Blink Charging Co. (BLNK) 25th Annual Needham Growth Conference (Transcript)

Blink Charging Co. (NASDAQ:BLNK) 25th Annual Needham Growth Conference Call January 12, 2023 12:45 PM ET

Company Participants

Brendan Jones – President

Conference Call Participants

Chris Pierce – Needham

Chris Pierce

Hey, everybody. My name is Chris Pierce with the Needham Research team. Welcome to the afternoon session on Thursday of the 25th Annual Needham Growth Conference. It’s my pleasure to welcome Brendan Jones, President of Blink Charging.

Brendan, thanks for being with us. How are you doing today?

Brendan Jones

I’m doing great. It’s great to be here.

Chris Pierce

Cool. Why don’t you give us 30 to 60 seconds just a kind of a brief overview, very brief, on Blink, and then we can move into a fireside chat format.

If any investors have any questions, throw those in the chat box in your screen, and we can work those in as well.

Brendan Jones

Absolutely. So, Blink is a full-service EV infrastructure company. And we offer out to the public, to private industry, to auto OEMs, a full service of options to choose from. We sell equipment and services, including network services. And we also provide owner-operator solutions to a variety of real estate opportunities where we own and operate equipment and derive revenue from that.

We pride ourselves at Blink of being the only fully vertically-integrated company in the industry today. And that means we design, manufacture, sell and own and operate and service our own equipment. And we have the ability through our flexible business models to never say no to a customer. So, whether they want to own the charger, whether they want us to own charger, whether they want a partner on it, we do this.

And last part is, we just left CES where we announced five new products and offerings out there. So, from DC fast charging to L2 charging to in-home charging and fleet charging, we offer services and products across the board.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q – Chris Pierce

Got you. Okay. Well, I think that might be a good place to start. You talked about the way to never turn down a client, it’s because you offer these four options, you’ve got post-owned, Blink-owned, hybrid-owned, Blink-as-a-service. Can you walk through why you decide to structure the business that way to kind of check all four — to check those four boxes? And are there approaches that resonate with some player more than other players? And how does home charging fit in the picture as well?

Brendan Jones

Yeah, absolutely. So, the idea was flexibility, because different site hosts have different perspectives on charging. Some want a simple turnkey approach, where they say, “Look, I want it as a convenience for my customers, because they might be a retail establishment, but I don’t want to manage it. I want nothing to do with it.” That’s perfect for the owner-operator model.

Now, we have to maintain that it’s the right investment and we have to look to see if we’re going to have the right utilization numbers to work for us. Others just want to buy the equipment. Say, it is a workplace that wants workplace charger. They want to buy it, operate it and provide it as a service to those companies. Some might be a multifamily dwelling where a hybrid solution, where we go in, they pay for the install, we pay for the upkeep maintenance of the charger, and we split any revenue derived in those charger simultaneously. And some, to what you said on the service model and that’s Blink-as-a-service, they want a monthly fee for everything. They don’t want to pay capital upfront. They just want to make it an operational expense for everything, and we provide them a monthly fee for a five-year period of time to have that, and that derives a revenue and an income stream for us.

So, it’s about adapting our business practices to the different type of requests we get from site hosts, from municipalities, from utilities, et cetera, and auto OEMs, on what type of charging, on what type of business model they need.

Chris Pierce

Can you talk about how a home charging fits in the picture?

Brendan Jones

Yeah. I mean, home charging, we do direct sale to homeowners. We do that through Amazon, Best Buy, and a couple other sources. Customers can go log in and pick one of the Blink home chargers. And we offer two on that; a brand-new released HQ 200 model, which we just featured at CES, and then a Series 4 lower-cost model. And now what we see in the homeowners model is, they want connectivity, they want sometimes plug-in charge on their home charger, and they also want a degree of energy management with potential V2G, vehicle to grid, and vehicle to home ability, and we offer those as well.

Chris Pierce

Got you. And of those four options, you kind of walked through the examples of each one, but is one approach winning out more with customers? Is it shifting to which — like, customers used to prefer X, now they prefer Y? And is there one that you guys prefer from your revenue or financial model? Or one that investors kind of have a preference for?

