Blink Charging Co Stock

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Blink Charging Company Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Vitalie Stelea.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to Blink's second quarter 2026 earnings call. With us today, we have Mike Battaglia, President and CEO; and Michael Bercovich, Chief Financial Officer.

Today's discussions will include references to non-GAAP measures. These are reconciled to the most comparable U.S. GAAP numbers 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 differ from those stated, and the most significant factors that could cause results to differ are included on Page 2 of the second quarter 2026 earnings deck. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are year-over-year.

Regarding our calendar, Blink will participate in the H.C. Wainwright 28th Annual Global Investment Conference on September 14 and 15 in New York City. For additional events, please follow our press releases and Blink's Investor Relations website.

I will now turn the call over to Mike Battaglia, President and CEO of Blink Charging. Please go ahead, Mike.

All right. Thanks, Vitalie. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us. So I'd like to set the stage for today's call by highlighting 2 achievements that exemplify the transformation at Blink. First, we narrowed our adjusted EBITDA loss to just $2.2 million this quarter, compared to a loss of $7.9 million in the second quarter of last year, representing a 72% improvement. And second, our GAAP gross margin was a strong 38.9%, that is a 2,200 basis point year-over-year increase or an improvement of $3.6 million on a lower revenue base.

Together, these 2 data points demonstrate that the plan we communicated and put in place at the beginning of this year is working and moving Blink decisively toward our goal of exiting 2026 at approximately breakeven. We'll come back to both of these data points in more detail in a few minutes, but I wanted to begin here as the rest of the call will reinforce these key points. The restructuring work is behind us, and you are seeing the company we committed to build, leaner, more focused and making deliberate decisions that prioritize quality of revenue, margin expansion and profitability.

Total revenue of $21.7 million was up 4.3% sequentially, and we were encouraged to see product sales grow 20% from the first quarter. We also completed the divestiture of Envoy Technologies on June 5. And while it impacted the top line in the second quarter, it reinforces our commitment to focusing resources and capital on optimizing the core business. And with every customer contract renewal, we evaluate the economics and execute only when the terms work for Blink. Otherwise, we walk away. The result is a higher quality revenue base as evidenced in margin performance. Again, GAAP gross margin of 38.9% this quarter compared to 16.8% in Q2 of last year. This sends a clear message, our plan is working.

Now turning to Slide 6. Market conditions within the U.S. electric vehicle market are strengthening, which underpin the fundamentals of our business. Used EV sales are robust as mainstream buyers consider alternatives to gasoline-powered vehicles in an environment of elevated global fuel prices. Similarly, in Q2, new battery electric vehicle sales demonstrated growth over Q1, reflecting steady market recovery since the discontinuation of the EV tax credit, and this is exactly what we were expecting.

Consumers are choosing the predictability of charging costs associated with electricity over the spikes and fluctuations of geopolitically driven gas prices. Plug-in hybrids service the on-ramp, transitioning drivers toward full battery-powered EV ownership. And new sales have also been showing global resiliency with Europe hovering at a 17.5% penetration rate of new vehicles sold, benefiting our businesses in the U.K. and Belgium. Importantly for us, infrastructure perception remains the #1 barrier to buying an EV. That gap between the customer's perception today and when they're going to feel comfortable with infrastructure availability is the opportunity for Blink. We own and operate infrastructure, and we are building into those perception gaps.

On Slide 7 is the business model transformation that is driving margin expansion. By 2028, we are targeting repeat and recurring revenue streams to account for approximately 80% of total revenue, with hardware sales comprising the balance. We achieved this with a deliberate plan that progresses through various stage gates, from raising capital to site pipeline generation to construction and deployment and finally, to owned and operated cash-generating DC fast charging assets. Recurring revenue drives predictability and this transition drives structural margin expansion.

Moving to Slide 8. Our DC fast charging build-out plan totals 25 sites and 118 stalls, funded by the equity raise we completed in December of last year. We expect to have nearly all of those sites built by the end of 2026. This would bring our total DC charger footprint to about 169 sites, representing 519 stalls by year-end.

Slide 9 is a visual representation of where we're headed. This is a concept of one of our future DC fast charging sites. They're fast, incorporate energy management technologies and are located in high-density locations where people live, work and play.

Turning to Slide 10. We highlight Blink's focus on innovation. This month, we are launching EnergyConnect, this month, our new energy management platform. This marks an important evolution for Blink. EnergyConnect is an AI-driven energy management system that will eventually be live across our DC fast charging and Level 2 networks. In simple terms, it transforms charging sites into a smarter, more valuable energy asset as it addresses 4 key areas for us and our site hosts.

First, real-time load monitoring. We can see actual power draw against configured limits at every site. Second, automated load balancing. The system distributes power intelligently phase by phase. Third, demand charge mitigation. Scheduled load limits reduce or eliminate expensive peak hour utility charges. And fourth, it lets us grow without underlying infrastructure upgrades. We can add more chargers on the electrical service already in place. These capabilities save us future OpEx and CapEx dollars, and this is a platform, not a feature, and it's live today.

In the first half of 2027, we will bring battery storage under EnergyConnect control, unlocking peak shaving and electricity arbitrage. And beyond that, it's the foundation for aggregating and monetizing distributed energy through a virtual power plant and participating in grid services. This marks our progression from a pure charging company into a broader energy company with EnergyConnect serving as the operating system that powers it.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Michael Bercovich, our Chief Financial Officer, to review the financials in more detail, and then I'll circle back at the end of the call with concluding remarks. Michael?

Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. Q2 2026 is a quarter where the numbers validate our plan. Margins are expanding as revenue quality improves. Our structural cost realignment is delivering tangible results. Costs are reset in control, operating leverage is expanding and adjusted EBITDA loss has reached a multiyear low as we drive the business towards sustained profitability. And the balance sheet gives us the flexibility to invest in DC fast charging network and fund expansion with efficient capital.

Let me walk you through the details, beginning with the selected financials on Slide 12. Q2 2026 total revenues were $21.7 million compared to $28.7 million in Q2 of 2025. Let me provide some context for this and also underlying story. As we communicated previously, Blink is prioritizing quality of revenue over quantity. From time to time, Blink renews contracts and commercial agreements. And with every renewal, we are evaluating profitability expectations. If it doesn't fit, we walk away, which explains some of this reduction. We also completed the divestiture of Envoy Technologies, which sharpens our focus on the core EV charging business and supports additional improvements in our EBITDA profile.

Product revenues were $7.4 million compared to $14.5 million in the second quarter of last year. This decline reflects deliberate strategic decisions. While some participants in the industry continue to prioritize top line growth at the expense of margins, we remain focused on profitable growth, higher-margin opportunities and disciplined deal selection. We believe this strategy positions Blink for stronger and long-term shareholder value creation.

Service revenue, which includes repeatable charging revenues and recurring network fees, grew 6.2% year-over-year to $11.5 million compared to $10.8 million in Q2 of 2025. This is the growth engine for Blink, both from a revenue and margin perspective. Further, with our ongoing margin optimization efforts, we are experiencing margin expansion. We will address this in more detail momentarily.

Other revenues, which consist of warranty fees, grants and rebates and other revenue items were $1.9 million in the second quarter compared to $2.3 million in the prior year period. Car sharing revenues were $0.8 million, a decrease of 25.9% compared to prior year period, primarily attributable to the Blink strategic divestiture of Envoy Technologies on June 5, 2026. For modeling purposes, Envoy's last 12 months revenues were $4.7 million, and they will not be recurring.

As a reminder, starting with the fiscal year 2026, we have redefined our non-GAAP metrics to align with peers and industry practices. You can see the definitions of these metrics in our earnings press release as well as in the appendix section of this presentation. The main difference is that we exclude noncash share-based compensation, other nonrecurring items as well as depreciation and amortization to better present the fundamental direction of our business. So let's get to it.

GAAP gross profit in Q2 was $8.4 million or 38.9% of revenues compared to gross profit of $4.8 million or 16.8% of revenues in Q2 of 2025. That is 75% improvement in gross profit dollars on lower revenue and more than 2,200 basis points of margin expansion. The gross margin percentage exceeded our expectations, driven by disciplined portfolio optimization, the shift to contract manufacturing and improved revenue mix.

On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted gross margin was a robust 47.9%. The fundamentals of our business are stronger than ever. Our focus on higher quality revenue, disciplined portfolio management, contract manufacturing optimization and a richer mix of repeat, recurring and higher-margin revenue streams continues to enhance our margin profile. These are sustainable improvements that we expect to support further profitability as the business grows.

Turning to operating expenses. Total operating expenses in Q2 were $14.7 million compared to $34.4 million in Q2 of last year, a 57% reduction year-over-year. This reflects the successful execution of our Blink Forward transformation initiative and the completion of the restructuring actions over the past year. Importantly, those are structural, not temporary improvements. We have rightsized the organization, streamlined our cost structure and instilled greater discipline across G&A and compensation spending, and we continue targeting more. As a result, Blink is operating as a leaner, more focused and more efficient organization that is well positioned to drive profitable and predictable growth. Compensation expenses were $8.4 million, down 39% from $13.8 million in Q2 2025, reflecting the benefit of our headcount reductions.

G&A expenses were $1.8 million, down from $7 million (sic) [ $10.7 million] in prior year quarter, and other operating expenses declined to $4.1 million from $6.7 million as our cost optimization efforts continue to compound across the organization. GAAP net loss for Q2 was $6 million or $0.04 loss per diluted share compared to a net loss of $29.3 million or $0.28 loss per diluted share in Q2 of last year. That's an improvement of over $23 million in reduced net loss.

Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2026 was a loss of $2.2 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $7.9 million in Q2 of last year. That is a 72% improvement and it gets us closer to achieving profitability.

Turning to our balance sheet and cash position. We ended Q2 with cash and cash equivalents of approximately $34 million. Days sales outstanding is now below 80 days, demonstrating the continued impact of enhanced working capital practices and refined liquidity management. For the first 6 months of 2026, net cash burn was approximately $5.6 million compared to $30.1 million in the same period last year, an improvement of approximately $24.5 million. Tighter financial management across the business gives us the flexibility to invest in our future DC fast charging network. As we scale this infrastructure, we expect our cash burn to increase to support future repeatable cash flows from charging assets.

Regarding the business outlook, I'd like to provide an update across 3 key areas. #1, revenue. We are revising our full year 2026 revenue guidance to between $83 million to $90 million from $105 million to $115 million previously. Here is why. With the focus on revenue quality, the Envoy divestiture and other commercially disciplined decisions, we are consciously choosing to run a leaner and more focused company. The emphasis is on the durable profitability and not just the top line for the sake of the top line. Our updated guidance reflects thoughtful strategic choices, not a change in our confidence or long-term opportunities. While these actions reduce revenue in the short term, they improve overall business performance and financial health.

#2, gross margins. We are raising our full year gross margin outlook to approximately 38% on a GAAP reported basis from approximately 35% previously. The drivers are well understood, disciplined portfolio optimization, selective renewal of contracts, contract manufacturing efficiencies and improved revenue mix and increased utilization of our own charging assets.

Lastly, #3, path to profitability. We anticipate a further reduced adjusted EBITDA loss in the second half of the year as we continue business optimization efforts. We recognize early that long-term success in this industry requires more than revenue growth. It requires a sustainable business model. Over the past year, we have focused on making the right decisions, not always the easiest ones, in order to build a stronger company. We believe the progress we have made reflects this discipline, and we're committed to continue to execute with the same focus going forward. And we choose to confront market challenges head on rather than wait for the markets to solve them for us.

I will now turn it back to Mike to wrap it up. Go ahead, Mike.

All right. Thanks, Michael. So the second quarter of 2026 was about broad execution and the results reflect that. At Blink, we are believers in intense focus and management accountability. We want to concentrate on the core, build the core and do what we do best. As we move through the remainder of 2026, our focus is on deploying capital, scaling the DC fast charging network, deploying energy management capabilities through EnergyConnect, and building a business that generates durable, repeatable revenue and reaches adjusted EBITDA breakeven in the fourth quarter. We have accomplished the hard structural adjustments. Now we are scaling what works.

I want to close by highlighting a few milestones and notable achievements in Q2. #1, GAAP gross margin of 38.9%, up from 16.8% a year ago. Quality of revenue is performing. Secondly, revenue up 4.3% sequentially. The business has stabilized. Third, adjusted EBITDA loss improved 72% year-over-year. The cost structure is right. And fourth, $34 million in cash and days sales outstanding at about 80 days for the second straight quarter. Our balance sheet gives us options. As a result of these achievements, we are targeting to exit 2026 at approximately breakeven profitability.

In 2027, we expect to return to revenue growth with a positive full year adjusted EBITDA, driven primarily by charging and energy services and increasing the repeatable and predictable revenue mix. We expect to provide formal 2027 guidance alongside our 2026 year-end results. And overall, since I became CEO, I've been clear about what Blink will do, build a company with fundamentally sound financials, operate with discipline and scale profitably over time. Every quarter, the results move in that direction. So I would like to extend a thank you to the Blink team for their continued focus and execution. And I would like to thank our customers and drivers who rely on Blink to provide energy to their vehicles every day.

With that, we can move on to Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Chris Pierce with Needham.

Just one financial question and one kind of bigger picture question. Like -- sorry if I missed it, but did you guys give -- I know you gave the gigawatt hours, and you have been giving that in the past 4 quarters. Did you give -- like how should we think about utilization on the network? I am just trying to think about where service revenue could go with your installed base and as you grow the installed base. So that's kind of top line. And then within OpEx, should we sort of think of this? I kind of just want to go a little deeper on your comments, Michael, about further room from here, if this is sort of a steady state of the business going forward, which is -- I mean, versus last year, sort of get where we are? I just want to understand how to think about modeling OpEx going forward.

Yes. I will take the first part, Chris, and then Michael can take the second. So obviously, good question. I will answer it this way. We are seeing increasing utilization among the core group of assets where we have executed with the tools and analytics available to us. So call it the assets that have been installed in the last 18 months. And the new sites that we are putting in, so again, we raised about $20 million in equity in December. We committed to the majority of that being put in the ground in order to build out DC fast charging assets. And as I pointed out in the deck, we are going to have a lot of those built by the end of the year. And we are very confident in the utilization that those sites are going to deliver. So to answer the question, overall, we see the overall network utilization increasing, but especially among the assets that we have installed, call it, in the last 18 months.

Okay. Perfect. And then on OpEx?

