Blink Charging Co. (BLNK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'm joined by Brendan Jones and Vitalie Stelea from Blink Charging. And we would like to -- before I begin, I just have to go through a couple of disclosures real quick. So as a research analyst at UBS, I need to provide certain disclosures related to my own relationship or that of UBS with any companies where we express a view on the call today. These disclosures can be found at www.ubs.com/disclosures or alternatively, you can reach out to me directly and I can send them to you. Guys, thank you very much for being here. Really appreciate it.

Absolutely.

So I guess a great place to start would be, can you talk a little bit about some of the differentiation between your company and some of your competitors, some of the differences, some of the similarities and just how that looks from a competitive landscape because I feel like that's a lot of the conversations that I'm having these days kind of educating investors on what those competitive dynamics look like.

Sure, absolutely. So our perspective is that in order to have sustainable growth and sustainable revenue growth and control expenses, you need to move to or achieve fully is vertical integration and what your operations are, where your product comes from, where your software development takes place. And you need to do that in order to keep in front or keep up with an ever-changing environment that is the EV landscape. So we've set forth over the last 3 years to structurally adjust the company to do that very thing. So right now, we're about 60% of our product is made by Blink. All of our software solutions are made by Blink, except for some ancillary solutions. We're moving that to 80% within the next year to 18 months. Most of that will be the final fulfillment of the U.S. transition and the fulfillment of the European transition. So then you look at that and you lay that over our complementary business model. So we don't say no to a site host. Because if site host wants to buy a charger, we get a charger for you. We have a network solution. We have maintenance contracts, and we get the repeatable revenue off of the maintenance contract and the networking fees. And the networking fees vary from $20 up to $40 on DC fast chargers, et cetera. And if they say, well, we want to partner with you. Well, we got a solution with that. They pay for the install, and we pay for the charger, the maintenance, the upkeep the network fees. And we split the revenue, we get 60, they get 40 or we go to turnkey. So the premise of never saying no to a customer is really benefiting us because we turn in from salespeople into consultants automatically with them and tailor a solution that works for them instead of saying no, and you add that to vertical integration. And that really starts over time to be very powerful towards revenue. And then you get synergies because there's no difference. You got the network. You got the chargers. It's only which way they're going. Everything else is the same, call center network, operation center, maintenance. All that is the same. So you don't need to say, hey, I'm one thing or the other. You need to exploit both for sustainable growth in the space.

That makes total sense. And particularly, as we talk in -- we're going to get into this later about utilization rates and how you can leverage that and that's an additional revenue stream that's unique to your company versus some of your closer peers that also sell hardware. And I think kind of a great place to start then, just kind of on your financials. You guys have put up some very, very impressive gross margins here recently. In the second quarter, you were upwards of 37%. Most recent quarter, you're about 30% gross margins. I'm just curious if you can explain to us just your ability to generate those margins, the sustainability of that, in particular, what we've been seeing from some of your peers where maybe we've had an inventory write-down or something else that's kind of happened. I mean how have you guys been able to generate these really healthy margins over time.

