What happened
Last Thursday, Blink Charging (BLNK -5.44%) announced that it had signed a deal with Burger King to deploy its electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in the northeastern U.S. The news didn't help Blink much at the time (its stock actually dropped 1.3% on Thursday), but the company quickly made up those losses on Friday -- and today, a reminder of the news posted on TheFly.com appears to be reviving interest in the stock even further.
Blink shares are up 12.5% in 11:40 a.m. EST trading.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
So what exactly did Blink say last week? Well for one thing, its charger deal isn't really with Burger King proper, or with its parent company, Restaurant Brands International. Rather, Blink struck a much more limited bargain with "a large Burger King franchisee" called JSC Management Group "to deploy numerous EV charging stations at key Burger King locations across the Northeast."
And yet, "numerous" is in the eye of the beholder. According to the company's press release, Blink will deploy 26 charging stations at only 10 Burger King locations. Moreover, five of these restaurants already have Blink chargers installed. So, really, we're talking about somewhere between 21 and 26 chargers getting put in at about five new locations.
Now what
When you really dig into the details of Blink's announcement, this transaction doesn't sound particularly supersized -- but more like a kid's meal of a deal. I doubt it's going to do much to grow Blink's tiny $4.5 million annual revenue stream.
Granted, management says it hopes to add "additional JSC locations ... in late 2020/early 2021," and it might. But unless and until that happens, I'm going to have to conclude that today's stock price surge -- and the $100 million-plus increase in Blink Charging's market capitalization that it's brought about -- is an overreaction.