Brendan Jones

So, we have a bias long-term towards the owner-operator model. And we do that because we like the product revenue and it makes up the majority of our revenue right now. But we also believe that there’s going to be a degree of commoditization on the product side, and you’re going to have some suppressed margins as we move forward, especially hyper-commoditization, which we see happening mostly in the L2 market right now. So, we believe long-term that selling kilowatts on the owner-operator model and providing those turnkey service is going to provide that consistent sustainable revenue stream for the future. So, we’re biased towards that, but we’re never going to turn down a sale.

So, the other advantage is, while we’re looking at commoditization, we’re also going to make sure that we control our own destiny with our manufacturing facilities. So, we expanded our footprint in India and we’re expanding our footprint in the United States to make sure that we control [most our] (ph) sourcing to keep that cost of goods sold down, and that benefits us in two ways. Of course, we have a lower cost of goods and a better margin when we sell, but also our cost of acquiring equipment under the owner-operator model is equally reduced as well.

So, one model, while we have a preference for owner-operator, they’re mutually beneficial. And I’ll give you an example of that. So, one of the things that we don’t have to worry about at Blink is we don’t build in a degree of obsolescence into our charging system, so that all of a sudden, we know we’re going to get a replacement sale out of it. We need to build them to be durable. Because on the owner-operator model, we don’t want obsolescence on that. We want long-term durability. So, we’re not taking capital and putting [it up] (ph) replacement charges on that for at least a seven- to ten-year period of time. So, the models actually force us to higher quality and more robustness in our manufacturing standards and our attention to detail.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And you talked about hyper-commoditization, I believe you said in the L2 market. Can you just kind of go a little bit deeper? Does that — is that from the consumer side of things? Is that from the chargers all looking alike and acting alike? What do you mean by hyper-commoditization?

Brendan Jones

Yeah. So, over time, — and we looked at a lot of data from McKinsey and other sources on this, we said, you’re going to see manufacturing become hypercompetitive, especially as more Chinese products enter the market. And we’ve seen that over the last year. Every time we turn another page, there’s another charger manufacturer start-up who’s producing new DC fast chargers, new L2 products across the board.

So, we always want to hedge that bet with the owner-operator model, where we — where you might get a reduced margin on a competitor, but we’re going to offset any reduced margin there by generating revenue from kilowatt sales on the owner-operated model. And we want to stay ahead of it, right? That’s why we want to control our destiny with our own manufacturing, so we can reduce that COGS where needed and where we can.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And on the owner-operated model, I can see how it makes sense from a long-term perspective. You’re selling power over 10-, 20-year period, utilization is up ticking. But I’m just curious why a site owner would want to give up that upside that sounds pretty exciting, just kind of — just laying it out in two sentences.

Brendan Jones

Yeah. Some do, and some don’t, exactly to your point. Some don’t want the hassle, right? If it’s purely as a convenience, right, so people come there and they want to take advantage of that time to say, “Hey, come shop in my location. Come to this place, because we have charging services for you, and you can charge your car while you do that.” That makes it a very opportunistic thing. So, we look at those retail establishment and whether it’s Kroger or some others on the grocery side chains which we have relationships with or other big box retailers out there.

And they’ll say, hey — now, there’s always a what’s in it for them. So, it’s not — Blink never has a situation where we’re not doing some type of revenue share with our site hosts. So, even if it’s turnkey, we’re still giving them 10% of the revenue. So, they still have it in it. They just don’t have to do that capital expense. So, it’s not on their books, the capital is on ours.

Chris Pierce

And does that mean they don’t have to talk to the power company about getting power to that site? They don’t have to deal with any installation? Do you guys do that as well? Or is that kind of — how does that process work?

Brendan Jones

Depending on the type of the equipment, you do a feasibility analysis, right?

Chris Pierce

Okay.

Brendan Jones

And sometimes you use host power, sometimes depending on, especially in DC fast charger situations, you have to bring in a transformer and negotiate a rate card out with the utility. So, all based on the site assessment, the type of charging for that particular location.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And can you talk about — you sort of touched on NEVI a little bit, but just kind of how is Blink positioned? Given you have these multiple models, is that — does that kind of put you in position to talk to large construction companies that might be bidding for and building a site? But you can also bid for and build a site on your own? Or, like, how do — like, I guess, how does it work as far as NEVI?

