Pomerantz Appointed Co-Lead Counsel in Blink Charging Securities Litigation
On December 21, 2020, U.S. District Judge Edwin G. Torres of the Southern District of Florida appointed Pomerantz LLP as Co-Lead Counsel on behalf of Co-Lead Plaintiffs Tianyou Wu, Alexander Yu and H. Marc Joseph in Bush v. Blink Charging Company, 20-cv-23527 (S.D. Fla.), a securities litigation being pursued on behalf of a class of defrauded investors concerning allegations that Blink Charging Company (“Blink Charging” or the “Company”) had overstated its growth and misrepresented the accessibility and functional status of its charging stations.
Blink Charging designs and manufacturers electric vehicle “(EV”) charging solutions for homes and businesses. The Company also owns and operates a network of electric vehicle charging stations across the United States.
The complaint alleges that, between March 6, 2020 and August 19, 2020, the defendants failed to disclose that: (i) many of Blink's charging stations were damaged, neglected, non-functional, inaccessible; (ii) Blink's purported partnerships and expansions with other companies were overstated; and (iii) the purported growth of the Company's network had been overstated.
On August 19, 2020, analyst Culper Research (“Culper”) published a report entitled “Blink Charging Co. (BLNK): You Won’t Miss It,” in which it alleged that “[W]e believe that [Blink] has vastly exaggerated the size of its EV charging network in order to siphon money from the pockets of investors to insiders. Blink claims that “EV drivers can easily charge at any of its 15,000 charging stations,” but we estimate that the Company’s functional public charging station network consists of just 2,192 stations, a mere 15% of this claim.”
Culper stated in its report that it sent out investigators who confirmed that Blink’s charging stations were not as the Company had represented. Specifically, Culper’s report stated that “Our analysis of the Company’s own data suggests that the average charger is utilized for just 6 to 38 minutes per day (0.39% to 2.65% utilization), while annual charging revenue of a mere $6.37 per member suggests that the average Blink member doesn’t even obtain one single full charge from the Blink network over the course of an entire year.” Culper concluded that “Blink vastly overstates the size, functionality, usage, and economic potential of its chargers.”
Also, on August 19, 2020, analyst Mariner Research Group (“Mariner”) published another report that was highly critical of Blink. Mariner wrote that Blink’s “revenue growth has significantly seriously lagged the EV industry… due to persistent issues around product quality, customer churn, and user experience, and believe that these issues will continue to hamper [Blink]’s growth.” Mariner concluded that Blink Charging “should be valued at its liquidation, or book value, of just $0.17 in a downside scenario and at $2 a share in a bull case scenario.”
On this news, Blink Charging’s share price fell $2.29 per share, or 22%, to close at $7.94 per share on August 20, 2020 closing price of $7.94 per share.