Chris, it is a very good question. Let me answer that. I think the key takeaway is that the vast majority of the structural cost actions are now behind us. Over the past 15 months, we fundamentally reset our operating expense base, and we believe that the current run rate is a good rep for the business going forward. You should expect operating expenses to remain relatively stable with some improvements as we move on because we are just not going to give up and we will continue looking.

And then you will see some normal quarter-over-quarter fluctuations driven by timing and some investments in growth initiatives. But as the revenue grows, right, our objective is essentially to leverage this existing cost structure rather than just grow operating expenses. So part of what we did is really reset the operating structure to help us to grow in the future with some additional changes that we plan to do in the next few quarters.

Okay. Perfect. Can you just remind us what equipment you are putting in the ground? I know you had a factory outside of D.C. And then I think you had been using some third-party contracting on DC. Like what is happening with your prior production capabilities? And what equipment are you putting in the ground, like kind of where are you sourcing it from?

Yes, sure. I will take that. So it's different as we talk about Level 2 versus DC. So let's start with Level 2 because that's what we were assembling in Maryland. So we took that production and we shifted it to third-party contract manufacturers, both here in the United States as well as overseas, in India. That is Blink product. So that's our IP, that's our software development, firmware development. It's just sitting in the hands of a third-party contract manufacturer to manage the supply chain, to snap them together and deliver it to our warehouses here in the U.S. So that's L2 or AC.

Secondly, on DC, our strategy has not changed. We are using third-party hardware to support our DC build-out as well as product sales. And that typically sits with 3 companies: Tellus Power, Kempower and Sinexcel.

Okay. Perfect. And then just one last one for me. I guess it would be hard not to mention that we have seen companies in this space, across the space really talk about getting adjusted EBITDA positive in '23, '24 and that's sort of a reset. I guess, what's different or what are you seeing now that kind of gives you the confidence that you can sort of kind of talk about exiting this year flattish and positive adjusted EBITDA next year given sort of how volatile the environment has been that's sort of made it hard for people to sort of stick to their predictions?

Yes, I will start with that. So I'm sure Michael will have some comments on this. So #1, just look at the progress we've made. I mean this isn't theoretical. We are not talking about this as a conceptual thing. We are demonstrating our progress to it. Adjusted EBITDA loss in Q2 of $2.2 million, we are not that far off. So right there, I think, is evidence -- tangible evidence that we mean what we say. And I think we have a pretty good track record over the last 18 months or so of delivering what we said we were going to deliver.

The other thing is, two, as we continue to build our repeat and recurring revenue mix, we can see what type of revenue we need to generate in order to get to profitability. So as we look out and we have, I would say, relatively conservative assumptions on product sales, that's how we're modeling this. We are not modeling this, as Michael said in his comments, based on the market recovering us. We are adjusting our business based on where the market is. So when you combine all of those things, again, press -- continuing to press down on the operating expenses, the increased mix of repeat and recurring revenue and being conservative in the outlook for product sales, we're not saying this flippantly. We are demonstrating that we are getting it. So Michael, anything to add?

Yes. Maybe just a couple of points, Chris. Let me say this, profitability is the priority. And the revenue reset you see was intentional. It's not demand driven. And cost structure has fundamentally changed. It's a completely, completely new company. And Blink is positioned to return to growth from a much healthier base, and that's what we can tell you today, and that's where we're driving.

We now hear from Ryan Pfingst with B. Riley.

First, could you give some more specifics around the decisions that you made that ultimately led to the revenue guidance reduction and the expected enhancement of gross margin?

Yes. So you're talking about like when we talk about quality of revenue, just to be clear?

Yes, exactly. Yes.

Yes. Sure, sure. So first of all, it really probably encompasses 3 things. So first of all, we're ensuring that our owned and operated chargers are optimized. And that means validating driver pricing, so what drivers pay for the electricity at our Blink-owned sites. And just as importantly, ensuring that we are procuring energy at the cheapest rate possible. So that's #1.

Secondly, when customer contracts come up for renewal, we are evaluating the true cost of the business, not just the gross margin, but think about contribution margin impact. So if it make sense, we continue, if not, we walk away. And there are a couple of areas that were meaningful from a revenue standpoint that we recently walked away from because the profitability was nonexistent. And we don't feel like that's an efficient use of capital or resources at Blink.

And then finally, when we are evaluating hardware sales, we are considering the add-on opportunities that can create longer-term value. So things like whether or not there's a network subscription attached to it, an extended warranty purchase, a revenue share model perhaps. And these considerations help us understand the true margin contribution beyond just the hardware margin itself. So that's how we are thinking about the business now kind of every day we wake up.

Make sense. I appreciate that. And then just to clarify on EBITDA guidance. Should we think about the target being exiting the year at a breakeven run rate or breakeven for the fourth quarter?

Michael, do you want to start?

Yes, absolutely. So we're driving towards profitability to the end of the year and the drop to this record low of $2.2 million, just a good example. So we plan, again, as I said, profitability is the top priority. We plan to exit the year at a breakeven around that. And then we're building a plan now from where we are and those decisions that we're making right now to become profitable in 2027 with a much leaner, much more focused company and then derisking that as well.

Understood. Appreciate that. And then last one on EnergyConnect. Could you just dig into the battery storage strategy a little bit more and maybe some of the new opportunities that this can provide?

Sure. So I think it's really interesting, I think, where Blink is and the opportunity that's available to us here. So we've been working on EnergyConnect for a while, and we are initially deploying it at our Blink-owned sites. So we're rolling it out. We're testing it against things like load balancing and some of the things that I mentioned in my comments, with the intent of trying to maximize the profitability opportunity at those Blink-owned sites. And then once we have validated that, we then get to bring it to the market. So there are kind of additional SaaS opportunities above and beyond just network fees that will -- that we can bring to customers. That's #1.

The second piece of it is then incorporating battery energy storage. And this is what I mentioned in the comments again is that when we look to early 2027, we should be able to bring battery energy storage capabilities underneath EnergyConnect. And that opens up a whole different set of opportunities for us in terms of, obviously, peak shaving, demand event mitigation and also providing energy back to the grid, which obviously is something that's top of mind for everyone. And I kidded around before and I've said, that used to be the conversation for EV charging. And now that whole conversation, thankfully, has shifted over to data center. So we're no longer sort of the looming evil child out there. It's the data center. So we think that that is a really big opportunity for us to leverage the EnergyConnect platform to be at the core of all of those things.

[Operator Instructions] Our next questioner is from Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainwright.

So I'd like to just dig in a little bit deeper on the EnergyConnect strategy. Is there a possibility for you to go back to already installed DCFC locations and upgrade those with batteries? Or is this only going to be for new installation coming in 2027?

Sameer, thanks for the question. It's a great one. There is absolutely a big opportunity to retrofit existing DC fast chargers. And I think order of magnitude, as an example, we have sold upwards of 1,500 DC fast chargers into automotive dealers across the country. That's a pretty good -- and I think probably some of those dealers are struggling with things like demand charges, and that can represent a very interesting opportunity for us. So absolutely.

That sounds wonderful. And then second question is about -- I think concluding your prepared remarks, you mentioned the balance sheet and optionality. I understand to the extent that you would be -- you want to deploy as many of your own chargers, and then also use some of this for the battery rollout. But what other options are on the table that you may be considering?

Yes. So let me -- I'm sure Michael would like to jump in here, too. I'll start. So to me, this is a kind of a multi-faceted opportunity, I'll say, for capitalizing the company. So #1, we've talked about profitability on this call. And when we achieve profitability, we believe it's going to open up a world of options for us that perhaps aren't available to companies like us in the position we're in right now. So that's #1.

The second thing is that we believe that this strategy opens up an investment community to us that, again, hasn't been interested or visible, however you want to word it, and that when we start to show that our DC -- owned and operated DC fast charging footprint gives us a beachhead into this market that's real, we believe that the financing opportunities could be -- some very interesting ones could be available to us. So Michael, anything to add?

Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Mike. Sameer, liquidity remains a key focus for us. We finished the quarter with approximately $34 million in cash, no debt, which we believe differentiates Blink from many of our peers. Our focus continues to be disciplined cash management, improving operating performance and reducing cash burn. Every transformation decision we have made over the last year have been centered around extending runway while building business capable of generating sustainable profitability.

And that's one of the reasons why profitability, as Mike said, is such an important priority. A business that consistently generates stronger operating results, creates more strategic options, whether it's funding growth internally or accessing capital with lower cost when opportunity arise. Our goal is to put Blink in a position where we have choices and where every financing decision is made from a position of strength rather than necessity.

Understood. And I should congratulate you on the very successful cost reduction efforts. I mean it is really impressive what you have achieved over the last few quarters. And good luck with your 4Q breakeven EBITDA.

With all questions having been addressed from the Q&A, we turn the floor back over to your management.

We appreciate all of you who joined Blink today for our second quarter announcement, highlighting significant improvements in our GAAP gross margin and adjusted EBITDA. These are critical KPIs that our management follows on our path to profitability as reflected in our updated guidance today. We look forward to keeping you updated. Reach out to the Investor Relations team and be well. Thank you.

This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Blink Charging First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

It is now my pleasure to hand the floor over to your host, Vitalie Stelea, Vice President of Treasury and Finances. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to Blink's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. With us today, we have Mike Battaglia, our President and CEO; and Michael Bercovich, Chief Financial Officer.

Today's discussion will include non-GAAP references, and 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 [Technical Difficulty] today's discussions may also include forward-looking statements about our expectations. Actual results may differ from those stated and the most significant factors that could be different are included on Page 2 of the first quarter 2026 earnings deck. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are year-over-year. For additional events and news, please follow our media releases in the Events section of Blink's Investor Relations website.

I will now turn the call over to Mike Battaglia.

All right. Great. Thanks very much, Vitalie, and good afternoon, everyone, and thanks so much for being with us here today. So the first quarter of 2026 reflects our continued track record of execution. The restructuring work of 2025 is behind us. Capital was raised at the end of last year, and that capital is now being deployed. What you're seeing in Q1 is Blink's new culture, disciplined, focused and building toward profitability consistently, and I would even say relentlessly.

I want to be direct about what Q1 represents. It came in largely as expected. Revenue was approximately flat year-over-year, consistent with typical seasonality we see in the first quarter. And what matters more than the top line numbers are the fundamentals behind them. So let's unpack that together. Our recurring and repeatable service revenues grew 25% year-over-year to $13.3 million. This is the engine of our business, and it is running stronger every quarter. Our cost structure is significantly rightsized. Our cash burn remained controlled for the third quarter in a row. And our DC fast charging build-out, which is the central investment story for Blink is moving forward with real momentum.

Moving to Slide 4, you'll see how we're characterizing the business today. The cost reset is complete, repeatable and recurring revenue is scaling. DC fast charger investment is accelerating, and we are positioned in a large and growing market at what we believe is a highly attractive entry point. These are not talking points. They are the results of decisions and actions we have been executing against for more than a year, and they are durable.

On Slide 5, you can see the business model transformation that is driving margin expansion. In 2025, approximately 45% of our revenue was repeatable and recurring. Our target for 2028 is 80%. We get there with a deliberate and simple plan that moves from fundraising to DC fast charger site selection to construction of high-performing DC fast charging sites and finally, scaling utilization of those charging assets. Every quarter that passes, the mix of repeatable and recurring revenue moves in the right direction. Higher service revenues as a percentage of total means higher margins, more predictability and less dependence on transactional product sales. Once again, that transition is structural, and this quarter continues to validate the framework.

As you can see on Slide 6, we have 27 sites encompassing 136 stalls in our near-term build-out plan. Of those, 3 sites with 11 stalls are already under construction. The additional 125 stalls are approved and in various stages of deployment. We look forward to moving them into the construction stage and then ultimately into the go-live stage.

And on Slide 7, we're showing the future of Blink. These exemplify the type of site layouts that are guiding us into the future. They are fast, they're modern and most importantly, they represent technologies that we intend to deploy. Next, our unique go-to-market strategy operates along 2 complementary tracks as shown on Slide 8. We engage in multi-vertical channel sales encompassing hardware and software that generates recurring network fees and carries healthy margins. And our owned and operated infrastructure generates repeatable energy revenue with stability and predictability. Addressing both of these allows us to participate in 2 very large addressable markets. In particular, as we scale the owned network, specifically DC fast charging, those repeatable energy revenues grow, the margins improve and the business becomes increasingly self-sustaining.

On Slide 9, you will see how we're targeting several emerging opportunities to effectively leverage our size and scale. Electrified autonomous vehicle deployments are accelerating and mobility providers need partners like Blink for charging infrastructure. Secondly, we continue to pursue Blink network integrations with automotive OEMs. This immediately expands visibility of our public infrastructure and drives utilization. Once integrated with automakers, we become sticky as drivers rely on our chargers. And this leads to Blink's philosophy of integrating our network via APIs into other charging ecosystems like fleet platform providers, charging app integrators and others.

In short, we want Blink everywhere companies and EV drivers are accessing charging. Finally, energy management services represent a real opportunity for us, as we leverage our charging data sets, which are extensive and AI tools to optimize pricing at point of sale, total cost of ownership for fleets and deploy vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-building capabilities.

Now let's turn to first quarter highlights on Slide 11. So total revenue in Q1 was $20.8 million compared to $20.7 million in Q1 of 2025. Gross profit was $6.6 million, representing a GAAP gross margin of 32%. We will walk through the adjusted numbers in a moment, and those tell a cleaner and encouraging story.

Slide 12 shows our revenue for the last 5 quarters. The growth was modest, so I don't want to overstate, but it is an encouraging sign of stabilization since the first quarter of last year. At the same time, our non-GAAP gross margin of 42.4% was in line with our expectations and over 200 basis points higher than Q1 of last year. Margin expansion remains our top priority, supported by pricing optimization, cost reduction and more efficient execution impacting cost of goods.

The opportunity from here is operational leverage. The business has previously supported quarterly revenue in the high $20 million range and even more than that. And as volume improves, we believe there is an opportunity to capitalize on our refined organizational cost structure. The goal is not just revenue growth, but higher quality revenue growth that translates into profitability over time.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Michael Bercovich, our Chief Financial Officer, to review the financials in more detail and then I'll circle back at the end of the call with concluding remarks. So Michael?

Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. Q1 2026 is a quarter where the numbers validate exactly what we've been saying. Costs are reset and well controlled, service revenue scaling and the balance sheet gives us the flexibility to invest in DC fast charging from a position of strength, not necessity.