Brendan Jones

Absolutely. So, we first — we’ll take a little bit and look at history. So, over the last two years, maybe two years and two months, about $27 million worth of grants and RFP, we’ve won as a company, right? And the majority of that is on DC fast chargers, all of it is on the owner-operator model. So, we already do that level of work. We’re installing in Florida, Vermont, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states right now, DC fast chargers, and similar plan to NEVI. So, this is just rinse and repeat on that same model of owning and operating equipment and installing. Now, we work with construction companies and [indiscernible] to install these chargers, there are partners. Some work exclusively to others, they’re servicing multiplicity of clients, including other EB infrastructure companies as well.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And then, you’ve talked about DC fast charging versus AC charging. How does the Blink — how do you see the feature shaking out when you’ve got home AC charging, you’ve got top off around town? And is DC thought of as just a quarter-type charging, or does DC have other applications as well?

Brendan Jones

Well, I think to always to set us free, we got to go back to data and see what the general community of EV experts has come up with. We look at Mackenzie and Mackenzie recently released analysis that said 90% of global charging will be L2, the other 10% Blink. There was a Bloomberg announcement about four or five months, might be six months now going on, and they said 97%. We think that was a little extreme on that side. And then, we looked at the data on the percent of consumers say they’re going to charge at home, which is about 80%.

So, while DC fast charging and reengaging it heavily, it’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s faster. It doesn’t equate to faster is always better, especially from the capital side. So, it’s about [15:1 to 20:1] (ph) ratio on the DC installation compared to an L2 installation. And that has variability depending on the site, size of transformer, everything that you got to bring in, and how fast you want on the charger.

But clearly, if we look at just passenger cars, and according to the DOT, they sit 95% of the time, even though you and I pay a lot of money for those cars, where we actually [indiscernible]. We have to exploit opportunities to charge them where they dwell, and then we have to have convenient charging DC whether for opportunistic charging and quarter charging.

So, we see DC as definitely quarter, 100% that’s the way to go, shouldn’t ever put an L2 or a low-speed DC on a quarter. It need to be — put a high-speed DC. Suburban-urban [indiscernible] charging, but the bolt when you’re in a metro, let’s use New York as example. You — south of Central Park, you only have two gas stations left. So, the idea of suddenly you’re going to say big depots of DC fast chargers bringing up is very unreasonable. But they’ve got some of the most robust garage infrastructure in the nation within New York. So, we have to inundate those situations with charging. You can bring some high speed in, but L2 is going to be the dominant form for sure.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And then, Blink has been active on the M&A front. Can you walk through why Blink was compelled to act on the SemaConnect transaction, Electric Blue, Blue Corner? And just kind of talk about those charges as you add them to the network, what do you kind of — what do you learn? Or what’s the process to get one of those on your platform where they’re all kind of [talking] (ph) to each other?

Brendan Jones

Yeah, absolutely. So, the company’s history is very inquisitive in its nature towards M&A. And it has a history. The company didn’t start as Blink. It started as Car Charging Group. It bought Blink in a bankruptcy sale, and you could tell they went bankrupt back in 2014. So, the history of it is always to buy assets and buy companies that will add to its charging portfolio moving forward.

And when we looked at companies in Europe and we looked at companies in the United States, we looked at what synergy and what scale are we going to get out of it. Clearly, the European purchases in Belgium and then in the U.K. gave us an opportunity to expand our market share. They’re already owned and operated models. Now, we’re investing in those models with our sales owner-operator, and then we’re starting to commonize the manufacturing sources of those, meaning we’ll use a Blink-produced charger in the future for those.

SemaConnect was just a great partner. They had manufacturing facilities in India. They had assembly facilities in the United States. They had a great reputation, and they were scalable. And we looked at what SemaConnect needed. They had a 15-year-old technology stack. We were in the process of developing our new technology stack. So, we launched our new network here in the United States in July. We will convert the SemaConnect network over to that in the first quarter of this year, and then we’ll convert all of the networks over to one global network.

And the advantage that we’re going to get there is you have a lot of legacy technology stacks out there, and you have a lot of other companies that have third-party technology stacks that they get the network from someone else and pay a fee. Well, we build our own. And this new network is designed to be plug and play. So, big issue when you’re talking to clients is about integration, API integration, customized services, something different they want out of the network. Blink can do it on a dime now. We have 40 developers standing by ready to make development changes to our network. And we’re going to be have one global platform and flexibility within that new technology stack to do whatever we need to do to service the community.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And since you brought up the UK and Belgium and I brought it up with Electric Blue and Blue Corner, can you talk about the differences in the models in Europe versus the U.S.? And kind of what’s more prevalent in where Blink is kind of better suited — or not necessarily better suited, but what models do you apply in different markets?

