What do you mean by installations, owning and operating or actually doing the physical installations?
Actually, either one. Most of them are kind of just equipment only of the, you know, the like Asian and European players that are now starting to work their way into the U.S.
Okay. Our philosophy that we developed about 13 years ago almost led us to the belief and understanding that all hardware becomes commoditized. I'll just give you a perfect example. The first ChargePoint unit that we ever bought, you know, in our H1 of our lives, us and ChargePoint, they were our supplier, we were their biggest customer. Once we bought the Ecotality assets, we started developing our own hardware. Prior to that, we only owned and operated. We bought hardware at $6,200 for a single port unit. I think it had maybe 1.8 KW of output.
Today we're seeing stuff, you know, at you know on a European side of the business, maybe $1,000-$1,200 per port, and you're looking at potentially 43 KW of output. So, you're talking about massive commoditization, massive consolidation on pricing, massive compression, obviously $6,200, much faster, much more robust, much more features, and you're getting down to $1,000. That's not the space that we wanna focus on because that's inevitable. You're gonna have charging ports for a few $100 a piece that are gonna have connectivity. It's ultimately gonna get there. The real future of this business is owning those locations and having the recurring revenue stream over and over and over again. Hardware becomes commoditized in every business. We see that across the board.
You usually typically have a few players. We built a charging station that can satisfy our customers and satisfy our property owners and make sure that we alleviate obsolescence. We used that and built it for our business. Most of our competitors who develop hardware, as I mentioned earlier, they look for upgrade cycles. They want you to get rid of that stuff, a completely different way of building hardware. Again, take a look at the map, as I mentioned earlier, and you can see a lot of industry validation of where these are going. The reason why is because these OEMs actually benchmark units against all of us, ChargePoint, SemaConnect, FLO and anyone and everyone you can think of, domestic and foreign. We were selected. Why?
Because we build a better box. The reason why we do so is because our model is different. We own it. We wanna have these things in the field for 10, 20 years, if it's possible even. Our competitors build differently. It's a totally different models, where we'll spend a little bit more to firm up a unit to have a little bit better of a component. Our competitors say like, "Hey, we want a modem to go, you know, offline, and you have to buy a whole new unit in the future." We have a different way of looking at things. We wanna make sure if the modems change, you can go into that unit, change the modem without having to throw the whole box in the garbage.
Different philosophy of building hardware because we own and operate. We're seeing the payoffs of it. We're seeing people really wanna buy our hardware. I think it's gonna be a very difficult market, and I think it's gonna become commoditized because of the interest and because of the global nature of the space. Positioning ourselves as we have is to take advantage of the opportunities while they exist. While there's an opportunity to sell hardware, we're a key player in that space. While there's an opportunity to provide networking services to others besides ourself, we're in that space. Our real business, what we look at, where we're gonna be in ten and twenty years from now, is owning those charging stations and making money every single time you fuel that vehicle.
Got it. Thanks. For the ad revenue that you're envisioning with the new product you're gonna be launching, I know it's early stage with this, but is there anything you can talk about as far as what the sales channels are that you might envision for selling the ad rev,
Okay. First off, I want you to understand, when we're deploying one of these advertising pedestals, they won't be installed unless we have an advertiser who's willing to commit to pay for that advertisement. That's number one.
Got it. Okay.
It's not like we're just gonna spend money to put something in there and take some risk. That's not what we're doing. When we own and operate it, our plan is to make sure that we have the advertisers there. When we sell it to a third party, they may have their own uses for it, for their own advertising, or we'll bring the advertisers to them and monetize it that way. We plan on, when you look at the type of locations that can use this type of service, look what we're building out. Look how many municipal contracts we have, hospitals, movie theaters, mixed-use locations, shopping malls, on the streets. You know, there are certain locations that don't want them, right?
Like you might have a high-end condo building who wants a charger, but doesn't understand having screens. You have a lot of others, where you have an apartment building where the property owner doesn't mind having some advertisers so you can generate additional revenues. There are so many different locations that can use the service and want the service. It's just something really great to have in our portfolio. Every one of our locations that wanna have it, we're gonna put it in as long as we can get a commitment from an advertiser, so that we can monetize the location. We're not interested in having the Field of Dreams model with this product. This is something that we're gonna have a deal in hand before we're gonna be deploying these pedestals.
Great. Thanks. I think it's an important distinction. Thanks a lot, Farkas.
Yes. You got it.
Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back to Michael Farkas for closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for joining us. This is an extremely exciting time for our company, and we remain focused on expanding our footprint, growing our customer base, and establishing new partnerships. We look forward to speaking with you again very soon. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's event. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.