So when we look at the margins, especially as they started materializing in Q2 and then maintain to a degree in Q3, it goes back to vertical integration, particularly on the L2 product. And where we see some margin degradation is when we move to DC in a heavy amount, and everybody sees that on the sales side with DCs. So you got to have a healthy balance. So I think our unique position is we can offset one with the other, and we can keep driving why we're reducing expenses simultaneously to improve margin on an aggregate level. And that's been the key. I mean, if you had to describe the perfect storm, it is making the transition and upping production on vertically integrated product. And then at the same time, realizing all the synergies from 6 acquisitions over a period of 3 years and bringing that to [indiscernible]. And we're still not done that. So you reduce the cost, so you improve your bottom line margin. Now we have robust on the sales side, DC fast charger sales right now. Now we've taken a step, and that is we have put into our own portfolio of manufacturing, our DC 9, which is a 30 to 40-kilowatt charger, that's a big fleet player, dealership player, et cetera. So we're going to see some margin improvement on that product now. The bigger question is how much further do we go in, and we're still doing the analysis on that. Our [ DC 40 ] design, so it's 240 kilowatts. It is a silicon carbine design. So it's less cheaper to build all that. But we have 2 strategies unfolding, do we build it ourselves or do we go to the third party. And that's mostly due to scale and cost on the component side of that business. And we're almost done with that, and we'll make a decision in Q1 on which way we're going to go. But be a company today in this environment that is conscious to cost cutting to cost avoidance and then it continues to develop ways for revenue enhancement and for gross margin enhancement. And you're going to get it, but it's discipline. It's daily. You've got to practice continuous improvement, and you got to believe that, hey, I made this joke the other day. Everybody -- most people know the movie, It's a Wonderful Life. And there's a famous line from there when George was getting all upset because he couldn't go to the world and he goes, "I'm tired of working hard to save $0.05 on a 10-foot piece of pipe." Well, I'm not tired of that. And we're going to continue to do that every day because that $0.05 adds up to very lean and eventually, as we stated, December 2024 profitability at that point. And that's the goal.

Absolutely. I think that's a great place to go to next is that kind of path to profitability. You touched on the multiple levers, and it's something that I found really kind of profound when I was doing my diligence and my initiation process was the -- how clear you were with the different levers and things that you were able to do and working on internally in order to start moving towards that breakeven target. So just love to hear a little bit more about some of the actions that you're putting in place, not only with the synergies, but also the cost cuts. And what's kind of left there that's going to help you kind of get it across the line.

Yes. So it's a great question. And to be clear, A, it was a big team effort; C, we brought in some -- and B, we brought in some outside help, so people that are smarter than us that we had to bring in to give us a little outside view of the company. So we got that done. And it's a multilevel approach. But as you imagine, it's still going back to -- so where are those identified areas? And those identified areas are -- so we still have 3 networks going globally. It's taken more time than we thought originally to combine them all, but now we have a target of completion in the beginning of Q1, and some are actually happening right now. So I'm giving myself a little bit of leeway, say, in Q1. But -- so that's the European transition. So there's 2 separate networks working there. And as you imagine, you're going to get some synergies and some reduced expenses when you're only managing 1 as opposed to 3. So then our next level is how efficient are we in our operational structure in Europe, in India and then in the United States? And where does that duplication? Is it in call center operations? Is it in network service operation? Is the amount of buildings you have? And we're working through all that. And then simultaneously, you lay this on top, which is our strategic advantage. So we don't -- everybody thinks because of our strong India presence where we have about 160 to 190 employees working out of India. But they're Blink. There's no contract. There's none of that. There are employees. And when you think of European operations and then global operations, what makes sense to do there as opposed to the United States, as opposed to Europe. And that analysis is fully underway, and it adds to the lever. And then there's also, okay, you analyze the market, do you have opportunities to take price? If so, what is that benchmarking data tell you? And that is ongoing as well. And you combine all these together, it is -- I can't describe all the levers we have to pull. But in each category, if it's G&N or G&A, non-headcount and everything, we have a target that we've got to hit. And if we miss that target, we have a lever that we can over deliver on to make up for that. And that's to get to the December goal. And that's across the entire -- there's no category left out. But getting efficient and really looking internally at the business and saying, on a daily basis, how can we do this better and more efficient, that's going to get us there.

Right. And that's really from your time in Nissan that you spent in kind of that Kaizen approach.

Yes. Nissan, I love Nissan. The 21 years, great training. And a very disciplined approach to business and different business units as in, okay, we're doing this, this way today, let's look at it and see if we can do it better tomorrow. And emerged in a culture of self-analysis, always. And it's okay to do that. It's not -- and Vitalie and I laugh now that the company is actually now they get it. And everybody sees this that this isn't this massive cost-cutting exercise. This is efficiency. And I think we're -- we look at how well we've done on it, not to toot our own but it is, is we've reduced the company from a cost perspective, and we haven't made a lot of noise about it. We're doing it very effectively, very quietly because it's the right thing to do and it's obvious. No drastic Draconian measures have been put in play yet, and we don't plan on doing any.

