Good afternoon, I'm Stan Solomon. I'm the Barclays energy desk analyst, and I'm very pleased to be introducing Blink CEO, Brendan Jones.
Well, good afternoon, everyone. Oops, I sort of fell apart here on my mic. I'm gonna put that in the pocket there, and hopefully it doesn't fall out again. So thanks everyone for having us. We're gonna jump right into the presentation so that we have enough time for Q&A. And I'll skip by the safe harbor statement. I anticipate everybody knows what that is as we move in.
So a little bit about Blink. What Blink is, is a full-service EV infrastructure company, and we operate in the United States, then globally in Europe, some aspects in Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America. And our model is that we're fully vertically integrated. We do our own designs, manufacturing, we develop our own network services, and then we provide charging solutions via sales and via an owner-operator model.
This makes us one of the most unique companies in the space because we're the only ones to actually operate in this fashion. Now, we like to say this equals sustainable growth and improved profitability over time, and we'll get into later in this presentation the path towards that level of profitability. A quick look at our leadership team. Another unique thing about the company is, while Blink has been around for quite some time now, our leadership team over the last three years has come from within the industry. I have 15 years, going on 16 years of experience. I started with Nissan as the executive responsible for launching their EV and their infrastructure, and then progressed through several other companies. Harjinder Bhade was the original CTO of ChargePoint. Mark Pastrone, COO of SemaConnect, folded into Blink.
Miko de Haan was the second in charge at the largest charging company in Europe that was bought by Shell at one time. And then Mike Battaglia came to us from automotive and J.D. Power, where he participated in EV as well. So a very experienced team has come together over the last three years at Blink to really transform the company. But the reason we're transforming it is because of the opportunity that's out there. So the global forecast for EV is right now, it's at 10% worldwide. And that's good from where we started out because I started out hawking Nissan LEAFs, and there was no penetration globally at that time.
So to get to ten percent, you know, 10% is more of a percentage than some of the auto OEM have of their market share. Some of them are 2%, 3%, and 4%. So getting up to that, that's a significant achievement. A little anecdotal on that, California was 22% of sales last month on EV penetration, so even in this country, it's growing significantly. It's predicted by 2040 to be 75%-100%, and that's just-- that's not that long ago. You know, I look at it from the perspective of as much time as I've been in that space, that's the distance we have now between 2040, and I still feel like we just began this journey. So it's coming around the corner pretty quick.
If we look at charging, and then we look at it a couple of different ways. You know, if we first look at it here, it's just this astronomical number of 339 million-490 million chargers needed by that date. Well, you know, right now, there's not enough manufacturers, there's not enough chargers being produced by any one single company to get anywhere near that, even if you combine them together. So this signifies a tremendous amount of growth in this space is gonna take place, and that's to the advantage of Blink and other companies like us that are in this space. So we're counting on that, and we're structural adjusting the company as we move forward to be able to take advantage of that growth in the marketplace.
So if we look at the U.S. in particular, so by 2030, we need 30 million chargers. There's about four million in the ground today that are operational, so that leaves a gap of 26 million that companies like Blink, ChargePoint, others out there, got to fulfill the need to make sure the EV driving public has some place to change, charge. You look at the investment, it's $100 billion more than capital investors needed by 2040. 90% of all kilowatts dispensed globally, and this is what I call an undisputed fact now. Bloomberg, McKinsey, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and many others, have validated that 90% of the kilowatts dispensed will come from L2 chargers, not DC fast chargers. They just happen to be the sexy chargers that get all the news and all the press.
It's gonna be L2 chargers that are going to carry the lion's share of charging in the U.S. and globally. So fast chargers are part of our business. They represent about 5%-10%. We sold 987 already this year, which is the highest in the history of the company. It generated about $10 million worth of revenue. We see that increasing as we move forward, but we're gonna continue to take a conservative approach on DC fast charging and a bullish approach on L2 charging as we move forward.
