Blink Charging Co. (NASDAQ:BLNK) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Blink Charging Co. (NASDAQ:BLNK) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript May 11, 2026

Blink Charging Co. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.08 EPS, expectations were $-0.07.

Operator: 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.

Vitalie Stelea: 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.

Michael 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?

Michael Bercovich: 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.

Michael Battaglia: 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?

Q&A Session

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

Ryan Pfingst: 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?

Michael Battaglia: 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.

Ryan Pfingst: 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 Battaglia: Michael, do you want to jump on that or…

Michael Bercovich: 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.

Ryan Pfingst: 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?

Michael Bercovich: Yes, please go ahead, Mike.

Michael Battaglia: 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?

Michael Bercovich: 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.

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

Unknown Analyst: 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?

Michael Battaglia: 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.

Unknown Analyst: 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.

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

Sameer Joshi: 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?

Michael Battaglia: Yes, Michael, go ahead.

Michael Bercovich: 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.

Sameer Joshi: 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.

Michael Battaglia: 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.

Sameer Joshi: 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%?

Michael Battaglia: Mike, do you want to jump or I can — go ahead.

Michael Bercovich: 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.

Operator: 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.