4/17/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star 0 and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Michael Langezal, CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

speaker
Michiel Langezaal
CEO and Co-Founder

Thank you, operator. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone on this call as well as to those joining via our webcast. You can find a copy of the presentation used during this call on our investor relations website found at ir.fastnetcharging.com. On the title page, our new station in Brescia, Italy. Our first station in Italy and a proud moment for Fastnet as we now have operations in eight countries. We opened the station in February with the ceremony on a beautiful sunny day attended by dozens of our guests, partners, and customers. very interested government officials, a good reason to celebrate. This high-value location is on a key highway stretching from Milan to Venice and is in Italy's most EV-dense region, all part of our strategy to continue expanding and bringing the best fast-charging experience to everyone in Europe. I'll speak more about this later on. Slide two, please. With reference to the information provided in these slides and discussed during this call, please ensure you take note of the disclaimer. Moving to slide three. My name is Michiel Langezaal. I'm the CEO and one of the founders of Fastnet. Victor van Dijk, our CFO, is with me on this call, and together we will present this webcast. Today, I will take you through the highlights for Fastnet during the first quarter of 2025, with amongst other things, our latest headline results and an update on network growth. We will also discuss the EV market more broadly to provide insights into how we see market conditions evolving and give our view on market sentiment as sales begin accelerating rapidly in Europe once again. Following this, Victor will present the 2024 financial results, which were also recently published in our annual report for 2024, available on our website. After our presentation, we will be happy to answer your questions. If possible, please limit them to two questions per analyst so we can give everybody the opportunity. We've scheduled this call to last for one hour. So let's get started. The following slide presents the highlights of the first quarter for 2025. For the EV market, Q1 this year seemed to mark a return to full speed ahead. And for Fasnet, Once again, I'm pleased to report strong growth with several all-time highs in our quarterly results. Across the board, we have seen significant increases in our key operational metrics. From energy sold to quarterly revenue, Q1 showed a 48% year-on-year increase in revenue to a total of €28 million for the quarter. EV stock grew 27% this quarter in comparison to the same quarter last year. Fastnet outgrew this and captured more than its fair share of growth, with sessions growing 27%, energy delivered 34%, and revenue by a whopping 48%. And maybe to put this into context to the very few other charging companies that make their performance available, Recharge, which is active in the Nordics, last year sold almost 92 gigawatt hour with some 4,000 EVSEs according to their report. Fastnet sold some 50% more energy with significantly less chargers despite being in a market which does not yet have the far majority of car sales being electric. That is the power of a great concept and great locations. This revenue growth also drove gross profit which was up 31% from last year to 19.7 million euros. Strong demand for bonds continued to fund our rollout pace, with Fastnet raising a record 36 million in its issue in the first quarter of this year. And as a consequence, our cash position remained strong at 113 million euros at the end of the quarter. To be honest, I feel that we're now past the second phase of the EV revolution and we have moved into a new chapter. Despite some exaggerated negative market sentiment last year, a corner has clearly been turned. New regulations and new technologies are accelerating mass adoption with sales surging, just as we anticipated when referencing the Osborne effect. As a result, Fastnet is selling more clean energy to more drivers than ever, empowering our expansion across Europe. Talking about network growth, our network continues to expand. We opened seven new Fastnet stations in Q1, which brings us to a total of 353 stations in operation today. In 2025, we're adding two new countries to the list, Spain and Italy. and our teams have been working hard to set up our supply chains in these countries. The work has already produced tangible results with our first station in Italy opening, and soon we expect Spain to go live as well. It is these firsts, as well as the establishment of SHOP, that represents a true zero-to-one effort. For the rest of the year, our focus will shift fully to scaling the number of sites these supply chains are designed to support. As we expand our network and enter new markets, we're placing strong emphasis on scaling our quality to match. We don't just want to do more charging. We want to do the best charging and we want to do it at scale. And therefore I'm delighted that we've continued to be placed in leading positions for customer satisfaction in our key markets. I'm proud that we have continued to deliver the same or even higher reliability to our customers. It is this commitment to excellence