You can see all our products. What's really interesting about this slide, when I was a sked to come to Blink and leave Electrify America, like, "What do you got?" "Well, we got one charger and another one in development." And, you know, and that was March 2020. And now when you look down on this page, you know, all but two of these are on market today. So the company has grown, developed, acquired, then began manufacturing more product, and structurally adjusted in a very significant way, that there is not a charger that we have, there's not a need that we can't fulfill for any opportunity out there in the space. If it's 350kW charger, we have that. If it's all the way down to a small in-home charger, and if somebody needs a mobile charger for rescue situations, we have that charger as well. So it's a complete portfolio covering the entire space.
So if we look at the charging demand, you know, we've now it's 78,000 chargers that have been deployed in the history of this company, going all the way back to its original founding in 2009. You know, that puts us globally in the top echelon of charging companies, and, you know, number three or four in the United States since its inception. Here's the mix on where we are, U.S. versus globally, 2% internationally and 78% U.S. So the U.S. is really driving our demand, but we see that number increasing in Europe as we move forward. A little bit here about software and manufacturing.
So 24 months ago, a little longer, actually, it's about 26 months ago, we decided to scrap our old network and build a brand-new network so that we'd lead in software and development. The reason why we needed to do that is a lot of the legacy networks aren't what we call plug and play. You can't integrate another software. It's very difficult. You need more design time. We decided to build a network based on the latest technology that you can plug into any pre-existing network, you can plug into any utility, you can plug into any fleet services or any business, and you can do API configurations and anything at a flip of a switch. That's what we develop now.
So when we're going into India, when we're going into China, we have plans, when we're going to other countries, it's easy to integrate into their systems the way we built the network today. And it's low cost and low maintenance compared to what it was on the old network. And we maintain that. And the key thing to differentiate us is none of it's third party. So it's Blink developers working on the Blink system instantaneously. I don't need to go out and get a quote and a bid from a third-party developer to go fix my network, because it's my network, and my developers fix it 24/7 days a week. And then we offer, as we talked about, we can tailor our business offerings as a result of what we offer.
I mean, the L2 chargers that we design and build, when we go to service them, we keep it simple, and this is why this is. This operational efficiency that exists with L2s, that doesn't exist with DC. If I roll a truck, I'm not going out to the field to fix the charger. I'm rolling a truck with a charger in it, I'm popping that charger out, throw it in the back of the truck, putting a new one on. That one goes back to the plant, is refurbished and recycled, circulated out to the model. We don't throw them out, and we don't waste precious hours and labor dollars out in the field fixing something. We do it all in-house.
They just get a new charger or a refurbished charger on that site, and it's the most efficient model to be able to use in the U.S. for very low cost. You use a low-cost tech instead of a high-cost premium tech, when you do those changes throughout the market. So commitment to expanding.
So U.S. manufacturing right now is moving to 30,000 units of output out of our Bowie, Maryland, facility. By the end of next year, that will be 40,000-50,000, and we're looking for expanding right now into a DC fast charger facility and another L2 facility. That'll bring us up to 100,000 production in the U.S., while expanding our facilities in India and bringing on an assembly factory in Europe as we move forward.
All the chargers that we do in the U.S. will be Buy American compliant, according to the Act, and right now it's only on steel, but on 20 July 2024, it's got to be 55%, the labor and content in that charger has to be made in America. We're happy to say we're already compliant on that one as well, so we're gonna have no hiccups or problems on buying American quality and move that out. The key is to stay in front of the production curve and make sure that we have the capacity to meet our global demand, and we are continuing our plans to do exactly that. Little picture of all of our customers. We operate across multiple channels: automotive, fleet, hospitality, commercial, multifamily, and government.
Right now, the fastest-growing ones are fleet, off the chart, red hot. Right now, multifamily, very hot. We continue to do a great book of business in commercial and automotive. And automotive is the key; we're just at the beginning of automotive now, where they've done their initial onslaught of dealer readiness for chargers. When we get to 10% and 15% and 20%, they're all gonna come back around to increase the number of chargers in there, and we got a good foothold. That's our largest book of business today as we move forward. When we look at financials, we just came off the best quarter in the history of the company. Revenues were $32.8 million. That was up 186% when we looked at that.
