Blink Charging - Earnings Call - Q4 2020

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's Fourth Quarter and Year End Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. Please note that this call may be being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn today's program over to John Nesbitt of IMS Investor Relations.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Blink Charging's fourth quarter and year end twenty twenty investor call. On the call today, we have Michael Farkas, Founder and CEO Brenna Jones, President and Michael Rama, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to take a moment to read the Safe Harbor statement. This conference call contains forward looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. These forward looking statements and terms such as anticipate, expect, intend, may, will, should or other comparable terms involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future.

Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief, current expectations of Blink and members of its management as well as the assumption in which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, including those described in Blink's periodic reports filed with the SEC and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward looking statements. Except as required by federal securities law, Blink undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward looking statements to reflect changed conditions. Okay. I'll now turn the call over to Michael Farkas, Chief Executive Officer of Blink Charging.

Go ahead, Mike.

Speaker 2

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We closed out 2020 with a very strong fourth quarter. Revenue grew over 250%, and we made tremendous progress expanding our footprint. As we move through 2021, we remain focused on executing our aggressive rollout of chargers to a wide variety of partners and locations, including health care networks, hotels, multifamily residences and municipalities.

As a pioneer in EV charging, we've watched what was a gradual transition to EV gain massive traction in 2020. The EV industry is experiencing tremendous momentum, fueled by a combination of environmental concerns coupled with legislative initiatives on both the local and federal levels, that have more and more drivers making the switch to EVs. And it follows that more EVs that are on the road, the more demand there will be for fast, accessible and reliable charging stations to power these vehicles. With that in mind, we've been pursuing new exclusive partnerships and locations for the placement of our charging units. While EVs compromise a relatively small portion of vehicles today, they represent a rapidly growing segment of the transportation sector, and we're focused on positioning our chargers in densely trafficked areas to capitalize on what we believe will be a substantial shift to EVs over the coming years.

It is important to note that in our own and operate models, exclusive agreements allow us to deploy chargers today and to add chargers to contracted locations as necessary to meet demand. And that's throughout the duration of our long term exclusive agreements. We are aggressively deploying our chargers using a variety of business models, but emphasizing our own and operate model. The Blink owned model is a key competitive advantage for us because with this model, we realize an economic benefit each time a vehicle is charged at one of our own chargers. As EV adoption continues to accelerate and charger utilization increases, we expect our owned and operated units will represent a growing revenue stream for many years to come.

We believe the opportunity in front of us is enormous, with few companies better positioned than Blink to benefit from the anticipated growth in demand for EV infrastructure. As we have pointed out previously, Bloomberg NES Electric Vehicle Outlook 2020, which looks at the global EV market, noted that passenger EV sales increased from 450,000 in 2015 to 2,100,000 in 2019 and are expected to reach over 50,000,000 in 02/1940. Bloomberg NEF also expects that more than 50% of new car sales will be EVs by February of new car sales, and and projects that we need many, many more charging stations, and that should top over $290,000,000 by 02/1940, with a value of $500,000,000,000 worldwide. The EV revolution is underway, and Blink is strongly positioned for significant growth as we continue to play a leadership role in laying the groundwork for this transition. To support our growth, in January 2021, we completed a successful equity raise of 2 and $21,500,000 It significantly strengthened our balance sheet.

Now with a stronger capital structure, we're better positioned to expand the Blink owned charging infrastructure, improve internal systems, improve operations, increase our technology and to prepare for anticipated exponential growth. It also allows us to secure new partnerships, acquire new locations and to seek amazing strategic acquisition opportunities. We have been adding new positions and people to improve our operational strength across our organization, with additions to our sales staff, IT, customer service departments. And bottom line, the greatest achievement that Blink has made over the last year is not our stock price. It's not the money that we've raised, but it's the team that we've built.

