Michael Farkas
Analyst · ROTH Capital. Your line is open
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We closed out 2020 with a very strong fourth quarter. Revenue grew over 250% and we made tremendous progress expanding our footprint. As we move through 2021, we remain focused on executing our aggressive rollout of charges to a wide variety of partners and locations, including healthcare networks, hotels, multifamily residences, and municipalities. As a pioneer in EV charging, we've watched what was a gradual transition to EV, gained massive traction in 2020. The EV industry is experiencing tremendous momentum fueled by a combination of environmental concerns, coupled with legislative initiatives on both the local and federal levels that have more and more drivers making the switch to EVs. And it follows that more EVs that are on the road, the more demand that will be for fast, accessible and reliable charging stations to power these vehicles. With that in mind, we've been pursuing new exclusive partnerships and locations for the placement of our charging units. While EVs compromise a relatively small portion of vehicles today, they represent a rapidly growing segment of the transportation sector. And we're focused on positioning our charters in densely trafficked areas to capitalize on what we believe will be a substantial shift to EVs over the coming years. It is important to note that in our own and operate models, exclusive agreements allow us to deploy chargers today and to add chargers to contracted locations as necessary to meet demand and that's throughout the duration of our long-term exclusive agreements. We are aggressively deploying our charters using a variety of business models by emphasizing our own and operate model. The Blink own model is a key competitive advantage for us because with this model, we realize an economic benefit each time a vehicle is charged with one of our own charges. As EV adoption continues to accelerate and charger utilization increases, we expect our owned and operated units will represent a growing revenue stream for many years to come. We believe the opportunity in front of us is enormous, with few companies better positioned than Blink to benefit from the anticipated growth in demand for EV infrastructure. As we have pointed out previously, BloombergNEF's Electric Vehicle Outlook 2020, which looks at the global EV market, noted that passenger EV sales increased from 450,000 in 2015 to 2.1 million in 2019 and are expected to reach over 15 million in 2040. BloombergNEF also expects that more than 50% of new car sales will be EVs by 2040, 50% of new car sales and projects that we need many, many more charging stations and that should top over 219 million by 2040, with a value of $500 billion worldwide. The EV revolution is underway and Blink is strongly positioned for significant growth, as we continue to play a leadership role in laying the groundwork for this transition. To support our growth, in January 2021, we completed a successful equity raise of $221.5 million. It significantly strengthened our balance sheet. Now, with a stronger capital structure, we're better positioned to expand the Blink own charging infrastructure, improve internal systems, improve operations, increase our technology, and to prepare for anticipated exponential growth. It also allows us to secure new partnerships, acquire new locations, and to seek amazing strategic acquisition opportunities. We have been adding new positions and people to improve our operational strength across our organization with additions to our sales staff, IT, customer service departments and bottom line, the greatest achievement that Blink has made over the last year is not our stock price. It's not the money that we've raised, but it's the team that we've built. Every one of our employees of this company has allowed us to grow this business and it will be completely dedicated. And just after the fourth close of the – the close of the fourth quarter, we announced a purchase of a 10,000 square foot office condominium in Miami. And that's to house our corporate headquarters and to support our current and future growth. Additionally, following the closure of the quarter, we opened a new Phoenix location, which has already begun making meaningful contributions to our operations. This is an extremely exciting time for our industry and specifically for Blink. We began 2021 in a solid position. We plan to capitalize on the many opportunities we're seeing to provide the accessible fast and reliable EV infrastructure that makes traveling with EVs both attractive and viable. Now I'll turn the call over to Michael Rama, our CFO, to run through some of the specific financial results of the quarter. Following that, Brendan Jones, our President, will provide details around some of our recent progress before we go to the Q&A. Go ahead, Michael.