Brendan Jones

Yeah. So, the similarities are — and we’ll look at all of our operations there, including the Netherlands, et cetera, and in the Belgium and U.K. The similarities are you have a lot of public activity going on, public dollars and tenders being moved to spur the EV market. And we’re very active in both the U.K. and in Belgium and even in Holland on those fronts as we look at our expansion.

The difference, specifically in the European market, is on the sales side of the equation. As an example, we have a very good contract with a company called LeasePlan out of Belgium. Most companies in Europe provide a car to their employees. And now those cars are switching to EVs, but it’s like any other benefit. So, you need a smart charger. So, our agreement with the LeasePlan is they buy our chargers, and those are the ones installed in the consumers’ home. And it has, of course, a kilowatt meter on it, so they are able to expense their home charging, as per their agreement. On their old agreement, when internal combustion engine, they’ve just expensed the gas expense, right, normally for it. So, it’s a different model, because the ownership model of cars is slightly different in Europe than it is in the United States. We have a lot of leasing and you have a lot of company-sponsored ownership of vehicles, much more so than in the United States.

But beyond that, we’re still doing public tenders there for DC fast charger on roads and municipalities, and we’re still doing a lot of L2 tenders there. So, the difference would be that Belgium and U.K. stand out also as high-incentivized markets right now. They still have a lot of public dollars available on the tender basis to install. Belgium is a little bit more mature. We have others that we won’t announce just yet that we’re moving into. As we’re moving across Europe, there will be further announcements in 2023.

Chris Pierce

Yeah, sure. And which revenue model tends to kind of play out more in Europe? Is it Blink sells the power? Or is it the host that owned?

Brendan Jones

Currently, owner-operator model is the dominant.

Chris Pierce

Okay. Got it. Okay. And then, when you see announcements like the Mercedes announcement this week or the GM announcement maybe a month ago, what are your thoughts when you see these OEMs building networks? Is it just, hey, that’s great news, because that means that they’re bullish on how many EVs they’re going to sell? And is that’s good news, because that’s — they’re not going to build their own chargers, they’re going to need to buy these chargers from someone, or like, what — I guess, what are your thoughts when you see those headlines?

Brendan Jones

You hit most of them there. So, it’s all of the above. Look, one stat, I think this is a Bloomberg stat again. What was it? 400 — almost 340 million to 490 million chargers needed by 2040. So, let’s — we can establish the fact, this is a big market. It’s a really, really big market. U.S. has one of the highest TIVs in the world. And when you consider California, New York, Massachusetts, they’re all banning the sale of internal combustion engines by 2035. Others will follow suit with that eventually. Yeah, it’s a big market.

The Mercedes market is a DC fast charger market. Their announcement fits in with DC fast charger infrastructure, that’s out there today. It’s going to have — help drive sales, providing other opportunities for EV charging and multifamily dwellings, workplace, et cetera. So, we applaud more charging, more of public charging announcement. What we have to do as a community is we have to build range confidence. So, the announcement — with more announcements that are out there that infrastructure is coming, the better for the space in general. So, we’re bullish on it and we will continue.

Now, we believe that Blink, with our model, is going to get our unfair share as we move forward. But we don’t shy away from the competition and we are certainly not in the camp where we believe it’s dilutive in its nature and it’s going to take away from our revenue. The best is yet to come for this space and all ships will rise.

Chris Pierce

So, we should think about it as multiple winners over the next multiple years in this space? That’s how you guys think about?

Brendan Jones

That is our belief. That is correct.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And then, can you — you said you were in Las Vegas last week at CES. Can you kind of talk about the next generation of charges you unveiled both in the home and kind of outside of the home? And what — I guess, now that you have these in there ready to go, what’s the next step? Is it the sales process? Is it the channel process? Like, what happens next?

Brendan Jones

So, again, we’re going to focus on all of the above strategy. So, CES focused on some both international products. We announced our universal product for Europe, which is a 22-kilowatt unit that we’re going to be selling in — all across Europe right now from Greece to the U.K., where we have operations going on. It’s a very flexible and adaptable charger. And it can have different feature sets, attitude it from connectivity, mobile app, Internet, V2G, and plug and charge, et cetera.