Every one of our employees of this company has allowed us to grow this business, and they're all completely dedicated. And just after the fourth close of the fourth quarter, we announced the purchase of a 10,000 square foot office condominium in Miami, and that's to house our corporate headquarters and to support our current and future growth. Additionally, following the close of the quarter, we opened a new Phoenix location, which has already begun making meaningful contributions to our operations. This is an extremely exciting time for our industry and specifically for Blink. We've begun 2021 in a solid position, and we plan to capitalize on the many opportunities we're seeing to provide the accessible, fast and reliable EV infrastructure that makes traveling with EVs both attractive and viable.

Now I'll turn the call over to Michael Rama, our CFO, to run through some of the specific financial results of the quarter. Following that, Brendan Jones, our President, will provide details around some of our recent progress before we go to the Q and A. Go ahead, Michael.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone. With our fourth quarter performance, we delivered a strong close to a challenging year. As Michael noted, despite the broad economic uncertainty that the COVID-nineteen pandemic created, we remain intent on driving growth and progress and our financial results demonstrated that focus. Our solid fourth quarter results continued the momentum of our second and third quarters as represented by total revenue growth of 250% to $2,500,000 And this growth was driven by increased product sales as well as increased network fees. Product revenues grew more than 1000% in the fourth quarter related to robust demand for our commercial and residential chargers, and network fees grew 67% related to the increase in chargers within our network.

The growth in these areas of our business was offset slightly by a decrease in revenues from charging services for the quarter, primarily related to less EV travel because of the pandemic. Additionally, fourth quarter twenty twenty revenues were favorably impacted by the timing of certain orders that pushed from third quarter twenty twenty to fourth quarter twenty twenty. Fourth quarter net loss was $7,900,000 or $0.24 per share compared to net loss of $2,900,000 or $0.11 per share for the 2019. For the fourth quarter, net loss included increases in compensation and operating expenses related to the onboarding of new employees, primarily in our sales, IT and customer service areas. Specifically, operating expenses for the quarter increased $8,300,000 from $2,900,000 primarily driven by increased operational expenses.

This includes significant scaling of our infrastructure and operations as we continue to scale the business to prepare for anticipated demand for our products and services as EV use grows. Looking at full year 2020, revenues increased 121% to $6,200,000 compared to $2,800,000 for the full year of 2019. Product sales grew more than fourfold to $4,400,000 for the full year and network fees improved 14%. Charging service fees decreased 43% for the full year 2020 related to the stay at home orders that kept drivers largely off the road for a majority of the year. As the COVID-nineteen vaccination efforts continue and the economy reopens, we expect to see usage increase as drivers return to more regularly traveled behaviors.

Over the medium to longer term, we expect to see growth in the charging service revenue from our owned and operated stations as more electric vehicles take to the road as we continue our aggressive expansion of the blink chargers of network of chargers. Net loss for the year was $17,800,000 or $0.59 per share compared to a net loss of $9,700,000 or $0.37 per share for the full year twenty nineteen. Net loss for the full year 2020 include increases as previously described. Now I'll provide charging station stats as of 12/31/2020. As of 12/31/2020, we deployed 16,616 charging stations, of which 7,062 were on the Blink network, which consisted of 4,348 Level two publicly accessible charging commercial charging units, fourteen

Speaker 2

oh

Speaker 3

four Level two private commercial charging units, 120 DC fast charging EV publicly accessible chargers, 14 DC fast charging EV private chargers, and 1,170 residential level two BlinkEV charging units. The remaining are non networked on other networks or international sales or deployments, which consist of 228 level two commercial charging units, 8,773 residential Level two EV charging stations, five twenty one sold internationally and 33 deployed internationally. And now a few comments on our cash and liquidity. At 12/31/2020, cash and marketable securities were $22,300,000 compared to $7,100,000 at December 3139. Following the close of 2020, we completed successful equity raise resulting in net proceeds of $221,500,000 Now I'll send it to Brendan for some additional remarks.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Michael. As I'm sure we can all agree, 2020 was quite the ride from an economic and public health standpoint. We are proud of our company's ability to stay focused and execute on aggressive rollout of EV charging infrastructure both domestically and internationally despite a myriad of challenges throughout the year including shutdowns, travel bans and the advent of virtual only sales calls and pitches. We'll review some highlights which will illustrate the brand recognition and momentum we're experiencing. We are seeing tremendous interest and many opportunities in the marketplace with both private partners and as part of grant structures being used by local governments at both the state city level for the establishment of convenient, accessible EV charging to support the increasing number of EV drivers on the road.

