Blink chargers hit six figures

Nasdaq-listed US charging firm Blink Charging has surpassed 100,000 chargers sold, deployed or contracted globally. The firm says it is “the third largest network in the US with a growing network in Europe”.

“We are proud to reach this significant accomplishment through dedicated pursuit of our mission to advance the energy transition through Blink’s innovative charging solutions,” says Blink CEO Brendan Jones.

“By prioritising, listening to, and understanding our customers’ needs and expectations, we have learned to strategically tailor charger placement and installation, so that the right charger is in the right place at the right time for every EV driver.”

Jones hails his firm’s turnkey model, which offers Blink-supported project management from start of project to installation as a key factor in its growth. Blink “has also placed a strong emphasis on ensuring charger uptime by offering optional preventative maintenance care programmes, such as Blink Care”, he says.

Customer cooperation

Blink positions itself as a vetted EV charging products and services provider through several cooperative contracts, such as with state and local government agencies as well as education institutions, to develop their EV charging infrastructure. It recently became an official vehicle charger and network service provider to the state of New York, as an example.

Earlier this year, Blink achieved “in process” FedRamp status to provide cloud-based EV charging solutions across the US government. In process status “is a designation for service providers who are actively working towards authorisation”, Jones explained last month.

It expects to receive final certification in October or November, upon which “Blink will have access as an approved provider to contracting opportunities with the general and service administration clients which opens up the door for thousands of sales”.

The firm’s customers mix contains “many recognisable names across commercial entities, multifamily complexes, planned communities, health care facilities, fleets and municipalities around the world,” according to Blink COO and CEO-elect Mike Battaglia. Battaglia will succeed Jones on his January retirement.

“This landmark is truly a collaborative effort shared among every member of the Blink team, each of our customers, and the demand from the EV community, all of whom share Blink’s vision to enable independence for all through the global electrification of transportation,” Battaglia says.

Data benefit

“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,” the COO further expounded last month. But these owner-operator chargers remain a small, if growing, part of Blink’s overall sales.

At the end of June, it counted 6,094 units, up by 25pc from the same point in 2023. Even allowing for further growth in the last almost three months, owner-operator chargers will make up less than 8pc of all Blink’s sales thus far.

But this share will increase., At present, in Europe, 80pc of Blink installations are owner-operator and 20pc are just sales, which is actually moving further toward owner-operator despite a previous enthusiasm to push hardware sales more in Europe. Even in the US, where the pattern reverses, 25pc of business is now usually owner-operated and 75pc is sales, suggesting the share of owner-operator chargers in Blink’s life-of-company sales will continue to rise.

“DC fast chargers are becoming increasingly important within our portfolio of US Blink-owned chargers,” Bataglia continued in August. “The revenue generated from our Blink-owned DC fast chargers in the US in the first half of 2024 increased nearly eight-fold compared with the first half of 2023.

“And with our L2 charging network, we have detailed visibility into high-traffic, profitable locations. We plan to capitalise 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.

“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,” Battaglia continued. “[That] 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. But the second one is we can offer to take over chargers that, for instance, a host owns — where they are faced with wanting to add more chargers but maybe do not have the budget to do it.”