And we also announced our new entry into the India market. We have a manufacturing and development center in India, where we’re expanding that. And as that market is emerging now, we’re expanding our charging services there. And it’s unique and different. As you might have mentioned, the Asia is transforming differently than the rest of the world. And you have a lot of EVs and the two and three-wheeler perspective. So, we put a — we announced that charger into the market that services that level and we’re already servicing passenger cars in India as well.

For in-home, we actually put two chargers out there, the Series 4, which is a low-cost charger, in an affordable number. And then, the new Blink HQ 200, which is a fully – full-feature charger for the home, where it has energy management, it is v2G capable, it’s V2Home capable, and all network compatibility and everything. So, when you want to buy a good home charger, that’s one of the ones to buy on there.

And then, we did the Vision. And the Vision charger is a advertising unit with a 55-inch screen on both sides. It has two 19.2 kilowatt chargers. So, it can do simultaneous charging at 19.2 kilowatts. And it’s ideal for advertising where site hosts are requesting that model. Blink will exclusively manage the charging side of it, and we have a partnership arrangement that will help us do the content managing on the ad revenue side, et cetera. So, we believe great excitement out of there.

And we also did what is our Series 9 fleet DC low-kilowatt charging, and that’s a 30-kilowatt compact easy-to-install wall-mounted DC. That’s ideal for fleet charging where they want reliance on a bit of faster charging, but still take advantage of dwell time on it. So, — and these are on top of other chargers that we’re announcing. We also gave a hint at our 180-kilowatt DC fast charging, which will be of a Blink designed to produced charger that we’re — we’ve already finished the design. We’re going through the engineering and validation aspects of that. That will be both built in India and in a manufacturing site where — manufacturing location in the U.S. that we’re in the final selection phases, as we speak.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And how do you kind of get — build consumer awareness of that home charger? And does — winning in the home charger, does that help your network when people are out and about, they’re using the Blink app, they’re looking for a Blink charger? Or is it — is that kind of the wrong way to think about it?

Brendan Jones

Yeah. I mean, there may be a loose correlation between the two, but it actually goes back to the philosophy of not saying no, right?

Chris Pierce

Okay.

Brendan Jones

And then, offering a low-cost version as well. We designed the HQ to be able to work in multifamily dwellings as well as a lower cost alternative. So, we want to make sure that if we approach somebody, we have the solution for them, so that they can use it.

Now, we prefer on the multifamily — our multifamily charger, which allows for a degree of access control, so the owners of the parking garage, now, like, they can monitor the charging. But we have some situations where they want the lower-cost charger in the home charger and we’ll install those.

So, you go into this market for the home, but you make sure that’s available for other positions as well. And it’s — you’re going to have people that are cost sensitive and you’re going to have people that are feature sensitive. So, make sure you have a solution for both.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And when you say approach someone, does that mean, like, your salesforce is out there pounding the pavement to someone that has 10 parking garages in Idaho, and they don’t have charges at all right now? Or, like, what — like, what does that really mean?

Brendan Jones

Yes. So, we’ve got a fairly large sales staff across the United States, in market, in all the big markets throughout the U.S. Well, they might not be knocking on the doors of an individual garage, they’ll certainly find out who owns, maintains and manages that, starting a conversation with either sustainability manager or the person responsible for charging, and have a dialogue at how to meet their charging needs as we move forward. And they do that every day.

Chris Pierce

Got you. So, let’s say just, I live in Northern California. I used to work in San Francisco before COVID. I could throw a rock and hit four Teslas. The building I worked didn’t had much charging station below. And the attendants in the garage, they move the cars around during the day as needed. But am I thinking of that, like, that doesn’t exist now in other states or other states are moving towards that model quickly? Or, like, I guess, how should I think about that?

Brendan Jones

Yeah. So, you have a different solution for densely-populated urban areas, such as San Francisco, where you do have a lot of valet situations at parking tents maneuvering cars. Now, they’re all going to need more chargers because you’re not going to have enough chargers to meet that ability. So, you’re going to do — you have some additionality there. You get to the Midwest, you have less garage-based infrastructure for workplace situations. And others, you have more — it is flat parking lots that are exposed, so you do outdoor installs there.