Let me walk through the details and turn to Slide 14 for our selected financials. Q1 2026 total revenues were $20.8 million, essentially flat year-over-year. The first quarter has historically been our lightest quarter, and this year there's no exception. We expect revenue growth as we move through the year, driven by DC fast charging site activations and continued service revenue growth.

Product revenues were $6.2 million. This continues to reflect our deliberate strategic decision to prioritize quality of revenue over quantity. We are focused on higher-margin product opportunities and are being disciplined in the deals we pursue. Service revenue, which includes repeatable charging revenues, recurring network fees and car-sharing revenues grew 25% year-over-year to $13.3 million compared to $10.7 million in Q1 of 2025. Every meaningful component of service revenue grew double digits year-over-year.

This is the growth engine of Blink, and it is performing. Network fees grew 21% year-over-year. Charging revenue grew 23% year-over-year. The compounding effect of a growing own network is beginning to show up clearly in our numbers. Other revenues, which consist of warranty fees, grants and rebates and other revenue items were $1.2 million in the first quarter of 2025.

It is worth mentioning that starting the fiscal year 2026, we have redefined our non-GAAP metrics to align them with peers and industry practices. You can see the exact definitions of these metrics in our earnings press release as well as in the appendix section of this presentation. The main difference is that we are now excluding noncash share-based compensation, other nonrecurring items as well as depreciation and amortization to better present the fundamental potential of our business.

So let's get to it. GAAP gross profit of Q1 was $6.6 million or 32% of revenues compared to gross profit of $7.1 million or 34.1% of revenues in Q1 of 2025. The year-over-year delta is largely driven by the composition of revenue, specifically higher cost of car-sharing service revenue and energy costs. As we deploy and operate more on DC fast charging assets, this is an expected and acceptable short-term trade-off as we scale the own infrastructure that drives our high-quality repeatable revenues.

On a non-GAAP basis, excluding depreciation of fixed assets and a small car-sharing segment adjustment, adjusted gross margin was 42.4% in Q1 2026. That is ahead of the prior year quarter of 40% on the same basis and is consistent with what we were expecting. Margin levers remain fully in place. Contract manufacturing optimization, network fee pricing and improved utilization on owned assets will continue to drive improvement over time. We remain on track for our full year gross margin guidance of approximately 35% on a GAAP reported basis.

Turning to operating expenses. Total operating expenses in Q1 were $18.4 million compared to $28.5 million in Q1 of last year, a 35% reduction year-over-year. This is a structural cost reset and action resulting from our BlinkForward initiative. These are not temporary savings. Headcount is rightsized, G&A is disciplined and compensation expense reflects the leaner, more focused organization we have built.

Non-GAAP operating expenses, excluding share-based compensation, depreciation and amortization and onetime recurring items -- nonrecurring items were approximately $13.9 million in Q1 2026 compared to $22.6 million in Q1 of last year. That is a reduction of over 38% on an adjusted basis year-over-year. Compensation expenses were $10.2 million, down 25% from $13.6 million in Q1 2025, reflecting the full run rate benefit of our headcount reductions. Excluding the impact of onetime nonrecurring and noncash items, the non-GAAP compensation expense was $6.9 million during the quarter.

G&A and other operating expenses also declined meaningfully as our cost optimization efforts continue to compound across the organization. GAAP net loss for Q1 was $11.6 million or $0.08 loss per diluted share compared to a net loss of $21 million or $0.21 loss per diluted share in Q1 of last year. That's an improvement of nearly $10 million in reduced net loss year-over-year.

Non-GAAP net loss for the first quarter of 2026 was $7.8 million or $0.06 loss per share in the first quarter compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $17.4 million or $0.17 loss per share in the first quarter of 2025, an improvement of 55% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2026 was a loss of $5.1 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $14.3 million in Q1 of last year. That is a 64% improvement year-over-year. I want to let the numbers stand on its own for a moment. 64% reduction in adjusted EBITDA loss in 12 months is a meaningful achievement.

Turning to our balance sheet and cash position. We ended Q1 with cash and cash equivalents of approximately $38 million. We have no debt on the balance sheet. The combination, a clean balance sheet, controlled burn over the last 3 quarters and growing repeatable and recurring revenue gives us the financial flexibility to invest in DC fast charging from a position of strength. Cash burn for the quarter was approximately $1.7 million, inclusive of capital investment in our DC fast charging network.

I want to address this transparently. Q1 cash burn reflects some timing-related working capital movements, in particular, a higher payable runoff in the quarter that are not representative of our steady-state burn rate. This is not a reversal of the trend we established over the past several quarters. But as we scale our DC fast charging infrastructure investments, the cash burn will increase. The difference is that is the money invested in expected return and not temporary working capital adjustments. However, what is really significant this quarter is that our net cash provided by operating activities was positive $0.7 million in Q1 2026, representing an improvement of approximately $13.7 million year-over-year, pivoting from negative $13 million in Q1 of last year.

On Slide 15, you can see the trajectory across 4 key metrics. Non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP compensation, G&A and cash burn. In every case, the direction is down and the improvement is consistent. Operating expenses of $13.9 million on an adjusted basis in Q1 2026 compared to $22.6 million in Q1 of 2025, an $8.7 million reduction.

Looking at our business outlook, I'd like to provide an update across 4 key areas: Number one, revenue growth. Our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $105 million to $115 million remains intact. There was seasonality in Q1, but we expect revenue momentum to build through the remainder of the year as DC fast charging sites come online, service revenue continues to compound and product sales reflect our disciplined margin accretive approach.

Number two, gross margins. Full year gross margin guidance of approximately 35% on a GAAP reported basis is unchanged. As the gross margin moves towards our target throughout the year, the drivers are well understood. Contract manufacturing efficiency, revenue mix improvement and utilization growth on our DC assets.

Number three, cash flow and liquidity. Operational discipline has directly translated to our cash preservation goals. Cash burn in Q1 was slightly better than recent quarters due to working capital timing, remained well controlled and is not indicative of a new run rate. We continue to expect quarterly cash burn to increase as we continue investing into DC infrastructure build-out. And with $38 million on the balance sheet and no debt, we have the flexibility to execute our fast charging investment program as planned.

Lastly, number four, path to profitability. With operating expenses down approximately 35% year-over-year and line of sight to a breakeven position, we are aggressively working towards the goal. We anticipate a significantly reduced adjusted EBITDA loss compared to prior years. Delivers are known and well controlled, continued service revenue scaling, disciplined product sales, DC fast charging utilization ramp and ongoing cost optimization in payment processing, SIM card fees and demand charge management. We have concluded internal reviews on each of these items and progress is being tracked and reported accordingly.

I'll now turn back over to Mike to wrap it up. Go ahead, Mike.

Great. Thanks, Michael. I wouldn't mind listening to your section again. That's all good stuff. So the first quarter of 2026 was about execution, and the results clearly reflect that. As we move through 2026, our focus is on deploying capital, scaling the DC fast charging network and building a business that generates durable recurring revenue and operates near cash breakeven. We have accomplished the hard structural adjustments. Now we are scaling what works.

So I want to close by highlighting just a few milestones and notable achievements in Q1. Service revenues grew 25% year-over-year to $13.3 million. Our recurring revenue and profit engine is running. Adjusted EBITDA loss improved 64% year-over-year. The cost structure is right. Our cash burn of approximately $1.7 million. The financial discipline is intact and $38 million in cash with no debt. Our balance sheet gives us options. But overall, since I became CEO, I've been clear about what Blink will do, build a company that can stand on its own financially, operate with discipline and scale profitably over time. Every quarter, the results move in that direction. That same disciplined approach continues to guide how we operate as we move through 2026 and beyond.

So I would like to thank the Blink team for their continued focus and execution. And I would like to thank our customers and drivers who rely on Blink to provide energy to their vehicles every single day.

So with that, we can move on to Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Ryan Pfingst from B. Riley Securities.

Congrats on all the recent progress. For the 27 sites that you talked about on Slide 6, how should we think about the cadence of these sites coming online? And is there anything you'd like to highlight in terms of challenges or potential positives regarding project development more broadly?

Yes. So absolutely. Thanks, Ryan. So there's a couple of interesting aspects to this. Number one is before we conducted the equity raise in December, we had actually greenlighted a few projects even before that because we were confident that we'd be able to raise and continue with what we set out to do. So some of those projects were already in flight, and they're actually coming online this month and into the coming months. So we -- when we look at the equity raise in December, we netted $18.5 million. And as we've said in the past, the vast majority of that fund -- of those funds are going towards CapEx.

So we are -- a couple of sites have already gone live. We have a few going live in May, and then it starts to actually ramp a bit in June, July, et cetera. So we anticipate most of the 27 sites to be live by the end of the year or near live. A few may spill into '27, but most of them should be complete or near completion by the end of the year.

Appreciate that color. And then maybe to tie it into capital deployment. It looks like CapEx was about $1.6 million in 1Q. With these sites coming online over the next 6 to 12 months, how should we think about CapEx progressing through the rest of this year and into '26?

Michael, do you want to jump on that or...

Yes, absolutely. So in December, we raised the money that was sized to fund our DC build-out programs through this year and the initial deployment phase. And combined with the quarterly burn that we presented in the last couple of quarters and first positive operating cash flow of $700,000 in Q1, we have sufficient runway to fund our plan. When we were raising money, we said that the majority of that $20 million, $18.5 million net that we raised will continue going to the DC fast charging infrastructure buildup. And we are now in the beginning or as Mike said, those coming online and we start spending that money because we truly believe that this is going to be a great investment as we continue to evolve and scale the service revenue. So that money will be spent as we go from quarter-to-quarter, and we anticipate to finish the build by the end of the year, maybe some will spill into Q1 of 2027.

Got it. Appreciate that. And then maybe one more on OpEx, which is down meaningfully compared to last year as we've talked about. Can you talk about now the operating leverage that you expect to have on the OpEx side as revenue is expected to scale through this year?

Yes, please go ahead, Mike.

Yes, I'll start and please jump in. So just a general comment. We have built this company in such a way that we can scale our revenue without adding any significant OpEx. So it doesn't make sense in our minds to have done all this work over the last 12 months, see revenue start to grow and then just keep adding OpEx to it just to support that. So we believe that we have largely rightsized this company so that it can scale the revenue and get to profitability with similar OpEx. So Michael, do you have any color on that?

Yes, Mike, this is a perfect answer. Ryan, this is about capital allocation. As we continue to grow and scale, there is no need in a significant OpEx increase. We rightsized the organization in a way that we can also leverage technology and not only people, we're changing systems and platform and consolidating, and this starts creating a lot of leverage and a lot of value.

Your next question is coming from Craig Irwin from ROTH Capital.

It's Andrew on for Craig. The first one kind of in the same vein as the last question. The cost improvements are obvious, and we even saw some improvements in adjusted gross margin. So as you guys kind of scale the business and we see a mix shift to kind of more recurring revenues, what can we kind of think of here as the potential gross margin accretion moving forward?

Yes. So again, I'll start. I'm sure Michael will jump in. So as we noted in our comments, the really, really tough restructuring work was done over the last year or so. We've moved from that to something that we call it Blink through, it's kind of almost a derivative of BlinkForward, which is radical simplicity. So we are trying to structure this company in everything we do through the lens of radical simplicity.

The stuff we did last year was the big stuff that's -- in many ways, obvious, it's the comp expense reductions, it's software subscriptions, it's everything that you go after in a situation like this. Now what we're doing is we're targeting what we call expenses that are hidden below the surface. And these are expenses that are not immediately obvious. They take a little bit of work to uncover, but they also are accretive or directly impact margins. So we believe that we still have some more room to go in margin expansion through specific actions and programs that we have at the company to specifically address these.

Great. Awesome. I really appreciate the color there. And the second one for me, kind of as you guys focus on the build-out of owned and operated DCFC stalls, can you guys just kind of remind us your overall philosophy behind site selection and then kind of walk us through the timeline of site selection to build to deployment? Any color there would be great.

Yes. So when we think about site selection, it's actually a reflection of how we think about the EV industry overall. And let me talk about what I mean by that. So if you look at where EV and EV sales have been over the last few years, the industry just got ahead of itself in 2020, 2021, '22, et cetera. The industry got ahead of itself. The rhetoric was EVs are going to take over the world. Everybody is going to be driving an EV. And we need to build all this infrastructure from a Buffalo to Albany and everywhere in between so that people can drive really long distances.

And while that's not incorrect, it's not what we really believe is going to be where EV sales momentum happens in the years ahead, which is there's 127 million households in the United States that have 2 or more vehicles in the household. One of those vehicles can easily be an EV, and that EV is used for your local commuting to and from work. It's used to go to the mall and back to the grocery store and back. Everything that is within your local community, and that is the primary use case for electric vehicles right now until range -- battery range extends substantially or this infrastructure gets built out from point to point.

But my point is simply, if you believe that, then it guides your site selection towards metro areas, high-density populations and not necessarily rural, let's say, highway placement. So Blink is looking for population, high-density destinations where people want to go where they're going in their everyday lives and where they're going to -- where they want to and can spend time.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is coming from Sameer Joshi from H.C. Wainwright.

Congratulations on the progress and on the results. Just a few things, clarifications. It seems that you have had a very good recovery on the accounts receivables front this quarter related to December quarter. Was there something that allowed this to happen? Or like how should we look at the accounts receivables recovery?

Yes, Michael, go ahead.

Yes, absolutely. It's a great question. So we were talking quarter-over-quarter on our earnings calls about not only radical simplicity that Mike mentioned, but also the changes that we made in our working capital structure, process and program. And now you actually see how this is all working out. We have some aged receivables. And during this quarter, we were able to recover those. But what we also did really well, we also changed the process. So we don't get to the same situation we were in the past when the receivables age. So we were able to recover a lot of receivables and our AR, as you can see, had got down tremendously.

Sounds really good. Good effort on that part. On the -- I think Michael or Mike, you may have mentioned your efforts on integration with automotive OEMs. Can you give us a little bit more insight into how that plan is going, how -- what the strategy is? Is there a target number of OEMs by the end of 2026? Any detail would be helpful.