Likewise, we're seeing heightened interest from international partners also working to develop the infrastructure necessary to encourage the transition to EVs. We had many notable developments during the fourth quarter and have made substantial progress to date this year. So I'll highlight a few that characterize our growth strategies for the expansion of our charging presence. Establishing new locations is the linchpin of our strategy and we are literally adding new locations almost every week. Among our recently announced additions, we acquired YUGO Stations Incorporated and its portfolio of 44 DC fast charging locations as well as multiple grants.

YUGO was awarded for the development of up to 45 additional charging stations. We also signed agreements with JSC management, a large Burger King franchisee for the deployment of Blink owned charging station in key locations across the Northeast United States. Now internationally, we continue to have success deploying our chargers through partnerships and joint ventures. Our recently announced international opportunities include the sale of 45 dual port blank charging stations for deployment across Greece by blank charging Helles, our joint venture entity with Eunice Energy Group and a follow on order from Inter Energy for an additional 150 fast charging stations to be deployed in The Dominican Republic. Additionally, we received an initial order from Inter Energy for 15 charging stations as it expands the EverGo network in Panama.

Switching gears, healthcare facilities, operate 20 fourseven are typically highly trafficked by a mix of medical professionals, patients and visitors are natural locations for our charging stations and an important element of our focused growth strategy. We announced agreements with several healthcare networks during the fourth quarter, including the Lehigh Valley Health Network for Blink owned charging stations across their extensive portfolio of healthcare facilities in Pennsylvania. The further deployment of Blink owned charging stations at St. Luke's University healthcare facilities also in Pennsylvania and an exclusive contract to provide Blank IQ 200 units at several Blessing Health System locations in Quincy, Illinois. Additionally, resale partners are also an important extension of our sales efforts and we expanded our reseller portfolio to include several in this quarter.

The Lion Electric Company, a leading manufacturer of zero emissions buses and trucks, will now offer the Blink IQ 200 charging station to school systems and fleets they work with. And Ballantyne Strong will offer Blink's full line of charging stations to their extensive customer base of cinema operators, theme parks and other entertainment and leisure related locations. And finally, we are seeing continued success when we compete for grants and for participation in the subsidized rollout of EV infrastructure by states and cities. Some recent highlights include our award after a competitive bidding process to provide EV charging infrastructure for the city of San Antonio's EVSA program. The award initially calls for us to deploy up to 140 Blink owned charging stations throughout the city.

We also announced two agreements that will expand our presence in the Northeast Region Of The U. S. We have our first deployment in New Hampshire in the resort town of Waterville Valley where our Blink owned units are the only charters within 30 miles. And we announced a collaboration with the state of Vermont to deploy 22 DC fast chargers and 22 L2 chargers at 11 sites across the state in the new next two years. At five of these locations, we will deploy high speed charging of 175 kilowatts for DC fast chargers.

Needless to say, we have a very full and growing docket of deployment. We continue to execute against our goals of expanding the EV charging infrastructure to support and promote the increasing adoption of EVs. We are super energized by the opportunities recently afforded to us by the recent capital raise to support our rollout of EV charging infrastructure. We are proud of the progress our sales team has made and energized about our potential as we move through 2021. With that, we will now open up the call for questions.

Thank you very much.

Speaker 0

We will take our first question Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

You. Good afternoon, everyone. Guys, you mentioned COVID-nineteen obviously had a big impact on the business in 2020. Maybe whether or not it was could have been some supply chain issues for some other folks in the sector or just simply less deployments given less driving and less charging revenues you mentioned. But now that kind of vaccinations are accelerating here, could you just give us a sense of what type of visibility you have into orders or deployments for 2021?

And what you think this could do to both top line revenue and also CapEx requirements?