Service revenue was $7 million, network fees were $1.7 million. Then we could look at the amount of charging stations was 5,830 for the quarter, and then 16 gigawatts dispersed on Blink Network during that time. Despite the-- I'll tell you, and this is-- You know, I came out of one company where we're doing a lot of DC fast chargers, when we got in this company, I'm looking at the numbers that were giving me on the amount, the input, and I go: "Man, I got a lot of work." They were, you know, "Well, we'll do 60 chargers this month. Oh, we'll do that." Well, we're doing 5,830 a month, and that number is gonna increase exponentially.
So the company has really, really changed in just three years from what it was. So targets. We went out in the second quarter announcement, excuse me, and said: "Hey, look, we're gonna revise the target." We came in first at $90 million, then the Street bumped us up to $100 million, and then we say: "Okay, we're gonna bump that up to $110 million-$120 million, based on projections." We are on target to meet this. I'm not gonna say publicly if we're gonna exceed or not. I will say that we're on target to meet this, and I'm very, very happy about the progress towards that. Of course, our job is to challenge ourselves and see if we can do better, and we will do so.
So this will be the highest revenue in the history of the company, and we plan on next year to being on the same trajectory of doubling our revenue year over year for the last three consecutive years. We'll do it for a fourth consecutive year, which leads up to our next point, is that we're targeting a positive EBITDA run rate by December 2024. All the pieces of the puzzle are in place for us to do this. The difference when it comes to the way we did it, we didn't do it to make a marketing statement, a PR play, to improve the stock price. We did it based on facts, understanding data, and looking at where our revenues come in and how and if that is sustainable.
Then we came up with a forecast plan that said we can hit the number on that date. Now, we're gonna try and beat that date, of course, but we did it because we know we can do it, and we wanna be in the first in the space that delivers this number out there, with your EBITDA positive. That's the goal. We believe Blink can do it. The numbers indicate we can do it.
Now we got to show everybody that we can. Another thing when you look at Blink, when we compare to the other companies out there, we're different in that we're the company that doesn't say no. When you think about the way companies work, we're vertically integrated, so we produce our own charger, and that charger sits there in the middle. It either goes left or right.
It goes left to the sales side, it goes right to the owner-operator side. Everything that falls beneath that is the same. You have to commission the charger, you have to network, you still have to install it. Where we're facilitating the install on the sales side, you still have to have the service contract, maintain the network, and replace that charger when after.
All that the same, the only differentiation is whether it went to the sales or another end. On the sales side, we still are now selling more service contracts, more maintenance contract, guarantee the quality of that charger if a site host owns it, so we don't have the quality issues that the industry has been plagued by. And look across the board, we cover all the aspects like no other company does.
Blink does not miss a revenue opportunity where the rest of our competition listed here, they do, because they don't simply have the offering. So key, when we look at this, what's out there for the investor? So vertically integrated charging ecosystem, flexible business models. Right now, 50% of our product is built by Blink. In 18 months, 80% will be built by Blink. You know, full suite of EV charging solutions, we never say no to a site host. The site host wants to own it? Okay, we've got that. The site host wants us to own it? We got that. You want to split it, you own part, you pay for the installation? We got a solution for that. Is don't say no. Find a solution that works for the site host.
Strategic pipelines, we have fast-growing TAM with significant tailwinds and increasing global footprint, and then attractive financial profile. Right now, based on where our stock price today is, where our revenue is currently, after that, we're one of the best buys stock price out there, today, and we will continue to be so. We hope to see some upside in the stock price as we move forward, but right now, I'd bet on Blink in terms of a purchase on stock. We'll open that up for Q&A.
There's a question right here.
Hi. Hi, thanks. Richard Brown . I'm new to the story, so, like, do you only make money selling the actual charger, or do you have sort of recurring revenue stream?
Yeah
You can get?