Yes. So yes, thanks, Sameer. It's a good question. So we are already integrated directly with a couple of OEMs. And I think though that maybe the best example of executing against that is subsequent to the end of the quarter, but I think it was just in the last few days, we press released our partnership with Emobi. And Emobi is a company that effectively aggregates EV charging network providers and integrates them into automaker platforms so that the automakers don't have to go to every single EV charging network and do these integrations individually. What happens is we integrate with Emobi, Emobi integrates into OEMs. And where that is powerful for us is the fact that they already have those integrations with multiple OEMs. So instead of -- from an efficiency standpoint, instead of us having to go directly to each of those OEMs and do separate integrations with each of them, we now go to Emobi and potentially others in the future that are already there.

So I've said this, I said it in the comments, I'm just going to say it again, we don't have a specific target. We want to be at all of them. We want to be at every single one of them that will have us. And we're just going to keep pressing on that to get it done.

Understood. And actually, maybe just one last one. I know both previous callers asked you about gross margins. But to get to the 35% full year GAAP gross margin target, would volume play a role? Or would these efforts that you talked about, you have some already identified some savings in the gross margin area. What will drive the year-end gross margin of 35%?

Mike, do you want to jump or I can -- go ahead.

Yes. Yes, absolutely. So Sameer, what you see from last year, we already were doing 35% and even 36%. It's a combination of, first of all, disciplined product sales as we already exhibited over the last couple of quarters, and we'll continue doubling down, and we see a lot of opportunity for that in the marketplace, but it's also continuously growing our repeatable and recurring service revenues. And we identified in previous calls several opportunities for optimization and improvement and those plans in place, and we continue working through it. And we are expecting the 35% for the year.

Thank you. That completes our Q&A session. Everyone, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.

Greetings, and welcome to the Blink Charging Company, Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And please note, this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Vitalie Stelea, VP of Treasury and Finance for Blink Charging. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Ali, and welcome to Blink's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. With us today, we have Mike Battaglia, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Bercovich, Chief Financial Officer.

Today's discussions 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 differ from those stated, and the most significant factors that could cause actual results to be different are included on Page 2 of the fourth quarter 2025 earnings deck.

Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are year-over-year. For additional events, please follow our media releases in the Events section of Blink Investor Relations website.

And now I'll turn the call over to Mike Battaglia, President and CEO of Blink Charging. Mike, please go ahead.

All right. Great. Thanks, Vitalie, and good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I'm proud to report that the fourth quarter of 2025 marks a pivotal moment for Blink Charging. The most significant transformation in this company's history, our BlinkForward initiative substantially met its 2025 objectives. This quarter represents a transition from rebuilding the foundation to preparing the business for its next phase of growth. We started the year with close to...

[Technical Difficulty]

Apologies, ladies and gentlemen, we have lost our speaker temporarily, one moment, please, and we should get them back in the call.

Sorry about that, everyone. I think I'm back. This quarter represents the transition from rebuilding the foundation to preparing the business for its next phase of growth. We started the year with close to 600 people globally, and today, we operate with fewer than 300 highly focused and skilled team members. We have fundamentally reshaped how this company operates, became leaner, disciplined and focused on financial excellence, and the results are showing.

Let me walk you through what BlinkForward has accomplished. When I took over the role of President and CEO a year ago, it was apparent to me that Blink should operate as a financially focused business that we should fundamentally change our culture and advance with a different vision for Blink. That vision was centered on building a company that can stand on its own financially operate with discipline and scale profitably over time.

We launched the BlinkForward restructuring plan in May 2025, as we set out to accelerate our path to profitability and focus on what matters, including long-term sustainable growth. I'm pleased to say that we have accomplished nearly all of the objectives that we set out to achieve in several critical ways. Our shift to contract manufacturing is now fully complete and operational. We have exited in-house production and are leveraging third-party manufacturing partners in both the United States and India.

This gives us greater flexibility, optimizes working capital, lowers overhead and improved supply chain resilience, all while retaining full ownership of our proprietary intellectual property with hardware, firmware and software. Importantly, our inventory position has been dramatically improved, and we maintain a lean balance sheet that allows us to be agile and nimble to evolving market needs. We reassessed and subsequently wrote off approximately $6 million of legacy inventory at year-end as part of this realignment.

And our go-forward inventory levels will reflect rightsized and asset-light positions, targeting around $15 million on the balance sheet. Moving to Slide 4. We took bold actions throughout 2025. First, our operating expense reductions have been significant. On an adjusted basis, fourth quarter operating expenses were approximately $17.1 million, a decrease of approximately 32% from the beginning of a 2025 adjusted level of $25.2 million. If we annualize our total Q4 adjusted operating expenses and compare against full year 2024 adjusted operating expenses, you would see a reduction of $39 million year-over-year.

That is a 36% reduction and I'll emphasize that again, that's a 36% reduction. Importantly, these reductions were not about shrinking the company, they were about creating the operating leverage required to support sustainable growth and innovation going forward. Second, while some of our competitors are burdened by capital-intensive asset-heavy practices, our move to a more agile contract manufacturing model and better working capital discipline will serve as a key pillar in our pursuit of profitability.

This is foundational to our ability to deploy EV infrastructure at scale while maintaining financial flexibility and discipline. Third and perhaps most importantly, we have accelerated the shift in our revenue mix towards higher quality, repeatable and recurring service revenues. In Q4, our service revenues reached $14.7 million, up 62% year-over-year. Service revenues represented 54% of our total revenue, up from 32% in Q4 of last year. And for full year 2025, service revenues grew 45% year-over-year to $49.3 million.

And as we've said before, this is the future of Blink. Our strategy was further validated by our successful follow-on equity raise in December. We achieved our target of $20 million with a clean, no warrant raise with the majority of proceeds directed toward expanding our DC fast charging network, which we expect will provide repeatable, high-quality revenue streams. This is central to our strategy of building a durable, profitable business. Our Blink forward strategy has been built on 6 pillars: customer-driven market leadership; sustainable profitability; expanding charging solutions; capturing market share; developing recurring revenue; and securing cost-efficient capital.

Each of these pillars has guided our transformation, and we will continue to execute against them into 2026 as we balance growth, innovation and profitability in the years ahead. On Slide 5, you can see the trajectory of our quarterly performance throughout 2025. Revenue has stabilized in the $27 million range across Q2, Q3 and Q4, and while we have fundamentally improved the quality and mix of revenue.

The story here is clear. We have rightsized the business, shifted our focus toward repeatable and recurring revenue streams, higher margin product sales and dramatically reduced our cost structure. With the business now rightsized and stabilized, our focus is shifting from restructuring to scaling what works. Now let's turn to fourth quarter highlights on Slide 7. Total revenue in Q4 was $27 million compared to $28 million in Q4 of 2024. While top line revenue was relatively flat, this was a deliberate outcome of our strategic pivot to a lean asset-light blank that is more agile and adaptive to changing market realities.

We are being selective about product sales, focusing on high-margin accretive opportunities while investing in growing our repeatable and recurring service revenue base. This disciplined approach positions us to pursue growth opportunities that are accretive and aligned with long-term value creation. GAAP gross margin in Q4 was 15.8%. This was primarily impacted by $5.9 million in noncash inventory adjustments related to our transition to contract manufacturing and our general direction of becoming an asset-light company with a robust and lean balance sheet.

Excluding these onetime items, our adjusted gross margin was 37.8%, much improved from our Q3 2025 adjusted gross margin of 34.5%. We are highly competitive in our industry and expect gross margins to improve as we move through 2026, with a target of approximately 35% on a full year basis. The quality of our revenue tells the real story. Charging service revenue grew 49% year-over-year to $9.3 million driven by our expanding Blink-owned Charging network and strong performance from our European markets during Q4. For full year 2025, network fees grew 53% year-over-year to $12.2 million driven by an increase in charges added across our network, notably DC chargers, which carry higher network fees.

On Slide 8, I want to reiterate that our Blink-owned charger portfolio continues to be a powerful growth engine. Charging revenue from Blink-owned sites grew substantially year-over-year and our DC fast charging revenue from Blink-owned locations in the United States, grew over 200% in 2025. As a result of our successful capital raise in December, we have approximately 30 DC fast-charging sites, representing about 150 ports in various stages of review and construction. And as these come online, they will represent a significant source of future repeatable and recurring revenue.

I'd also like to highlight some of our recent DC fast charging installations, including our portfolio of DC chargers with Royal Farms. Revenue in 2025 was up over 300% to nearly $950,000. In 2024, those locations delivered $225,000 in revenue on nearly the same number of chargers. Most of this growth was driven by higher utilization as drivers increasingly recognize Blink as a growing provider of DC fast charging services. And we recently activated a new Denver area site featuring Blink's most powerful DC fast chargers to date, delivering up to 600 kilowatts. Early utilization is trending upward reflecting strong demand for ultra-fast charging.

This deployment demonstrates the type of high-power, fast-charging sites that support predictable dwell times and represent compelling long-term growth and value creation opportunities. Turning to Slide 10. Our expense discipline continued to improve in Q4, excluding noncash charges for goodwill and intangibles impairment for our Mobility segment and expenses eliminated on a go-forward basis.

Operating expenses came in at approximately $17.1 million. That is down from $25.2 million in Q1 2025. We have reduced our adjusted operating expense run rate by over 30% over the course of the year, reducing annualized expenses by over $32 million from the run rate at the beginning of 2025. Cash management also remained strong. Our cash burn for the quarter was approximately $2 million comparable to Q3's $2.2 million and a fraction of the levels we experienced in the first half of 2025.

This continued discipline in working capital and cost management is building a foundation for sustainable operations. And remember, Blink has no debt on the balance sheet. This level of financial discipline gives us flexibility and a strong foundation. So with that, I'll turn it over to Michael Bercovich, our Chief Financial Officer, to review the financials in more detail, and I will circle back at the end of the call with our outlook. Michael?

Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. 2025 was a monumental year in the history of being charging, and I'm so proud to be a part of it. This was a year defined by building a stronger financial foundation and positioning the business for sustainable operations going forward.

Let's turn to Slide 12 for our selected financials. Q4 2025 revenues were $27 million compared to $28 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year, total revenues were $103.5 million compared to $124 million in 2024. Product revenues for the fourth quarter were $11 million compared to $17.2 million in Q4 of last year. As Mike described earlier, this reflects our deliberate strategic decision to prioritize quality of revenue or quality.

We are focused on higher-margin product opportunities and being disciplined in the deals we pursue. With our focused approach for evaluating sales and our transition to contract manufacturing, we expect product margins to improve as we move through 2026. This reflects a more disciplined scalable approach to product revenue that supports long-term profitability. Service revenue increased 62% to $14.7 million in Q4 2025, up from $9 million in the fourth quarter of last year. For the full year, service revenue grew 45% to $49.3 million. This growth validates our strategy of investing in Blink-owned and operated infrastructure and network services. This service revenue are repeatable and recurring in nature, contributing to improve revenue quality and productibility.

Other revenues, which consist of warranty fees, grants and rebates and other revenue items were $1.3 million in the first quarter compared to $1.8 million in Q4 of last year. The decrease was primarily due to the shift of procuring third-party extended warranty contracts resulting in modifications to the way our warranty revenue was record as previously from a gross revenue basis to a net revenue basis. GAAP gross profit in Q4 was $4.3 million or 15.8% of revenue. This compares to gross profit of $4.4 million or 15.7% of revenue in Q4 of 2024.

I want to call out that Q4 included approximately $5.9 million in noncash adjustments, mainly in inventory related to our manufacturing transition and a year-end inventory utilization. Excluding these items, gross margin was approximately 37.8%, significantly above the 34.5% as we reported in Q3 of this year, and year-over-year gross margin improvement of 1,100 basis points. And I want to repeat, 1,100 basis points.

For the full year 2025, gross margin was 24.6% on a reported basis, impacted by various noncash inventory charges throughout the year. Excluding those charges, full year gross margin was approximately 36% even. Turning to operating expenses. Total operating expense reported in Q4 were $37 million, which included $17.9 million related to impairment of goodwill and $800,000 in intangible assets for our mobility segment. .

Excluding these noncash items, standout operating expenses were $18.3 million. And when we further exclude approximately $1.2 million of expenses that have been eliminated on a go-forward basis, and are not expected to recur, adjusted operating expenses were approximately $17.1 million. This compares to adjusted operating expenses of $25.2 million in Q1 of 2025, representing a 32% reduction over the course of the year. These reductions reflect structural changes to our cost base rather than temporary measures. Compensation expenses decreased to $10.5 million from $11.7 million in Q3, sequential improvement of 10% and reflecting the full benefit of our head count reductions.

G&A expenses came down to $3.4 million from $5.3 million in Q3, a 36% sequential reduction driven by continued cost optimization across the organization. The G&A for fourth quarter were $3.4 million, which includes a $1.3 million reversal of bad debt provisions following successful recovery efforts. Without this reversal, our G&A expenses would have been $4.7 million in Q4. Net loss for Q4 was $32.7 million on a reported basis, primarily driven by the noncash charges I mentioned.

Adjusted net loss was approximately $6.9 million. Full year net loss was $83.4 million on a reporting basis compared to $201.3 million in the prior year. Full year loss per diluted share was $0.76 compared to $2 loss in fiscal 2024. Total adjusted EPS in 2025 was a loss of $0.63 compared to a total adjusted EPS loss of $0.64 in the same period of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2025 was a loss of $10.3 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $14.8 million in the same period of 2024. Normalizing for $6.6 million follows in recurring headwinds, specifically to a $5.9 million in inventory rationalization and $1.4 million in BlinkForward restructuring compensation costs and adjusting for $700,000 G&A benefit.

Our adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to only $3.7 million. The result represents a substantial multiquarter improvement in financial performance. Total adjusted EBITDA for 2025 was a loss of $58.1 million compared to a total adjusted EBITDA loss of $52.7 million in 2024. Regarding our balance sheet and liquidity. As we previously announced, we successfully raised capital during the fourth quarter, strengthening our financial position to fund our DC fast charging investment program. Cash burn for the quarter was $2 million comparable to Q3 is $2.2 million.

This consistency demonstrates that our working capital and cost discipline is durable and not a onetime in nature. Looking at our business outlook, I would like to provide guidance across 4 key areas: number one, revenue growth for fiscal year 2026, we are targeting total revenue in the range of $105 million to $150 million, representing 1% to 11% growth over 2025. This is driven by continued expansion in repeatable and recurring service revenues, selective margin accretive strategic product sales and the contribution from our growing DC fast-charging footprint, as Mike covered earlier on this call.