Speaker 3

I'll jump in part of that. This is Michael Rama. Gabe, nice talking to you again. So we're expecting our Q1 twenty twenty one revenues to be strong compared to Q1 twenty twenty. We're on track to have a very good 2021.

We're seeing a lot of orders come in. We're seeing activity from a lot of the different property owners and partners. And so we're expecting a strong 2021.

Speaker 2

Gabe, this is Michael Farkas. I'll add to Yes, there's been obviously an uptick across the board in EVs. We're seeing a lot more cars hitting the market now than ever before and from mainstream manufacturers like Volkswagen, especially in a very big way. So obviously, more cars on the road, you know, today we have low single digit EV sales as a percentage of total food sales. And as that increases, that'll directly, we believe, impact our revenues in the charging stations that we sell to others as well as own and operate.

In addition, a lot of people now are, you know, business owners, property owners, more cognizant of what's going on with EVs and they're taking the initiatives which they haven't in the past. So that should also add again to deployment numbers in a very good way.

Speaker 5

Got it. Thanks guys. That's helpful. And then I guess just as a follow-up, could you maybe just talk a little bit about the margin profile as we progress throughout 2021? Again, I know 2020 maybe a little bit kind of funky just given COVID-nineteen, but particularly on charging revenue, is anything you could say on how the margin on that line item and opportunity progresses throughout 2021?

Should we expect it to improve as utilization kind of increases? Just curious about how that trends.

Speaker 2

You know, we've been working on getting our costs down. Our average cost of electricity today is now about $0.12 per kilowatt hour. So we're working on opportunities of being able to bring that cost down. Our average sale price is a little bit north of $0.39 So what we would like to do is be able to save on the electricity, be able to really dedicate green energy if possible, and then bring down the cost to our customers accordingly. But there are very nice margins in our business, both on the sale of the fuel.

In addition, there are very nice margins on the hardware itself, as well as the networking services and processing fees and so on.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Michael. And then just one last one. Just on G and A, you guys obviously mentioned getting the staff bulked up to support the growth initiative ahead. I guess just curious if we should expect further increases in G and A on more hiring? Or do you think you're kind of well staffed now for the opportunity ahead in the near term?

Speaker 2

We see a lot of growth ahead of us. And we're roughly about 100 bodies today, and this business is growing at an exponential rate. I think everyone's takeaway from here should be very clear. We're in an industry today where there's roughly 300,000 or so viable charging stations that are out in the field. From estimates, we're looking at anywhere between 12,000,000 to $14,000,000 maybe higher by 2030 in The U.

S. Alone. That's going to take staff to build. It's all about having the right team, being able to really get into all of those little nooks and crannies of the of the real estate space and knowing all the owners, operators, managers, and so on, and being able to really service them and take care of our hardware, grow our hardware base. It's going to take money to invest in our team.

So we're expecting that to increase for a little bit.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you so much, guys.

Speaker 6

You're welcome.

Speaker 0

We'll take our next question from Craig Irwin with Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Good evening. And first I should say congratulations on the strong revenue in the quarter.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. It seems,

Speaker 7

you know, from your disclosures around international deployments that you guys are starting to get some nice early traction there. Can you maybe, give us a little bit more color on, where these units are being deployed? Where you're seeing the greatest success? And would you expect this to be a material contribution over the course of 2021? And any color you can give us on, you know, how we could

Speaker 2

think about the relative contribution. Okay. Europe is a tremendous market. The international market is huge as well. We have certain areas of the world where there's a lot more utilization than there is in The US today.

Our role and responsibility is to deploy our hardware in areas where we'll get the best utilization in our own and operate model. And in our hardware sale model, it's our role to go out there and sell as much hardware as we can. We have an amazing piece of equipment for European market. As we did for The U. S.

