NASDAQ:BLNK Blink Charging Q2 2024 Earnings Report $0.74 -0.05 (-6.21%) As of 11:47 AM Eastern This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more. ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast Blink Charging EPS ResultsActual EPS-$0.18Consensus EPS -$0.14Beat/MissMissed by -$0.04One Year Ago EPS-$0.44Blink Charging Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$33.26 millionExpected Revenue$38.90 millionBeat/MissMissed by -$5.64 millionYoY Revenue Growth+1.30%Blink Charging Announcement DetailsQuarterQ2 2024Date8/7/2024TimeAfter Market ClosesConference Call DateWednesday, August 7, 2024Conference Call Time4:30PM ETConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by Blink Charging Q2 2024 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrAugust 7, 2024 ShareLink copied to clipboard.Key Takeaways Total Q2 2024 revenue was $33.3 million with a 32.2% gross margin, in line with the company’s ~33% target. Service revenue grew 15% year-over-year to $8 million and now represents nearly 24% of total revenue, highlighting the shift toward recurring network fees and charging services. Product sales bookings in Q2 were softer due to a temporary EV market slowdown, prompting a revised 2024 revenue outlook of $145–155 million and a push to achieve adjusted EBITDA positivity in 2025. Blink deployed or contracted 4,106 chargers and dispersed 33 gigawatts of energy globally, winning strategic contracts with Decathlon in Belgium, expanding into Italy and Germany, pursuing FedRAMP certification, and partnering with the BYD dealership group in Mexico. The company reduced total operating expenses by 41% year-over-year and cut cash burn by over a third sequentially, as part of ongoing cost optimization initiatives to improve cash flow and sustainable profitability. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallBlink Charging Q2 202400:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xTranscript SectionsPresentationParticipantsPresentationSkip to Participants Operator00:00:00Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Blink Charging Co.'s second quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Vitalie Stelea. Sir, the floor is yours. Vitalie SteleaVP of Investor Relations at Blink Charging Co.00:00:20Thank you, Matthew. Welcome to Blink's second quarter 2024 earnings call. With us today we have Brendan Jones, President and CEO, Michael Rama, Chief Financial Officer, and Michael Battaglia, our Chief Operating Officer. The discussions today will include non-GAAP references. These are reconciled to the most comparable U.S. GAAP measures in the appendix of our earnings deck. You may find the deck, along with the rest of our earnings materials and other important content on Blink's Investor Relations website. Today's discussions may also include forward-looking statements about our expectations. Actual results may be different from those stated. The most significant factors that could cause actual results to differ are included on page 2 of the second quarter 2024 earnings deck. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are year-over-year. Now, regarding our investor relations calendar. Vitalie SteleaVP of Investor Relations at Blink Charging Co.00:01:18Blink will attend the J.P. Morgan Automotive Conference on the eighth of August in New York City. Blink will also attend the H.C. Wainwright Annual Global Investment Conference on the tenth of September in New York City. Our management will be meeting with investors at all of these events. Please also follow our announcements in our website for additional investor events in the future. And now I will turn the call over to Brendan Jones, Blink's President and CEO. Please go ahead, Brendan. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:01:49Thanks, Vitalie, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Blink's second quarter's results. So let's just jump into it. So our total company revenue was $33.3 million, with service revenue representing about $8 million or approximately 20% of the total. Service revenue increased in Q2 15% when compared to the second quarter of 2023. Gross margin in the second quarter was 32.2%. That's in line with our target guidance of 33%. Now, during the quarter, we contracted, sold, or deployed 4,106 chargers globally and dispersed nearly 33 GW of energy across all Blink networks. Our total company revenue for the second quarter of 2024 increased when compared to the second quarter of 2023, despite some of the challenging market conditions that we encountered. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:02:55On our first quarter earnings call, we mentioned that we had seen lower sales bookings in April. That trend persisted throughout the second quarter, primarily driven by a slight slowdown in EV sales. We believe the pressure on EV sales is a short-term factor, but nonetheless, expect to see some impact to our revenue as we move through the balance of this year. We are confident, however, about the long-term outlook for the industry and of course, for Blink. There are several reasons for our optimism. First, we continue to see a gap between the demand for charging and the available infrastructure to service this demand. If we look at data from S&P Global, 40% of all new vehicle model introductions in 2024 and 2025 will be EVs, and that is on top of the vehicles already on the market again. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:03:55And so 40% is a massive number, and we are uniquely positioned as a company to build the infrastructure and provide the network services to meet the increased charging demand by all these vehicle launches. Additionally, we believe that fleets will continue to be a significant contributor to future demand. Fleet operators are beginning to preference EVs over combustion engine vehicles because they can save 30% on total cost of ownership. This is tremendous savings even for the smallest of fleets. The fact that we now know that rideshare vehicles like Uber and Lyft are switching to EVs and driving up demand for DC and L2 charging is a very good data point and example of what we'll see in the future. Imagine the impact that EVs will have on very sophisticated fleets and the savings that will be delivered to their owners. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:04:55Looking at the big picture, we are seeing sustainable growth in charging service utilization, and some of our peers have been reporting the same trends. Consequently, as EV sales increase, it follows that demand for charging infrastructure will also grow. With a higher number of electric commercial vehicles on the road, Blink's ability to close the gap in available charging sites represents a tremendous market and revenue opportunity for the company. We made great progress in the second quarter this year. To name just a few of our accomplishments, in Europe, our Belgian team won the contract with Decathlon, the world's largest sporting goods retailer, to install, own, and operate both L2 and DC fast chargers. This is very exciting for us as we can see ample opportunities for growth with Decathlon. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:05:52Additionally, as a result of several key commercial contracts already in place in Europe, Blink has begun to expand our presence into Italy and Germany, which are very lucrative EV markets. In the U.K., our team collaborated with U.K.'s largest dedicated parcel delivery company, called Evri, to provide and install the first EV hub at an important sorting center. Additional sites are planned for the future. Now, if we pivot over to the U.S., our team achieved in-process status for the government FedRAMP certification. Now, in-process status is a designation for service providers who are actively working towards authorization. And when we receive final certification, and this is estimated to be in the October-November timeframe, Blink will have access as an approved provider to contracting opportunities with the General Services Administration clients, which opens up the door for thousands of sales. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:06:59Recently, we became an official vehicle charger and network service provider to the state of New York, and we also launched our Blink Care preventive maintenance program that will maximize charger uptime for our customers. If we look at Mexico, we were selected by the official BYD dealership group for EV charging products and services. BYD is an OEM that is gaining global momentum, and we view this as a strategic opportunity in Mexico and around the world. As you can see, we are focused on leveraging our strong reputation in the marketplace to position Blink to compete and win in the short, short mid-term, while also continue structurally adjusting the company for sustainable long-term growth. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:07:51When we look at the long-term market, between the rapid growth of EVs in China, European mandates and incentives that are already in place, and the accelerated growth in developed European markets, combined with the need for the U.S. auto industry and American companies in general to stay competitive globally, we believe EVs will represent one of the key segments of global transportation now and well into the future. If you look at slide 5, McKinsey currently forecasts over 28 million chargers are needed by 2030, and globally, EV infrastructure spending is expected to be about $260 billion by 2030, with about 90+% of those chargers being L2. In fact, as the market matures, we're gonna see more of the emphasis being placed on L2 applications. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:08:46I will comment more in a little bit, at the end of the presentation, but not right now, to give you some more details, I would like to pass the call to Mike Battaglia, our Chief Operating Officer. Mike? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:08:58Great. Thank you, Brendan, and good afternoon to everyone on the call today. So I'd like to start by emphasizing that Blink continues to be uniquely positioned in the market as we offer flexible solutions to our customers. Whether they want to purchase equipment for us, from us, combined with network services, or whether they want us to own and operate chargers for them, we can do both and many variations in between, which not only positions us well competitively to win business, but also provides revenue diversification, evidenced by the fact that nearly a quarter of our current revenue is derived from recurring service streams. And since we own and operate, we have unique insights into a variety of charging locations, which helps us design chargers and software services to anticipate and address our customers' needs. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:09:52As Brendan mentioned earlier, our Q2 product sales reflected some softness that we mentioned on the first quarter earnings call, and we expect to see continued pressure as we move through the back half of the year. That said, based on the visibility of our pipeline and our ability to successfully address the needs of diverse vertical markets, we anticipate order activity will turn around later this year and into 2025. At the same time, our service revenue showed continuously strong growth in the second quarter, making up 24% or nearly one quarter of total company revenue. That is a 300 basis point improvement from 21% of total revenue in the second quarter a year ago. We continue to expect service revenue to grow as a percentage of our total revenue. For example, charging service revenue has increased by 13% year-over-year. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:10:49When we look at the total number of owner-operated units by Blink, we had 6,094 units as of June 30, 2024. That is a 25% increase in a span of only one year. For the first half of 2024, we generated charging revenue of $10 million from Blink-owned chargers, compared to $7.2 million in the first half of 2023. That's a 37% increase year-over-year. Energy dispersed through Blink-owned chargers in the first half of 2024 grew to 8.9 GW, representing 55% growth year-over-year. Notable here is that DC fast chargers are becoming increasingly important within our portfolio of U.S. Blink-owned chargers. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:11:42The revenue generated from our Blink-owned DC fast chargers in the United States in the first half of 2024 increased nearly eightfold compared with the first half of 2023. That's eightfold. And with our L2 charging network, we have detailed visibility into high-traffic, profitable locations. We plan to capitalize on these insights by deploying Blink-owned DC fast chargers in a disciplined way so that we meet our return on capital criteria, which targets positive station economics within five years or less after deployment. Operationally, Blink's gross margin for the second quarter of 2024 was 32%. The slight decrease in gross margin compared with the first quarter of this year was due to a higher mix of third-party manufactured chargers from legacy customers. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:12:34Upon the launch of our new single-port Blink manufactured series product in Q4 of this year, we anticipate a more favorable product mix, and that takes advantage of our strategy of vertical integration. For the first half of 2024, Blink's gross margin was a robust 34%. Moving on to Slide 8. You can see that cumulatively, as of the end of Q2 of 2024, Blink has contracted, sold, or deployed 98,261 chargers since the company's inception. Geographically, 75% of the total company-wide number is attributed to North America and 25% to Europe and other international locations. Further, Blink continues to grow our market share due to our superior products and innovative and flexible business models. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Blink has the third-largest network of chargers in the United States. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:13:35On Slide 10, the variety of products we offer appeals to a broad and diverse range of customers. Our Series 7 and 8 chargers, which are produced in-house at our Bowie, Maryland, production facility, are the most popular Level 2 models among our customers. In short, we offer a full suite of EV charging hardware. Now, if we move on to Slide 11, it shows a representative group of our customer base, including many recognizable names across commercial entities, multifamily complexes, planned communities, healthcare facilities, fleets, and municipalities around the world. A very diverse customer base. As we've said before, we deploy the right charger at the right place, at the right time. And as we continue into 2024, our priorities remain laser-focused on three things. Number 1, continuing to pursue strategic partnerships in key vertical markets to gain market share. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:14:39Number two, driving higher-margin software and recurring services revenues by increasing our Blink-owned network footprint and complementary software services. And finally, number three, continuing to manage costs across the business to position Blink for long-term success. Blink has the highest gross margins today among comparative peers, and we intend to pursue further margin expansion. So with this, I'll pass the call on to Michael Rama, our Chief Financial Officer. