Hello, good morning and a very warm welcome to this webinar Co hosted by LCP Delta and Improved Corporate Finance. My name is John Murray, Head of EVs at LCP Delta. And today we'll be discussing the European EV charging market and considering the question, is a consolidation era coming? The European EV market has witnessed huge growth over the last 10 years. Electric cars, once seen as a niche technology, are now out selling diesel cars almost 2 to one in Europe. And almost everywhere you look, you will see electric cars on our roads. It's just normal now. And yet we're still in the foothills on the journey to electric transport. EVs might account for almost 100% of new car sales in Norway, but in terms of cars on the road in Europe, fully electric still only accounts for around about 3% for the more generous. Subsidies for Ev's have been removed in most countries and instead it's the car makers that are now facing strict emission regulations or face paying large fines. The cost of Ev's is coming down, but to enable the continued growth of Ev's we need a widespread, reliable and affordable EV charging network. Hundreds of billions of EUR will be is needed to be invested in the EV charging infrastructure over the next 10 years. And most of this will have to come from the private sector. And that's why I'm delighted that we're having this discussion today focusing in on the questions related to the finance of the EV charging industry and really delighted to be joined by three of the leading voices in this space. Right before we get into the discussion, just a very brief bit of housekeeping. What you can see in the screen in front of you and you'll be able to see the slides and the videos of the speakers. The webinar is being recorded and will be emailed to you tomorrow to watch, to watch back and and to share with your colleagues. You'll also see a resource list on the bottom left hand corner of your screen where you're able to access additional materials. And most importantly, we really encourage you to ask us questions and there's an ask a question feature in the navigation tab. Please feel free to submit questions at any time and we will come to those at the end. We might even come to one or two of those during the discussion as well. And finally, you're also able to customize your view by moving and resizing the different windows within your screen. So at housekeeping. Daniel Lyons, welcome. Good morning, managing partner at Improved Corporate Finance. Can you go ahead please with introductions? Hi, John, thank you. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here with you and to Co host this very relevant and timely conversation about the future of the EV charging industry. So thanks for Co hosting it with us. And joining us today are some very esteemed speakers from the EV charging industry. I'm delighted to have both Ian Johnston and Massimo Resta on the webinar with us today. Ian is the CEO of Osprey Charging, one of EU KS leading and fastest growing networks of rapid electric vehicle charging points with over 13,000 live stations across the UK. Ian was also the inaugural Chair of Charge UK, which is the UK advocacy group for the EV charging industry and it represents the views of the sector to government and other stakeholders. So thank you, Ian, and welcome to our webinar this morning. And joining Ian is Massimo Resta, who's a partner of Zu Capital and it's a london-based private equity firm specializing in clean infrastructure and renewable energy, where Massimo focuses on investments and sectors including solar, waste, energy storage and particularly specializing in EV charging infrastructure. Zuk has invested across a number of different platforms and a number of different segments in EV charging, including Insta Bolt, which the exited to EQT be power zest believe EO charging and charging. So thank you, Massimo, and welcome to the presentation this morning. And I think with both of your voices in the room as both an operator and an investor, we'll have a range of perspectives to to inform the conversation, perhaps to set the scene. John, I'll hand the mic back to you and you can take us through a few perspectives on the sector from LCP Delta. And after that, we can then open up the conversation and explore some of the themes in the title. So, John, to you. Yeah, thank you, Daniel. And actually just before we get into the the content proper, I'm, I'm aware that we've got to, we're bringing together various different audiences and maybe not everyone is familiar with, with improved corporate finance and with, with LCP. So just a few words. First of all on LCP Delta. Firstly, our parent company LCP and one of the largest consulting partnerships in the UK with over 1200 people. And collectively we're advising over 900 clients, including almost half of the 5100 companies. LCP Delta is the energy transition practice of LCP. For over 20 years, we've been providing deep market research opinion, strategic advice to clients that are are investing in and navigating the energy transition. And on the EV charging side, we have our EV charging research service where we're providing our clients with market data, forecasts, customer research opinion focused on the European EV charging industry. And just in the last three years, we've supported over 60 different