Market and having our Level two charging station max out capacity of its standard, We did the same for our European hardware, which we now have on a per port basis roughly 44 kilowatts of output. It's a very fast level two small footprint charging station. And again, we believe it'll be very impactful. It's very, very economically priced. So again, it's it's we believe as a company with global aspirations that not only expanding where we are today in Israel and in Greece and in The Dominican Republic and in Panama and in other areas, you know, we need to go where where there you know, people wanna buy our hardware and are happy with our hardware, and we need to go into areas where we own and operate where there's massive utilization that's that's today, not necessarily in the future.

We believe that this year we have some very interesting news that we may be in the European market, especially with our new hardware. And I believe everyone will be excited about what we do outside of The US in the coming years.

Speaker 7

Excellent. Excellent. So then a follow on question there is obviously, you know, is a greenfield opportunity for you, so you have to invest. Can you maybe talk about the relative contribution to the increase SG and A and salaries and comp? You know, is this really primarily staffing up for Europe?

Or are you staffing up for other opportunities in The US and internationally also at the same time?

Speaker 2

It is just a wholesale growth of our business across the board. So are some of those resources focused on our expansion in Europe? Yes, they are. And as well as in Middle East and South Latin America and Caribbean? Yes.

So we do have some of our staff that's focused on that. As we grow, more so will do. But we're an American company, and we still have a lot to do here. We're looking forward to introducing next generation of DC fast chargers and do for the level two, you know, the DC market we did at the level two with our Blink IQ 200. So we are focused on on The US space, and we're here and we have amazing relationships.

But there's there are tremendous opportunities globally. Blink is focused on internationalizing our network, having the ability of of being multilingual, multi currency, and we have some amazing things that we're gonna be launching in the near future that allow that. And once that's in full order, you know, whether we're operating a unit from Miami that's in Maine or in Oregon is not really different than operating and managing a unit that's in Paris or London or in Holland somewhere. So our network has the ability of managing charging stations globally, and that's where we're gonna be in in very short order. And once that happens, we're gonna be able to expand in in any area where where EV struck EV infrastructure is needed and where we have an interested customer that wants to

Speaker 6

work with Blank. We'll have

Speaker 2

the hardware solution for each area and have the appropriate solution because, again, the hardware is different based upon the grids that they operate on, and having the back end processing systems, payment systems, mobile applications where literally that same portal is used globally to operate a charging station no matter where you are. And that allows us to extend wherever we see activity.

Speaker 7

Great. So Michael, one of your most exciting wins, these past couple months was with, San Antonio. City council there held an open RFP, and you were you were the winner in in an open competition. Can you maybe talk about, you know, what they found most interesting, most compelling about your product and whether or not this translates to other open RFP processes out there, you know, and your competitiveness given that this has been a pretty thorough process?

Speaker 2

Yes. It was actually a very, very thorough process. And again, we came ahead. And it's been, we've been really been doing pretty well at these open competitions as of late. And it's really about our offerings, our services, and I would say our customer service, really being there for these municipalities, being there for our customers, providing an amazing service.

One of the main advantages that we have over a lot of our competitors is we have an obsolescence proof piece of equipment in our level two charging stations. Almost all of our competitors, you know, they're either one third, one half at most of the output that we have in our IQ two hundreds. When you have sustainability groups, when you have municipalities that look at this long term, and and you can easily convey the message, hey, if you don't buy something that has 80 amps of output, you're buying obsolescence. Why? Because more and more cars are coming out with that capacity.

Do are you gonna go to a charger that has one third or or one half the capacity that's just down the block? There's a charger that goes, you know, faster that works according to your your schedule and that charges for electricity at at a fair rate. Obviously, then it go to to something that that that's a little bit quicker. That's obviously the holy grail in in a lot of charging. Obviously, there's level two and there's DC, and and different locations are appropriate for different hardware and what's available, you know, power at those locations.

You know? But but but ultimately, our hardware really won the day. It's it's it's just a better piece of equipment. There's a big difference between us and our competitors when it comes to building hardware. They build it to sell it to a third party.

There's no other company that designs its own equipment and has it manufactured and brands it by its own name and does what we do, you know. And there's also an owner and operate space. We we learned a lot about where things are weak. You know, the chain breaks at its weakest link. Right?

