Posted on Feb 10, 2019 2021 at 10: 00Updated Feb 10. 2021 at 10:45
At first glance, there are few reasons for the vitality of Blink Charging’s title. Never profitable since its founding in 2009, not really among the leaders in its market, the Miami (Florida) firm would only total $ 5.5 million in revenue in 2020, according to Bloomberg estimates. On the Nasdaq, where it has been listed since 2017, the company is still in the lead: the action is one of the most popular at the moment on Wall Street.
Blink has experienced a surge in recent months that bitcoin envy. The title, which flirted with 2 dollars for more than a year, is now worth 54 (+ 3,000% in eight months) – in the United States, only seven values valued over a billion dollars have done better. The company weighs 2.2 billion, or 493 times the amount of its sales; for Tesla, the ratio is just 25.
What is happening to the markets? As with Tesla and a whole galaxy of companies gravitating in the sector of the electric car, the rise of Blink is not due to its current performance but to its potential: the company operates a public network of charging stations for electric cars.
A place to take
With 2.5 million new registrations last year and wonderful growth forecasts (+ 70% in 2021 according to IHS Markit), the zero-emission sector is taking off, driven by China and Europe. And if “Tesla babies” and other hydrogen specialists are proliferating, the charging station segment is still little invested – especially by manufacturers who, with the notable exception of Tesla, consider that investing in a network is not their responsibility.
There are no electric cars, however, without a dense network of recharging stations: not all individuals can have a terminal at their home and professionals, such as taxis or ambulances, need to charge their batteries during the day. .
The market is therefore doomed to expand, driven by proactive policies implemented in several countries. In the United States, the Biden administration is stepping up incentives to boost clean mobility. And Blink, which intends to deploy some 250,000 terminals “over the next few years” (against a little less than 7,000 today), is one of the contenders.
“A joke for a billion”
However, society is far from winning support. “A joke to a billion”, swept at the end of November Andrew Left, the very media founder of the specialist of the short sale Citron Research – who very recently converted back to consulting to individual investors after the GameStop case.
In fact, the firm is as well valued as its competitor ChargePoint, which operates a network fifteen times larger and which weighs $ 144 million in revenue (26 times more than Blink). Its network is based in part on the terminals bought from a bankrupt competitor in 2013, whose stations are notoriously defective – the American has also recognized “material weaknesses” in documents submitted to the stock market policeman.
Blink also has to deal with a worrying waltz from his staff: a financial director and two operations directors have left the ship since 2017. Michael Farkas, the founding boss, remains at the helm. According to Bloomberg, he has sold more than $ 40 million worth of securities since the start of the year.