auto OEMs, energy companies, chocolate manufacturers as investors and so on. And some of the slides that are we presenting in a few minutes are taken directly from that EV charging research service. And just a few words on our dedicated clean energy investment team, whose job it is to support the deployment of capital across the energy transition value chain, including the EV charging space. This team is supporting clients with pre investment advice, commercial due diligence, value creation, growth strategy support. And you can see on the slides just a few of the clients that we've supported with these topics in recent times. Daniel, do you want us to say a few words as well by way of background to improve corporate finance? Always take the opportunity for a bit of marketing. Thank you, John. Yeah. So for those of you that are not familiar, improve corporate finance. We're a boutique. And. And corporate finance, specializing in M&A and fundraising in the climate tech sector. And we, we focus on three sub verticals within that space. And you can see them represented as the Venn diagram on the page there, technology, energy and mobility. And it's actually at the intersection of those 3 themes where we have done most of our work over the last few years. And as you can see on the right hand side, we've been involved in over £4 billion or EUR worth of transactions, over 100 landmark deals that we've been advising on. And most of our work is cross-border and international. And we're perhaps most well known for some of our our work in EB charging. And here's just a few select examples of some of the transactions that we've been involved in across the EB charging value chain. So you can see that spans CP, OS and asset heavy businesses like the sort that Ian is representing today, hardware manufacturers, software providers and the turnkey solution providers as well as energy management. So across the value chain. And we, you know, we have a a well and breadth of experience in the kind of investor sentiment and in perspectives from the investor and acquisition community, which we hope to bring to the conversation today. So with that, John, I'll hand back to you and then we can set the scene a little bit and then open the discussion. Yeah. Thank you, Daniel. So yeah, I'm just going to send it in, present a few slides just now. First of all, looking back at the last few years and then looking forward to what we expect to see when it comes to the, the roll out of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. And we, we plan to talk for, well, the, the, the webinar is an hour long and we'll have 10 minutes at the end for, for AQ and a discussion after the paddle discussion. So first of all, I wanted to look back and what we've seen over the last five years. Back in 2019, there was a little over half a million new EVs sold across Europe. That's including fully electric passenger cars, plug in hybrids and also ELCDS, electric fans. And, and by 2023, as you can see in the chart and this number had grown to over 3 million new EVs being sold at a compound annual growth rate of 52%. So we've seen really strong growth in, in a quite a short space of time. But of course, I think most people on the call will be familiar with what happened last year 2024, a really tough year frankly for the EV industry with flat growth even I think a a slight decline in in EV sales compared to the the previous year. What caused this? Well, a result of subsidy cuts, particularly in Germany, electricity price rises, high inflation, rising interest rates, which really put the brakes on the growth of the the uptake of EVs. And during the course of 2024, despite all that we have as an industry passed through to quite significant milestones, albeit arbitrary numbers, But I think initiative of, of the growth that we've seen over the last years. And just in the last few weeks, I believe we have passed through the the the landmark of 15,000,000 EVs on the road in Europe. And, and we reported on this about a month ago and the landmark of 1,000,000 public chargers have been now installed across all of Europe. So I think kind of indicative I think of the fact that the the EV industry in Europe has certainly come of age. And so it's a really exciting time to be involved in the industry. Of course, over the course of the last year or two, we've seen a shake out, perhaps consolidation in some sorts. And some of these companies that were very involved in the EV charging industry in the last years have decided to refocus or change strategies. Just some some example headlines there. I'm sure most people will be familiar with some of the things that we've seen in the industry over the last couple of years. So the shakeout has started and I guess one of the things we'll be discussing today is, is to what extent this will continue in the years ahead. So what's the market going to be looking like in in the years ahead? Well, I think it's safe to say that the second wave has already started and this is for the uptake of of new EVs. What's driving this? Well, the manufacturers. But I think it actually boils down to two things. First of all, at a European level and EU level, new stringent CO2 limits targeted at the auto OEMs that are now obligated to reduce the, the overall CO2 emissions of their of the new cars