So when you own and operate the charging stations, you're involved in site acquisition, site evaluation process, installation, maintaining those units, operating them, then dealing with the EV driver. Most of the other, none of the other manufacturers really are involved in that process. So there's a lot of insight and experience that we've gained doing that for many years before we developed the IQ 200. And we learned a lot of things. We learned, hey, let's try to figure out a way to get this unit in the ground as fast possible because we pay the electricians.

That benefits anyone who buys our hardware. How do we figure out a way to maintain these units better? How do we make sure they last longer so that that that that, you know, again, as an owner and an operator, we want them to be in the field as long as possible. So I think I think all of those factors, you know, again, also really just taking care of the customer as best as we can. You know, showing them over and over again that that, you know, we're coming next year and can work with you.

And in addition, we have multiple deployment methodologies which really allow municipalities to work with us because of the different relationships they have at different locations. So there's multiple reasons, but I think one one of the linchpins was definitely our hardware.

Speaker 7

Great. That that definitely makes sense. Thank you. So last question if I may. Lion Electric, that's a that's a pretty nice customer win.

So I should say congratulations for that. You know, they have an exciting trajectory over the next number of years. And they're they're doing some, amazing fleets. The the one contract they have that I I guess many people find incredibly interesting is a billion dollar purchase order from from Amazon. Can you talk about, you know, where you you might expect to participate with LINE?

Do you expect broad participation over there or would it be on a project by project basis? You know, can we translate these other purchases, purchase orders that they have into potential purchase orders for BLINK? Assuming everything goes well over the next year or two?

Speaker 2

Well, I think when you look at what we provide to them and what our competitors can provide to them, I believe we have a much more viable solution, and that's why they decided to work with us. Now they typically sell the bus and the charger as as a combination. And, you know, I I usually posted on Facebook, and I think it was on Instagram, a whole depot of buses with blink chargers, and each bus pulls in and, you know, after they do their runs at the end of the day, and they plug in, they're ready to go. One thing about our charging stations, as I said before, is yes, we are the fastest. And you can't get any faster from level two charging stations.

After that, you go to DC fast chargers. The other thing about our charging stations is they're also backwards compatible. So if you only have, you know, 12 amps or 20 amps or whatever it may be, you can connect our charger, lower the the the charging station through software, and then as the, you know, more capacity is available at the location, which, again, some of the stuff that Biden was talking about over the last couple of days, you know, the trillion dollar package, part of that is updating our grid. So when the grid gets updated, which is gonna happen, there's more power available power available, instead of having to go take another charger and buy it and then throw these in the garbage because they were slower, with our charging stations, all you have to do is do a mobile app through software, upgrade it when you have no power available. And it's something where we're future proofing deployments.

So we believe that as things progress, you know, we're seeing, you know, the fruits of of of of our labor today in some of these deployments. We believe that we'll be one of the largest vendors of the hardware for those buses because we have a superior piece of equipment to charge those buses.

Speaker 7

Thank you. Congratulations on the progress, and appreciate you taking my questions. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 0

We will take our final question from Sameer Joshi with H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Thanks. Thanks for taking my questions. The first question is about you have mentioned it in your press release, but I didn't hear it in the commentary about your involvement with the carbon offset credit program with the Connecticut Green Bank. Can you help us understand how that program works for you? And are you planning to do similar programs with other parties?

Speaker 2

Michael, do you want to go into the just maybe a little bit on the program, and then I'll go into, you know, where things are going with the branch and the

Speaker 3

Yes. We generate what we call, low carbon fuel credits from the state of California, Oregon, and we generate

Speaker 5

them on

Speaker 3

a kilowatt basis every quarter. We monetize them on a continuous basis, and we pair them up actually with it's called renewal credits as well, so the way to bundle them and sell them as big package. Yes, we look at that and then as utilization and usage increases, we'll see those credits continuously coming in.

Speaker 2

In addition, again, I'm going to talk about where things are going with the Biden administration. They're talking about $1,000,000,000,000 that they're spending on you know, different areas of infrastructure and transportation. And and we're gonna see a tremendous amount of spending on EV infrastructure from the Biden government. They've said it clearly that they wanna see 500,000 charging stations built throughout the country. And it's very important to understand when they talk charging stations, you know, we talk talk charging ports.