of service that continues to ensure that drivers keep coming back. And it makes Fastnet one of the most trusted charging brands on the market. Location is fundamental to our strategy. We built our stations on high-value, high-traffic sites with the aim of securing long-term contracts that provide the best business case. Continuing to secure these high-value locations is vital for our growth, and in Q1 we secured 20 more locations for development, all single-site acquisitions. There were no large-scale tenders adding scale to this number during this quarter. Our target is 1,000 stations open across Europe by 2030. We're more than halfway there, as we have so far secured 587 locations for development. Moving on to station performance. Energy delivered per station grew slightly below BV fleet growth, with 17% to 488 MWh annualized. The revenue per station amounted to an annualized €325,000. which translates to 29% growth compared to the same period last year, showing that revenue grew significantly faster than energy delivered and the fleet growth. Note too, that with significant growth ahead of us in the coming quarters, we have already hit our station revenue target for 2025 this quarter, a development that is partly a consequence of FastNet increasing prices in most of its markets at the start of the year. Then finally, I would like to briefly address the current developments in global trade. We have assessed our business and supply chains and have found no material impact. Logically, like many businesses, we run our daily office operations on services like Google Workspace, but no material exposures were found. On a positive note, I would like to mention that we are significantly exposed to the countermeasures Europe is taking when it comes to energy sovereignty and energy security. Electric cars are seen as a large part of the solution. And thus, it is also not a surprise to see the Commission staying strong on its 2035 target of all car sales being electric. In summary, these highlights all show very significant year-on-year growth across the board, from stations to revenue to profitability. Last year, Fastnet showed we could maintain growth through uncertain times, and now the market is firing again. As you can imagine, I'm very enthusiastic about the coming quarters. And it's worth taking a look at the facts behind the sentiment. Moving on to the next slide. And that starts with electric car sales. After a growth slowdown last year, we now see things ramping up fast. As you can see in this overview, across all markets, EV sales are increasing at very serious growth levels. Although many did not expect this market swing, with hindsight, it is quite obvious. Europe's CO2 emission regulations followed a staggered approach in which CO2 emissions are brought down step by step over five-year periods. The car makers aligned their go-to-market strategy accordingly, which led to newer, more affordable EVs coming to market this year and not last year. Similar to other technology markets, the automotive industry has now been impacted by the Osborne effect, as we mentioned earlier. Just to recap, this is the phenomenon whereby the announcement of new and more advanced products can significantly reduce the sales of the current offerings as consumers wait for the newer and better versions to become available. And in turn, when these products become available, it leads to a very serious uplift in the sales of these new products. Well, all of this is happening as we speak. In this slide, I would Also like to mention the role of the recent discussions in Brussels on the 2035 automotive roadmap. We've all seen the considerable lobbying efforts of the car makers and many expected the watering down of the targets. Given this, we understand the commission's decision to provide some flexibility within the targets. However, at the same time, We are very happy to see the EU remaining firm on the targets themselves. I will here quote some interesting paragraphs from the speech from the Commission's president, Von der Leyen. Quote, the second topic that we have discussed was the transition towards clean mobility. There is a clear demand for more flexibility on the CO2 targets. The key principle here is balance. On the one hand, we need predictability and fairness for the first movers, those who did their homework successfully. That means we have to stick to the agreed targets. To address this in a balanced manner, I will propose a focused amendment to the CO2 standards regulation this month. Instead of annual compliance, companies will get three years. The targets stay the same. End of quote. The implementation of the flexibility is calculated by averaging fleet emissions over a three-year period from 2025 to 2027. For Fastnet, this means that a certain portion of the EVs will reach Europe's roads some months later than originally planned for. But importantly, they will reach our roads. Also, the Commission is working on a proposal for green fleets to spark demand. More about this later in our presentation. In summary, we're seeing EV sales picking up once again with further demand acceleration on the horizon. So let's now talk about technology development. Slide five, please. I was impressed by how many people asked us about the announcement by BYD about five minutes, one megawatt charging. First of all, as an engineer who has been active in e-mobility