Right. And then another thing that maybe we haven't talked about, just along that same thread here is with the integration of all the different networks that you've acquired, but then the consolidation of the CRM systems. I mean we think about approaching a really fast-growing market. I mean that's another kind of lever that you'll have in terms of understanding where the demand is, where you can kind of flex your manufacturing operations. Is that something else that we can think about further down the road that's going to be...

Absolutely. So when you go to the big 3, I mean you hit on most of them right now. So the networks, that's the big one. The second one is the financial system that NetSuites or others and then the CRM. So network, as we've talked about, is being done. The financial system is scheduled during the same time frame to come live in Q1, and CRM in the same time frame to come live as well. So those is where you start operating now as this one company, globally. And you've got -- we can do it today, but it's a lot of manual process. And so you're spending a lot of human capital on getting these done, and we'll move forward. It's going to be a lot of intelligence that gets it done for us as we combine everything together. So yes, and you have to invest in that. That's something that when you're looking at reducing costs or everything, no. You go, you spend the money there, you get more efficient. It pays off down the road. And we committed to that about 2.5 years ago. We said we're going to invest heavily in this area to be able to get that, and that's now starting to pay dividends.

Fantastic. No, that's very helpful. And I think -- just let's pivot real quick to your manufacturing footprint. Can you just kind of remind us what that looks like? How many facilities you have in the U.S. and internationally? What do they produce and just general capacity right now...

Yes. So we have a large footprint outside of Bangalore, and that facility builds all of our base parts. So they take from different smaller suppliers, what we need, whether they're PCB boards or chipsets or everything, and they build them into what we call mini platforms. Then those mini platforms are shipped out to our facility in Bowie, Maryland and then they assemble there. DC fast chargers, DC 9 to 30, that's fully assembled in India, and we're making a decision on whether we're going to bring that in or not. And right now, that decision is penning on. We've updated the facility in Bowie, Maryland, and we're moving into the new facility within like 2 weeks here or 3 weeks. We're waiting on the certificate of occupancy. That takes capacity up to -- we can push 15-plus -- 15,000 on L2s out a year out of the one now. That brings us to 40. We can take it to 50 if we go another shift, but you get in a quality issue. So we'll reserve that and find out how to build quality into that, if we can on that. Then we have a larger facility in Phoenix, and Phoenix right now is doing the check on the third-party products. So we bring all third-party products into there. It bench tests everything and does quality checks on everything in that facility and then ships it out from there. So those 2 facilities service the United States. There'll be a transition in Europe over time, where as we go to more Blink build product in Europe, we'll have another assembly facility in Europe that will take the same construct of the base parts and everything and then do the manufacturing in Europe. So we're expanding India to get more capacity on parts. We've expanded Bowie. And we have 2 more expansions we're looking at, 1 for the DC fast charger potentially and then 1 definitely in Europe to increase and maintain capacity over time.

Okay. Got it. And when was that Bowie facility is supposed to be completed?

So we are supposed to get the certificate of occupancy right now. So -- then there's a big -- so the big announcement on that, the grand opening is in Q1. And we'll do a big -- we'll be operating before that, but you want to make it look pretty and have a nice party on that.

Of course, of course. And so you're already doing the hiring stuff in advance of that and...

Absolutely.

Yes. So once that opens, you get the certificate, and then you're...

And all -- everything I just laid out with the exception of the assembly facility in Europe is already baked in. So it's all in our forecast and everything. And we'll see as we move towards. We're already on the 18-month clock, we got 2 months out of the 18-month clock. We fully anticipate the budget as we move forward, and then we'll have the European aspect of that done, too. Yes. And it's low -- it's not as costly as you think because of the way we build L2 product and the way we assemble. We can do it at a much more efficient level with human capital. Eventually, we'll look at machine based. We're looking at AI. And all those are investigative topics, we don't have any anything to report on those, except they're under investigation right now by the technology team.

