[Editor’s note: “Buy These EV Charging Stocks for Huge Gains in the 2020s” was previously published in July 2022. It has since been updated to include the most relevant information available.]
The EV Revolution has arrived. And everyone is rushing to buy Tesla (TSLA) and Nio (NIO) stock to gain exposure to this megatrend. But there’s actually a much better, off-the-radar way to play this revolution: EV charging stocks.
The logic is simple.
No charging stations, no working EVs.
Gas cars run on fuel. Without fuel, a gas car is just a metal box with four wheels that doesn’t go anywhere. That’s why, to make gas cars broadly useful, the world built out a network of millions of refueling stations. The owners of those stations — Chevron (CVX), Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Shell (SHEL) — are $100-plus billion giants.
The same thinking applies to electric vehicles.
EVs run on charge. Without a charge, an EV is just a metal box with four wheels that doesn’t go anywhere. And to make EVs broadly useful, the world will have to build a network of millions of charging ports. The owners of those charging ports will be $100-plus billion giants one day — the new Chevron, Exxon and Shell.
The best part? It doesn’t matter which auto maker wins the EV wars. So long as consumers buy more EVs, there will be a greater need for charging station infrastructure. Thus, EV charging stocks are a broad, less risky bet on the entire EV revolution.
With that in mind, here are my two favorite EV charging stocks to buy for huge gains in the 2020s:
EV Charging Stocks to Buy: Blink Charging
At the top of this list is the stock market’s longest tenured EV charging operator, Blink Charging.
Many EV charging stocks came public in 2020 as companies tried to capitalize on investor enthusiasm for all things EV-related. Blink Charging was not one of those companies. Instead, it has been on Wall Street for over 10 years.
But it wasn’t until the EV Revolution went mainstream that BLNK stock soared into the spotlight. From 2020 to ‘21, BLNK stock was up more than 2,000%.
This year, the stock market has struggled, to say the least. But once it finds solid ground again, stocks like this will regain their highs. Indeed, this big rally in BLNK was just the beginning.
Blink is America’s second-largest charging station operator, with more than 23,000 EV charging stations throughout the U.S., Europe and Middle East. The company has a broad range of high-quality chargers for every need. And it has scored partnerships with important clients across all verticals — such as food, McDonald’s (MCD); commercial, Meta (META); and retail, Whole Foods.
Blink should be able to leverage its incumbent technological advantages and partnership network to become one of the largest EV station operators in the U.S. and Europe. (This isn’t a winner-take-all market).
Yet, Blink is worth just $1.2 billion today. That implies the stock still has enormous upside potential over the next several years.
ChargePoint
The second on this list of EV charging stocks to buy is the highest-quality name on it, too: ChargePoint.
ChargePoint is America’s largest EV charging station operator. The company operates over 30,000 U.S. charging stations. And it commands 73% EV charging station market share in North America, making it 7X larger than the closest competitor.
This size is a huge advantage because of network effects.
Roughly 62% of the Fortune 50 — including Meta, Netflix (NFLX), Salesforce (CRM), Microsoft (MSFT), and Adobe (ADBE) — already deploy ChargePoint charging stations at their corporate offices. ChargePoint should be able to leverage this already-huge and very well-known commercial client portfolio to keep winning more corporate contracts.
The same is true across the education, hospitality, and residential verticals. ChargePoint counts Harvard, Stanford, Best Western, Disney (DIS), and Brookfield (BAM) as customers (among many, many others).
Meanwhile, from a consumer-facing perspective, ChargePoint has teamed up with auto makers like BMW (BMWYY) so that its charging locations are seamlessly integrated into in-car navigation systems. And the company has a widely downloaded app that allows EV drivers to easily locate ChargePoint charging stations.
All that will push ChargePoint to top-of-mind for consumers. And that should provide a huge tailwind for ChargePoint to also dominate the at-home residential EV charging market.
Overall, the network effects at play here are powerful and pervasive.
Indeed, they’re so much so that ChargePoint will very likely replace Shell as the world’s largest “refueling” station operator.
Of course, that implies enormous long-term upside potential for CHPT stock.
On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.