Blink Charging Co.

Greetings. Welcome to the Blink Charging Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Vitaly Stalia, VP of Capital Markets and FPMA. You may begin.

Thank you, Holly, and welcome everyone to Blink's third quarter 2024 earnings call. With us today, we have Brendan Jones, President and CEO, Michael Battaglia, our Chief Operating Officer and CEO-elect, and Michael Rama, Blink's Chief Financial Officer. The discussion 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 two of the third quarter 2024 earnings deck. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are year over year. Please follow our announcements and Blink's investor relations website for future events for investors. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Brendan Jones, Blink's president and CEO. Brendan, please go ahead.

Thanks, Vitaly, and good afternoon for everyone, and thanks for joining us here today. During the third quarter of 2024, we continued to execute on our strategic priorities and initiatives. Our total company revenue was $25.2 million with service revenue representing $8.8 million or approximately 35% of the total company revenue. Gross margin in the third quarter was 36%, significantly exceeding our full year 2024 target guidance of 33%. Now, during the third quarter, we contracted, sold, or deployed 6,978 chargers globally, representing a 17% increase year-over-year and a 70% increase sequentially. What is notable here is that the majority of this growth comes from L2 chargers built by Blink, where we command higher margins than third-party manufacturing units, further validating our vertically integrated model. On the energy side, Blink dispersed nearly 37 gigawatts of energy across all Blink networks globally compared to 16 gigawatts in Q3 of 2023. This is 126% year-over-year growth, is largely driven by demand for charging in our markets and the increased number of units deployed on our networks. Sequentially, we saw energy disbursement grow 12% in just one quarter compared to 33 gigawatts dispersed in Q2 of 2024. But what we think is most important to highlight is the progress we've made and continue to make to establish Blink as a more profitable and better positioned company for future growth. In Q3, we reduced our cash burn by $3.6 million. or a reduction of 27% compared to Q3 of last year. Year to date, we reduced our cash burn by $45 million, or 50%. And let me repeat this again. We reduced our cash burn by $45 million from last year's cash spend, and this excludes financing activities. So the efficiency and cost control initiatives we've outlined and began implementing over a year ago are delivering meaningful cost reductions, and we are pursuing additional opportunities to drive continued efficiencies moving forward. Now if we jump to slide five, you will see that what makes Blink unique is our owner-operated portfolio of chargers that so strongly contribute to our gross margin in 2024. As of September 30th, we had 6,442 owned and operated chargers, and that is 28% growth versus the same period last year. As a reminder, in our owner-operated model, we install, maintain, and also receive the lion's share of the revenue generated by our chargers. This substantial increase in OMRA-operated units is one of the main drivers of service revenue growth in the third quarter. Among these numbers, DC fast chargers have been gaining more and more momentum. In fact, revenue generated by Blink-owned and operated DC fast chargers went up 544% year over year. That is a huge number. As of September 30th and across all our networks now, we had a total of 1,278 DC fast chargers, which provide important data on location, pricing, and utilization. We used this data to inform Blink on how to successfully deploy Blink-owned DC fast chargers across the US and in Europe. Now, if we look at product sales, on our first and second quarter earning calls, we noted lower product revenues, and we stated that this would continue through the third quarter. As expected, our third quarter product net revenues reflected muted delivery activity. That said, product sales were faced with a very challenging comp in 2024, as we saw significantly stronger DC fast charger sales, particularly to automotive dealerships in 2023 compared to this year. Most dealers who wanted to acquire chargers have them now. So we have been replacing dealership sales by focusing on other sales verticals, such as multifamily dwellings, commercial fleet, local and state governments, offices, hospitals, and schools, which provide Blink with a more profitable and sustainable revenue stream. Given the shift in product sales, as you can see on page six, we're now adjusting our full year overall guidance to 125 to 135 million. We are maintaining our gross margin target of approximately 33%, and we expect to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of 2025. As we examine the first three quarters of 24, Blink is encouraged by the improving EV sales trends, especially in September and October. We believe the EV sales increases will create future sales opportunities for Blink. According to Kelly Blue Book, EV sales in the U.S. grew 11% year-over-year in the third quarter and reached record highs in terms of both sales, volume, and share of the U.S. auto market. An estimated 346,000 EVs were sold in Q3 in the US, which is an increase of 5% from Q2 of 2024. Globally, EVs accounted for 8.9% of all new car sales in the third quarter, up from a previous high of 7.8% in Q3 of 2023. With this promising EV industry data, we are energized about capturing the corresponding potential demand for EV charging infrastructure as clients look to provide charging services for their growing fleets, employees, customers, and constituents. For the last several quarters, as promised, we have focused on optimizing Blink to establish systems and processes to ensure that Blink is resilient when faced with charging market conditions. Now, while the job's not done, our team has made excellent progress towards that goal, as evidenced by the significantly reduced cash burn compared with the reduction in compensation and G&A. Now, with that stated, I'm now going to pass it on to Mike Battaglia, and he will go over some additional details for the third quarter. Mike?