that we sell. But also enabled by the introduction of many more car models that are targeted at the the much more kind of affordable asset classes. And you can see just some examples of some of those cars on the screen there. And just in terms of Bev registration volumes, just in the first two months of 2025, you can see the growth compared to the same two months last year, plus 42% in the UK, plus 41% in Germany -1% in France. But that's partly because there was a really strong EV adoption in the first couple of months last year because of social support for lower income households getting EVs. And you can see the numbers for the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, really strong growth just in the last couple of months, A real consequence, I think, of those new CO2 limits that have come into play on the 1st of January. So I think it is fair to say that the second wave has already started. And in this chart here you can see our forecast for the the the growth in UED registrations across all of Europe out of 2035. But you can see this second wave in this five year period 2030 where we expect to see really strong growth coming once again. Of course, from our from our perspective, we're we're interested in the EVs, but we're even more interested in what that means in terms of the charging infrastructure. A very simple chart here, which is just showing you the the installed base of charge points across the different segments at the large orange segment is referring to charge points installed in the home. The blue bar is public and and the pink bar is, is the workplace. And you can see that clearly the, the large majority of charge points are being installed in, in, in the home. I don't, I don't think I'd say surprise to anyone. But if we look at this in terms of what this means in terms of the, the, the energy mix from a sort of an electricity delivered point of view. I just wanted to bring up this example which is focusing on the German market and it's showing the left hand chart is showing the the annual electricity demand by vehicle types. This is for fully electric cars, plug in hybrids and electric vans. Again growing from around 5 terawatt hours per year in 2022 up to about 9 terawatt hours this year and growing up to to to 58 terawatt hours by 2035. S really large growth into the how much energy is going to be required to to fuel these vehicles. And then on the right hand side, you can see what this means in terms of the the EV charging mix. And today or in the very recent history, almost 2/3 of that energy was coming from the home. And, but as you can see in the chart, this mix is going to evolve as an increasing number of EV drivers will not be able to charge at home and will need to rely on charging in, in public, for example. So public charging drawing from 31% up to near 40% by 2035 S the, the, the overall cake is getting a huge amount bigger in the next years and, and the share of that cake is going to be weighted ever more heavily towards public charging. How do we derive that this chart? Well, it's taken into account how many EVs we expect to be on the road, how many charge points we expect to be installed and look at the utilization rates of those public charging assets and, and all the charging assets actually to figure out where that energy is going to come from. So I think the, the, the, this is an example just for Germany. We've got the same, the same types of data for other countries. And I think it is initiative of how the, the market is likely to evolve over the next years ahead. So that's the content. And I think now I want to hand back over to to Daniel to, to start with the questions to, to open up the discussion to, to the wider panel. Well, thanks John, great tier and actually want to reflect a little bit on the message that you're delivering there, which is we're now entering the so-called second wave of EV adoption. And if you look at the shape of the curve that you've just presented, it's much sharper and and and, you know, goes faster than the first wave. Yeah, sitting in the chair I'm in. And I'm, I suspect the same for some of the others on this. Cool. At times it feels like the hype in the market is not what it was maybe a couple of years ago, maybe to Massimoni. And do you see the same thing? And what do you think might be behind that? Well, maybe that is the case and maybe that's actually a good thing for investors that are committed to this sector. But if you look at the fundamentals, nothing has changed. So if we need to decarbonise transport EVs is the only game in town. Infrastructure is going into the ground. We have seen it from the grass that have been shown. Just right now the investments are flowing. What I would say is that there are different type of investors that approach the market. So we are entering, if we want to create a buzz war, maybe we are entering to an era of conscious capital where whereby maybe a couple of years ago a number of investors entered the space with unrealistic expectation in with regards to the profitability or the ability to roll out this infrastructure. And and we're disappointed, but the ones that actually had more realistics, assumptions and perhaps broader shoulders are there to reap the benefits. Perfect. So no alternative. I take it from that Massimo, you don't believe