That's great. Okay. Fantastic. I was going to ask you about that. That helps. Got one ahead of me. So I guess we've talked a lot about Level 2s, and I have this conversation constantly with investors of what the installed base is going to look like in the U.S. And I think we hear -- I hear DC fast charging talked about 90% of the time and Level 2 is very minimally, but it's a flip on where I see the installed base going over the long term. So can you maybe -- you -- it's better to hear from you what you think about Level 2 and why that's such a big emphasis for your company.

Yes. And so let me give you a better background. And the team has done both, right? I had a lot of experience at EVgo and Electrify America. We know the ins and outs of DC fast charging pretty good. We know that Level 2 based on data, and we are a data-driven company and you can't ignore what the outside group says, whether it's McKinsey, PriceCooperswaterhouse (sic) [ PricewaterhouseCoopers ] -- am I ever going to say that right, I always get the name wrong. And then various other sources add always strongly, and the data today still validates this. It's 90-plus percent L2. And some say 95%. In the Bloomberg study, they had it up to 97%. I thought that was probably a little too aggressive. I think it's closer to 90% is the right number on the L2. And that is, when you think about the logicalness of this, so cars have -- sit 95% of the time. That number according to the Department of Transportation has not changed in forever. I don't think there's going to be a change on that. Sure, e-mobility is going to take some away from that, but it's mostly in the commercial sector and not in the privately owned sector. So it's still going to be quite high. So you'll have to exploit opportunities to where you can charge these vehicles at a less capital intensive way. And our theory and practicality as we play it out is you can put out a multiplicity of charging. For the same capital, you can solve 1 DC fast charger. And that's our premise. And so far, that's proving out to be. The difference is, to your point out, I go back to an advertising analogy, when you look at share of voice for your brand and commercial, how you're out there. The share of voice is DC. The practical application is L2, and that's where we sort of have to take that back before we over-dial and think that's the solution because it's what we're doing, and it's okay because this is hard, it's new and it's changed and people are resistant to change. As we're holding on to that old paradigm and we're saying, okay, because that's a fueling depot. I get that. I go down. There's the Exxon on the corner and I get it, but why?" Because we don't have to. We can eliminate all that. It's -- Vitalie parks his [ Mark EA ] at home, and he wakes up in the morning, he's got a full charge. And then he goes to work, he parks in it, plays in workplace charging. He goes down to Miami Beach, and our garage and back is full mostly of us and Tesla drivers and everyone else, but he can get a spot. And then he plugs up and charge, and he never goes to a DC fast charger. But you're going on a trip, you're going anywhere where you need and you're in excess of the batteries capacity or you just want to fill up, you need DC fast charging. So in that -- when you get to that suburban or urban rim at about 40 miles and 30 miles outside the metros and then get on to the quarters, you absolutely have to have it. And we are investing in those projects.

Great. Yes. And I mean that's the thing. It's -- I think we think too much of EVs as the same behavior that we would with an ICE vehicle or you run down to empty. But if you think about your cell phone, when you leave the house, great analogy is that you're not going to run yourself on down to empty. If you have an opportunity to charge it, you're plugging it. Because the worst thing is you don't have access to energy, and you can't charge it up. So there's an incentive in the behavior changes. I think that, for non-EV drivers, is something that is still something for them to get their head around.

We have to continue to educate, but you also think of it as what is the transition and what does it mean to the grid? And L2 is less impactful and gives us a chance as a country to keep catching up. DC at the levels that some wanted to be is impractical because you can't catch up under that. And then we say, well, we're not going to have enough infrastructure. No, we are going to have to have enough, you just have to understand the usage of that infrastructure. And we look at our European model, and it's dominant L2. And that utilization of that network continues to increase and outpace what we're doing in the U.S. right now. So we're -- we know what's working. We're looking at Europe. We're looking at China, which is huge L2 as well, and they're going to 100% EVs sooner than any other country in the world. So we need to pay attention to that. They're going. Europe shifting. Where is the united States?

No, absolutely. And I guess to kind of maybe dive a little bit deeper in there, just can you talk a little bit about the economics of Level 2 chargers? And maybe even in that conversation, maybe who are your customers for Level 2s? What segment within that presents the most opportunity?

