Hmmm…I think it’s the equivalent of saying, “We build the infrastructure for gas stations, but we’re not a gas company. We’re neutral about which gas company uses what we build.”
To run with that analogy, now imagine that the new gas station infrastructure company can drive an entire station to a remote military base and, “in a matter of minutes, not months,” a single person can have it up and running with no digging or pouring concrete or grid connection. “No permitting, no construction, and no utility bill.”
Your car can still be charged by any company that you want. Your choice of charger will be pre-installed. They are just providing a fully-functioning station, powered by the sun, that is also fully portable.
Is your military base only temporary? You can pick up your charging station and take it with you to a new location. Yep, our station can be bought with its own trailer to move wherever it’s needed.
Would you like us to put our station in your parking lot? Guess what? You don’t even have to lose a single parking space. You can drive right up on it to charge your car. Company moving to a new location? You can take your station with you. It can charge up to six cars at a time and reach to twelve parking spaces.
You want a Tesla charger on yours? You got it. Rather have Blink? Or ChargePoint? Done. Beam installs your choice at the factory, drives it to your location, and it will be operational that same day, even if there’s no electrical grid within 50 miles.
This video is under 2 minutes and describes the advantages of the ARC product nicely.
The new acquisition that closed in Q4, now called Beam Europe, brings the technology and patents (and some early contracts) to have your car charged by parking under one of their streetlights.
When asked about their moat, the CEO answered with a single word. “Patents.” I can’t say how strong those are. In my initial thread @intjudo asked about patents and I provided a whole set of links. But evaluating patent strength is not my wheelhouse.
What I do know is that no one else seems to be doing EV charging via portable, solar stations right now, so even if another company can get around all the patents, BEEM will still have the first-mover advantage.
As for the gross margins, the claim on the call last night was that they were currently 10% (no longer negative) and that that would be moving higher in Q2 and the second half of the year as their price increases, scale, and efficiencies kick in. They don’t report until the end of March, so those numbers will show whether that claim is accurate.
It’s a micro-cap, so I understand why people might not be interested in a tiny company with very low margins. But the value proposition for the product seems abundantly clear to me–as well as to the large number of local and federal government authorities who are placing repeat orders.
JR