in hydrogen and other low fuel alternatives as a way to get no. Not exactly. So I'm not an expert, but we've seen that we are approaching 50 million cars in on the roads in Europe. I think they are 5000 hydrogen cars at the moment. Plus hydrogen is, is very difficult to transport. There isn't a network yet and needs to be developed. Honestly, I, I, I don't see it as a credible threat at the moment for passengers cars, which is the vast majority of the cars that we're driving on our roads. And and honestly I don't see the reason why EV shouldn't be taken up. I appreciate that the existing OEM's might have an interest, but I think it's the wrong bet and many of them have already invested a large amount of money into EV platform so I don't I don't see why they should reverse this. This direct, not their direction. Yeah, it certainly seems where all the flow of capital is headed at the moment. But maybe, Ian, let's bring you into the conversation. How do you react to some of the messages that John just presented? We're entering the second wave, but fundraising and and securing capital to build out the infrastructure needed seems to be harder than it used to do. Are you muted? That's why we're getting Ian to unmute himself. Perhaps Massimo, you want to comment a little bit further around how do we solve this, this gap in the sense that we need more capital? But do you, do you believe that actually it's a it's a struggle? I think the capital is there. So what we need is to see other pieces of the puzzle falling into place. And I think it is happening. So on one side, we need cars that are more affordable. And this is happening, as we saw, because people don't necessarily switch to any PE going from Mafia 500 to a Tesla Model Y, right? So we need cars in the 20 to 25 €1000 pound, whatever you want to call it that are affordable and we need a more reliable infrastructure and more spread infrastructure to support the transition. And and these two things are happening and it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but it feels like the sales data that John was showing seems to suggest that the the transition is continuing to happen. Let let's remember. By the way that the seize trajectories is upward is up for EV cars in a market that is generally speaking down 20% in traditional cars. So I, I think considering what is happening in the economy, it is a very positive situation for, for EV cars and EV charging by. Yeah, the stats seem to suggest that the momentum is there indeed. I totally agree with that perspective and it's, but at times it feels like the capital is not following. Maybe Massimo, you've got a sorry Ian, are you back on now? Can you hear me now? Yes. Perfect. Good morning, Good morning. Yeah, great. Apologies. What I was trying to say earlier is that first thing in response to John's slides, I think I feel quite fortunate this morning to sit here in London where I whilst it's been a tough year for, for the whole sector across Europe, you know, we year on year last year EV sales grew over 20% in the car market that was only up 2%. So I think again to back up mass miss point, the data says that nothing is really changing in this world and the, the, the growth is still there to be seen. I think what we are seeing, Daniel, to your point on is the capital following and still feeling that that confidence is that quite clearly we've had we've had COVID, we've had war in Ukraine and this is all taking longer than we all thought it might do. And there's lots of people that raise a lot of money with very, very bullish business plans and growth numbers. And of course, reality is quite different. So now I think what's required in this space, regardless of what your model is, is the need to demonstrate a clear path to profitability. And I think that's where we're beginning to see a shake out from those that haven't been able to get to the scale or haven't been able to win those TRA contracts that allow them to demonstrate that that path does exist. It's a capital intensive business. So some people just run out of steam and and they and they are now facing the consequence. But the more professional, the more robust investors are, are properly there to stay. And I will read the benefit that maybe of the consolidation wave that is about to happen. One of the things that I mentioned in the in, in the slide there was, and one of the big drivers for growth was the, at an EU level, the, the new CO2 emission regulations, your, the, the, the cafe, Cafe regulations, which are mandated, not manufactured to sell, you know, more EVs essentially. I guess the equivalent in the UK is the, is the ZEV mandate sort of, you know, not dissimilar measure, but for, for, for both of those that there's currently your ongoing discussions, consultations about whether those should be watered down in some way or or pushed back. And Massimo, maybe to you first as an investor, how much confidence do you take in those regulations? Has been a really strong mandate that that is investable or is it that that you see the current uncertainty around those mechanisms as as a quite a serious threat? I, I certainly they will slow down a bit the penetration of EVs, but I wouldn't consider them as, as a threat because again, we need to consider that the transition is a, is a very complex undertaking