So take a broad brush on this because it really -- it presents the vast amount of opportunities we have. So we're not relegated to street side, replicating what the old charging or fueling paradigm is. We can go anywhere. And health care facilities, I'll just pull that one out as an example. We do Lehigh Valley Health. We do Kaiser Permanente. We do a whole bunch of other ones. Your dwell times over in an hour. We sell to them only 19.2 kilowatt chargers. You're on that for an hour or 2 hours in the doctor's space. You've got a whole lot of kilowatts that we just put back in your car for going to the doctor's office. And that's the opportunistic way that we're approaching it. And then you take that to hospitality into other long dwell time locations or even short dwell times like public libraries, et cetera. Municipal garages is big, both in Europe and the United States. Our penetration of garage-based infrastructure is huge. And that's one area we're going to continue to go deeper and deeper. And the reason why is it provides us with inroads in the 2 subsegments. First, public L2 hit the garages public. Secondarily, it is multifamily dwelling, which is the new different niche in the in-home charging. When we think in-home as a single family, but no, in-home is if you have a condo and that condominium has 15 chargers in the garage, that's home charging. And we are -- that's the big segment. We're also fleet, as you've seen successful announcements on fleet. We like to tune our own on the post office, but not so much Blink got the award. It's the size of the award to give an indication of other awards that are going to come, 41,500 chargers is the post office order. Split between 3 vendors, we're proud to say we're outperforming the other vendors. The revenue that we'll generate on a forecast basis next year from that order outstrips the amount of revenue we got 2021 in total, 1 customer. And we've seen from that, as we've seen another announcement, you get 1 fleet customer, then you get another, you get another, you get another. And if you deliver, you get even more. So -- and we break it down to 2 categories, municipal fleet and then commercial fleet. And now we're starting to penetrate commercial fleet at a significant level as well. Work all of these and then continue to build simultaneously your owner operator model, which is sustainable long-term revenue. But when you build your owner operator model, to do so in a way that where you place that charger, it's going to get utilization. There used to be in the industry the Plant the Flag mentality. And I participated in some of the Plant the Flag mentality. It didn't matter where we want get a charge in the ground, so we've got to charge on the ground. Well, it's a land grab, get it in the ground. Now we're -- we don't care about the land grab. If that land isn't good, we're not going to put a charger there. We're not going to invest our capital on somewhere that doesn't get the requisite amount. Our baseline is 10% on an L2. So if we get 10% utilization, we get a 1-year payback on a hybrid, which is where they pay for the install and then we get -- on 18 months on an owner-operator, we get a payback at 10. Now one of the changes in the company that was very significant is in late 2000, we questioned and look at all the legacy chargers and look where they place, look at utilization today and what was projected and said we need to refine this model. So we went out and did what a lot of other people are doing, and we took a baseline software package from RTIS. We appended it. We called in the specialists in the industry to build us a system. And if it doesn't make through that system, and the system looks at drive-by traffic, EV penetration, chargers in the area today and projected to be in the area tomorrow, easibility of getting in and a human look at what it looks like westbound, eastbound, easy access to the location, et cetera, and it gives us a utilization projection. If it doesn't hit that, we're not investing capital. And it's cold and hard. And of course, the sales guys go, no. But you have to adhere to that. So now that capital is going to have a return for our shareholders.

Right. No, and that makes perfect sense. And I mean -- and that is the biggest thing that everyone talks about is the breakeven pass, and that's just playing straight into what you've discussed earlier as well. Would it be possible for you to disclose the utilization over internationally and in North America? I think you've said publicly the majority of your owned and operated are about 15% plus.

So on the L2 network, since 2000, we put in the system that we just described. Those on -- the majority of those are over 15%. Some of the legacy chargers are frankly not. But since we put in this methodology, and that's been in line with our growth, we're -- the majority are plus 15.

And is that similar in Europe as well?

No, Europe is higher, yes.

Got you. And that makes sense just given they're further along that in...