So, you’re going to have variability depending on what type of urban environment it is? How dense it is? Is it more vertical in its nature? Or is it lower-lying buildings and open parking lot? So, you do the need-based assessment. It’s all not the same. San Francisco mirrors a lot of the East Coast, and you see — that’s where you see a big amount of both workplace and multifamily dwelling charging. And now it’s moving into the middle, and the solution is a little bit more varied as well. Chicago, New York, San Francisco, in the vertical side, all about the same in terms of the way you engage with multifamily dwellings and parking management companies.

Chris Pierce

But the idea that I pull into a parking lot of Safeway and there’s a charger there. I pull into the garage I used to work and there’s three charges there. Is that just not the way it is in most of the United States at this point in time?

Brendan Jones

It’s the way it’s becoming in most of the United States, depending on the market. I mean, California leads, as you know. There’s a much more dense amount of chargers in California than any place else in the nation.

Chris Pierce

And is that the growth that investors are focused on? Or investors are more focused on the NEVI growth and the quarter growth that perhaps that can help with range anxiety?

Brendan Jones

Well — oh, God, range anxiety.

Chris Pierce

I know.

Brendan Jones

I laugh because the industry created that term. So, I think, yeah, you do have the psychological effect on DC fast charging. And faster is better becomes something that you believe even though the reality is that the vehicle sit 95% of the time, right? So, when we look at it, if you’re going to really believe in the data and the Bloomberg numbers, the opportunity from a market share and from a sales and services perspective is L2 and then DC fast charger for those quarters. We don’t believe that’s the long-term model. If you’re just DC standalone, we believe you need something other than DC standalone to be able to have a long-term sustainable future.

Chris Pierce

Okay. And what do you tell investors you may be over focused on the University of California study about industry ports out there, and 30% of them you pull up and it doesn’t work, like that — like — is that just — I mean, I guess, what do you — when investors bring that up, how do you respond?

Brendan Jones

Well, it’s a concern. First, I mean, the industry has some issues to overcome on quality. And we have to investigate instead of everybody getting all excited about it. Really, what is true root cause analysis? And what does it tell us? We know a lot that point of failure is not really in a — this is way mechanical failure of the charging. You do have a failure rate on charging, but usually it’s the point of contact with the consumer. So, it’s a credit card reader. California mandates credit card readers now with mag stripe on them. The failure rate on that, it will be the biggest because of the nature of credit card readers. You’ll have less of a failure rate on tap to charge situations with mobile apps, et cetera. And then, then it goes back to network services going down.

So, what we really have to do is get real about why the failures happened and why it suddenly increased. If you looked at plug shares across the board, everybody decreased in 2022. One of the main culprits behind that, which we won’t have moving forward, was the sunset of the 2G and the 3G networks. So many, many, many chargers operated off that network. And unless they had an upgrade in the charger or a modem change, all of a sudden, the consumer goes up to that, and that charger doesn’t work. And it didn’t work because it was the old technology. In Europe, interesting enough, they banned that from happening. Because they believe they displace chargers. They didn’t let the carriers sunset 2G and 3G, and that continuity of charging across Europe.

Chris Pierce

So, what happens if a partner of yours calls about a charger? Do you have local representation? Or you have a contract worker that can go out and kind do what needs to be done to get that charger up and running? Or, like, what’s the turn-around time there?

Brendan Jones

Yeah. So, if it’s an L2, that’s out of service, within 24 hours, we dispatch a tech. That tech goes to the charger. He does not fix it in the field. He swaps the head, puts a new charger on, sends that back to Phoenix or Bowie, Maryland. They refurbish that charger, fix whatever was broken, and that gets back into circulation.

On the L2 charger, we dispatch a tech. We first do over-the-air work through our network operation center. You have an addressability factor depending on DC fast charger equipment of anywhere from 60% to 80%, you can address the failure over air. When that does not work, then we roll a truck and we service that charger in the field.

Chris Pierce

And you just talk — you mentioned Bowie real quickly. Can you talk about manufacturing capability you have there? How it came to be? How you’re thinking about it? And any constraints on manufacturing if they exist at all?