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:15:10Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to Slide 14, total revenue in the second quarter of 2024 was $33.3 million, an increase compared to $32.8 million in the second quarter of 2023. Revenue in the first half of 2024 was $70.8 million, which is an increase of 30% compared to $54.5 million in the first half of 2023. Now, product sales in the second quarter of 2024 were $23.6 million, compared to $24.6 million in the second quarter of 2023. The first half of 2024, product sales were $51.1 million, which is an increase of 25%, compared to $41 million in the first half of 2023. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:16:04Second quarter 2024 service revenue, which consists of charging service revenues, network fees, and car-sharing revenues, was $8 million, an increase of 15% compared to the second quarter of 2023. For the first half of 2024, service revenue was $16.2 million, a 38% increase compared with the first half of 2023. The year-over-year growth was primarily driven by greater utilization of our chargers, the increased number of chargers on Blink networks, and revenues associated with our car-sharing programs. Gross profit for the second quarter of 2024 was $10.7 million, compared to $12.3 million for the same period last year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin was 32% in the second quarter of 2024. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:16:56Gross profit for the first half of 2024 was $24.1 million, compared to $16.8 million for the same period last year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin for the first half of 2024 was 34%, compared to 31% in the first half of last year. Blink generates the highest gross margin in the industry among comparable peers and competitors. What is more important to emphasize next is the significant progress we have made in reducing our total operating expenses year over year. Blink's total operating expenses for the second quarter of 2024 were $31.4 million. That is a 41% reduction when compared with the second quarter of 2023, and primarily driven by a 54% reduction in compensation expense and another 24% reduction in G&A expenses. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:17:53This is the result of disciplined and continuous cost optimization and avoidance actions that we've implemented over the last 6 quarters. We are not done yet, and we have additional measures being implemented now. As a result of these actions, our cash burn for the second quarter of 2024, excluding a one-time debt payment, was $12.6 million. Sequentially, that is a 32% and 38% reduction compared to the fourth quarter of 2023 and first quarter of 2024, respectively. On average, we've reduced our cash burn by more than a third compared to our previous two quarters sequentially, excluding one-time debt payments. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2024 was a loss of $14.7 million, compared to a loss of $13.5 million in the prior year period. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:18:46Adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2024 was a loss of $24.9 million, compared to a loss of $31.3 million in the first half of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA for the three and six months ended June 30, 2024, excludes the impact of non-recurring items such as acquisition-related costs, additional stock-based compensation expense, estimated loss related to underperforming assets of a subsidiary, change in the fair value related to a consideration payable, and a one-time non-recurring expenses. Now, EPS for the second quarter of 2024 was a loss of $0.20 per share, compared to a loss of $0.67 per share in the prior year period. EPS for the first half of 2024 was a loss of $0.37 per share, compared to a loss of $1.20 per share for the first half of 2023. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:19:42For the three months ended June 30, 2024, the weighted shares outstanding was 101 million shares, compared to 61.9 million shares outstanding for the three months ended June 30, 2023. Adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter of 2024 was a loss of $0.18 per share, compared to a loss of $0.44 per share in the prior year period. Adjusted earnings per share in the first half of 2024 was a loss of $0.31 per share, compared to a loss of $0.92 per share in the first half of 2023. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:20:19Non-GAAP adjusted EPS is defined as adjusted net income or loss, which excludes the amortization of intangible assets, acquisition-related costs, estimated loss related to underperforming assets of subsidiary, changes in fair value related to consideration payable, and one-time non-recurring expenses divided by the weighted average shares outstanding. Now, as for the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents at June 30, 2024, was $73.9 million, compared to $93.5 million at the end of the first quarter of 2024. During the second quarter, Blink paid off in full $6.9 million of notes payable associated with the Envoy acquisition. Currently, we have no such debt obligations on the balance sheet. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:21:08Now, turning to Slide 15, here, I would like to revisit the significant decline in our total operating expenses as a percentage of revenue and the progress that we've made over the last six quarters. Total operating expenses were 170% of revenue in 2022. In 2024, we have reduced this number by 8,200 basis points, which is more than half, demonstrating that our strategy of balancing our expenses while preparing for the future is working. Now, this concludes my prepared remarks. I'm going to turn the call back over to Brendan Jones for a few final comments. Go ahead, Brendan. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:21:48Thanks, Michael. So folks, in Q2, Blink achieved growth driven by profitable and recurring revenue from services. We saw some softness on the product side in the second quarter, which was driven by the current environment for EV sales. The EV market as a whole, it slightly dipped in Q1, and then it grew slightly in Q2, but overall, it is flat for the first half of 2024. Our total revenue is in line with this trend at this time. For the full year of 2024, Blink is adjusting its revenue target to between $145 million and $155 million. The company is also updating its timeline to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA during 2025 now. We are maintaining our gross margin target of approximately 33%, supported by efforts of a continuous improvement. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:22:50Now, when we focus on the robust increase in service revenue and significant reduction in expenses this quarter, this demonstrates the underlying strength of our business model. Our number one priority is to continue to structurally adjust for the future demand growth while also remaining nimble and responsive to changing market conditions. Blink's synergies, our cost-cutting, and our cost-avoidant actions will continue through 2024 and beyond. We also will continue to advance our vertical integration strategy with production of high-quality Buy America compliant chargers from our facility in Maryland, but at the same time, we are going to leverage our expanded manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. and globally to drive cost reduction, increase synergies, and service our global customers. Now, let me summarize a few things that were mentioned earlier. During the second quarter, we continued to gain market share and expand our charging footprint. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:24:03While our sales performance reflected the general short-term softening of EV demand, we are unquestionably still at the forefront of massive charger infrastructure build-out that is gonna be with us for many decades to come. Blink is the third largest network in the U.S., with a growing network in Europe. As a result, we are well positioned to benefit from this long-term trend for EVs. If we look at the product, the breadth of Blink's product lineup, combined with our flexible offerings, differentiates us in the marketplace and establishes the company as a leading provider of electric vehicle charging solutions that can meet the demands of virtually, virtually all customers across the board. In the second quarter, we continued to diversify our product sales to include more Level 2 charging equipment. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:25:00Moreover, we anticipate that our enhanced focus on services and software solutions and integrating our product into the broader grid will allow us to expand our addressable market and increase revenue. We also significantly reduced our operating expenses by 41% compared to the second quarter of 2023. As we continue to drive efficiencies, scale our business, and focus on reaching sustainable Adjusted EBITDA profitability. With our unique, vertically integrated model, we believe that Blink is well positioned to drive long-term growth and value for our stakeholders. We remain committed to expanding our global charging footprint and leaning into our mission of advancing energy transition through innovative charging solutions. Before we end this call, it is important to note that we believe we've created the best team in the charging industry. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:26:01I would like to thank our team across the globe who is implementing our plan and taking care of our customers. I also want to thank our customers and our drivers for trusting Blink with their charging needs and for being part of this transportation and energy revolution. Blink is successful because of our team. Our team listens, they learn, and they lead in this industry. With that, I think we're ready to take some questions, so we'll turn it over. Operator00:26:30Certainly. Everyone at this time will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. We do ask that while posing your question, please pick up your handset if you're listening on speakerphone for optimum sound quality. Again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone. Roth Capital Partners, your line is live. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:27:02Good evening, and thanks for taking my questions. So Brendan, can you maybe talk a little bit about linearity of demand during the quarter and how things have progressed over the last few weeks? You know, the weakness that you saw that you reported on the last quarter, you know, I guess I didn't understand that to be something that that was as material as what transpired. Can you say whether or not things deteriorated from that point, or maybe if we hit a trough and saw sort of typical linearity? And then the second part of that question, Bowie, Maryland, is a great investment. Obviously, you got, you know, key customers in there that like to buy well, the made in America product. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:27:46But in the quarter, you said, there was a shift in product mix to third-party manufactured products. Is the market asking for something slightly different right now? You know, what should we know about, you know, the revenue channel, and what's driving volumes right now? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:28:06Okay, I'm gonna start at the last question, then refresh me, and we'll go back to the first question, all right? So looking at product, you know, it's not that there's a change in customer demand on that, it's just that in our fully vertically integrated model, there's a miss on what's called a single-plug unit. We have a dual-plug unit, which is very cost-effective and drives down the acquisition cost for our customers. But when it's a single-port charger that is needed, that has historically been a third-party product that we've gotten. So the demand for that slightly did increase, and so we had to use the third party at a lower margin factor on that particular product. And, you know, that's been consistent throughout our history. Now, we're working to sunset that. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:28:56What's gonna happen, though, is our replacement charger that is being built by us either in Bowie, Maryland, and sourced globally as well out of our manufacturing facility in India. That's gonna replace this charger. So that's gonna alleviate this legacy issue that we have on some of the revenue now on the margins. Now, keep in mind, we still maintain best-in-class margins despite that. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:29:22Yeah. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:29:22So there's a lot of things that go in the equation. So the industry, you know, it. You know, look, when you look at the sales and, you know, the numbers in first quarter were somewhere around 7.3%, which were much lower than they were at the end of calendar year 2023. They bounced up and got a little bit above prior years, just over 8% for Q2, but they sort of stayed there, and that's flat, right? So we were predicting earlier that industry volume would be up to 10%+ and even higher in some industries. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:29:59So you know, that's primarily one of the drivers of what we saw in the lower activity and higher volumes on L2 charging and some DC charging as well, which is a big revenue source for us as well. Now, you couple that in the U.S. with some of the political uncertainty and even some of the naysayers on EVs when it became politicized, you know, I think that you know added to this equation that we saw. But we continue to see positive signs for the future. We continue to hear customers that, you know, we have open contracts with, that are into Q4, and some announcements today we got into Q1 of next year, that, you know, they're not backing off. They may have delayed a bit, but they're not backing off. So we're very, very encouraged by that. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:30:50We see the market, you know, rebounding a bit on the vehicle side. We continue to see the OEMs invest in charging and then invest in, in electric vehicles. Another announcement out today about Hyundai is investing in Thailand to make sure that they have the component strategy for their massive increase in EV sales, and that was another sizable investment by Hyundai. So I think we're in this soft spot. We're seeing this soft spot is going to alleviate and lift. You know, there, there might be some slowness in Q3, but definitely as we get into Q4 and beyond, we, we see the industry recharging itself, excuse the pun, and, and moving forward. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:31:29I, I like the pun. I, I definitely like the pun. If, if we, if, if we could touch on the linearity in the quarter, and how things are trending post-quarter, that, that would be really helpful. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:31:41Oh, okay. In terms of which part of the business? Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:31:45The revenue progression. So I understand there's always a hockey stick into the end of the quarter. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:31:50Mm-hmm Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:31:50But can you maybe, you know, the softness that you noted, right? When you noted that last quarter, you know, many of us hadn't weighed that as significantly as what materialized, right? So it was very early in the quarter, and you tend to, you know, the visibility builds, right? Can you talk about, you know, how the progression of the quarter compared to a typical quarter for you? You know, where did we see things move to the point where you elected to adjust your guidance to some changing market conditions? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:32:27Yeah, we adjusted the guidance because, I mean, you know, number one, we didn't see that strength in Q2, so as a result, we were forced to adjust it. We see in our numbers, though, that month-over-month sales are improving, but what we're not gonna do is get into giving quarter-over-quarter guidance here. Michael, whoops, I gotta go, Mike Battaglia, you wanna add any color to that? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:32:58Yeah. So, as we started off the quarter, we saw that softness, and that seemed, to use your term, the linearity of it, continued through May and June. As you had pointed out, we always see a bump in the, well, last month of the quarter, and we saw that bump. It just wasn't as strong as we've seen in prior quarters. So that's really primarily what drove it, and that's what caused us to adjust the full year. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:33:31Understood. Understood. Then the 33 GW in network throughput, that's a chunky number. That's a nice, growthy number, and it's nice to see that drive 15% growth in the service revenue. You know, can you maybe talk a little bit about utilizations across the network? Are there areas of the network maybe where you need to supplement available charge posts? You know, are there you know, some bright spots out there as far as you know, opportunities for investment, given the strong growth in network throughputs? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:34:09So I think I understood the question. If I'm not answering correctly, hit me, or Mike or Mike will jump in and answer better. So, I mean, in terms of the back off in long-term investments, you know, we're not seeing it. We're engaged right now, and we'll have some announcements on some pretty lucrative owner-operator deals that we're fully involved in, in both the United States and Europe. We're seeing an uptick on a percent of activity, and what we measure by that is, you know, we look at revenue coming, and it's had this balance of about, in Europe, 80/20, meaning 80% is owner-operator, and then 20% is usually sales. In the U.S., it's 25% is usually owner-operated, and then the rest 75% is sales. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:35:05What we've witnessed in Q2 is a significant uptick in owner-operator investments, and the good thing for Blink is that fits under what's called our hybrid model, and that's where that we pay for the charger, the maintenance, the upkeep, the swapping out of the charger. The site host pays for the installation, and then we split the revenue on a 60/40. Right now, that picked up significantly, as Mike indicated in his numbers. The other spot we're gonna keep focusing on, and where we're seeing growth right now, is in multifamily and fleet. So fleet operators aren't slowing down as much, and as you all know, we still have a very lucrative contract with the Post Office. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:35:51We can't comment directly on what we'll see in that, but that contract remains in place, and we have confirmation that we'll be getting additional orders on that, although the dollar amount and the timeframe, we're not at liberty to disclose at this time. Michael, any additional color on that? Battaglia, that is. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:36:10Yeah, just real quick. So Craig, you know, I've been at Blink now four years, and one of the things that I love is the fact that our analytical capabilities continue to get better and better. So to your point, one of the things we are doing now is looking deep within the existing customer base and identifying those locations where we see the need for additional chargers. Now, it presents a pretty interesting opportunity where we can do really one of two things. One is, if we own the chargers at the site, we can expand them. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:36:42But the second one is, we can offer to take over chargers that, for instance, a host owns, that where they're faced with wanting to add more chargers, but maybe don't have the budget to do it or whatever it may be. So we're looking at it on both fronts. And as I mentioned in my comments, we're also looking more and more at high-utilization DC fast charger sites in a responsible way that Blink approaches this. So, yeah, there's opportunity out there to do more on the owner-operator and high-utilization front. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:37:16And I would only add to that, which is really interesting in the space, is the advent of AI and our engagement with companies that are focusing on equations that equal higher revenue on a site basis with better station economics by placement. That is. It's really fascinating to see what those numbers bear out, and we'll have more on that as we move out into additional quarters or with our engagement with those type of companies. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:37:48Great. Well, thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on a really strong job bringing down the, the frictional costs. It's, it's impressive you've got them down so much year-over-year. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:37:58Sure. Thanks. Operator00:38:01Thank you. Your next question is from William Grippin, from UBS. Your line is live. William GrippinDirector and Equity Research Anlayst at UBS00:38:09Hi, thanks very much for the time. My first question was just wondering if you could give us an update on where you stand with the Blink Mobility spin-off. I think you had referenced that last quarter. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:38:18Yeah. So it's a great question. So we just met with the team that is spinning off the company yesterday. So the S-1 is basically almost complete. We have a few more things we have to tweak in it. Roth is the selected company that is doing the spin with us right now. We've got the decks done to go on the investor roadshow. We're paying attention to market feedback right now in terms of, you know, what is the market like? Is the IPO the right way to go? And then we're also working on the cost side to make sure that we're reducing the expenses overall across the board. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:39:08So there's a lot of expenses that we have an opportunity on the BlueLA model and the Envoy model, but particularly the BlueLA model, to begin, to reduce significantly. Those activities are now fully underway. We'll have a timeline update on when they're gonna materialize in the numbers. But, you know, we feel optimistic. You know, the IPO market isn't great right now, but we believe the fundamentals of the spin as we move into the back half of Q3 into Q4 that there's gonna be an opportune window to go ahead and go ahead and spin the company off. Mr. Rama, any clarity around that? Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:39:54No, I think, yeah, it, you know, it's the market. We had to look at, you know, the market, how it's being perceived at this, and the timing and stuff like that. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:40:01Yep. William GrippinDirector and Equity Research Anlayst at UBS00:40:04All right. I appreciate that color. And then just last one for me here, but on the DCFC segment, could you elaborate a bit on how you're thinking about positioning or investing in that part of the market as throughput continues to increase across DCFC networks? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:40:21Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, DC fast charger as an owner operator is a different beast entirely. So what we've adopted, and has been serving us very well as a company, is we're not gonna plant flags as a company. There's other companies that are planting flags. And we're not gonna put a charger in the ground that doesn't have positive station economics or positive station economics within a basic ROI timeframe. Typically, we look for four years or shorter on that. If there is a DC fast charger project, if there's government funding, and we can meet that, then we engage in that project. And we're getting some of those projects now. And the same thing, even if there isn't grant money. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:41:09If we can still engage in that project, and it's gonna have that return, then we're gonna do it. Blink is not like some of the other folks that engaged in DC. We're not a cost-of-sales model. So when we do a DC fast charger, we do it for a return on investment in the short term. And it, as I said, it's four to five years we look for on that ROI, and we're starting to see this. Now, on the sales side, you know, last year we had a big sales year on DC fast chargers. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:41:37It's very different this year, and when you, when you break out the numbers, you'll see that we transitioned rather successfully away from heavy DC and replaced a lot of that revenue with the increase in service revenue and the increase in L2 sales. Now, we think DC is gonna bounce back, but it's gonna bounce back more in a fleet setting and more in a commercial setting for big commercial companies, et cetera, and then continue inroads for highway infrastructure. But generally, our preference on DC is leaning heavily now to more owner-operated and more strategic locations in downtown areas and high urban transportation areas where people drive and live with their EVs. William GrippinDirector and Equity Research Anlayst at UBS00:42:27Great. Appreciate the color. I'll turn it over. Operator00:42:31Thank you. Your next question is coming from Stephen Gengaro from Stifel. Your line is live. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:42:38Good afternoon, everybody. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:42:41Hey, Stephen. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:42:43Hi, how are you? So just curious, when you look at the charging revenue side, can you give us any sense for sort of Tesla versus non-Tesla charging at Blink stations? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:42:58Yeah. I mean, if we look at plug-ins, right, Tesla still remains our number one brand that's plugging in, but the percentage is reducing over time. And that's not because there's anything wrong with Tesla, that's because there's more vehicles out there from competitors. So Tesla. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:43:17No, exactly, exactly. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:43:18Especially on the. What, say that again? Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:43:22Oh, no, that was what I was getting at. Are you seeing growth on the non-Tesla side? I guess that's sort of the root of the question. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:43:29Oh, yeah, I mean, the entire industry is. There are several OEMs that will. You know, and there's no problem at Tesla, right? It's just they're in this position where, you know, they have to heavily incentivize 'cause their, their fleet of EVs is a little older, and you got a lot of newer cars coming on the market, and the competition is getting, you know, intense, which is good for the overall industry to drive down cost. So definitely, all the data indicates that GM, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, all have seen increased EV sales, while Tesla's flattened up and seen a little lower, in some cases on sales. So. And that's good news. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:44:10Think about it, when we said 40% of new vehicle launches are gonna be EV, on top of all the other markets out there, the competition is just increasing moving forward. We'll see Tesla become smaller as a portion, but it still might be the number one single brand that's charging on our stations right now. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:44:32Great. Thank you. And just a quick one, when you think about just kind of revenue growth as you think about 2025, should we just sort of think about how we're modeling EV adoption and EV sales to kind of use as a proxy in at least the near term? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:44:53Certainly, there's a higher correlation between L2 sales on both the in-home and municipal, and even to some degree, on the fleet level, as the total industry volume, whether commercial or privately owned vehicles. There's a correlation there, you can't deny it. Now, there's a lag between when that hits and then when it hits the infrastructure company in the revenue, right? However, on the utilization side, there's much more of a direct instant thing. So, you know, our utilization went up over time because those units in operation that were sold throughout 2023 and 2024 are now utilizing our stations, and they're finding more. So the more stations we add in the ground, and we saw a 4,000 unit increase in this month alone, then the more revenue we're gonna get on the utilization side. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:45:46And you see that bearing out in the numbers. So it's really two different things you have to manage. There's that very direct correlation between sales and the selling of product. And then, you know, there's an increase no matter what, because more cars are on the road, and that's the unit in operation as opposed to total vehicle sales equation. So UIO is, is driving increased utilization and driving increased revenue for us right now. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:46:17Very helpful. Thank you. Operator00:46:22Thank you. Your next question is coming from Sameer Joshi from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is live. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:46:30Hey, guys, can you hear me? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:46:32Yes. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:46:33Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thanks for taking my questions. I would like to just dig a little deeper on the car charging revenues, actually. So seems like, sequentially, 1Q to 2Q, they have been relatively flat or slightly down. Are you facing any uptime challenges due to maintenance or any utilization differences or shortcomings? Like, what is the reason for that flat revenue growth? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:47:06Yeah, you're gonna see some asset leasing in the numbers, where we're mostly, you're gonna see it, where we're upgrading chargers. Where we're taking out legacy chargers or replacing, you know, some of the original, original Blink Chargers, with new chargers. And when you take them down for that longer period of maintenance or replacement, you, you're gonna see, some changes in the numbers. Now, your goal is always to offset that by having, a higher number of chargers that are adding on the network. But when you go through some of the cleansing, so to speak, of older legacy chargers, especially taking off the network older legacy chargers that aren't owned or operated, they're site host's chargers, that the site host has just decided not to maintain, not to keep up, you know, you're gonna see a decrease there. Mike, any additional color around that? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:48:01No, Brendan, I think, I think you got it. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:48:04All right. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:48:05Okay. Thanks for that. And then, should we expect maybe in the near term, next 2 to 3 to 4 quarters, a higher revenue mix, revenues coming more from Europe? Not relatively, but as a proportion year-over-year, or just because of the challenges in the U.S., or how should we look at that as a revenue mix? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:48:31Yeah. So what we can say conclusively, without trying to give guidance on that topic, it's almost like mini guidance, right? Is that your utilization as a whole is increasing over time, right? It's got some seasonality in it, which we're actually moving into that seasonality now. It usually starts at the beginning of the summer, and then softens up on utilization significantly in August, and then bounces back for the rest of the year. But overall, we expect to see an increase in Europe's percent of revenue as a percent of total Blink revenue, because that's the trend, right? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:10They're at a higher penetration rate in general, and as more countries open up and try and compete with one another for, you know, who's got the most EV adoption, competing with Norway or competing with Belgium and the Netherlands, and Germany, who are the leaders in EV adoption, along with U.K., who is right behind but is incentivizing, we do expect that revenue in Europe. I don't know if it's gonna get even or be 50%, but it's certainly gonna improve from, Michael, where is it today? 24%? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:46Yes. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:47Okay. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:4724, yep. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:4824% today. That, we definitely see. And that's, and just to clarify that, that's on owner-operated revenue, not on sales revenue. Sales revenue, it will improve over time, but we see that more of keeping pace with the US. But service revenue, we definitely see increasing in Europe over time. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:50:14Understood. And just one last one. On the 2024 operational priority slide, I think during the first quarter there were mentions of implementing SaaS solutions and some energy management solution development. Have those been like deprioritized, or how should we look at that? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:50:37No, absolutely not. How about reemphasized? Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:50:42Mm-hmm. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:50:42So, we actually. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:50:44Yeah. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:50:45Yeah, we're, we're adding resources in both U.S., Europe and then in our development center outside of Delhi to make sure that we can deliver the market on time. We have the base package out of energy management services. We're into the enhanced packages right now. Those are being developed. And we'll have an update as we move through quarters, and we're gonna see those products begin to launch. But that is a major, major strategic focus of the company. So you won't see resources declining in that area. You'll see resources improving over time. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:51:25Understood. Thanks for taking my questions and good luck. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:51:29Sure. Operator00:51:32Thank you. Our last question comes from Noel Parks, from Tuohy Brothers. Your line is live. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:51:38Hey, Noel. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:51:39Hi. Hi, how's everything going? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:51:42We're good. How are you? Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:51:44Real good, thanks. Real good. I wanted to touch on, you know, your comment on, on multifamily and fleet, and, those seem to be sort of a persistent bright spot when you, look at demand, among the many different, you know, submarkets. And, just thinking, is it simply that, especially I'm thinking commercially owned multifamily, is. They're constantly in sort of a, an upgrade cycle or, a renovation cycle or, you know, in fleets of, a vehicle retirement cycle, so that, it's just, it's just more front burner for them when they're doing capital investments that we, you know, we got to get, our EV charging, in as well. Is that a big part of the driver, what kind of keeps them going? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:52:36Sure. What I'm gonna do is let Mike answer this, because he lives and breathes that on a daily basis. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:52:41Sure. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:52:41So, Mike? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:52:42Yeah, thanks, Brendan. So the first part of the question on multifamily, you know, I think the statistic is that, nearly a third of American citizens live in an apartment building, and, you know, it's a big percentage in Europe as well. So just the sheer volume of that market is big. Secondly, when we look at fleet, it's a combination of things. It's number one, it's yes, as they as vehicles age and they retire those vehicles and they acquire new vehicles, we see a big movement towards battery electric. The second thing is, as the market has gained more experience with BEVs, they realize that the total cost of ownership is simply better. And one of the, you know, there's two big impacts to that. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:53:35One of them is our maintenance costs, and the other is fuel costs. And then thirdly, there are many, many fleets out there that simply have carbon reduction footprint goals, and that's driving demand as well. So, you know, there's really, it's really coming from a number of different areas, but we are very bullish on the fleet market. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:53:57Mike, did you want to answer the multifamily dwelling part? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:02I'm sorry, what part of that? If you could repeat the question. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:05Part of this question was multifamily dwellings. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:09Yeah, I touched on it at the beginning, but what, what specifically? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:12Oh, I'm sorry. Never mind. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:14Oh, that's okay. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:54:17Okay. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:17Noel, did I answer it on the multifamily side, or? Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:54:20Yeah, sure thing. Absolutely. Just the, the. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:22Oh, perfect Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:54:23Point about the size of the market is helpful. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:27Yep. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:54:27And, I was also wondering, you know, I feel like such a core part of the story as it's evolved and as you've gone through acquisitions, it, you know, it keeps coming back to, you know, business model, business model and business model, the flexibility that you, you offer to a wide variety of customers. And I, I hope that that's not sort of so old hat that the, the salience of that isn't, isn't necessarily coming through. But, can you just talk about maybe some recent examples, say, of a new sizable potential customer coming to you and sort of working through the, the variety of business models and sort of what, you know, how they get to whatever outcome of adoption they, they choose? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:55:15Mike, you wanna take that? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:55:17Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Brendan. So, you know, in fact, we're in the midst of one that is really a great example. So there are two paths to this. One of them is a customer that looks at EV charging and says, "You know what? I'm not an EV charging company. I do, you know, I specialize in retail. I'm a retailer, so I would rather concentrate on retail and have you guys concentrate on EV charging." And they still receive a benefit from us in terms of revenue share, when they do that. So that's one piece of it. But another piece of it, which we're seeing more of, and I'll give you this particular example. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:56:04We have and I'm not gonna name the name, but it's a major, major healthcare company in the United States, and they previously owned their chargers across the country. They basically realized that they did not want to own the responsibility of, maintenance, uptime, all of those different things, because, again, they're what they do is deliver healthcare. They don't worry about EV charging stations. We're actually in process of taking over all of their L2 charging stations, coast to coast, and, you know, we think that's gonna be a trend that we see going forward, where even customers that currently have EVSE in the ground are just simply not gonna wanna continue to do it themselves. They're gonna want a provider to take it over for them. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:56:55But the thing I'll add to that, to Mike's comment, is what's key is we already know from the utilization data of those chargers and healthcare locations, that once we take them over, it's a profitable equation, and it's revenue accretive for us. So it's not like we're getting into a bad deal. We're getting into a good deal, and we're getting the chargers for free, and that's what a flexible model does for you. It allows clients who made one decision, three years down the road, to pivot to another decision in a seamless way. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:57:28Great. Great. And just the last one for me. You, you talked about preserving gross margin through continuous improvement activities. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about what some of those recently have been or, or are planned. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:57:43Yeah. So, you know, it's getting over a year, it's probably a year plus now that we've launched continuous improvement and cost reduction and cost avoidance throughout the company in a very intense way. We started it early in 2023, very softly, and then rolled it out across the globe into every business unit. And you know, now it is, you know, it's part of everybody's daily jobs, and we'll give you an example. We had one example where one of our individuals in the tech team, you know, that's not, you know, his daily job isn't to cut cost, but he identified a few vendors that he resourced against another vendor to give us a better technology and then a better cost. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:58:31And after he did the comparative analysis and worked with purchasing, you know, we net an annual savings of about $300,000-$350,000 out of that. So those activity and those wins are now spread across the company. They also spread to where we still have, you know, several duplicate systems that now have a firm sunset date that is all marked in 2024. And once those sunset, then we save all the money that is allocated to maintaining those duplicate systems. One by one, we're sunsetting them, and we've already had six success in finance systems from the U.S. to Europe, where we're aligning now. We've already done it on CMS systems, where we're aligning now. Now we're doing it on networks, we're aligning now. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:59:21And then also, you know, we're looking at, and one of the key things, if we have underperforming business units, we're going ahead and closing down those underperforming business units. And we've done quite a few of those in different countries throughout the world already. And, and to say that, "Hey, it's not mature for us right now to invest additional resources in that." We'll take that money that we're investing there, we'll go and move it into a much more higher GDP country and then move into that. So that's part of it. We have more of those to share with you as we get through the balance of the year, but we've enacted, you know, some pretty significant savings. On one, we'll give you one example. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.01:00:01On one country we just moved out of, and our net save, after moving out of one year, is $800,000, just by netting out and ceasing operations. Those activities are going to continue throughout the company. That is now the Bible to be a Blink employee, and we're gonna continue to enhance that as we move forward. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers01:00:23Terrific. Thanks a lot. Operator01:00:27Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. I'll now hand the conference back to Vitalie Stelea for closing remarks. Please go ahead. Vitalie SteleaVP of Investor Relations at Blink Charging Co.01:00:35We thank you all for joining us on the call and the webcast today, and for your interest in Blink Charging. If there are any additional questions or requests to meet with management, please email us at ir@blinkcharging.com, and we look forward to engaging with you in the future. Operator01:00:56Thank you, everyone. This concludes. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers01:00:57Thanks, everybody. Operator01:00:58You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.Read moreParticipantsExecutivesBrendan JonesPresident and CEOMichael BattagliaCOOMichael RamaCFOVitalie SteleaVP of Investor RelationsAnalystsNoel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy BrothersSameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. WainwrightStephen GengaroManaging Director at StifelWilliam GrippinDirector and Equity Research Anlayst at UBSAnalyst at Roth Capital PartnersPowered by Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) Blink Charging Earnings Headlines5 insightful analyst questions from Blink Charging’s Q1 earnings callMay 18 at 12:48 AM | msn.comWhy Blink Charging (BLNK) Stock Is Trading Lower TodayMay 16 at 4:11 AM | finance.yahoo.comThe REAL Reason Trump is Invading IranFor a moment… Forget about Trump’s ties to Israel. Forget about reports of Iran’s nuclear program. Because my research has led me to believe we’re risking World War 3 with Iran for a completely different reason.May 19 at 1:00 AM | Banyan Hill Publishing (Ad)Blink Charging (NASDAQ:BLNK) Rating Increased to Hold at Wall Street ZenMay 16 at 1:05 AM | americanbankingnews.comBLNK Q1 Deep Dive: Recurring Revenue Growth and DC Fast Charging Expansion Shape OutlookMay 15, 2026 | finance.yahoo.comBlink Charging Advancing Fast Charging in Q1 2026May 13, 2026 | finance.yahoo.comSee More Blink Charging Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Blink Charging? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Blink Charging and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About Blink ChargingBlink Charging (NASDAQ:BLNK) Co. is a provider of electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions, offering a nationwide network of charging stations and related software services. The company designs, develops and markets Level 2 AC and DC fast charging equipment, as well as a cloud-based management platform that enables real-time monitoring, analytics and payment processing. Its integrated approach addresses the needs of commercial, residential and fleet customers looking to deploy EV infrastructure. Blink’s product portfolio includes a suite of charging stations suitable for parking garages, retail locations, hospitality venues and multiunit dwellings. The company’s mobile application allows EV drivers to locate available chargers, initiate sessions, track charging status and process payments. Blink also provides ongoing maintenance, network operations management and customer support to ensure reliable performance and uptime at installed sites. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida, Blink Charging has expanded its footprint across the United States and into select international markets, including Canada and parts of Europe. In July 2020, the company completed its initial public offering and began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol BLNK. Over the years, Blink has partnered with municipal authorities, commercial property owners and electric utilities to accelerate the deployment of charging infrastructure in both urban and suburban environments. Michael D. Farkas, the company’s founder and chairman, has led Blink Charging since its inception, driving strategic growth initiatives and guiding product innovation. Under his leadership, Blink continues to invest in research and development to enhance charger performance, expand network coverage and support the broader transition to electric mobility.View Blink Charging ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Latest Articles Dillard’s Posted a Huge Earnings Beat—So Why Did the Rally Fade?Why Applied Optoelectronics Stock May Be Near a Turning PointIs Everspin Technologies the Next AI Edge Breakout?Peloton Stock Gives Back Gains After Upbeat Earnings ReportDatavault Gains Traction: 5 Reasons to Sell NowTMC Stock: Why This Pre-Revenue Miner Is Worth WatchingRobinhood, SoFi, and Webull Are Telling Very Different Stories Upcoming Earnings Analog Devices (5/20/2026)Intuit (5/20/2026)NVIDIA (5/20/2026)Lowe's Companies (5/20/2026)Medtronic (5/20/2026)Target (5/20/2026)TJX Companies (5/20/2026)NetEase (5/21/2026)Ross Stores (5/21/2026)Walmart (5/21/2026) Get 30 Days of MarketBeat All Access for Free Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools. 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PresentationSkip to Participants Operator00:00:00Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Blink Charging Co.'s second quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Vitalie Stelea. Sir, the floor is yours. Vitalie SteleaVP of Investor Relations at Blink Charging Co.00:00:20Thank you, Matthew. Welcome to Blink's second quarter 2024 earnings call. With us today we have Brendan Jones, President and CEO, Michael Rama, Chief Financial Officer, and Michael Battaglia, our Chief Operating Officer. The discussions today will include non-GAAP references. These are reconciled to the most comparable U.S. GAAP measures in the appendix of our earnings deck. You may find the deck, along with the rest of our earnings materials and other important content on Blink's Investor Relations website. Today's discussions may also include forward-looking statements about our expectations. Actual results may be different from those stated. The most significant factors that could cause actual results to differ are included on page 2 of the second quarter 2024 earnings deck. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are year-over-year. Now, regarding our investor relations calendar. Vitalie SteleaVP of Investor Relations at Blink Charging Co.00:01:18Blink will attend the J.P. Morgan Automotive Conference on the eighth of August in New York City. Blink will also attend the H.C. Wainwright Annual Global Investment Conference on the tenth of September in New York City. Our management will be meeting with investors at all of these events. Please also follow our announcements in our website for additional investor events in the future. And now I will turn the call over to Brendan Jones, Blink's President and CEO. Please go ahead, Brendan. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:01:49Thanks, Vitalie, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Blink's second quarter's results. So let's just jump into it. So our total company revenue was $33.3 million, with service revenue representing about $8 million or approximately 20% of the total. Service revenue increased in Q2 15% when compared to the second quarter of 2023. Gross margin in the second quarter was 32.2%. That's in line with our target guidance of 33%. Now, during the quarter, we contracted, sold, or deployed 4,106 chargers globally and dispersed nearly 33 GW of energy across all Blink networks. Our total company revenue for the second quarter of 2024 increased when compared to the second quarter of 2023, despite some of the challenging market conditions that we encountered. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:02:55On our first quarter earnings call, we mentioned that we had seen lower sales bookings in April. That trend persisted throughout the second quarter, primarily driven by a slight slowdown in EV sales. We believe the pressure on EV sales is a short-term factor, but nonetheless, expect to see some impact to our revenue as we move through the balance of this year. We are confident, however, about the long-term outlook for the industry and of course, for Blink. There are several reasons for our optimism. First, we continue to see a gap between the demand for charging and the available infrastructure to service this demand. If we look at data from S&P Global, 40% of all new vehicle model introductions in 2024 and 2025 will be EVs, and that is on top of the vehicles already on the market again. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:03:55And so 40% is a massive number, and we are uniquely positioned as a company to build the infrastructure and provide the network services to meet the increased charging demand by all these vehicle launches. Additionally, we believe that fleets will continue to be a significant contributor to future demand. Fleet operators are beginning to preference EVs over combustion engine vehicles because they can save 30% on total cost of ownership. This is tremendous savings even for the smallest of fleets. The fact that we now know that rideshare vehicles like Uber and Lyft are switching to EVs and driving up demand for DC and L2 charging is a very good data point and example of what we'll see in the future. Imagine the impact that EVs will have on very sophisticated fleets and the savings that will be delivered to their owners. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:04:55Looking at the big picture, we are seeing sustainable growth in charging service utilization, and some of our peers have been reporting the same trends. Consequently, as EV sales increase, it follows that demand for charging infrastructure will also grow. With a higher number of electric commercial vehicles on the road, Blink's ability to close the gap in available charging sites represents a tremendous market and revenue opportunity for the company. We made great progress in the second quarter this year. To name just a few of our accomplishments, in Europe, our Belgian team won the contract with Decathlon, the world's largest sporting goods retailer, to install, own, and operate both L2 and DC fast chargers. This is very exciting for us as we can see ample opportunities for growth with Decathlon. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:05:52Additionally, as a result of several key commercial contracts already in place in Europe, Blink has begun to expand our presence into Italy and Germany, which are very lucrative EV markets. In the U.K., our team collaborated with U.K.'s largest dedicated parcel delivery company, called Evri, to provide and install the first EV hub at an important sorting center. Additional sites are planned for the future. Now, if we pivot over to the U.S., our team achieved in-process status for the government FedRAMP certification. Now, in-process status is a designation for service providers who are actively working towards authorization. And when we receive final certification, and this is estimated to be in the October-November timeframe, Blink will have access as an approved provider to contracting opportunities with the General Services Administration clients, which opens up the door for thousands of sales. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:06:59Recently, we became an official vehicle charger and network service provider to the state of New York, and we also launched our Blink Care preventive maintenance program that will maximize charger uptime for our customers. If we look at Mexico, we were selected by the official BYD dealership group for EV charging products and services. BYD is an OEM that is gaining global momentum, and we view this as a strategic opportunity in Mexico and around the world. As you can see, we are focused on leveraging our strong reputation in the marketplace to position Blink to compete and win in the short, short mid-term, while also continue structurally adjusting the company for sustainable long-term growth. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:07:51When we look at the long-term market, between the rapid growth of EVs in China, European mandates and incentives that are already in place, and the accelerated growth in developed European markets, combined with the need for the U.S. auto industry and American companies in general to stay competitive globally, we believe EVs will represent one of the key segments of global transportation now and well into the future. If you look at slide 5, McKinsey currently forecasts over 28 million chargers are needed by 2030, and globally, EV infrastructure spending is expected to be about $260 billion by 2030, with about 90+% of those chargers being L2. In fact, as the market matures, we're gonna see more of the emphasis being placed on L2 applications. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:08:46I will comment more in a little bit, at the end of the presentation, but not right now, to give you some more details, I would like to pass the call to Mike Battaglia, our Chief Operating Officer. Mike? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:08:58Great. Thank you, Brendan, and good afternoon to everyone on the call today. So I'd like to start by emphasizing that Blink continues to be uniquely positioned in the market as we offer flexible solutions to our customers. Whether they want to purchase equipment for us, from us, combined with network services, or whether they want us to own and operate chargers for them, we can do both and many variations in between, which not only positions us well competitively to win business, but also provides revenue diversification, evidenced by the fact that nearly a quarter of our current revenue is derived from recurring service streams. And since we own and operate, we have unique insights into a variety of charging locations, which helps us design chargers and software services to anticipate and address our customers' needs. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:09:52As Brendan mentioned earlier, our Q2 product sales reflected some softness that we mentioned on the first quarter earnings call, and we expect to see continued pressure as we move through the back half of the year. That said, based on the visibility of our pipeline and our ability to successfully address the needs of diverse vertical markets, we anticipate order activity will turn around later this year and into 2025. At the same time, our service revenue showed continuously strong growth in the second quarter, making up 24% or nearly one quarter of total company revenue. That is a 300 basis point improvement from 21% of total revenue in the second quarter a year ago. We continue to expect service revenue to grow as a percentage of our total revenue. For example, charging service revenue has increased by 13% year-over-year. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:10:49When we look at the total number of owner-operated units by Blink, we had 6,094 units as of June 30, 2024. That is a 25% increase in a span of only one year. For the first half of 2024, we generated charging revenue of $10 million from Blink-owned chargers, compared to $7.2 million in the first half of 2023. That's a 37% increase year-over-year. Energy dispersed through Blink-owned chargers in the first half of 2024 grew to 8.9 GW, representing 55% growth year-over-year. Notable here is that DC fast chargers are becoming increasingly important within our portfolio of U.S. Blink-owned chargers. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:11:42The revenue generated from our Blink-owned DC fast chargers in the United States in the first half of 2024 increased nearly eightfold compared with the first half of 2023. That's eightfold. And with our L2 charging network, we have detailed visibility into high-traffic, profitable locations. We plan to capitalize on these insights by deploying Blink-owned DC fast chargers in a disciplined way so that we meet our return on capital criteria, which targets positive station economics within five years or less after deployment. Operationally, Blink's gross margin for the second quarter of 2024 was 32%. The slight decrease in gross margin compared with the first quarter of this year was due to a higher mix of third-party manufactured chargers from legacy customers. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:12:34Upon the launch of our new single-port Blink manufactured series product in Q4 of this year, we anticipate a more favorable product mix, and that takes advantage of our strategy of vertical integration. For the first half of 2024, Blink's gross margin was a robust 34%. Moving on to Slide 8. You can see that cumulatively, as of the end of Q2 of 2024, Blink has contracted, sold, or deployed 98,261 chargers since the company's inception. Geographically, 75% of the total company-wide number is attributed to North America and 25% to Europe and other international locations. Further, Blink continues to grow our market share due to our superior products and innovative and flexible business models. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Blink has the third-largest network of chargers in the United States. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:13:35On Slide 10, the variety of products we offer appeals to a broad and diverse range of customers. Our Series 7 and 8 chargers, which are produced in-house at our Bowie, Maryland, production facility, are the most popular Level 2 models among our customers. In short, we offer a full suite of EV charging hardware. Now, if we move on to Slide 11, it shows a representative group of our customer base, including many recognizable names across commercial entities, multifamily complexes, planned communities, healthcare facilities, fleets, and municipalities around the world. A very diverse customer base. As we've said before, we deploy the right charger at the right place, at the right time. And as we continue into 2024, our priorities remain laser-focused on three things. Number 1, continuing to pursue strategic partnerships in key vertical markets to gain market share. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:14:39Number two, driving higher-margin software and recurring services revenues by increasing our Blink-owned network footprint and complementary software services. And finally, number three, continuing to manage costs across the business to position Blink for long-term success. Blink has the highest gross margins today among comparative peers, and we intend to pursue further margin expansion. So with this, I'll pass the call on to Michael Rama, our Chief Financial Officer. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:15:10Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to Slide 14, total revenue in the second quarter of 2024 was $33.3 million, an increase compared to $32.8 million in the second quarter of 2023. Revenue in the first half of 2024 was $70.8 million, which is an increase of 30% compared to $54.5 million in the first half of 2023. Now, product sales in the second quarter of 2024 were $23.6 million, compared to $24.6 million in the second quarter of 2023. The first half of 2024, product sales were $51.1 million, which is an increase of 25%, compared to $41 million in the first half of 2023. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:16:04Second quarter 2024 service revenue, which consists of charging service revenues, network fees, and car-sharing revenues, was $8 million, an increase of 15% compared to the second quarter of 2023. For the first half of 2024, service revenue was $16.2 million, a 38% increase compared with the first half of 2023. The year-over-year growth was primarily driven by greater utilization of our chargers, the increased number of chargers on Blink networks, and revenues associated with our car-sharing programs. Gross profit for the second quarter of 2024 was $10.7 million, compared to $12.3 million for the same period last year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin was 32% in the second quarter of 2024. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:16:56Gross profit for the first half of 2024 was $24.1 million, compared to $16.8 million for the same period last year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin for the first half of 2024 was 34%, compared to 31% in the first half of last year. Blink generates the highest gross margin in the industry among comparable peers and competitors. What is more important to emphasize next is the significant progress we have made in reducing our total operating expenses year over year. Blink's total operating expenses for the second quarter of 2024 were $31.4 million. That is a 41% reduction when compared with the second quarter of 2023, and primarily driven by a 54% reduction in compensation expense and another 24% reduction in G&A expenses. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:17:53This is the result of disciplined and continuous cost optimization and avoidance actions that we've implemented over the last 6 quarters. We are not done yet, and we have additional measures being implemented now. As a result of these actions, our cash burn for the second quarter of 2024, excluding a one-time debt payment, was $12.6 million. Sequentially, that is a 32% and 38% reduction compared to the fourth quarter of 2023 and first quarter of 2024, respectively. On average, we've reduced our cash burn by more than a third compared to our previous two quarters sequentially, excluding one-time debt payments. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2024 was a loss of $14.7 million, compared to a loss of $13.5 million in the prior year period. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:18:46Adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2024 was a loss of $24.9 million, compared to a loss of $31.3 million in the first half of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA for the three and six months ended June 30, 2024, excludes the impact of non-recurring items such as acquisition-related costs, additional stock-based compensation expense, estimated loss related to underperforming assets of a subsidiary, change in the fair value related to a consideration payable, and a one-time non-recurring expenses. Now, EPS for the second quarter of 2024 was a loss of $0.20 per share, compared to a loss of $0.67 per share in the prior year period. EPS for the first half of 2024 was a loss of $0.37 per share, compared to a loss of $1.20 per share for the first half of 2023. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:19:42For the three months ended June 30, 2024, the weighted shares outstanding was 101 million shares, compared to 61.9 million shares outstanding for the three months ended June 30, 2023. Adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter of 2024 was a loss of $0.18 per share, compared to a loss of $0.44 per share in the prior year period. Adjusted earnings per share in the first half of 2024 was a loss of $0.31 per share, compared to a loss of $0.92 per share in the first half of 2023. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:20:19Non-GAAP adjusted EPS is defined as adjusted net income or loss, which excludes the amortization of intangible assets, acquisition-related costs, estimated loss related to underperforming assets of subsidiary, changes in fair value related to consideration payable, and one-time non-recurring expenses divided by the weighted average shares outstanding. Now, as for the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents at June 30, 2024, was $73.9 million, compared to $93.5 million at the end of the first quarter of 2024. During the second quarter, Blink paid off in full $6.9 million of notes payable associated with the Envoy acquisition. Currently, we have no such debt obligations on the balance sheet. Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:21:08Now, turning to Slide 15, here, I would like to revisit the significant decline in our total operating expenses as a percentage of revenue and the progress that we've made over the last six quarters. Total operating expenses were 170% of revenue in 2022. In 2024, we have reduced this number by 8,200 basis points, which is more than half, demonstrating that our strategy of balancing our expenses while preparing for the future is working. Now, this concludes my prepared remarks. I'm going to turn the call back over to Brendan Jones for a few final comments. Go ahead, Brendan. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:21:48Thanks, Michael. So folks, in Q2, Blink achieved growth driven by profitable and recurring revenue from services. We saw some softness on the product side in the second quarter, which was driven by the current environment for EV sales. The EV market as a whole, it slightly dipped in Q1, and then it grew slightly in Q2, but overall, it is flat for the first half of 2024. Our total revenue is in line with this trend at this time. For the full year of 2024, Blink is adjusting its revenue target to between $145 million and $155 million. The company is also updating its timeline to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA during 2025 now. We are maintaining our gross margin target of approximately 33%, supported by efforts of a continuous improvement. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:22:50Now, when we focus on the robust increase in service revenue and significant reduction in expenses this quarter, this demonstrates the underlying strength of our business model. Our number one priority is to continue to structurally adjust for the future demand growth while also remaining nimble and responsive to changing market conditions. Blink's synergies, our cost-cutting, and our cost-avoidant actions will continue through 2024 and beyond. We also will continue to advance our vertical integration strategy with production of high-quality Buy America compliant chargers from our facility in Maryland, but at the same time, we are going to leverage our expanded manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. and globally to drive cost reduction, increase synergies, and service our global customers. Now, let me summarize a few things that were mentioned earlier. During the second quarter, we continued to gain market share and expand our charging footprint. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:24:03While our sales performance reflected the general short-term softening of EV demand, we are unquestionably still at the forefront of massive charger infrastructure build-out that is gonna be with us for many decades to come. Blink is the third largest network in the U.S., with a growing network in Europe. As a result, we are well positioned to benefit from this long-term trend for EVs. If we look at the product, the breadth of Blink's product lineup, combined with our flexible offerings, differentiates us in the marketplace and establishes the company as a leading provider of electric vehicle charging solutions that can meet the demands of virtually, virtually all customers across the board. In the second quarter, we continued to diversify our product sales to include more Level 2 charging equipment. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:25:00Moreover, we anticipate that our enhanced focus on services and software solutions and integrating our product into the broader grid will allow us to expand our addressable market and increase revenue. We also significantly reduced our operating expenses by 41% compared to the second quarter of 2023. As we continue to drive efficiencies, scale our business, and focus on reaching sustainable Adjusted EBITDA profitability. With our unique, vertically integrated model, we believe that Blink is well positioned to drive long-term growth and value for our stakeholders. We remain committed to expanding our global charging footprint and leaning into our mission of advancing energy transition through innovative charging solutions. Before we end this call, it is important to note that we believe we've created the best team in the charging industry. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:26:01I would like to thank our team across the globe who is implementing our plan and taking care of our customers. I also want to thank our customers and our drivers for trusting Blink with their charging needs and for being part of this transportation and energy revolution. Blink is successful because of our team. Our team listens, they learn, and they lead in this industry. With that, I think we're ready to take some questions, so we'll turn it over. Operator00:26:30Certainly. Everyone at this time will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. We do ask that while posing your question, please pick up your handset if you're listening on speakerphone for optimum sound quality. Again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone. Roth Capital Partners, your line is live. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:27:02Good evening, and thanks for taking my questions. So Brendan, can you maybe talk a little bit about linearity of demand during the quarter and how things have progressed over the last few weeks? You know, the weakness that you saw that you reported on the last quarter, you know, I guess I didn't understand that to be something that that was as material as what transpired. Can you say whether or not things deteriorated from that point, or maybe if we hit a trough and saw sort of typical linearity? And then the second part of that question, Bowie, Maryland, is a great investment. Obviously, you got, you know, key customers in there that like to buy well, the made in America product. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:27:46But in the quarter, you said, there was a shift in product mix to third-party manufactured products. Is the market asking for something slightly different right now? You know, what should we know about, you know, the revenue channel, and what's driving volumes right now? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:28:06Okay, I'm gonna start at the last question, then refresh me, and we'll go back to the first question, all right? So looking at product, you know, it's not that there's a change in customer demand on that, it's just that in our fully vertically integrated model, there's a miss on what's called a single-plug unit. We have a dual-plug unit, which is very cost-effective and drives down the acquisition cost for our customers. But when it's a single-port charger that is needed, that has historically been a third-party product that we've gotten. So the demand for that slightly did increase, and so we had to use the third party at a lower margin factor on that particular product. And, you know, that's been consistent throughout our history. Now, we're working to sunset that. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:28:56What's gonna happen, though, is our replacement charger that is being built by us either in Bowie, Maryland, and sourced globally as well out of our manufacturing facility in India. That's gonna replace this charger. So that's gonna alleviate this legacy issue that we have on some of the revenue now on the margins. Now, keep in mind, we still maintain best-in-class margins despite that. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:29:22Yeah. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:29:22So there's a lot of things that go in the equation. So the industry, you know, it. You know, look, when you look at the sales and, you know, the numbers in first quarter were somewhere around 7.3%, which were much lower than they were at the end of calendar year 2023. They bounced up and got a little bit above prior years, just over 8% for Q2, but they sort of stayed there, and that's flat, right? So we were predicting earlier that industry volume would be up to 10%+ and even higher in some industries. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:29:59So you know, that's primarily one of the drivers of what we saw in the lower activity and higher volumes on L2 charging and some DC charging as well, which is a big revenue source for us as well. Now, you couple that in the U.S. with some of the political uncertainty and even some of the naysayers on EVs when it became politicized, you know, I think that you know added to this equation that we saw. But we continue to see positive signs for the future. We continue to hear customers that, you know, we have open contracts with, that are into Q4, and some announcements today we got into Q1 of next year, that, you know, they're not backing off. They may have delayed a bit, but they're not backing off. So we're very, very encouraged by that. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:30:50We see the market, you know, rebounding a bit on the vehicle side. We continue to see the OEMs invest in charging and then invest in, in electric vehicles. Another announcement out today about Hyundai is investing in Thailand to make sure that they have the component strategy for their massive increase in EV sales, and that was another sizable investment by Hyundai. So I think we're in this soft spot. We're seeing this soft spot is going to alleviate and lift. You know, there, there might be some slowness in Q3, but definitely as we get into Q4 and beyond, we, we see the industry recharging itself, excuse the pun, and, and moving forward. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:31:29I, I like the pun. I, I definitely like the pun. If, if we, if, if we could touch on the linearity in the quarter, and how things are trending post-quarter, that, that would be really helpful. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:31:41Oh, okay. In terms of which part of the business? Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:31:45The revenue progression. So I understand there's always a hockey stick into the end of the quarter. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:31:50Mm-hmm Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:31:50But can you maybe, you know, the softness that you noted, right? When you noted that last quarter, you know, many of us hadn't weighed that as significantly as what materialized, right? So it was very early in the quarter, and you tend to, you know, the visibility builds, right? Can you talk about, you know, how the progression of the quarter compared to a typical quarter for you? You know, where did we see things move to the point where you elected to adjust your guidance to some changing market conditions? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:32:27Yeah, we adjusted the guidance because, I mean, you know, number one, we didn't see that strength in Q2, so as a result, we were forced to adjust it. We see in our numbers, though, that month-over-month sales are improving, but what we're not gonna do is get into giving quarter-over-quarter guidance here. Michael, whoops, I gotta go, Mike Battaglia, you wanna add any color to that? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:32:58Yeah. So, as we started off the quarter, we saw that softness, and that seemed, to use your term, the linearity of it, continued through May and June. As you had pointed out, we always see a bump in the, well, last month of the quarter, and we saw that bump. It just wasn't as strong as we've seen in prior quarters. So that's really primarily what drove it, and that's what caused us to adjust the full year. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:33:31Understood. Understood. Then the 33 GW in network throughput, that's a chunky number. That's a nice, growthy number, and it's nice to see that drive 15% growth in the service revenue. You know, can you maybe talk a little bit about utilizations across the network? Are there areas of the network maybe where you need to supplement available charge posts? You know, are there you know, some bright spots out there as far as you know, opportunities for investment, given the strong growth in network throughputs? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:34:09So I think I understood the question. If I'm not answering correctly, hit me, or Mike or Mike will jump in and answer better. So, I mean, in terms of the back off in long-term investments, you know, we're not seeing it. We're engaged right now, and we'll have some announcements on some pretty lucrative owner-operator deals that we're fully involved in, in both the United States and Europe. We're seeing an uptick on a percent of activity, and what we measure by that is, you know, we look at revenue coming, and it's had this balance of about, in Europe, 80/20, meaning 80% is owner-operator, and then 20% is usually sales. In the U.S., it's 25% is usually owner-operated, and then the rest 75% is sales. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:35:05What we've witnessed in Q2 is a significant uptick in owner-operator investments, and the good thing for Blink is that fits under what's called our hybrid model, and that's where that we pay for the charger, the maintenance, the upkeep, the swapping out of the charger. The site host pays for the installation, and then we split the revenue on a 60/40. Right now, that picked up significantly, as Mike indicated in his numbers. The other spot we're gonna keep focusing on, and where we're seeing growth right now, is in multifamily and fleet. So fleet operators aren't slowing down as much, and as you all know, we still have a very lucrative contract with the Post Office. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:35:51We can't comment directly on what we'll see in that, but that contract remains in place, and we have confirmation that we'll be getting additional orders on that, although the dollar amount and the timeframe, we're not at liberty to disclose at this time. Michael, any additional color on that? Battaglia, that is. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:36:10Yeah, just real quick. So Craig, you know, I've been at Blink now four years, and one of the things that I love is the fact that our analytical capabilities continue to get better and better. So to your point, one of the things we are doing now is looking deep within the existing customer base and identifying those locations where we see the need for additional chargers. Now, it presents a pretty interesting opportunity where we can do really one of two things. One is, if we own the chargers at the site, we can expand them. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:36:42But the second one is, we can offer to take over chargers that, for instance, a host owns, that where they're faced with wanting to add more chargers, but maybe don't have the budget to do it or whatever it may be. So we're looking at it on both fronts. And as I mentioned in my comments, we're also looking more and more at high-utilization DC fast charger sites in a responsible way that Blink approaches this. So, yeah, there's opportunity out there to do more on the owner-operator and high-utilization front. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:37:16And I would only add to that, which is really interesting in the space, is the advent of AI and our engagement with companies that are focusing on equations that equal higher revenue on a site basis with better station economics by placement. That is. It's really fascinating to see what those numbers bear out, and we'll have more on that as we move out into additional quarters or with our engagement with those type of companies. Analyst at Roth Capital Partners00:37:48Great. Well, thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on a really strong job bringing down the, the frictional costs. It's, it's impressive you've got them down so much year-over-year. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:37:58Sure. Thanks. Operator00:38:01Thank you. Your next question is from William Grippin, from UBS. Your line is live. William GrippinDirector and Equity Research Anlayst at UBS00:38:09Hi, thanks very much for the time. My first question was just wondering if you could give us an update on where you stand with the Blink Mobility spin-off. I think you had referenced that last quarter. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:38:18Yeah. So it's a great question. So we just met with the team that is spinning off the company yesterday. So the S-1 is basically almost complete. We have a few more things we have to tweak in it. Roth is the selected company that is doing the spin with us right now. We've got the decks done to go on the investor roadshow. We're paying attention to market feedback right now in terms of, you know, what is the market like? Is the IPO the right way to go? And then we're also working on the cost side to make sure that we're reducing the expenses overall across the board. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:39:08So there's a lot of expenses that we have an opportunity on the BlueLA model and the Envoy model, but particularly the BlueLA model, to begin, to reduce significantly. Those activities are now fully underway. We'll have a timeline update on when they're gonna materialize in the numbers. But, you know, we feel optimistic. You know, the IPO market isn't great right now, but we believe the fundamentals of the spin as we move into the back half of Q3 into Q4 that there's gonna be an opportune window to go ahead and go ahead and spin the company off. Mr. Rama, any clarity around that? Michael RamaCFO at Blink Charging Co.00:39:54No, I think, yeah, it, you know, it's the market. We had to look at, you know, the market, how it's being perceived at this, and the timing and stuff like that. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:40:01Yep. William GrippinDirector and Equity Research Anlayst at UBS00:40:04All right. I appreciate that color. And then just last one for me here, but on the DCFC segment, could you elaborate a bit on how you're thinking about positioning or investing in that part of the market as throughput continues to increase across DCFC networks? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:40:21Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, DC fast charger as an owner operator is a different beast entirely. So what we've adopted, and has been serving us very well as a company, is we're not gonna plant flags as a company. There's other companies that are planting flags. And we're not gonna put a charger in the ground that doesn't have positive station economics or positive station economics within a basic ROI timeframe. Typically, we look for four years or shorter on that. If there is a DC fast charger project, if there's government funding, and we can meet that, then we engage in that project. And we're getting some of those projects now. And the same thing, even if there isn't grant money. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:41:09If we can still engage in that project, and it's gonna have that return, then we're gonna do it. Blink is not like some of the other folks that engaged in DC. We're not a cost-of-sales model. So when we do a DC fast charger, we do it for a return on investment in the short term. And it, as I said, it's four to five years we look for on that ROI, and we're starting to see this. Now, on the sales side, you know, last year we had a big sales year on DC fast chargers. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:41:37It's very different this year, and when you, when you break out the numbers, you'll see that we transitioned rather successfully away from heavy DC and replaced a lot of that revenue with the increase in service revenue and the increase in L2 sales. Now, we think DC is gonna bounce back, but it's gonna bounce back more in a fleet setting and more in a commercial setting for big commercial companies, et cetera, and then continue inroads for highway infrastructure. But generally, our preference on DC is leaning heavily now to more owner-operated and more strategic locations in downtown areas and high urban transportation areas where people drive and live with their EVs. William GrippinDirector and Equity Research Anlayst at UBS00:42:27Great. Appreciate the color. I'll turn it over. Operator00:42:31Thank you. Your next question is coming from Stephen Gengaro from Stifel. Your line is live. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:42:38Good afternoon, everybody. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:42:41Hey, Stephen. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:42:43Hi, how are you? So just curious, when you look at the charging revenue side, can you give us any sense for sort of Tesla versus non-Tesla charging at Blink stations? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:42:58Yeah. I mean, if we look at plug-ins, right, Tesla still remains our number one brand that's plugging in, but the percentage is reducing over time. And that's not because there's anything wrong with Tesla, that's because there's more vehicles out there from competitors. So Tesla. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:43:17No, exactly, exactly. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:43:18Especially on the. What, say that again? Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:43:22Oh, no, that was what I was getting at. Are you seeing growth on the non-Tesla side? I guess that's sort of the root of the question. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:43:29Oh, yeah, I mean, the entire industry is. There are several OEMs that will. You know, and there's no problem at Tesla, right? It's just they're in this position where, you know, they have to heavily incentivize 'cause their, their fleet of EVs is a little older, and you got a lot of newer cars coming on the market, and the competition is getting, you know, intense, which is good for the overall industry to drive down cost. So definitely, all the data indicates that GM, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, all have seen increased EV sales, while Tesla's flattened up and seen a little lower, in some cases on sales. So. And that's good news. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:44:10Think about it, when we said 40% of new vehicle launches are gonna be EV, on top of all the other markets out there, the competition is just increasing moving forward. We'll see Tesla become smaller as a portion, but it still might be the number one single brand that's charging on our stations right now. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:44:32Great. Thank you. And just a quick one, when you think about just kind of revenue growth as you think about 2025, should we just sort of think about how we're modeling EV adoption and EV sales to kind of use as a proxy in at least the near term? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:44:53Certainly, there's a higher correlation between L2 sales on both the in-home and municipal, and even to some degree, on the fleet level, as the total industry volume, whether commercial or privately owned vehicles. There's a correlation there, you can't deny it. Now, there's a lag between when that hits and then when it hits the infrastructure company in the revenue, right? However, on the utilization side, there's much more of a direct instant thing. So, you know, our utilization went up over time because those units in operation that were sold throughout 2023 and 2024 are now utilizing our stations, and they're finding more. So the more stations we add in the ground, and we saw a 4,000 unit increase in this month alone, then the more revenue we're gonna get on the utilization side. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:45:46And you see that bearing out in the numbers. So it's really two different things you have to manage. There's that very direct correlation between sales and the selling of product. And then, you know, there's an increase no matter what, because more cars are on the road, and that's the unit in operation as opposed to total vehicle sales equation. So UIO is, is driving increased utilization and driving increased revenue for us right now. Stephen GengaroManaging Director at Stifel00:46:17Very helpful. Thank you. Operator00:46:22Thank you. Your next question is coming from Sameer Joshi from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is live. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:46:30Hey, guys, can you hear me? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:46:32Yes. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:46:33Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thanks for taking my questions. I would like to just dig a little deeper on the car charging revenues, actually. So seems like, sequentially, 1Q to 2Q, they have been relatively flat or slightly down. Are you facing any uptime challenges due to maintenance or any utilization differences or shortcomings? Like, what is the reason for that flat revenue growth? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:47:06Yeah, you're gonna see some asset leasing in the numbers, where we're mostly, you're gonna see it, where we're upgrading chargers. Where we're taking out legacy chargers or replacing, you know, some of the original, original Blink Chargers, with new chargers. And when you take them down for that longer period of maintenance or replacement, you, you're gonna see, some changes in the numbers. Now, your goal is always to offset that by having, a higher number of chargers that are adding on the network. But when you go through some of the cleansing, so to speak, of older legacy chargers, especially taking off the network older legacy chargers that aren't owned or operated, they're site host's chargers, that the site host has just decided not to maintain, not to keep up, you know, you're gonna see a decrease there. Mike, any additional color around that? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:48:01No, Brendan, I think, I think you got it. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:48:04All right. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:48:05Okay. Thanks for that. And then, should we expect maybe in the near term, next 2 to 3 to 4 quarters, a higher revenue mix, revenues coming more from Europe? Not relatively, but as a proportion year-over-year, or just because of the challenges in the U.S., or how should we look at that as a revenue mix? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:48:31Yeah. So what we can say conclusively, without trying to give guidance on that topic, it's almost like mini guidance, right? Is that your utilization as a whole is increasing over time, right? It's got some seasonality in it, which we're actually moving into that seasonality now. It usually starts at the beginning of the summer, and then softens up on utilization significantly in August, and then bounces back for the rest of the year. But overall, we expect to see an increase in Europe's percent of revenue as a percent of total Blink revenue, because that's the trend, right? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:10They're at a higher penetration rate in general, and as more countries open up and try and compete with one another for, you know, who's got the most EV adoption, competing with Norway or competing with Belgium and the Netherlands, and Germany, who are the leaders in EV adoption, along with U.K., who is right behind but is incentivizing, we do expect that revenue in Europe. I don't know if it's gonna get even or be 50%, but it's certainly gonna improve from, Michael, where is it today? 24%? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:46Yes. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:47Okay. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:4724, yep. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:49:4824% today. That, we definitely see. And that's, and just to clarify that, that's on owner-operated revenue, not on sales revenue. Sales revenue, it will improve over time, but we see that more of keeping pace with the US. But service revenue, we definitely see increasing in Europe over time. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:50:14Understood. And just one last one. On the 2024 operational priority slide, I think during the first quarter there were mentions of implementing SaaS solutions and some energy management solution development. Have those been like deprioritized, or how should we look at that? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:50:37No, absolutely not. How about reemphasized? Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:50:42Mm-hmm. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:50:42So, we actually. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:50:44Yeah. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:50:45Yeah, we're, we're adding resources in both U.S., Europe and then in our development center outside of Delhi to make sure that we can deliver the market on time. We have the base package out of energy management services. We're into the enhanced packages right now. Those are being developed. And we'll have an update as we move through quarters, and we're gonna see those products begin to launch. But that is a major, major strategic focus of the company. So you won't see resources declining in that area. You'll see resources improving over time. Sameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright00:51:25Understood. Thanks for taking my questions and good luck. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:51:29Sure. Operator00:51:32Thank you. Our last question comes from Noel Parks, from Tuohy Brothers. Your line is live. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:51:38Hey, Noel. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:51:39Hi. Hi, how's everything going? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:51:42We're good. How are you? Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:51:44Real good, thanks. Real good. I wanted to touch on, you know, your comment on, on multifamily and fleet, and, those seem to be sort of a persistent bright spot when you, look at demand, among the many different, you know, submarkets. And, just thinking, is it simply that, especially I'm thinking commercially owned multifamily, is. They're constantly in sort of a, an upgrade cycle or, a renovation cycle or, you know, in fleets of, a vehicle retirement cycle, so that, it's just, it's just more front burner for them when they're doing capital investments that we, you know, we got to get, our EV charging, in as well. Is that a big part of the driver, what kind of keeps them going? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:52:36Sure. What I'm gonna do is let Mike answer this, because he lives and breathes that on a daily basis. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:52:41Sure. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:52:41So, Mike? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:52:42Yeah, thanks, Brendan. So the first part of the question on multifamily, you know, I think the statistic is that, nearly a third of American citizens live in an apartment building, and, you know, it's a big percentage in Europe as well. So just the sheer volume of that market is big. Secondly, when we look at fleet, it's a combination of things. It's number one, it's yes, as they as vehicles age and they retire those vehicles and they acquire new vehicles, we see a big movement towards battery electric. The second thing is, as the market has gained more experience with BEVs, they realize that the total cost of ownership is simply better. And one of the, you know, there's two big impacts to that. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:53:35One of them is our maintenance costs, and the other is fuel costs. And then thirdly, there are many, many fleets out there that simply have carbon reduction footprint goals, and that's driving demand as well. So, you know, there's really, it's really coming from a number of different areas, but we are very bullish on the fleet market. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:53:57Mike, did you want to answer the multifamily dwelling part? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:02I'm sorry, what part of that? If you could repeat the question. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:05Part of this question was multifamily dwellings. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:09Yeah, I touched on it at the beginning, but what, what specifically? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:12Oh, I'm sorry. Never mind. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:14Oh, that's okay. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:54:17Okay. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:17Noel, did I answer it on the multifamily side, or? Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:54:20Yeah, sure thing. Absolutely. Just the, the. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:22Oh, perfect Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:54:23Point about the size of the market is helpful. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:54:27Yep. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:54:27And, I was also wondering, you know, I feel like such a core part of the story as it's evolved and as you've gone through acquisitions, it, you know, it keeps coming back to, you know, business model, business model and business model, the flexibility that you, you offer to a wide variety of customers. And I, I hope that that's not sort of so old hat that the, the salience of that isn't, isn't necessarily coming through. But, can you just talk about maybe some recent examples, say, of a new sizable potential customer coming to you and sort of working through the, the variety of business models and sort of what, you know, how they get to whatever outcome of adoption they, they choose? Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:55:15Mike, you wanna take that? Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:55:17Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Brendan. So, you know, in fact, we're in the midst of one that is really a great example. So there are two paths to this. One of them is a customer that looks at EV charging and says, "You know what? I'm not an EV charging company. I do, you know, I specialize in retail. I'm a retailer, so I would rather concentrate on retail and have you guys concentrate on EV charging." And they still receive a benefit from us in terms of revenue share, when they do that. So that's one piece of it. But another piece of it, which we're seeing more of, and I'll give you this particular example. Michael BattagliaCOO at Blink Charging Co.00:56:04We have and I'm not gonna name the name, but it's a major, major healthcare company in the United States, and they previously owned their chargers across the country. They basically realized that they did not want to own the responsibility of, maintenance, uptime, all of those different things, because, again, they're what they do is deliver healthcare. They don't worry about EV charging stations. We're actually in process of taking over all of their L2 charging stations, coast to coast, and, you know, we think that's gonna be a trend that we see going forward, where even customers that currently have EVSE in the ground are just simply not gonna wanna continue to do it themselves. They're gonna want a provider to take it over for them. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:56:55But the thing I'll add to that, to Mike's comment, is what's key is we already know from the utilization data of those chargers and healthcare locations, that once we take them over, it's a profitable equation, and it's revenue accretive for us. So it's not like we're getting into a bad deal. We're getting into a good deal, and we're getting the chargers for free, and that's what a flexible model does for you. It allows clients who made one decision, three years down the road, to pivot to another decision in a seamless way. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers00:57:28Great. Great. And just the last one for me. You, you talked about preserving gross margin through continuous improvement activities. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about what some of those recently have been or, or are planned. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:57:43Yeah. So, you know, it's getting over a year, it's probably a year plus now that we've launched continuous improvement and cost reduction and cost avoidance throughout the company in a very intense way. We started it early in 2023, very softly, and then rolled it out across the globe into every business unit. And you know, now it is, you know, it's part of everybody's daily jobs, and we'll give you an example. We had one example where one of our individuals in the tech team, you know, that's not, you know, his daily job isn't to cut cost, but he identified a few vendors that he resourced against another vendor to give us a better technology and then a better cost. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:58:31And after he did the comparative analysis and worked with purchasing, you know, we net an annual savings of about $300,000-$350,000 out of that. So those activity and those wins are now spread across the company. They also spread to where we still have, you know, several duplicate systems that now have a firm sunset date that is all marked in 2024. And once those sunset, then we save all the money that is allocated to maintaining those duplicate systems. One by one, we're sunsetting them, and we've already had six success in finance systems from the U.S. to Europe, where we're aligning now. We've already done it on CMS systems, where we're aligning now. Now we're doing it on networks, we're aligning now. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.00:59:21And then also, you know, we're looking at, and one of the key things, if we have underperforming business units, we're going ahead and closing down those underperforming business units. And we've done quite a few of those in different countries throughout the world already. And, and to say that, "Hey, it's not mature for us right now to invest additional resources in that." We'll take that money that we're investing there, we'll go and move it into a much more higher GDP country and then move into that. So that's part of it. We have more of those to share with you as we get through the balance of the year, but we've enacted, you know, some pretty significant savings. On one, we'll give you one example. Brendan JonesPresident and CEO at Blink Charging Co.01:00:01On one country we just moved out of, and our net save, after moving out of one year, is $800,000, just by netting out and ceasing operations. Those activities are going to continue throughout the company. That is now the Bible to be a Blink employee, and we're gonna continue to enhance that as we move forward. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers01:00:23Terrific. Thanks a lot. Operator01:00:27Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. I'll now hand the conference back to Vitalie Stelea for closing remarks. Please go ahead. Vitalie SteleaVP of Investor Relations at Blink Charging Co.01:00:35We thank you all for joining us on the call and the webcast today, and for your interest in Blink Charging. If there are any additional questions or requests to meet with management, please email us at ir@blinkcharging.com, and we look forward to engaging with you in the future. Operator01:00:56Thank you, everyone. This concludes. Noel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy Brothers01:00:57Thanks, everybody. Operator01:00:58You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.Read moreParticipantsExecutivesBrendan JonesPresident and CEOMichael BattagliaCOOMichael RamaCFOVitalie SteleaVP of Investor RelationsAnalystsNoel ParksManaging Director at Tuohy BrothersSameer JoshiSenior Equity Research Analyst at H.C. WainwrightStephen GengaroManaging Director at StifelWilliam GrippinDirector and Equity Research Anlayst at UBSAnalyst at Roth Capital PartnersPowered by