since the early days, I find it interesting to see how many people are still amazed to see electric vehicle technology not being stagnant. In contrast to what they're used to from the internal combustion engine, our industry, like that of solar panels or digital cameras, continues to amaze people technology development year on year removes barriers from charging time to range to vehicle weight to rare earth materials to charging and cold temperatures and the list goes on and on and on charging times of five minutes is something we expected to happen we have been planning for this since founding the company in 2012. let me tell you a little about Let me tell you a little bit about how we think this will impact our industry and Fastnet. First of all, it is a great development for electric drivers. The decision to buy a car is about freedom, the freedom to drive anywhere. And the benchmark is a fossil car with ample range and quick refueling. And long charging times are a bottleneck to mass adoption for electric vehicles. In this context, The introduction of five-minute charging is a great development as it signals the next acceleration phase for electric vehicles, further scaling of our markets. For Fastnet, it is also a very positive and important development. On balance, it will make fast charging more attractive than slow charging. For example, think about those people living in apartment buildings. or for whom installing a wall box next to their car means digging a long trench. For those people, five-minute fast charging could just mean continuing their refueling behavior. So next to scaling the market, it will shift the balance in market volume from AC towards DC fast charging. So faster charging is great for the market and should increase sales at our charging stations. But how about the business case for this technology? Here we see the following happening. I'm thinking about 2030 or beyond. There will be so many EVs on the market that charging stations in good locations like ours will need to cater for hundreds of cars a day. When each car takes 20 minutes to charge, the size of the station and the plot needed to accommodate all these cars while charging becomes quite significant, if not very large. This is not a theoretical problem, but a real one, especially in densely populated urban areas and the roads surrounding the big cities. Charging faster means shorter overstays. And this allows volumes to grow without congestion on the stations starting to cause havoc. Economically, this means we improve the utilization of the land we lease and the investments we make to realize the infrastructure. But simply, we need less street work to cater to these hundreds of customers. Knowing that around 50% of the investments in stations are related to civil works, canopy, and so on, you can imagine the improvement in ROI. You might think, but But do you now need an outsized grid connection for such high power levels? Well, the answer is a bit yes and no. We do need a series connection, but whether we have a connection of three megawatts to power 20 EVSEs charging at levels of up to 300 kilowatts for 20 minute time spans, or we have the same connection powering six megawatt chargers, this does not change much as both deliver the same number of kilowatt hour to EV drivers each day. When looking at the solar market, we know that the larger the inverters become, the lower the price per kilowatt. So we do expect some synergies in megawatt charging versus many lower power chargers. And on that note, I would like to hand you over to Victor van Dijk, our CFO, for his part of the presentation.

speaker
Victor van Dijk
CFO

Thanks a few. In Q1, we published our annual report. Let me take you through the highlights on this slide. Despite slower growth in EV sales in 2024, we have seen strong organic and inorganic revenue growth at FastNet last year. We have two big growth axes. One is growth at existing stations that benefit from an ever-increasing EV fleet and increasing recurring charging demands. The other is opening new stations on high traffic locations that quickly ramp up sales. I'll talk about those in the next slide in a moment. We are seeing network operating costs increasing, mainly due to increased grid fees and expanding our organization in our large non-Dutch markets to cater for network growth. See more detail on this on slide 18 in the appendix. In the end, the business case at full utilization and at higher charge speeds can more than carry these costs. Prices can go down even while maintaining similar operational EBITDA margins. So cost increases will in the end mean that prices go down less than anticipated, that is prices to the customer. Of course, we are diligent in keeping costs as low as possible, so we can offer lower prices to the customers in the end. We've increased the network expansion teams. They are signing new locations with high traffic counts, long lease lengths, and therefore great business cases and great IRMs. So that is a very valuable cost investment. We've had a step change in signing these locations last year. We signed 138. Now we are ramping up the organization this year and next year to build those stations at the same pace as signing them. This leads to increased network expansion costs. But as said, this is a very valuable cost investment, and it will yield over the next 15 to 30 years that the station is