Brendan Jones

Yeah. So, manufacturing in Bowie, basically, what happens in India is we build parts, right? We build a lot of parts in India. All of those subsystems go to Bowie and they are manufactured into chargers. And in Bowie, so they both do the manufacturing of those chargers. We are becoming Buy in America compliant with that. We meet the 60% standard of labor and local content that the federal government has put out under the Biden $2.5 million that’s going to go, that focus primarily on L2 through those.

We are going to expand that facility as we made an announcement during the acquisition and upping the capacity up there to get that out of — to up to about 30,000 units on the L2 side out of that. So, we’re expanding the existing footprint of that as we speak. Those plans are underway and in place right now today.

So, again, that gives us control of our own cost of goods sold out of that and we can be very competitive in the market as it relates to sourcing issues of different components, et cetera.

Chris Pierce

Got you. Okay. And then, just you talked about marquee accounts. I think it was mentioned on — during the last earnings call, during the press release or the presentation. What is a marquee account for Blink?

Brendan Jones

So, we categorize it in the two different groups, right? So, there’s marquee on the sales front. And usually those are accounts that are in excess of $1 million, right, in gross revenue, right, from the sales of chargers. And we look at our account that we run through ABM or GM, that’s a big dollar account. And it’s already in the millions of dollars and it continues to grow up as we place more and more chargers at dealerships across the country. And we have others that fit into that same category, all above $1 million, some direct customers where we’re installing the chargers, other resellers who are redistributing with us.

Then, on the owner-operator side, we look at real estate companies and we look at that differently. We look at that from an opportunity perspective. And what companies have the most real estate under management or under control that we work with. And that’s where we go marquee accounts in CBRE. We signed another deal with Cushman & Wakefield just recently as well to be their provider for L2 and DC fast charging in their facilities. In Europe, one of the larger parking companies in both London and in Ireland as a whole, we are their exclusive provider on the owner-operator model there as well. So, when they need charging, they go to us.

So, owner-operator model, it is the strength of the portfolio where we can install charging on the owner-operator, and on sales, it’s the dollar value of that portfolio over time that fits the marquee title.

Chris Pierce

Got you. Okay. And then, when you — you talked about Cushman & Wakefield, is there a competitive process? Or is your sales — like — I guess, I’m just curious, is it like a bake-off between charges, or is it we’re not at that stage yet because there’s so many charges that need to go up, there’re so many companies are — there’s opportunity for everybody right now?

Brendan Jones

Yeah. You get, with all of them, exclusive becomes [indiscernible] words at times, right?

Chris Pierce

Yeah.

Brendan Jones

So, you get status with one or two others is the dominant, right? That’s what we’re seeing as maybe. There are ones where it’s pure us, with the parking company in the U.K. and Ireland, it’s just us. But there’s others where you’re one of the preferred choices with one or two others.

Chris Pierce

Okay. So, just kind of last question to bring it home here. How do you see the charging market or Blink’s kind of portfolio looking in two or three years? Are we talking about the amount of chargers in the field is still growing 20%, 25% annually? Or Blink is kind of we’re beyond that level of growth, and it’s kind of about the power generation and owned and operated sites rate at that point?

Brendan Jones

So, we want to keep pace with the industry, both on the sales front and the owner-operator front, and we want to outpace them. And, look, based on — we can’t give — we don’t give guidance.

Chris Pierce

Yeah.

Brendan Jones

And I can’t report yet on Q4, as you know. But the trend numbers indicate we’re doing so. And what we look at Blink is keeping getting better, right? To be a sustainable company, you have to make sure you’re exploiting all opportunities in the space. And you make sure and you have to self improve, and you got to stay nimble.

If I go back to the beginning, we’re having debates on 110 versus L2. And DC fast charging [indiscernible] didn’t work. So, you have to stay nimble on what type of market share? What type of chargers? We’re installing 350 kilowatt chargers now that five, six years ago, people wouldn’t have fathomed. And there’s megawatt chargers coming online now.

So, our goal is stay ahead of the industry, but stay in that sweet spot industry, where the volume is and where sustainability is going to exist for the long term. We believe that is in L2, in high-speed L2, and in DC fast charging as well. And that’s where volume and economy of the scales are going to occur, and we’re going to make sure that’s where our investment dollars go.

Chris Pierce

Perfect. All right. Well, Brendan, thanks for your time this afternoon. Have a great rest of the day. We appreciate you dialling in.

Brendan Jones

Absolutely. Thanks, guys.