and there will be people that are going to get hurt by the transition. And it's normal that the governments are trying to save the industry. Some of the Onms didn't see the writings on the wall and they are now struggling. But considering where we are, I think it's the instead of finding these Onms, it's better if they direct their their money to further investment in the industry to accelerate the transition as opposed to kill them completely, you know, with a back slash that that will will entire. So I think it's going to be a pragmatic solution. The reality is that they they need to face the the reality so that EVs are coming. The tariffs that we're imposing on Chinese car are a demonstration of that, because if people were not willing to buy electric vehicle, you wouldn't need these tariffs, right? These are we are, we're trying to protect our industry and allow it in cutting some stuff for them to transition. But it is inevitable that we're going to be driving EBS in a few years from now. I don't think that you can reverse a global trend. Yeah, you know, I totally agree that it's the other the, the, the trend, the long term trend is, is very much set in stone. I think certainly for, for, for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles. It's just, you know, what, what's the direction of travel and how fast, how fast can we can we get there? And, and, and Ian as as ACPO, I guess you, you're, you're campaigning for, you know, the, you know, the, the regulations to stay as they are. I mean, quickly some question marks around sort of what's going to happen in, in the next weeks and months perhaps. But I mean, how, how much is it as ACPO, are you influenced by these short term uncertainty and volatility versus actually just the, the knowledge that you know, the, the long term sector fundamentals are there and it's actually just a matter of time and, and not getting too sidetracked by what's happening in the here and now. Yeah, John, thank you. Look, I think with any new technological adoption, whether it's the mobile phone or the Internet, the, the, the line of growth is never a straight line. There will always be peaks and troughs and bumps and dips. So we're, we're in a, we may be in a dip last year, but I think the other thing that I think there's too much weight that's been put on the late the legislation and the regulation. Now there is no doubt that just like with renewables, the regulation and the and the and the subsidies and the schemes initiated much of this growth. But the reality now now is that there's two things going on. 1st, there's consumer demand and consumers want the product because it's a better product now. And that is now getting traction. But secondly, this is about global industrial strategy. You see Volkswagen launching a a 17,000 LB entry level EV with 250 miles is because they have to react well, the Chinese will kill them all. So I think the legislation, the regulation underpins the growth and it's important. But if, if, if there are tweaks to it along the way, what's happening now is that there are bigger factors at play in terms of demand and the competitive pressures from China, which are going to drive more affordable EVs, more EVs on the road. And, and the greatest impact of the discussion around the legislation is in 20-30, you know, hybrids are they allowed is not in the actual legislation. It's in that the the media coverage of it and the impact that 1000 consumers. So when when the UK government and the European governments made the decision and drew a line in the sand, whatever the regulation will be, the growth will continue in our view. So with all that optimism, which I share completely and I can I agree with everything you've just said there in around actually the way that the legislation is presented to the car buying public is almost as important as the legislation itself, in fact, even more important sometimes. The question here in the title of the presentation is all about consolidation in the industry. And we've heard from John and had a quick discussion at the start of this around perhaps the hype in the market is not where it was a couple of years ago. Yet we've seen the adoption figures continue. And we've just heard from both of you that actually there's a lot to be optimistic about yet. We are starting to see signs that consolidation is happening in the industry. And there are a few examples that John presented on his slides. Shell pulling out of home and workplace charging in Europe. EBA Global went bankrupt despite having a huge customer base in terms of customer service and operations. Across many Cpos around the world, various hardware players are pulling out of the industry, some of them big strategics. Why do you think this is? And what do you think might be behind some of that consolidation we started to see already? OK. Should I go ahead? I think what's what we're. Seeing. Go, go, go. Please, master, you go ahead I. Don't know if Co go. Yeah, sorry. I, I, I think what we're seeing now is what we knew there would always be. There will be winners and there will be losers and and we're starting to see the reality of that in this shakeout that's taking place. I think John or mass message at the start, there are lots of people that flew into this market wanting to make some quick money