Yes. You see some -- there's some variation between Belgium, Netherlands, U.K., Ireland and Luxembourg and some of the other countries we're in. But on an aggregate level, it's higher.

Yes. Absolutely. I guess quickly, because I want to get to some of the topics I definitely get a bunch of questions on. But first, just within DC fast charging, just how are you positioned there? And you generated over almost $20 million revenue in DC sales. Just kind of want to know a little bit more about that, where your customers are in business. Anything you can share there.

Yes. I'll speak, so I don't give away anything that we haven't announced yet, right? So there's -- because there's some new developments. But first, we already talked about making the decision on the DC 240 on what we're going to do, and that's silicon carbide. So one way or another, that charger is coming to market in ours. Really, it's a margin question to how much margin are we going to be able to achieve on it based on market pricing, based on manufacturing costs associated with it. So that's coming. Now we can make that an NEVI compliant unit if we assemble in the United States. We know how to do that. That plan is already -- it's baked on how to do that. It's just executing on it. But until then, we continue to -- on the DC side, we're utilizing our DC 9, which is 30 and 40, and that's the #1 seller because that goes heavily into dealer's commercial fleet and municipal fleet as a stock up and some that one on abundance of those because they decided to go with DC, but they want low kilowatt DC instead of high kilowatt DC. So that's our #1 seller. So when you look at that number for DC, it's that charger. So now we flip that over. But we have secured manufacturing partners with us for NEVI compliant chargers. We've secured manufacturing on our chargers as well in the L2 with NACS connectors. All that is done. We'll see some of our first NACS connectors come out in Q1 as customers select. But we're letting the customer tell us, do you want the NACS connector, and we'll put it on. And if you go to our Bowie, Maryland facility today and you pull up, you can charge on a NACS connector today.

Yes. That's great. I do want to get to NACS next, but congratulations on the announcement this morning with your Mack Trucks contract. That was great. Anything you can just kind of want to talk about there, just some high level.

I mean I think as we spoke about earlier, it's a continuation of making sure that you're offering the right services to fleets, and you're doing so in a very transparent and collaborative way that you make sure it fits their business needs. We've seen other wins. We'll have announcements on that fit into that category. But it's that, be transparent, have the right technology, have a commitment to updating that technology as you move forward, and you're going to start to win these deals. And be transparent about everything. Some companies are trying a race to the bottom on price. I think we're starting to see a degree of people understand what that means in the industry. So they don't want to go back and say, I've got a charging problem, I got broken chargers. They want a company that's going to stand behind those chargers, and that's Blink.

That's great. That's great. And then so NACS, I mean this is something that I get questions on all the time. I had a conference call with a couple of my colleagues, Joe Spak and [indiscernible] last week, where we discussed kind of some of the -- an update on the EV charging landscape and more specific to EV penetration rates. But the transition in NACS, I mean, what's the impact to Blink. When we think about this, I felt like I did a ton of work and research on this. I felt like there was a lot of confusion that this was going to be a problem for the existing installed base, et cetera, but really I don't think that's the case. I'd love to hear your thoughts there. And how is that going to -- like has anything -- any ramifications for Tesla? Or are they going to be taking share or increasing share? How does that work for you guys versus the opposite?