This revenue target range is particularly encouraging as it represents the clean growth coming out of our restructuring plan last year. Following more, we are continuing to lean into our DC fast charging network strategy. While we are investing heavily in the sites today, we expect to see the initial revenue contribution from these investments in late 2026 with 2027 serving the first full year of scale revenue from the DC network expansion and our transition to a more robust recurring and repairing revenue model.

This growth is driven by the core operating framework we have established rather than a balance sheet expansion or elevated cost structures, patterns that we see with some of our competitors. Number two, gross margin. We are targeting gross margins of approximately 34% -- 35% for fiscal 2026. The specific level will depend on product revenue mix between L2 and DC chargers, market conditions and the impact of tariffs on our supply chain. We see an opportunity for 100 to 300 basis points of gross margin improvement as we realize the full benefit of contract manufacturing and favorable revenue mix shift. Number three, cash flow and liquidity. Operational discipline has directly translated to our bottom line and cash preservation goals.

For the second consecutive quarter, our total cash burn, including essential capital investment, has stabilized at approximately $2 million per quarter, and we can see the same pattern in Q1 of 2026. Through the successful execution of our working capital and liquidity management programs, we have extended our runway, allowing us to find our DC fast charging growth initiatives from a position of strength. Lastly, number four, path to profitability. With operating expenses down approximately 30% year-over-year, a significantly leaner operations, we are aggressively working to our operational cash flow breakeven. We anticipate significantly reduced adjusted EBITDA loss compared to prior periods.

This improvement is supported by the operating leverage created through our cost reductions and revenue mix shifts. We also expect continued operational improvements to position the company for profitability. This is a target for us, an internal measure and KPI, and we will continue to pull levers across both revenue growth and expense optimization to achieve it. And with the few levers that we are targeting is our revenue growth and product sales that are focused and disciplined in various tactical opportunities to shed significant costs that are not related to headcount, but operational excellence. We believe that with successful execution that we have already exhibited during this last year, we will see additional increases in our margins.

The things for improvement include optimizing charging demand fees, simplifying our payment processing and SIM card fee structures and rationalizing charger assets. We have concluded an internal review and with a unified effort, this items with progress tracked and reported accordingly. Some of our peers continue to struggle with legacy debt and high cash burn. Our no debt lean balance sheet position allows us for aggressive capital-efficient DC fast infrastructure deployment, a significant difference as we move towards profitability while maintaining financial flexibility and discipline.

I will now turn it back over to Mike to wrap it up. Go ahead, Mike.

All right. Thanks, Michael, and the call didn't drop, which is nice. So the fourth quarter full year 2025 represents a defining chapter for Blink Charging. As we continue to BlinkForward into 2026, our focus is on building a business that can stand and grow on its own. We have transformed this company from the ground up and accomplished several notable milestones, including reducing our head count and operating expenses significantly, transitioning to contract manufacturing and improving working capital, reducing quarterly cash burn from $15 million to $2 million, improving our repeatable and recurring revenue mix, raising $20 million with favorable terms and beginning deployment of our high-speed DC charging footprint.

Since my time as CEO, I've been clear about what we set out to do, and we've executed against it. We said it, we did it and the results are visible in the business day. That same disciplined approach continues to guide how we operate as we move into 2026 and beyond. So I would like to extend a thank you to the Blink team for its resilience and focus throughout this past year of transformation. And I would like to thank our customers and drivers who rely on Blink to provide energy to the vehicles every day.

So with that, let's move on to Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Craig Irwin with ROTH Capital Partners.

Congratulations on strong execution in this environment. So Michael, I wanted to start by asking about the impact of your restructuring, right, the way you've repositioned the business for better profitability in '26. The big item, I guess, is the repositioning of your manufacturing and the change in strategy around the way you're managing working capital.

That's generated a lot of improvement for you, it's like a great significant -- very significant reduction in cash needs. But the overall benefit is still cutting in, at least as far as I understand. Can you help us unpack how this continues to benefit you over the course of this year? You got to burn down to -- was it $2 million a quarter, which is incredible. I mean...

Yes.

Better than last quarter. I mean, again, but how does this continue to benefit the organization over the course of this year? Does this bring down OpEx for it? Does it improve overall cash needs? And can you talk about the facility footprint? Is other likely changes that you made the key changes at the company?

I'll start, and then I'm sure Michael is going to jump in on this. So one of the things that we introduced into Blink this year is -- and we talk about it all the time, is a notion of radical simplicity. So we use that against everything we're doing at the company. So how can we reduce complexity throughout every facet of this organization in order to enable focused execution on the core parts of the business. So let me unpack that a little bit. So when you look at this major shift that you referenced from in-house production to contract manufacturing, what's the benefit?

Well, first of all, and I'm going to start with the bottom line and then work back. The bottom line, our cost per unit did not change. So think about that. We were building units ourselves. We outsource them to contract manufacturers and the cost per unit stay the same. So what's the implication of that? The implication of that is that we don't have to manage the entire supply chain. We don't have to stock parts. We don't have to forecast individual components. We have significantly reduced revenue -- inventory risk on our balance sheet. And so then it brings us to a point where we can simply plan for demand. So we can forecast out 1 SKU, 2 SKUs, 5 SKUs rather than 500 SKUs associated with components and manufacturing.

It also allows us to carry less inventory, so to be far more efficient from a working capital standpoint and to think of the business more in a just-in-time inventory type environment. So we've never built DC fast chargers. If you think about it, we've always sourced them. And now we're just simply extending that and doing that the same on the O2 side.

So Michael, I think you probably have some perspective on this as well.

Yes, absolutely, Craig. This is a great question. And really one of the most maybe important shifts in the business over the past few quarters. The improvement is really driven by a combination of factors that Mike was mentioning. First, will become significantly more disciplined, everything we do, cash burn on collections, right? We're collecting faster and more consistently than at any point historically, which will had a meaningful impact on our working capital. Two quarters in a row as you said, and already provided hint into the Q1 2026.

Second, we structurally reduced operating expenses through the actions we have taken under the BlinkForward initiative, the onetime benefit. This is not a onetime benefit, this is a reset, complete reset of the cost base. And as Mike talked about, reducing inventory levels, that is all part of our transition to contract manufacturing and really becoming more disciplined and focused and freed up cash and reduce balance sheet intensity, which is, again, if you're comparing companies. .

Our balance sheet is very light, and it will allow us to be nimble, allow it to be agile. So when we put all this together, you're seeing a much more efficient operating model, and we expect to continue managing cash burn and our business at this reduced levels going forward.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, that's big progress. And it actually segues nicely into my next question. So the investment community is very realistic about the EV and charging demand environment right now. So I don't think anyone is going to not understand your revenue guidance for this year. The one area, though, that I think is a nice surprise is the gross margin line. So this doesn't benefit directly from the working capital and manufacturing strategy changes, that you've implemented if the cost per unit is unchanged.

So clearly, mix and the internal initiatives, it's your control, right? This is your initiative that's driving this gross margin execution better or execution outlook better than what we've been seeing and what we've been expecting. Can you maybe just talk a little bit more about the opportunity on the margin side how this has come together for you, how long you've been working on this and your confidence in the trajectory because it clearly is something that's been under your control, you've made changes and is delivering.

Yes. It's actually a great question. And again, I'll start and I'll let Michael -- this is -- I think we're excited to answer this question. So first of all, when you look at the progress we made during 2025, we restructured the business with really big levers. We reduced head count nearly 50%. We looked at software subscriptions and all of the normal places that you would go in order to try to cut costs. We rationalized facilities.

So we exited some of our facilities in order to save cost. I mean we did many, many things, but they were big and visible. Now what we're doing going into 2026, is exactly the question you asked. What we're seeing -- the way we look at the business is we said, okay, those things were visible. What are the underlying costs that are below the surface that are not immediately visible that affect our margins. And so Michael mentioned them a bit in his comments. There are things like warranty costs, shipping costs, SIM card fees, so a SIM card like a cell phone SIM card that they also go into chargers.

So how much are we paying for those? Payment service transaction fees so that we are incurring on our network. Energy management in terms of things like demand fees and how can we better procure energy so that we don't get hit by demand fees on DC fast chargers. So there's multiple things that we're looking at that will directly affect margins.

And Mike, that's exactly right. Yes, that's exactly right. And the improvements are very different from what we did in 2025. And I'm not going to, again, call out the levers themselves that we talked about. But in a nutshell, '25, we focused on larger structural levers, as you said, reduced exposure to low-margin activities, restructure operations, resets the cost base '26. As you said, below the service improvement, it's all about operational optimization. And that's what's exciting about it because we're coming out of the restructuring is so strong.

And individually, those are smaller levers, but collectively, they can drive meaningful margin expansion, and we believe that this will help us as we continue moving forward with our multiyear strategy.

That makes a lot of sense. That makes a whole lot of sense. So then a multiyear strategy, right, again, dovetails perfectly into my last question, if I may. So we all know that you guys have been working so hard this last year to develop a strategy to get to EBITDA positive, right? I know you guys want to make money, not just grow fast and grow at the best rate you can given the overall demand environment, but I know you want to that while making money. Are there any major items you can call out for us as external observers of the company that might facilitate that.

Clearly, revenue is one that's environment-driven. Are there other things like changes in the portfolio or gaps that you'd like to close that can get you there? And is there something we can maybe consider as a time line or a loose goal given that I guess the Board has to improve disclosure of targets, but if we just talk aspirations, that may be a loophole. You know what I'm saying.

Yes. Craig, again, I'll start. So first of all, we are hell bent at this company on getting to profitability, and we're not going to wait for the market to take us there. And I want to say that again. We are not going to wait for the market to take us there. So we want to continue this theme that we set out last year and into right now, which is, look, we're going to tell you what we feel comfortable telling you in terms of the operating environment of the business, and then we want to deliver on that and then hopefully surpass that. So we're not giving guidance right now, but we're going to continue to optimize on the expense side.

And then Craig, it's interesting. I mean if you look at -- for me, personally, as CEO of the company, last year was all inward focused. It was cutting expenses. It was restructuring. It was making sure that we rightsize the business. This year, I'm going to leave that to my compatriot, Michael Bercovich and my whole focus is working with the sales team on growing top line revenue because that's what we need to do. And within growing top line revenue, we need to really understand and really go after and really stay focused on the product sales segments that are moving in the industry, not phantom segments that people keep hoping for but where is the actual activity happening?

And how can Blink maximize its position within those particular verticals. So we're not going to run after everything. We're going to run after the stuff that makes sense to run after where we see a market. So Michael, I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

Yes, Mike, thank you for that. And for me, it's all about two things that you mentioned, operational excellence. Last year, we hit a lot of balls and a lot of things work out for us. This year, it's going to be operational excellence going and turning every stone that we already turn and turning it again. Sales, smart sales with higher gross margin and complete the shift of the repeatable and recurring revenue that we already talked about. We have inspiration to a DC fast charging network to produce more higher margin, repeatable sales that will help us to get to profitability.

We do provide guidance that this year, we anticipate a significantly lower loss on our adjusted EBITDA, and we're seeing that even from Q4, the number that we got to under $4 million and we continue driving it down. From here, we need to continue to invest in the business. continue doing what we did, and we'll get there. This is something that I know we all as a team working on, right? And there's a lot of opportunities, as I said, for 100 to 300 basis points on the gross margin.

And then also on operating expenses, we'll continue doing that, but we're very, very focused on what matters. And the business and profitability are incredibly important to us.

Our next question is coming from Ryan Pfingst with B. Riley.

I guess just on the first one, the revenue range for 2026. Could you talk about the cadence a little bit for the year? And then maybe what are some of the drivers that could get you towards the higher end of the range versus the...

Yes. So cadence-wise -- if you look at our business historically, 2024 was, I think, a little bit of an anomaly. But if you look back, at least since I joined in 2020, the revenue pattern kind of stays the same, which is -- the first quarter typically experiences some seasonality, and then it starts to march up from Q4 -- from Q1 throughout the year.

So I think we're going to see some of the same. If you look at how we get to the higher end of our range, some of it is going to be market activity in terms of EV sales. So if you look at the predictions of EV sales or the forecast of EV sales, it's following exactly what we expected, which is after expiration of the EV tax credit, EV sales fell dramatically, now they're starting to inch back up again. The question is what does the second half of the year look like? And ultimately, where is the market share. I think it's going to be somewhere in the 7% to 8% range. and I'm not alone in that.

So by definition, it means that the second half is going to be quite a bit stronger than the first half, and you're going to see automakers releasing new products during that time. So that's one. Another one is us successfully installing the 30 DC fast charging projects that we have in the pipeline. .

So we have a nice cadence of new sites coming online. We highlighted some of that in our comments. And we actually front-loaded a lot of projects, even prior to our capital raise. We greenlighted several projects such that we have them coming online in actually a pretty good flow this month, meaning April and then May into June and throughout the year. So that's another one. And then a final one is simply market consolidation favoring Blink. And I've said this before, but right now, I see -- we have many opportunities that come across our desk every single week right now for M&A. And we're not touching those right now. And a lot of those companies are not going to make it, and we think we're going to benefit from the consolidation that we've been talking about quarter after quarter and that no question is happening at the moment.

Appreciate that. And you kind of just answered my follow-up here. But the next question was going to be about the competitive landscape as the EV market, evolved here in the U.S. and what kind of opportunities that could present to you either in the form of M&A or market share gains? .

Yes. I'll start. Michael may jump in on this, too. But I've said in the past, I mean, I like M&A, I like it as -- but it's got to be -- one of the things that we are not going to do at Blink is after all the work we've done is take our eye off the ball and do something that will jeopardize the operational leverage we've created. So again, we've seen a lot of stuff come across our respective desks, but most of it is asset sales. And when you get into asset sales, the only way you're going to pick something up is if it's highly accretive to what we're doing.

And anything that is not highly accretive, we're dismissing immediately anything that could potentially be accretive. We're looking at here and there. But as of now, we haven't seen anything that's really caught our eye. So Michael, I don't know if you have anything to add.

Yes, Mike, one thing to add to what you said. What we created is an asset-light less capital-intense balance sheet that will help us with the execution of our plan as we see some of the competitors out there that still live in the past, they're still burdening debt, continued burning an amazing amount of money. And in this environment, this is going to be very detrimental to the survival and detrimental to their business. And that's one of the things that we took care of this year by going through the bring-forward initiative and rolling out a completely different strategy. So we open for small opportunities, but we're also operationally focused on our plan and aim to deliver exactly what we planned.