easily. And in reality, there were only ever going to be a certain number of players that were able to secure the contracts and correctly build the platform to deliver, yeah, a sustainable growth business going forward. So I think what we're seeing is completely normal. I also think most players in the sector would agree what we're seeing right now is a real positive for us. It's a maturing of the sector. And you know, we need, we need all the players in this space, need it to be sustainably profitable going forward. That means we need to stop the erratic, some of the erratic behaviors that we've seen in the early days as well. So I think most of us in the sector welcome the maturity or the shake out, as you call it. And, and unfortunately, there were some that didn't get far enough ahead to keep their head above the water to survive. And that that is what we're now seeing. I think some of the examples you gave there, Daniel, that there's probably larger geopolitical, geopolitical or corporate political reasons as to why some people are paying out certain sectors and others the businesses have have grown too quickly and they've got too far forward on their skis and a run out of cash, as Massimo said earlier. Yeah, Massimo, do you want to comment? While I can only get what you said, first of all, we need to distinguish what we're talking about because if EV, if we're talking about the manufacturing business of EV charges, for example, some companies went bust, you know, recently. I mean, this is a volume business is electronics. The Chinese I believe will dominate the market because skin is the largest market, is the largest producer and the largest market at the moment is in China. And I think it will enjoy economies scales and you know, it's only going to go one way. There will be a exception like I don't know Alpatronics there, there are some companies that would be the exception, but by and large would I think it would be dominated by the Chinese. If we look at the infrastructure play again is a difficult business because it's it's not about installing sockets in the ground, it's about entering into long term agreement with the holster that have called different commercial motivations. It's about running an infrastructure with very sophisticated, softer behind it, because these are all automatic shops. Essentially, you need to buy electricity, you need to sell electricity, you need to cut it for the consumer. It's a very sophisticated business, very capital intensive and if you approach it with a shorter view and not a lot of capital, you might get hurt. That is what is happening. So nobody has the crystal ball on when the transition will will happen, but it's clear it will take some years. So if you, if you enter the market expected to to be profitable in two years, I think you're going to be disappointed and. I think, I think it's clear that we're going to see a lot of change in the next 5 years. How that's going to manifest itself and when is some of the big questions. But there are thousands of CPO's across Europe if you include, you know, the, the, the much smaller players in, in Germany, for example. So I think, you know, consolidation will happen. I think we are already entering that era. But I guess my question is how do we see this unfolding? Will will it be the case that we'll see larger Cpos, for example, acquiring successful profitable smaller players that happen to have really prime locations and growing utilization rates? Or or will consolidation primarily be driven by financial distress with struggling CP OS running out of cash and essentially their assets being sold off to the highest bidder? Which of those two do you think is more likely do you think? I can share perspective if you like, John, given that we've been talking to many CP OS about this topic in the sense that it's, it's probably a combination of both, if reflecting what Ian said around there's a real stride for profitability and financial discipline. Acquiring a smaller competitor that is a cash drain on your business because it's not profitable isn't going to be the pathway to increasing or improving your own financial performance. So it's not as it's not the main reason for doing it. And so if they're in distress, there might be a reason for that. And we're seeing and hearing lots of discussions around purchasing assets rather than purchasing teams and purchasing businesses. And so that, that's something that we, we, we're starting to see and hear a lot of across Europe where smaller, perhaps underfunded or businesses that are running out of capital are looking for solutions. And the acquiring community, the bigger players are saying, well, look, we don't want that team. We don't want that overhead. But we're interested in those assets because we're quite interested in spreading our overhead, our existing business over a lot much larger in school. I think we'll start to see some of that model. I don't know Ian or Massimo, you're seeing the same from your perspective. Absolutely right. So the ones the ones that will run out of money will be a quite largely at the asset base level, right. So there will be there might be a competition on price if the locations they secure are particularly interesting. But whoever has already the infrastructure, the platform behind it will largely be