So it's a positive. And you're right. The first thing we did is we went out and look. Our first intuition was this is an issue, this is actually a good thing. So no reaction. And we went back and said, okay, let's crank the numbers on a brand level. Who's our #1 customer? Tesla. Then you go outside our garage, and I say this many times, there's a lot of Tesla parked there into our chargers and charging and have been for quite a number of times. That's not going to change. And you add the cable, so the only change there is that the customer doesn't have to put the adapter that comes in every single Tesla out there, and that's the L2 side, right? So third-party chargers have always existed, okay? Tesla stations today, we know that there are still lines at Tesla stations today. So now for the industry, all the third-party providers now, all that do is add the NACS cable, and they can service those Tesla as well. So for us, we see it as a revenue gain and a sales opportunity that is outside that Tesla. So how you do it has all been released. Tesla has made it all public. So when -- one of the crazy things that -- when I talk to my CTO, the minute the announcement came out, and we said this is a good thing because we're like -- we're looking for the business, the amount of cable and connector manufacturers that called in and said, we got it. Because remember, this is what everybody forget, this is sort of a U.S. type of move. In Europe, China, the rest of the world, cable manufacturers and couple of manufacturers have been booming for years now. And these are independent guys that know how to build the cables, whether it's a water cooled cable, whether it's not or a fluid cable, I should say, instead of water, they don't have to do them all. And so good PR. Great PR for Tesla, stock went up. Great PR for Ford and GM, stock went up at that point in time, but impact more opportunity. And I go back to numbers. So there's no way that with -- if we look at 2030 and we look at a baseline of 35% penetration, that is estimated, right? California is at 23% today. So that's not that hard to get there. That's 30 million chargers. Now in that, the majority is going to be L2, about 28-point something, and that's part of the public-based charging. So you think about it, no way one group can take care of that. And everybody -- and I think people want a choice, right? So -- and today, we always joke, this is one of the misconceptions. If he went to a Tesla station today, he can't charge. Even with an adapter, he can't charge because the legacy stations don't fit on that because of the cable.

And that's actually -- like for the last question that I want to ask because this is something I've been thinking about as I face longer term is you all had to service various models and various...

Service them all.

Right. So you have to think about like what does that mean for Tesla? And I don't necessarily have to comment on it. I'll kind of tell you, my general thought is that there is IP that needs to be done in terms of understanding how to have your supercharger talk to other vehicles because there's different software underlying. And even though DCs protocol underlying, it is the same. I mean is that going to be a learning curve for them that they're going to have to go through once that network opens up and you've got Fords, GMs and you've got others that may have the NACS plug, but that's something that they're going to have to battle when it's not just dealing with the vertically integrated Teslas?

Well, Tesla has previously enjoyed their very high rating, right? Mostly because it's plug and charge, right, and there's no hassle. And people believe in Tesla. So even if it's bad, they have a hard time saying it was bad, right? Because they bought into the -- you buy a culture of Tesla when you buy a Tesla, although that's waning a little bit as of late. The other manufacturers service everybody, EV customers to begin with because they made this decision to change technologies. They're very discerning. And they don't hold back, especially if you're an independent and not associated with the brand you bought. So you better be ready. And you better be able to handle a vast majority of questions and issues and topics that you didn't think of. And I'll give you an example. We received one the other day that it was a high-speed charger that the customer was on and super angry and really upset because the charger said it would charge at 150 kilowatts, and that was correct. Now unfortunately, with this customer, they bought a used Chevy Bolt that only had ability to charge at 50 kilowatts. And they were very, very upset. But -- and that's just one example, and you have to go back and educate and say, no, you didn't buy a car that's capable of that charge. So if your car is not capable, you're not going to charge at a higher speed and you have to go through all that level of education. And then you have to go through the complexity of customer misunderstanding. So you pull up to a legacy station. And even by Tesla, that is one that max out of 120. But if 2 cars are there, it's pumping out at 60, and then okay. Now they go to a newer one and they go, okay, this is completely different. And think about trip planning around that. You got to go, okay, I got to make sure that this station has the right kilowatt output to do it. So we need to -- that all is going to happen, and it's all going to be out there. So we need to continue to educate and not make a statement out in the market that confuses the public for your own good when that's going to hurt the industry and the growth because company's going to point out it and say, see, charging isn't working. It is, we're just not communicating it right.

That's great. Well, thank you, guys. I really appreciate the time. Is there any last bit that you want to...

No. I mean, I think...

We covered a lot.

In closing for Blink, we're going to do things on an aggressive but yet fundamental way. We're going to keep innovating on the product and on the software side. And we're going to operate as a company that is maturing and needs to focus on the bottom line. That is where we got everybody with all orders in the water and rowing in the same direction, and we're going to keep moving forward that way.

Fantastic. Well, excellent. Thank you guys so much for being here. Really appreciate the time.

Sure.

Thank you, Rob.