So on the owner-operator model, the recurring revenue is from kilowatt sales, and on the sales side, the recurring revenue is from networking fees that are paid monthly on a per port basis, $20 per port, on it, and on service and maintenance contracts, that's the recurring revenue. So either side of the equation, we get recurring, so that we have that sustainable revenue for the long term. Was that really that good that I answered all your questions? Come on, somebody's got to have one.
I'm William with Barclays. Just a quick question on the, you know, for expansion, right? What are some of the challenges that you foresee or even like current challenges to sort of scaling up the, the charging stations across, not just nationally, but internationally?
Yeah, it's a great question, and the whole industry is struggling with it. So the first is capital. Okay, you know, we prefer the L2 model at Blink because it's not as capital intensive as the DC model. So the DC model is capital plagued, and that's why you see a movement towards the OEMs funding infrastructure in the U.S. and globally, because they're doing the same thing in Europe. Because you're not going to get a return on capital on most of your DC fast charger installations, you know, seven, eight, nine,10-year return rate. While on L2, you can get a return in a year to 18 months on that capital investment on return on capital. But that's the biggest constraint, and you saw the capital demands we outlined there.
City and municipalities are structurally adjusting, so they're ready for it. After capital, it would be cooperation with utilities, and utilities playing an active role and not necessarily profiteering within the space. They're having rate cards and rate reform that facilitates EV adoption. You know, demand chargers can kill the economic business model for a charger in a particular area. So that's the second biggest hurdle. But beyond those two, you know, today it's a much better environment to install globally and in the United States than it was even five years ago.
I think you alluded to this, but I'd love to hear a bit more just about how you capture the economics versus the utility capturing the economics. Like, how does that work?
In terms of the kilowatt sales?
Mm-hmm.
We buy, you know, kilowatts in the public arena at whatever the rate card, and we mark that up, sell a kilowatt to the consumer for the convenience of using the charger. We have more flexibility in that model in Europe, as the rate structures are that way. That's why when we look at our service revenue, there's a large part of it that's Europe, A, because the rate structure is more beneficial to us, and B, because the utilization is higher in Europe. In the U.S., you know, we can buy at $0.12-$0.15/kWh on average. Some states are higher, and we can sell it at $0.29-$0.59/kWh, depending on the region.
EV car sharing, I noticed that you've gotten into the business. How big can that be? Can you explain how that works with the charging stations, or is that just completely separate?
So no, so we have two car sharing services in the Blink portfolio. One's called Envoy, which is private car sharing, and one called Blue LA, which is public car sharing. Also within that, we have a $7.5 million grant to replicate the Blue LA structure throughout New Jersey. So it's complementary because they're all EVs, they need charging. But we think of that business at Blink as a standalone business. So, we see it as growing, as the more grant dollars that are being made available. With the grant win in New Jersey, we're now seeing grant applications populate other cities to replicate those type of sharing things. For us, we provide charging services to them. That's the way we see it, and we monetize that.
We will be spinning off the mobility platform, the Blink Mobility platform. The banker's been selected, the due diligence is in process. We're looking at having that spin-off as early as December, January of this year, on that, and that will be a standalone entity, that Blink is a significant shareholder in, but it'll be separate from Blink, and we will provide them with shared services from an IT perspective, turn it into a profit center, as opposed to right now, it's an operational expense.
So you're mentioning that, like, the growth is not really in the quick chargers, but I was wondering if you can elaborate a little bit more on that, because I think... I mean, my understanding on this space is that what really holds a lot of people back is range anxiety, right?
Mm-hmm.
So if I'm going to take, like, a long road trip down to say, Maryland, to visit a friend, you know, I'm not worried about plugging my car in at my office or at home. I'm worried about taking a long road trip, and I have nowhere to plug my car in, and I don't want to wait 12 hours for it to fully charge, and I'm on my way, right? So should charging be a way to facilitate that sort of, you know, anxiety or reduce the anxiety or?