operational. Note that without these expansion costs, we will be near net profitable already, with network expansion costs close to our net negative profits. Which brings me to the next slide. Our business case depends on there being electric cars on the road for us to charge. The good news is that consistent long-term growth in the EV market is the reality, and that growth is set to increase again after slowing in growth last year. As said before, Fastnet sales grow along two main axes. One is the increasing sales per station on existing locations. The other is building new locations that generally quickly ramp up sales to the average station revenue level. The first axis you see on the left, we build stations on locations with 30,000 vehicles passing by per day. In 2019, just pre-COVID, 0.9% of these vehicles were electric, so less than 300, generating just 46,000 revenues per station. Then with more and more of the 30,000 cars becoming electric, reflected in BEV fleet penetration going up, station revenues ramp up. With BEV fleet penetration expected to almost quadruple in the next six years, we expect station revenues to go up to more than one million per station by 2030. This means that on our existing 350 stations, we expect 350 million revenues On the right graph, you can see that we obviously add stations, also with 30,000 traffic. So they quickly ramp up to the average station. With the 587 locations already secured, including the operational station, we expect close to 600 million revenues per 2030 on those stations. Then we are signing more than 100 locations per year, each year right now. These 100 stations will add 100 million revenues per 2030 as well. So that is why the network expansion costs associated with adding these stations is a very valuable investment. All this is a promise we've been making for years. Our business case becomes more compelling as more and more electric vehicles hit our roads. Combined with our charging concepts, highly profitable at the right level of EV adoption, this ensures we continue to grow alongside and even quicker than the market we're operating in. Next slide, please. Then a view of profitability. By now, we are underlying EBIT positive in the Netherlands and are near that in Belgium. We reach this milestone first in the Netherlands and Belgium because BEV, fleet penetration, is the highest in these markets. Fleet penetration drives revenues and gross profits, which drives profitability. In the graph on the left, you can see that fleet penetration in key markets reach similar levels as in the Netherlands in the next few years. So we expect those margins to reach positive EBIT as well in the next few years. And of course, profitability in the Netherlands and Belgium will continue to grow. But this shows a clear path to profitability for Fastnaps. Next slide, please. Station economics continue to trend well. Organic sales growth, so sales on stations that were already operational in the previous period, grew by 22% year on year, almost in line with BV fleet penetration. So the relation to BFE fleet penetration growth, I showed two slides back, holds. We have some seasonality in energy costs and energy tax, which affected gross margin and operational even margin this quarter, despite increasing our sales prices. This I explain on the next slide in a moment. As always, we are not planning for high utilization at this stage. Getting higher utilization would be very easy. Just build smaller stations with less charters and don't expand our existing stations, then utilization quickly ramps up. However, we know that the BEV fleet will double over the next two to three years, which will double demand over the next two to three years. With such steep demand growth, we are catering for that demand, and accept a lower than optimal utilization right now to be able to welcome more customers and generate more revenue in the next two to three years. It is good to note that FastNet utilization is roughly two times higher than the average market utilization. That's also referenced to by Michiel in his reference to recharge in the Nordics. Then on the next slides, briefly on operational EBITDA margin. Our guidance is 35 to 40% for the year, and we are at 31% in Q1. This is due to seasonally high electricity prices in Q1, causing cost of goods sold to be 4.5 cents higher than the average in 2024, which has a 7% percentage point impact on the operational EBITDA margin in Q1. This impact is expected to reduce considerably with forward prices indicating lower energy prices. And if energy prices don't go down in line with this, we obviously have the flexibility to increase our sales prices if need be. Electricity taxes in the Netherlands increased for one January. Energy tax was always higher in the first quarter due to how the energy tax works. This Q1 effect increases with this tax change per one January. Also over the full year, there's an impact. We expect energy taxes to be circa one to two cents higher than before, given an impact of two to 3% on operational EBITDA margin. As such, we continue to expect operational EBITDA margin to be between 35 and 40% in 2025. Note that this is before any positive EBITDA effects from the German Highway Center. Let me now hand you back over to Michiel. Thanks, Victor.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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