interested in, in the assets in the locations. Overtime there might be some good platforms that find, let me say a committed investors that is willing to undertake and underwrite the growth of these small platforms to, to to grow them into national players. So you will see both and once they are successful, they might be acquired by a larger entity that are willing to do international play, for example, aggregating successful players across across countries. I think you will see a bit of both. Yeah, I think from sorry George, just to say, I think from our side there's in a in a spreadsheet, it often makes a lot of sense to add another charge for networks assets to your to your base. But I think there's also been an evolution in terms of the quality of the charging that's out there. So it, it, yes, it might in the short term add more cash contribution to your business, but I think also we've moved from a world of, you know, single lower power charging points to, you know, market leading charging hubs. And therefore, it's not always so simple that simply adding and acquiring a smaller CPO is, is net, net positive to to your business. I think must be used to a platform. I think for me, it does come down to platform. Of course, there's a long term cash value in each of the individual assets. But what makes something truly valuable is the way that the asset is operated, the way it's ran, the way your drivers are brought to that site through the larger platform offering. I think that is going to be the key determinant in what is a winner and what is a loser. It's not just having the asset, it needs to be the right asset and the right location that's being maintained and operated in the right way and with the drivers sent in the right way as well. And then my final comment is there was a question around do we think that we're going to see aggressive acquisition when, when certain businesses run out of money or or where we see a more natural consolidation? I think given the, the, the fact that we've established in this conversation that the investment world is, is hesitant at the moment. I think for the next six months for sure, if we're going to see consolidation, it's more likely to be investors taking advantage of people running out of money. At this stage. I think that people are waiting to see some blood on the dance floor. I think that's what we'll probably see in the next six months. And then after that, there'll be some more natural consolidation from that. That makes sense. If I reflect on your the first part of your answer Ian, which is you know for it to be an attractive acquisition target for a platform or ACPA like yours, it has to be good locations, good signs, well maintained, well performing well. That doesn't necessarily strike you as somebody that's about to go out of business and want to be sold or want to be acquired. That sounds like a great business, but it's the combination of those things with perhaps a realization that they don't have access to the, the funds or the capital to continue to scale. And that actually they might be better being part of a larger Organisation that's got the access to capital to, to continue to grow. And, and there's a, there's a better synergy. So it's what I'm hearing from you is it's not, you know, what we like to call bottom of the ocean fishing for, for legacy or bad CP OS. It's really the ones that are doing well but just need better access to capital or being part of a larger platform to accelerate. Agreed. And and just while we're on this topic, we're focusing really on the on the CPO market here primarily. And I want to ask a question about utilization rates and, and you know, I'm not going to ask you can a live on air to sort of, you know, to disclose any of your utilization rate figures. But I mean, essentially utilization rates are a function of the number of E VS on the road that are going to that that rely on public charge in versus the number of public charge points that are that are installed. And, and I think what what we've observed over the last one or two years and in many marks in Europe is that the roll out of the public charging infrastructure has actually gone more quickly than the uptake of of EVs and particularly among drivers that need to rely on on on using public charges. Many EV drivers today are still charging at home. So as a, as a consequence of that, we've seen utilization rates broadly flat line over the last two or three years or maybe even decline in some cases. And I, and I've said it many times before that actually it's a, it's a commercial imperative that utilization rates need to improve. Otherwise, investors are not going to continue to invest in the roll out of infrastructure because they're, they're, they're not profitable today, I think in most cases, correct me if I'm wrong. Have we reached this point already where, where investors are actually holding back distributing more cash to, to, to continue the rollout of infrastructure? Or are we still in this fairly, you know, early to the land grab phase where it's really important to secure those, those best locations? I think another part of the maturity that we're having as a sector is a deeper understanding of the behavior of utilization. You know, there's a widely accepted point now that when a new asset is installed, it