Every charging station we put in the ground, that's a charging port. And the reason why we do that is because when we put one charging station in the location that we own and operate, the entire location is ours as part of our contract. Not only sell the hardware, but when we own and operate. We don't just sign an agreement to put one charging station. It's actually an agreement for the entire location.

But when the government is referring to a charging station, think of a gas station with many gas pumps. That's what they refer to as a charging station. So when you're looking at the number of 500,000, you could easily multiply that by easily five or six or maybe even more charging stations, which are the pumps, the plugs that you actually plug in. So the administration is talking about, you you're talking almost 2,530,000 charging ports. That's a substantial amount.

And we believe that with the grants that are given out, if they were given out as they have in the past, and we believe there's not gonna be any much of a change, will be able to receive a substantial amount of of funding. Typically, those those programs are 80% funding. You you you pay for the deployment. You prove that the deployment was done. You present your bills.

You wait some time, and you get roughly 80¢ on the dollar reimbursed. That's how it was done in the past. So they incentivize people to put charging stations out there. You're gonna have you have to know what you're doing. You have to have the hardware, the locations, and so on, but there's massive subsidies.

There will be billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars, maybe even $100,000,000,000 or more that's gonna be earmarked towards EV infrastructure. There's a handful of companies that really have the experience to be able to go out there and deploy it, and we believe Blink will be able to be a major beneficiary of a lot of these grants and rebates from the administration.

Speaker 6

Understood. Yeah, thanks for that color. And yeah, mean, I agree with the tremendous opportunity you have in front of you. Just stepping back and looking at your near term opportunities, especially as it relates to Panama and Dominican Republic, are these sales and are these no longer Blink owned systems when you look at South America? Or how does that work?

Are you still owning part of the units that you are going to Panama and Dominican Republic?

Speaker 2

It depends on where we're operating in the South Latin America. Certain areas, we do own and operate. Certain areas, we sell very similar models to what we have. In our relationship with Inter Energy, Inter Energy buys the hardware from us.

Speaker 6

Understood. And then just one last one. I I think both the previous analysts asked you about SG and A. But now that you have over $220,000,000 in the bank, How do you see that utilized? What are the areas that you would like to focus on more than others?

Speaker 2

From a perspective of where we're going to focus the capital,

Speaker 6

where is the capital going to be focused? Is it going to be mostly expansion in The U. S? Is it Europe is going to be focused? How do you look at spending this money?

Speaker 2

Okay. As you can see, historically, we've been a very acquisitive company. We bought a bunch of companies in the past. We consist of roughly about nine acquisitions now. And we plan on growing our business both domestically as well as globally through acquisitions.

In addition, wherever we buy, we would like to help grow the business. So we believe in organic growth in our current business, in the areas we currently operate in, as well as in the areas that we're currently expanding in. So we're going to focus our capital in ways that will be best suited to our shareholders You know, and wherever there's activity, we need to focus, you know, our resources on areas where we can have immediate utilization, in areas where there may be a bit more utilization than there is here. Again, but, our focus is to grow our network and grow our business no matter where it is. We're positioning Blink to be a global network with multi currency and, you know, multi language, you know, really to be able to operate anywhere.

This is a global business. It's one network that can handle the whole world. Obviously, have certain, you know, information and storage of that information in local areas, but the network, you know, it could be a global network. And that being so, as I mentioned earlier, it's very easy to extend it to any area. You could put one charging station, and if there's a viable location over there, it's profitable.

And that's how we're looking at this business. More than happy.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Michael. Thanks for taking my questions. You're welcome.

Speaker 0

It appears we have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the program back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you for joining us. This is an extremely exciting time for our company and we remain focused on expanding our footprint, growing our customer base and establishing new partnerships. We are very excited and looking forward to speaking to you guys on our next quarter. Thank you very much.

Speaker 0

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.