[Operator Instructions] Our final question today will be coming from Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainright.

Michael, congrats on the progress. This is good tightening of the belt, I know it could be hard but congratulations on the execution on that front. So on the like sort of -- you have touched on many of those things that I wanted to talk about. But if you are looking at 2026 and beyond, what are the areas of growth? Is it more of own and operate? Is it increasing the service revenues from installed base or as you just talked about some M&A problems that you're on the back burner, but could that be come into play in 2027 and beyond?

Yes. Yes. Great question. So One of the things we mentioned, and it was subtle in our comments is rationalization of our network. And what does that mean? It means the days of the EV infrastructure business planting flags and build a charger and they will come are over. And what we are intently focused on is the production of our portfolio, the profitability of our portfolio, the unit economics.

So we are looking at assets that are unproductive. Quite frankly, at this stage in the game, I don't care about how many charges necessarily are connected to the network from a Blink-owned standpoint, I want to know, and I want to retain only the very best ones. So it's absolutely going to come from optimizing the sites that are proving themselves to be productive and profitable. It is about utilizing deep analytics that we have at our disposal now in order to accurately site DC fast charging sites. And then it is obviously opportunistically to take advantage of all the product sales opportunities that present themselves through our distribution channels.

Understood. Sort of maybe a follow-up on the previous one. You did speak about the 30 sites with the 150 ports. Michael mentioned heavy investment in the installed base. What could make this 30 site number grow to, say, 40 or 50? And like what are the sort of scouting activities that you are doing to find such locations that could yield you high service revenue?

Yes. Michael, do you want to take the first part of that from the financial angle and then I can answer the second?

Yes, absolutely. So part of our -- Sameer, if you remember, we talked about the majority of the investment, the majority of the cash that we raised was supposed to go to building a very strong profitable DC fast charging network. And we already had the backlog that I know Mike will talk about. So from a perspective of execution, we really needed the capital. And as Mike already earlier said today, we started with front-loaded that we already started activities of procuring for constructing because we were confident in our capital raise efforts. Mike, back to you because I know you want to talk about the backlog and delivery.

Yes. Yes. So a couple of things. One is we have somewhere in the neighborhood, Sameer, of a $100 million backlog of projects that we could install if we had the capital.

So then the next question is, well, what are you going to do to get the capital? We -- as we mentioned time and again, the company has no debt. It gives us flexibility, but what we want to make sure of is that any debt that we incur is not debt for the sake of, but it can be serviced by the cash flows of the projects that we put in the ground.

So that we need to prove that out to financial partners in order to get a quantum that is not just what you mentioned, Sameer, actually, our ambitions are quite behind that. So we have to prove out the unit economics, how do we prove out the unit economics? We put chargers in the right size, how do we select the right sites? We look at metro areas. And what we're interested in is density. We want to participate in dense metro areas, both urban and suburban that have high EV sales penetration that have with existing charger footprints that are in that market are demonstrating high utilization and that have gaps in the geography. And then we're going after those gaps. So I'm not going to name specific markets because I don't want to disclose that, but we have multiple metros throughout the U.S. that we're targeting and we're going to go after putting sites there.

Understood. Perfectly good answer. Just one last one and sort of it is cash flow management or working capital management. The inventory you're targeting at around $15 million. And that's -- I'm expecting that is for sales, right? That is what I would say, for sales...

For sales.

Got it. Understood. Thanks for [indiscernible] 2026.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. So I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Vitalie Stelea for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for joining on the phone or on line. If there are any additional questions, feel free to drop us a note at [email protected], and we look forward to interacting with you in the future. This is the end of the call.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.

Welcome to the Blink Charging Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Vitalie Stelea, Vice President of Treasury and Finance. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jen, and welcome to Blink's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. With us today, we have Mike Battaglia, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Bercovich, Chief Financial Officer.

Today's discussions 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 results to differ are included on Page 2 of the third quarter 2025 earnings deck. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are year-over-year.

Now for our conference schedule, Blink management will be attending and holding investor meetings at the B. Riley Convergence Conference on December 4 in New York City and the Needham 28th Annual Growth Conference on January 15 and 16. For additional events, please follow our media releases in the Events section on Blink's Investor Relations website.

And now I will turn the call over to Mike Battaglia, President and CEO of Blink Charging. Please go ahead, Mike.

All right. Great. Thanks, Vitalie. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Before we move into the quarterly numbers, I'd like to start with several key updates. First, I want to highlight the meaningful progress we've made under our Blink Forward initiative. As a reminder, we launched Blink Forward during our First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call in May. This program represents a comprehensive transformation plan designed to accelerate our path to profitability and sustainable long-term growth.

Next, I'm pleased to report that year-to-date, we have identified and eliminated approximately $13 million of annualized operating expenses. Historically, our operations were organized regionally within our global markets, largely reflecting legacy structures from past acquisitions. We have now transitioned to a global functional model led by departmental global leaders and supported by global back-office functions.

Our regional leaders maintain local market expertise, adapt to local demand patterns and incentive programs and are tasked with maximizing returns on local investments, all while operating under global functional guidance. This realignment is already driving efficiency, accountability and faster decision-making across the company.

On Wednesday, we also announced another major step toward profitability, a strategic shift to acutely focus Blink on growth in service revenues. Specifically, we are stopping in-house manufacturing and instead will leverage our intellectual property and engineering expertise through partnerships with third-party manufacturers who operate at greater scale and efficiency. There is a clear path in place to exit manufacturing by early 2026. In fact, we have already exited some of our production facilities or sublet to other companies.

To be clear, Blink will retain full ownership of all hardware, firmware and software design and development. We're simply outsourcing production to world-class manufacturing partners. This approach enables us to deploy capital efficiently and focus on growing charging services through expansion of our DC fast charging footprint and network services while benefiting from the cost, quality and supply chain advantages of partners with greater scale.

Our sourcing strategy is intentionally diversified across geographies, including multiple manufacturing partners in both the United States and India, where we already maintain engineering talent and oversight to ensure quality, cost effectiveness and supply chain resilience.

Some might ask, how does this differentiate Blink from competitors? Well, it's really pretty simple. First, we'll continue to offer flexible business models, selling charging station solutions to customers while also owning and operating charging sites ourselves. The common denominator across both models is our recurring and repeat service revenues anchored not only by our Blink network platform, but also high-quality hardware that is designed for commercial applications.

Importantly, our DC fast charging portfolio remains the central pillar of Blink Forward as we expand our owned and operated footprint in high utilization locations that deliver predictable reoccurring cash flow. Even as we leverage contract manufacturing, the second differentiator is that our technology remains proprietary from hardware architecture to firmware and software development and integration. This ensures end-to-end compatibility, reliability and superior performance demanded by our customers to support charger uptime and the customer experience.

So looking at Slide 5, we see that Blink has improved quarterly revenue substantially since Q1, demonstrating consistency and stability. And Q3 gross margin also bounced back from Q2 to nearly 36%. Other major achievements this quarter are our discipline in cash and working capital management and operating expense reductions, all key components of Blink Forward. As a result, we reduced cash burn in Q3 by 87% to $2.2 million sequentially, the lowest level in more than 3 years, even with a significantly higher revenue base. This cash efficiency underscores the financial resilience we are building into our everyday operations. These actions represent foundational steps in our pursuit of profitability and long-term resilience. They also position Blink to navigate near-term variability in EV sales, which we anticipate following the expiration of certain government incentive programs.

While these market adjustments may temporarily impact EV sales demand, we continue to see strong momentum for dependable charging infrastructure across our global footprint. Looking ahead, we anticipate EV sales to stabilize by mid-2026 as the market recalibrates and a new wave of EV models enters the ecosystem, further reinforcing long-term demand for charging solutions.

Now let's turn to the quarter on Slide 7. We view the third quarter as another example of progress as we transform Blink. Total revenue was $27 million, a 7.3% increase over the third quarter of 2024. In Q3 2025, we prioritized higher quality revenue, leading to stronger margins. And due to timing issues mainly in Europe, a number of projects and revenue shifted into Q4. Service revenue reached a record $11.9 million, up 36% year-over-year, reflecting the continued strength of our network and Blink-owned asset portfolio. Importantly, in Q3, we achieved gross margins of 35.8%, supported by services revenue growth and our focus on higher-margin product opportunities and disciplined pricing.

As shown on Slide 8, our Blink-owned portfolio of chargers continues to perform, driving 48% growth in charging revenue and more than 300% year-over-year growth in DC fast charger revenue from Blink-owned sites.

On Slide 9, we demonstrate continued progress in reducing our expense structure and cash burn since the beginning of this year. You can see that excluding certain noncash and nonrepeating items, our operating expenses came down from nearly $28 million in Q1 to $20.6 million in Q3. The contributing factors were significant reductions in both compensation and G&A expenses that both came down by about 35%.

These items, combined with significantly improved working capital practices, have resulted in an 87% reduction in cash burn in Q3 compared to Q1. Equally important, through our transformation efforts, we eliminated another $5 million of annualized expenses this quarter, bringing the total to $13 million year-to-date. And as I've said in the past, we are not done yet.

With that, I'll turn it over to Michael Bercovich, our Chief Financial Officer, to review financials in more detail, and then I'll circle back at the end of the call. Michael, go ahead.

Thank you, Mike, and a very good afternoon, everyone. With that said, let's turn to Slide 11. Our Q3 2025 revenues were $27 million compared to $25.2 million in the third quarter of prior year. This represents a 7% increase. Product revenues for third quarter of 2025 were $13 million compared to $13.5 million in the third quarter of 2024, which is relatively flat year-over-year.

What's important here is that in this phase of Blink's turnaround, our priority is quality of revenue, not just quantity. Growing up top line matters, but profitable, durable and strategically aligned growth matters more. Revenue must contribute to improving margins and long-term shareholder value. Building a company that generates predictable cash flow rather than one that simply grows for growth sake is the key to sustainable success. This is further demonstrated by our product gross margin of 39% in Q3 of 2025, which is about 700 basis points higher than 32% product gross margin in Q3 of last year.

It is worth noting that some of our revenue in Europe was impacted by delayed timing of revenue recognition, which shifted revenue for certain projects to Q4 of 2025. We made a conscious decision to focus on growth-oriented and disciplined revenue. And while we generated less total revenue versus Q2, we have increased the gross profit margins and repositioned our team on quality revenue in the future.

Service revenue increased 36% to $11.9 million in Q3, consisting of repeat charging service revenues, recurring network fees and car sharing revenues. Other revenues, which consist of warranty fees, grants and rebates and other revenue items, were $2.1 million in the third quarter compared to nearly $3 million in Q3 of last year. The $1 million decrease in other revenues was primarily due to a change in how warranty sales are structured and recognized.

At the beginning of this year, Blink outsourced its extended warranty program to a third party, and as a result, we now record only the net revenue earned from this contract rather than the full amount recognized in prior periods. Gross profit in Q3 was $9.7 million or 35.8% of revenues compared to gross profit of $9.1 million or 36.2% of revenues in third quarter of 2024.

Operating expenses in the third quarter of 2025 were $9.9 million compared to $97.4 million in third quarter of 2024. Excluding the impact of the favorable noncash change in fair value of consideration payable of $11.7 million and $2 million of favorable adjustment in the allowance of doubtful accounts receivable, the total operating expenses in the third quarter of 2025 were $23.6 million.

When comparing to the third quarter of 2024 and excluding the noncash charges of $69.5 million for impairment of goodwill and noncash change in fair value of consideration payable, total operating expenses were $27.9 million. In summary, the adjusted operating expenses in Q3 2025 were $23.6 million compared to $27.9 million in Q3 2024. Excluding the above-mentioned charges, it represents a decrease in operating expenses of 15% year-over-year.

Also, I would like to update you on the Blink Forward initiative and how it impacted our financials in Q3. In the third quarter of 2025, we incurred $3 million in operating expenses that have been eliminated on a go-forward basis and are not expected to recur in the future. Excluding those $3 million from the $23.6 million of operating expenses that I mentioned earlier, total operating expenses in the third quarter would have been $20.6 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of 26% and a sequential decrease of 15%. This is further exemplified by the significant decrease in both compensation and G&A expenses in Q3 of this year, which have been reduced by 24% and 32%, respectively, on a year-over-year basis. And as we just said, we expect another $3 million of these expenses that have been recorded in Q3 not to recur going forward due to cost optimization actions we have taken already.

Loss per share for the quarter was almost $0 compared to a loss of $0.86 in the prior year period. Adjusted loss per share for the quarter was $0.10 compared to a loss of $0.16 in the third quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of '25 was a loss of $8.9 million compared to a loss of $14 million for the prior year.

As of September 30, 2025, cash and cash equivalents totaled $23.1 million compared to $55 million as of December 31, 2024, and compared to $25.3 million as of June 30, 2025. If you do a quick math, in Q3 2025, Blink used only $2.2 million in cash. This is due to great liquidity optimization actions taken by our teams across all of Blink, resulting in significant improvement in working capital metrics.

As we continue our journey of transformation, this quarter reflects meaningful progress in strengthening our foundation for sustainable and disciplined growth. While revenue came slightly lower compared to the previous quarter, our team has made substantial strides in controlling and reducing operating expenses, enhancing gross margins and managing cash burn. This discipline is not only visible in the numbers, but in the way we run the business every day. The decisive actions we have taken to streamline operations, rationalize costs and focus resources on the most accretive opportunities are showing tangible results. Our cash burn rate has materially improved and our operating efficiency is trending in the right direction.

Both Mike and I mentioned this earlier, as we advance through the stage of our transformation, our focus remains on quality and sustainability of the growth, not just its pace. Expanding revenue is important, but even more essential is ensuring that the revenue contributes to profitability, margin improvement and long-term shareholder value. We are building a business designed for durable cash-generative performance, one that grows with purpose and discipline.

Looking ahead, we expect to focus on the same three key factors I covered during the Q2 earnings call, and is as follows: number one, revenue growth. Based on the current visibility, Blink expects revenue to show continued sequential growth in the second half of 2025. Number two, lower operating expenses, reflecting disciplined cost management and benefit of efficiency initiatives we already put in place and that we are successfully delivering on. And the last one, number three, improved working capital practices, particularly around receivables management, where we have already implemented several practices to accelerate receivables collection and reduce aged balances.

I will now turn it back over to Mike to wrap it up. Go ahead, Mike.