Sure. Absolutely, and that's the intent, but it's in two different ways, though. So I think you're absolutely right, but the majority of your driving life is not on the highway. I mean, the vast majority, 97% of it is in your community, where you don't necessarily need DC fast charging. And DC fast charging has two elements to it. One is exactly what you said. When you're on that highway drive, you want those kilowatts forced into that battery at a faster rate because you just don't want to sit there. And L2 charging is not practical anywhere on the highway. Anybody who recommends it is kind of silly. So, but it's also this effect that cures this term that the industry invented, GM in particular, called Range Anxiety, right? And you see the charger, and you believe.
You may never use that charger, but that's why we have questions about the economic model, about DC. But you go, "Hey, you know, I bought the EV, and I saw all these hundreds of DC fast chargers. I'm gonna do it." But all the data suggests the majority of your charging is going to be 90%+ on an L2 charger somewhere at your home, your community, your doctor's office, at your workplace, et cetera. So those are the realities, right? But that placebo works. You see it, and you will buy, and it builds range confidence, and that's what we see infrastructure companies in the business of, is building range confidence.
Two questions. The first one is your expectation to break even on the cash flow basis, and the second one is that there seems that there's a trend in the industry that, like, Tesla is like signing up all their partners to kind of consolidate technologies using their, the puck, electric puck, and Mercedes is doing the same, I think. Like, I don't follow the industry very closely. So, like, how would that impact you, like, as a company, if, like, everyone is using, like, Tesla's, like, standard or something like that? Yeah.
Yeah. It's a very popular question today, is the NACS standard. First, it's not a standard yet. A regulatory body has to adopt it. It might be what we call the de facto standard that it's moving into. So for us, it's not an issue, it's called an opportunity. If we look at Blink charging stations today on the L side, L2 front, our number one customer is Tesla. If I go outside the office at work, where we have a whole bunch of charging stations, there's Teslas there every single day, and there has been for a long, long time. What it does for Blink is it opens up the DC fast charging market to Teslas as well. It's not difficult to hang a NACS cable on any charger.
While the U.S. has had this catharsis, and Tesla is making a big and bold move here, it's Tesla's standard or NACS is banned in the rest of the world, especially Europe. You, you can't, you can't do it there. What has grown up in the rest of the world is charger manufacturing, cable manufacturing. So to replicate a NACS cable today, the minute it opened up, and we made our, our desire known to be building to that standard, we got seven calls from cable and connector manufacturers wanting to bid on our business, and we've selected that. So for us, it's an opportunity. Our two, three designs for DC fast charging will all have NACS cables on it moving forward. And that way, we're gonna get more kilowatt sales when we engage in that.
But again, that's that 10% of where charging is gonna take place, not the 90 that we're dominantly focused on as a company. You had a part two. So we targeted that date, but a whole bunch of variables contributed to that. You know, we had a great, our gross margin was 37%, that's strong. Our revenue was high, as well. Expense reduction and then enhanced revenue on a single sale. So when we look at a single sale of a charger today, we have a lower attach rate historically, and this isn't in the current because it's improving, of warranty contracts and service contracts associated.
Well, you all might have heard that the industry is not happy with quality, so now attach rates on service contracts are going up. So we're offering those assurance products that you can have on the charger. So we'll make more revenue now off a single charger in these service revenue categories, while increasing revenue and duplicating and doubling our volume year over year, as we have for the past three years. And when we look at that and combine everything together on a forecast basis, we see that our path towards EBITDA positive is there. It's a very straight or linear path that we believe we can get to. But also, I'll leave you with a little just anecdotal, fun stat to take away.
I looked at where our revenue is in 2021, and looked at one contract, one singular contract I have for that will deliver in 2024. It's more revenue than we made in 2021 from one contract, and that's how the industry has changed, and that's one of many that we have in there. So we see our path there. I wanna be number one, but if I'm not number one, I'm not worried about it, 'cause I'm gonna make sure we do it right, the right way, so it's sustainable. And that's our key when we say that number. We'll achieve it in December, in a manner which it is sustainable for the long-term health of the company.