What happened
Shares of electric vehicle (EV) charging company Volta (VLTA) surged on Monday, gaining 16.5% as of 1:40 p.m. ET as investors cheered the company's entry into a big market.
So what
On Monday, Volta announced plans to expand into Europe, starting with Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France.
"We've been honing our expertise over the past decade in the U.S., helping to catalyze one of the most significant macroeconomic shifts of our lifetime. We're proud to see the company we've built extend into Europe and look forward to the many opportunities that lay ahead," said co-founder and President Chris Wendel.
Image source: Getty Images.
Volta hasn't yet given out any numbers regarding how many stalls it aims to install in European markets over any time frame, nor said how much it plans to spend in the near term. However, the company is growing at a pretty fast clip in the U.S. as its unusual strategy for monetizing charging stalls seems to have taken off. Volta generates nearly all of its revenues not from the electricity it dispenses from charging stations, but from the advertising it shows on the digital displays that those charging stations are equipped with. In the third quarter, it derived almost 87% of its revenues from its "behavior and commerce" segment. Its revenue grew 82% year over year to $20.2 million during the first three quarters of 2021.
So far, Volta has focused on the U.S. market. It had set up 2,137 charging stalls as of Sept. 30, and by the end of the year, expects to have between 2,300 to 2,500, with another 1,300 stalls under construction.
Now what
Volta has mostly installed its charging stations at prime commercial and public locations that have appeal to brands and advertisers, and it plans to stick with that playbook in Europe as well. It sounds like a smart way for investors to play the EV boom. And given that Volta also recently projected strong revenue gains for the fourth quarter, the market unsurprisingly reacted positively to Volta's latest growth-related news on Monday.