All right. Great. Thanks, Michael. So to be clear, this quarter was one of profound transformation for Blink. We are exiting in-house manufacturing to refocus our efforts on growing our service revenue streams. Our goal is to grow recurring network fees and repeat charging revenue, primarily through a larger Blink-owned DC fast charger footprint. We eliminated an additional $5 million of annualized operating expenses that we do not expect to reoccur going forward. That puts us at $13 million per year of annualized expenses eliminated to date compared to an anticipated $11 million that we announced earlier in the year.

And as I said earlier, we are not done yet. We reduced our cash burn and improved our working capital practices that resulted in cash burn of $2.2 million for the quarter, an 87% sequential reduction. We refocused our teams to invest in accretive sales opportunities and improve the quality of our revenue. This was evident in the product gross margin of 38.7% and overall company gross margin of 35.8%. We believe this is a key contributing factor on our path to profitability.

And finally, we are on track to start shipping our value-focused Shasta chargers ahead of schedule in Q4. This is a product that fills a gap in our portfolio and is aimed at gaining share in the fleet and multifamily market segments. As we said earlier, regarding revenue and gross margins, we expect revenue in the second half of 2025 to exceed the first half, and we expect the same positive trends we saw in Q3 to continue into Q4.

So I would like to extend a thank you to the Blink team for its resilience and focus, and I would like to say thank you to our customers and drivers who rely on Blink to provide energy to their vehicles every day.

With that, let's move on to Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And our first question today will come from Craig Irwin with ROTH Capital.

Congratulations on another really strong execution quarter. And it's hard to know really where to start. But I guess if we kind of step back and -- the forward look, right, the biggest change looking forward from everything that you've implemented is probably the change in manufacturing. And I suspect there's more to unpack there around what this means for margins and resources, frictional costs necessary to support the business.

Can you maybe talk us through how this change in manufacturing is likely to cut over for Blink? I know that you have had relationships with contract manufacturers, particularly in India for several years, and experience -- substantial experience working with CMs globally. What sort of cash costs are there associated with maybe the exit of different manufacturing facilities? Any other color that you could give us to understand how this helps you towards a bigger mission of profitability, which is what I know you're really working for?

Yes. Great. Great. So I'll start, and I'm sure Michael Bercovich will have a couple of comments as well. So first of all, this was not something that we just decided to do yesterday. So it's something that we've been planning for quite some time. In fact, we have been moving this direction all year. And just to slightly amend what you said, Blink has owned its manufacturing and production in India. We haven't historically had contract manufacturers in India. We've assembled products in the United States and then we've sourced some third-party chargers externally, which we continue to do.

So specifically, what this enables us to do really is a number of things. Number one, it enables us to simplify our product procurement strategy. So think of this, instead of having to manage a manufacturing supply chain and individual components that go into a number of different SKUs within our charging lineup, we now can simply manage finished goods inventory. So number one, it simplifies the company, it streamlines operations and allows us to focus on fewer things. And we think and expect that it derisks the supply chain for us. Secondly, it enables us to reduce costs. It enables us to reduce compensation expense. It enables us to reduce facility expenses. And those are meaningful as we move toward profitability.

So at the same time, what we've done in parallel with this, because -- you're right in the sense that there's always risk that when you outsource manufacturing, in theory, your component or your finished good cost could go up. But what we've decided to do in parallel with this is to redesign some of our chargers that we currently sell in order to reduce cost. So we are -- we feel confident that and expect that our margins on products will be consistent with what we experience today. So Michael, anything to add?

Yes, absolutely, Mike. We are treating the capital as we raise it today. The discipline is now embedded in how we build, price and operate our product and services. We intend to protect our margins, especially because we will continue to own our IP going forward. We're aligning cost with revenues in everything we do. And we believe that this is actually a very positive move in the direction of going to profitability.

And as Mike said, we intend to sublease the premises. We exited it with minimal cost. That is not going to take an impact on us, on our ongoing operation. And this is a very positive move.

Understood. The second, I guess, question that kind of hits the top of my list is the throughputs on your networks have been really impressive, right, 49 gigawatt hours, 66% increase on the Blink networks in the quarter. That is just really impressive. Investors have generally been bearish on EVs, but 66% growth in utilization means that customers are comfortable with Blink and the profitability of this network is clearly increasing. Can you talk about anything that's maybe changed that's allowed you to see this growth acceleration? And how much follow-through do we have on the existing network? Can we see utilizations go 20, 30 points higher on the assets you already have in place?

Yes. So good question. So I would say the largest -- the biggest driving factor between the volume of energy going through the network is the fact that in the last 12 to 18 months, our footprint of DC fast chargers has increased pretty dramatically. And by the way, just to clarify, that's not all Blink-owned. That's customer host owned, that's Blink-owned, that's both. So I think we have in the neighborhood of about 1,800 DC fast chargers now within the United States and then obviously more in our global markets over Europe. So the footprint of DC fast chargers certainly contributes to that volume and those increases. So I'd say that, that's primarily number one.

Number two -- the second part of your question is, can we continue this and can we continue to see higher utilization rates? And the answer to that is we certainly expect so. And the reason why we expect so is we feel good about our -- about two aspects of the DC fast charging business for us. We feel good about the units that we're selling through the channel into the market, some of which are publicly accessible, some of which are not. And then secondly, the prospect for the Blink-owned DC charger footprint.

So as we become better and smarter about where to site chargers to increase the likelihood of success of those chargers, we'll see meaningful utilization at those sites. So I think on the -- bottom line, Craig, I think we still have room to run.

Excellent. Then last question, if I may. You've been pretty clear in your remarks that you're emphasizing DC fast chargers as a real opportunity over the next few years. And I assume there's still a healthy portion of mix. I don't know if you'd like to break that out for us today. But with the emphasis on DC fast chargers, I probably would have expected a contraction of gross profit margins. Something is working for you in there. Can you maybe help us understand if the profitability of DC fast charger sales is changing for Blink? And is this something that would weigh on, on future margins if it does become an outsized portion of mix? Or have margins there come up to the corporate average?

Yes. Again, a great question. So first of all, while the emphasis on Blink Forward and our owned and operated footprint is DC, Level 2 is still a huge part of our business, and it's a big part of our business both through the channel as well as the owner-operator model. The shift is that, when we look at our capital expenditures, we want more of those dollars in the future going to DC fast charging than to Level 2 because we think that the revenue and the profit opportunity will just accelerate through those sites rather than the owned and operated L2.

From a procurement perspective, we've also done a better job. So we're procuring DC fast chargers at a more favorable cost. Our margins are improving in that space. But to be clear, you're right, the L2 margins are historically a bit higher than DC. So when you look at our quarters, depending on the mix of those two things, gross margins could move one way or another within a reasonably narrow band, we think. So I think as we continue to do a better job of procuring DC, as our volume goes up, we're going to see those gross margins either stay steady or perhaps improve a bit.

Congrats on this substantial progress with the path to future profitability.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question will come from Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainwright.

It was a very good presentation. A lot of things were highlighted during the call. I would like to just dig a little bit deeper into working capital improvements that you have already made and are making on the AR front. We can see that. Is there any concerted effort towards improving the inventory situation here?

Yes. Michael, do you want to take that?

Yes, absolutely. You're absolutely right, we have improved the working capital through several measures. One of them was the way that we approach our receivables, the way we manage, the way we collect, the way we even contract. The other piece, if you see on our balance sheet, we're also managing the inventory more carefully. We deploy based on the needs on both short term and long term. We're managing this way more tightly because the cost of capital is top of our mind. And we will continue doing so. As you see, we will be moving to the cost of manufacturing, and this will help us even further to realign between the needs of the business at every single stage and also the cost of that revenue. We are focusing now on a more disciplined, more focused approach of quality of revenue, as I mentioned before in my readout of the results. And this is where you see through all facets of working capital deployment, inventory and the receivables.

Understood. And just an adjacent question, especially in relation to the new contract manufacturing model. How should we see this inventory sort of deplete over the next few quarters as you transition to contract manufacture? Or should we -- like what kind of dynamics are in play here?

So we expect our inventories to come down. Now that said, it's really -- there is -- it's also driven by mix. So as you do more DC fast charging business, the inventory costs are higher. But those we typically manage very leanly. So it's typically a build-to-order model, so they don't sit in inventory too terribly long. But we expect that as we move to contract manufacturing, our overall inventory costs will go down.

Yes, it makes sense. And just one last one on utilization. I just want to make sure that the -- what you're talking about is that the throughput is increasing, the number of electrons delivered, of course, is increasing. Is it on a per unit basis that the utilization is improving or on the installed base that you're seeing more throughput? Just wanted to understand that.

It's both, Sameer. It's both.

Okay, it's both.

So we're seeing more volume go through because of additional chargers in the ground, and then we're also seeing better utilization of the chargers that are installed.

That is really good to know. That's really good.

[Operator Instructions] And it appears there are no further questions at this time. Mr. Stelea, I'll turn the conference back to you.

We thank you all for joining Blink on our quarterly earnings call as we announced another strong quarter with significant reduction in cash flow burn and reduction in operating expenses. We are happy to connect you with our management team for additional questions. In order to do so, please send us an e-mail at [email protected]. And we'll look forward to updating you as we progress over the next quarter and in the future. With that, we're going to conclude our presentation. Thank you.

And this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for attending.

Welcome to today's fireside chat. Today with us, we have Mike Battaglia, our CEO; Michael Bercovich, our CFO; and Harmeet Singh, our Chief Technology Officer.

Let's begin with Mike Battaglia. And I think most of you on the call know Mike. He stepped into the CEO role in February of this year. Prior to that, Mike was our COO. And prior to Blink, Mike spent over 20 years in the automotive industry, including the data intelligence industry of the automotive sector. So with that, let's start.

Mike, I guess the first question goes to you. What's keeping you up at night these days?

I'll start off with the zinger. What's interesting about that question, Vitalie, is when someone asks it, it's usually the response is something negative. So you say, what keeps me up at night is this, this and this, it's usually negative. And in this instance, I'll answer it this way, is that what keeps me up at night is thinking about all of the progress we've made at Blink and yet how much we still have to go. But the progress we've made is significant. And I think in the middle of the night, you wake up and you think about all the things that are still left undone that you want to do, knowing where this company needs to go in terms of getting into profitability and where we as a management team and an organization want it to go, and I think where investors want to see it go.

So -- but more than keeping awake at night for over some ruminating thought, it's important to talk about what we've accomplished and where the challenges still lie because there are most definitely still challenges, and we all know that. But looking at what we've accomplished. When we had the first quarter earnings announcement, we knew that was not a great performance, and it frustrated all of us as to where we landed. But we said during that call that the second quarter was going to be better than the first quarter, and we delivered on that and to the tune of 38% sequential revenue growth, and there's other things in there that are significant. We had a 22% reduction in compensation expense. We took out $8 million worth of operating expenses on an annualized basis just in that quarter. So that's just one element of it.

And on the challenging side, look, we still have to preserve liquidity. We have to manage our cash very carefully. And thankfully, I'm sitting next to someone who I think you'll talk about in a moment, who's doing a very, very good job at that and who I'm happy to have next to me. So look, we've accomplished a lot in a short period of time over the last 6 months, but we still have a long way to go.

Great. Thank you. And just to remind everyone, you can submit questions through the Fireside chat interface. Thank you to those who sent the questions in advance. We've incorporated them into these discussions, but please feel free to send more questions our way. Let's move to Michael Bercovich.

Michael Bercovich, welcome to the company. Most of you who don't know Michael, he spent a big portion of his career in the public company domain, but also the last 10 years or so, he's spent more entrepreneurial, I would say, more transformational type of companies, and he's joined Blink in June of this year. So with that, welcome, Michael.

And you've been here for a couple of months now. Curious what you've seen at Blink, what have you experienced? And what do you think the opportunities are within the finance department, but also overall within the company?

Yes, sure. Thank you, Vitalie. Thank you for a warm welcome. I did spend half of my career in publicly traded companies where I started with the transformation initiatives was really part of one initiative that transformed company from loss to profit. And then I went to more entrepreneurial organizations, as you said, start up and also worked on either hyper growth or companies that had to go and transform to positive cash flow. So I'm really, really excited being in Blink. I see tremendous potential. In the last couple of months I've been here, I've witnessed and evidenced strengths, challenges, and also huge potential. And I have seen team dedication and the resilience of operation. And those are really, really important things when the company is going through transformation as we do.

From an opportunities perspective, I saw signs of momentum with improvements in business trajectory, operational discipline as we talked through our Q2 earnings release, team collaboration all across, which is super important, especially in times like that and more close to my heart, working capital practices that we instill across the board. There is significant opportunity to build on those early wins and drive forward. And that's my kind of a recollection of the last couple of months and what I've seen.

Great. Great. And I know Mike mentioned the $8 million that we announced on the previous earnings call on an annualized basis that we've reduced from operating expenses. I know you touched upon a little bit, but is there an opportunity to do more of that, something to reduce maybe operating expenses, potentially even cash flow?

Yes. I'll tell you, I'm not going to give guidance here, but I'll tell you where I'm focusing on, right? So we identified several areas of operational improvements, and that's where we're focusing on right now. First of all is AR collections. Collections performance has improved, and that's the most important thing. There's more focus on follow-ups and better tracking of the receivables and our commercial management in general.

Inventory management. As we already talked about in our Q2 earnings, we addressed the slow-moving and obsolete items. And those are very, very key when you do inventory management. The third piece will be cash optimization, expense control, operational discipline. Those are really, really important as we move forward, and we continue taking out expenses from our operating expenses and aligning our revenue to our costs.

Cross-functional collaboration. You can't do that without a team that is completely mobilized for that effort. And teams are working together to drive operational excellence from sales to finance to HR to technology, everyone is one Blink, and that's super, super important. The last piece where I'm focusing on right now is systems consolidation. But there is a clear opportunity to consolidate different systems into one integrated platform and drive additional efficiencies as we move forward.

Great. Well, thanks for that. Let's move on to Harmeet Singh, our Chief Technology Officer. Harmeet started with us in July. Just very recently, Harmeet has had quite a career in the charging space. He's worked for Greenlots, Shell Recharge. He was one of the leaders of those companies. He also founded and was the CEO of Zemetric, the company that Blink acquired. And now Harmeet is our Chief Technology Officer.

So Harmeet, welcome to the company. And if you could spend a little bit telling us about your first couple -- first month or so at Blink and what opportunities do you see going forward?

Yes, absolutely. Vitalie, thank you for the introduction. One of the things that really excites me about Blink is its reach. We have one of the largest networks enabled on a global technology platform. But our number one goal is to make EV charging a completely frictionless experience for EV drivers. And honestly, I think we have some work to do in that area. So therefore, we are aligning our teams and our technology road map for a seamless customer experience and customer excellence.

While we may have addressed EV range anxiety, but we have gone from range anxiety to charger anxiety. And we need to make sure that we are maintaining the highest uptime on our network and that every charging session is successful at its first attempt. So I'd like for us to be relentlessly customer-obsessed and technology really needs to drive that experience.

Now in addition to solving these -- some fundamental issues, I'm very excited about a couple of other areas. For example, intersection of EVs with electrical grid, right? This creates an opportunity for us to enable EVs as a grid asset and unlock stacked value streams, both for Blink, but also for our customers and our partners. We are also working on enabling newer payment technologies on this platform. I'd also like to add that we have identified areas of tremendous efficiency already in technology organization and operations in a very short amount of time that I have been here.

Listen, opportunities here are endless, but I will just round it out by reemphasizing that a frictionless and a delightful user experience and maximizing operational efficiency are at the top of my list in terms of goals.

Thanks, Harmeet. And Harmeet, we published a press release today. We talked a little bit about crypto -- accepting crypto payments. Can you talk to us a little bit more about this? And what type of opportunities do you see through crypto or blockchain here at Blink?

Yes. I believe that crypto presents a very interesting opportunity in the EV space, right, ranging from being able to instant settlements, transparency and lowering transaction costs, especially for where we have micro payments in the EV charging space. And while allowing for additional payment options for EV drivers, cryptocurrency has the potential to also streamline payment operations and interoperability and lower the cost for CPOs inside host. Blink will be integrating cryptocurrency payment options across our network by the end of 2025. We will be sharing further updates, Vitalie, as we continue to refine our road map and execute on it.

Okay. Good. Good. Okay. So now we'll address a couple of questions that came through our mailbox and also through the chat.

Vitalie, just one comment just real briefly. So we started this transformation at Blink really towards the beginning of the year. But one thing I want the audience to understand is that Michael Bercovich, Harmeet Singh are transformational leaders. And we got to a point and they've come in and they're accelerating the pace of that. And it's super important. And for all of the rest of the organization that has been at Blink, they're rallying behind these guys.

So just as a quick aside, I couldn't be more happier -- I couldn't be more happy to have them on my side. They're an asset, not just to me personally, but really to the organization. And we're going to do some very interesting things going forward. And I think what Harmeet touched on is really important because I talk a lot about cost reduction and certainly Michael does, and working capital optimization. We talk about top line revenue growth. But what cannot get lost in that conversation is innovation and bringing new things to the market that are exciting and that customers are looking for and that customers don't even realize they need yet.

And we have to do all of it. We can't just do a piece of it. We have to keep our expenses low. We have to preserve liquidity. We have to grow the top line. But just as importantly is we have to be an innovative company. At the end of the day, we're a technology organization, and we have to live like one.

Thank you. Makes sense. Mike, I guess this next question could go to either one of you, but an investor is asking when do we expect Blink to achieve profitability?

Yes. Great question. So maybe I'll start.

Please go ahead.

Okay. So profitability is the overarching tenet of the Blink Forward initiative that we launched back in February. So we are relentlessly focused on getting this company to profitability and to cash flow positive. That is absolutely the goal. A lot of good things come from achieving those things. So what we talked about on the last couple of earnings calls is that we were not going to provide guidance on when we're going to achieve EBITDA profitability. Why? Because we are trying to establish a culture at Blink that when we say something or we announce something that we're going to deliver on it and that we have an extremely high level of confidence that we're going to do what we say we did.

So while we're getting better clarity on it, we're still not prepared to come out and give a definitive date because when we are confident, we want our audience members, our investors, our supplier community, stakeholders to be equally as confident. So while we feel like we're on the right trajectory, we're not there yet. We have more work to do. But I think, again, I'm going to say it, we have a plan, the plan is working, and we're going to stick to the plan.

Yes. And I want to add, profitability is a mindset, right? Every right business, the mindset is being profitable. And that's what we're instilling right now. I don't believe -- and I came out of a different industry. I don't believe there were any EV company that was profitable. And I don't know if we're going to be the first, right? Because we're not providing guidance, but I can tell you that we're working on the mindset because the mindset will drive us there, aligning revenue with cost, doing the right decision on capital allocation. It's not essentially cost cutting. It's a capital allocation, where do we want to invest, how we want to go and see strategic plan evolve in the future. It's a part of that mindset of profitability that Mike talks about.

Great. Thank you. Next question is about the Blink-owned portfolio of chargers. I don't know, Mike, if you want to talk a little bit about sort of where are we moving as a company? Are we moving more towards Blink owned, towards product? How do you see that?

Yes. So first of all, I'm going to reiterate what Blink is good at and Blink's strengths. And one of Blink's strengths that we bring to the market is the fact that we have flexibility. And what does that mean? It means we go to market two ways. We sell charging stations and associated services to clients that want to buy them, and we also own and operate charging stations.

The owner-operator side of the business is unquestionably the future of Blink. It is where we want to go. It's where our most aggressive revenue growth has been over time. It's still not a significant enough portion of our overall revenue, but we're getting there each quarter. And I think, again, our charging services revenue in the second quarter was up 46% year-over-year. And we continue to see numbers like that in quarters past.

So the challenge is that it requires a lot of capital in order to get there. So right now, what we're doing is we are preserving capital. We are making sure that, as Michael mentioned, the capital allocation is responsible. So when we invest in a Blink-owned site, it is only the very best site that is in front of us at a particular point in time. So the future of the company and where the value is built is in Blink-owned, and we're going to continue to focus on that. But at the same time, we're also very bullish about the equipment sales portion of the business right now as it sits. So again, we think the second half of the year from a revenue perspective is going to be better than the first half, as we said in the past.

Okay. And actually, a question came in that I think ties very well into this previous one. Utilization. What type of numbers is Blink seeing? And maybe you want to differentiate between L2 versus DC and maybe some of the stories around that.

Yes, yes. Great. So first of all, overall utilization is increasing. Now there's two ways to measure utilization. There's what's called time-based and there's energy-based. And one of the things the industry needs to do is get a standardized definition of that, okay? But overall, we're seeing increased utilization across our Blink network for charging stations. The number of gigawatt hours that have gone through the Blink networks have increased dramatically, right, over time. So that is one measure of utilization. It's just the amount of energy that's going through the network.

Where we see a lot of bright spots are in our DC fast charging portfolio. And we're seeing the utilization of some of our sites within the DC fast charging portfolio, 20%, 30%, 40% utilization. Now that's not portfolio-wide, but what it does is it gives you a glimpse of when you pick the right site, you invest in the right areas, what you can achieve. And so when we look at charging stations that we've installed more recently, the utilization is far better than, let's say, charging stations that the company installed 10 years ago. So there's a very disciplined approach to this, and we're seeing very, very nice gains in utilization.

Great. And actually, another question came in that ties well into what we're going to talk about next. The question is, when will we introduce the next version of the L2 charger in the U.S. or Europe. And I think it's a perfect time to talk about Zemetric because it also came up on the second quarter earnings call a few times. So maybe Mike or Harmeet, if you can talk a little bit about the Zemetric acquisition. What does it bring to Blink in terms of product, software? And obviously, we've got Harmeet as our CTO, please go ahead.

Yes, I'll start quickly because on the second quarter call, there was actually a lot of questions about it more than I think we were even expecting. But let me -- I'll kind of tell the story of how the Zemetric acquisition came about. So as I was searching for a CTO and a really transformational CTO who was very aligned with where I wanted to go, interviewed several people, obviously, and stumbled across Harmeet and immediately knew that this was the right guy for Blink.

Now the complication to it was that he happened to own an EV charging company. So it's like, well, what do you do with that, right? So the first thing we did, obviously, was evaluate the company, we peeled back the onion. And what we saw, we liked very much. And what the fit was is that what we had talked about previously is that we had a gap in our product line for like a value optimized sort of fleet multifamily charger that was really tailored to that segment. And we were developing one on our own.

And when we looked at Zemetric, they already had that product line plus a lot of other interesting technologies and a very small team that was very talented. So when we looked at this entire thing, it was opportunistic, but in many ways, it was a no-brainer, and it was a very, very good decision. So that's a perspective on how the acquisition came about, but Harmeet can certainly elaborate.

Yes, Harmeet, if you'd like to add some more, maybe tell us how the idea came up about Zemetric and what you're focused on, that would be helpful.

Yes, absolutely. We started Zemetric with the goal of performance and reliability. And we took a fleet-first approach because to us, that was one of the most interesting use cases in the EV charging space, right? So Zemetric Shasta hardware product line and our Denali software platform aligned perfectly with Blink and sort of acted as a road map accelerator and fill critical portfolio gaps for Blink, as you guys just talked about, right?

So our solutions, that range from lowering the total cost of ownership for fleets by optimizing their charging curves and to our Level 2 chargers that are built for high performance, high reliability, maximum uptime with features such as cable tampering alerts, they fit very nicely with Blink's product portfolio. But as Mike also mentioned, most importantly, the acquisition and this merger also adds great talent from -- and leadership from Zemetric to an extremely talented team at Blink. And we are very excited for the future and for doing some great things together here.

Great. Next question is actually about software. So it goes back to Harmeet. Harmeet, the question is, is there an opportunity to streamline and commonize the software on the networks, but also on the chargers, so firmware-wise, if you could talk about that.

Yes, yes, absolutely. There are tremendous synergies. And I'd like to echo what Mike had mentioned, the teams have rallied behind the synergies from both sides. And at lightning speed, I'm surprised, right? So we have already started on sort of that next generation of hardware platform that brings the best of both the worlds. And we'll be sharing the -- some of the dates around that plan pretty soon when will it be launched. But it's happening faster than I actually thought that it would. And same goes on the software platform side.

And I'd like to make a comment, right? We typically tend to talk about products as a hardware product or a software product. But we're taking a different approach now. We're taking a solution-based approach. We're not thinking and talking about hardware in isolation from software. And the best thing is what we are going to offer and what we offer is an integrated value proposition that includes software, hardware, and services, but everything built on open standards. So they -- so our customers get best of both the worlds. They get an integrated solution, integrated value proposition, but they also have the comfort and confidence that they're not locked into any proprietary technology. So that's very important.

Great. Great. Next question that just came in is about the NACS connectors, the NACS connectors. How many of those does Blink have? And how fast are we going to deploy those out into the field?

Yes. So I'll start there, maybe, Harmeet, and feel free to comment. So the beautiful thing about our hardware platforms is that the charger chassis itself is agnostic. So we can attach a J1772 cable to it or we can attach an NACS cable to it. So that, by the way, is customer-driven. We're not necessarily driving that. We are reacting to what our customers want to see out in the field. So we have deployed some NACS cables. I think we'll see more and more of them, especially on Blink-owned chargers out in the field. But it's still really early in terms of NACS deployment. But again, we've seen some demand from customers, but we expect that to go up quite a bit.

Okay. Great. would you like to add anything to this?

No, I'd just like to emphasize that our solutions and our products are agnostic to whether it's NACS or a different standard. And we can actually also do those replacements in the field. So we're making sure that, that's part of our sort of design fabric.

Great. Okay. And the next question sort of ties to this one. In Europe, they don't have NACS. It's all one standard, but what type of utilization and trends are we seeing in Europe right now?

Yes. So I mean, overall in Europe, I think it's fairly common knowledge that EV adoption in Europe has outpaced the United States. So within our -- certainly our overall software networks in Europe, but also especially our Blink-owned network, we continue to see improvements in utilization. And look, there's a lot more cars being deployed and sold into the market than there are charging stations being built, right, at least from Blink. So we're seeing more and more cars, obviously visit our charging stations. But again, we're happy with the growth trajectory of our charging services revenue, both from an overall company perspective as well as from in isolation European charging perspective.

Okay. Great. Great. Okay. So we just went through the questions that came in. But before we conclude, I would like to maybe give an opportunity to each one of you to kind of summarize what -- and maybe tell investors what they should look out for in the future, right? So maybe we'll start with Harmeet. Harmeet, if you want to provide a couple of words before we conclude here.

Absolutely. I think to echo what Mike had earlier mentioned, extreme focus on innovation, making sure that we are listening to our customers, customer experience and customer excellence. And also very importantly, we're very -- we're aligning very fast internally across ops, product and tech to really position our technology and products across customer segments. So we have a very clear value proposition for each of the customer segments that we serve, and we maximize the value, both for us and then also for our customers there.

Great. Thank you. Michael Bercovich. The next few quarters will be about translating early moves into lasting structural improvements and setting the foundation for long-term success. I think we made progress in revenue and operational metrics and the biggest opportunities lie now in tightening working capital efficiency, driving operational discipline and investing in scalable systems and cross-functional collaboration. I think by doing so, we can build a more resilient and agile organization positioned for sustainable growth. And this is where the focus will be.

Great. Thank you. And then Mike, please.

Yes. So I think I want to emphasize a couple of points. Number one, as I mentioned before, we're doing everything we can to establish this culture of when we say we're going to do something, we're going to do it, and we're going to deliver it. So we're going to continue to build on that. Secondly, if I'm an investor and I have already invested in Blink or I'm thinking about investing in Blink, I think I want as much transparency as possible from the company that I'm putting my hard-earned money into. And we are going to strive to be as transparent as we possibly can. And it's forms like this that we're using to try to do that.

So the message is -- we're making a lot of progress. I think the second quarter was evident of some of the progress that we've made. We have more to go. And -- but any company has more to go, right? It's -- you never reach the end goal. You're constantly moving in a direction and you constantly set new goals and objectives and things like that. But I like personally where we're headed. I think the organization and the employee base is rallying behind where we're headed. So I think we've done a lot. We have clear direction on where we want to go. We have more to do.

And with this, we're going to conclude. We would like to thank all of you online and all of you who have submitted questions. The goal is to keep the communications lines open. So please feel free to e-mail us at [email protected]. We'll make sure to collect your questions and then set up meetings with our management team. So with this, I want to thank Mike, Michael, and Harmeet, and we'll stay in touch. Thanks again.

Thank you.

Thank you.