takes a period of time to reach normalization, normal levels of utilization. Now when you couple that with the massive, massive rollout of infrastructure, there's been over Europe over the last year or year and a half in some cases, we may say, look, there's been over building. Versus the new car sales then when you, when you overlay the sheer volume of new assets that have gone on the ground with that maturity period, that explains the, as you said, John, I think some flatlining in some cases of of utilization. You went on to ask are we, are we seeing some investors pulling back on the rollout? I think we, we from our perspective here in the UK, we did see some of our competitors putting back in the second-half of last year. But I think again, this is all maturity. I love math, most phrase of conscious capital, it's sense more sensible capital, more conscious capital. But we need to make sure now we're building the right assets for the future, not just the highest volume of assets, not just the biggest sites, the biggest rollouts, you know, those those days have gone now. And now it's about building the sites for the future. When to be clear, we're in the UK, 3.6% adoption. So we're still trying to predict where the best sites will be in eight years time. But that's different because before everybody was head down. Just build as much as you can, as quick as you can and presume the cash will keep coming. Do you think the implication in that the market is too crowded in the UK? If you think about overbuilding and you know, do you see a lot of competition when you're trying to secure a new site? Do you think there's too many players? From AUK perspective, the market is less congested now than it was a year ago. I think we've seen some some people who were strong competitors to us stepping away in the last year because of all the facts that we've talked about so far. Those that didn't quite get to the scale, but yet we're still very aggressive in terms of their behavior because they were trying to make it. So. We've seen a decongestion of the market from AUK perspective here. Yeah, I just wanted to add a couple of comments. Overcapacity over construction, if that is the case, it's only temporary because big picture less than 5 to 7% of the infrastructure required to support the transitions we be has gone into the ground. So we are at the very beginning. So, and it will self, it will be self correcting as you said, because if you be able to be too much, the utilization will go down and people will start to slow down the the pace of rollout. But having said that, the companies that are in the space know what the attractive solution will, sorry, the attractive locations are and they will, there will be a tendency to, to secure dislocation before the market discovers them, right, if you want. So I think you will you will see maybe a subdued utilization for for sometimes, but it's natural and it's not a long term feature of the market I believe. So there is that. And secondly, coming back to the value of the platform, all locations are equal. So the companies are in this space know very well that the utilization that you see in some location could be five times the utilization that you see the others. So if you look at the average utilization that might be misleading because the good companies will have better utilization if they secure the right locations. So again, utilization, it might might be going down, but maybe because not all the people that know how to do their job right. Yeah. And sometimes it takes, it takes a while for a new site to achieve a level of utilization that's required. That's. For sure. Yeah. And it's, yeah, that's for sure. Six months. Six months for people to discover it, not to put on their mental map or maybe just to integrate it in their daily routine. That's what it is, right? So the average utilization across the whole network can I agree with you can often be a misleading statistic. And we often see this in investment cases, investment memorandums, etcetera. And actually you need to dig underneath it and understand what's the spread between the highest performance sites and the lowest performing sites. And then do some cohort analysis on which and more recent charges that perhaps are causing a drag on the overall average. And which are the ones that have been insight for a long period of time, but yet haven't achieved the potential that we that was originally expected. So there's quite some science that needs to go into what otherwise is a simple statistic. Exactly. And sometimes making mistakes is part of the game, right? So you learn from your mistakes. You you know this is a statistical game and you need to learn along the way what works and what doesn't and inform with these you know your your next decisions. So all the time the successful operator will get better utilization rates. That's what it is. Ian, to take you as an operator, I think it's fair to say that you've seen your costs go up over the last years, both in terms of energy procurement. So the opportunity that you're having to, to, to purchase standing charges may be quite UK specific, but quite a big increase I think in, in the network charges that you're having to pay. Of course in the UK. There's also the, the, the 20% that issue, which is kind of contentious thing for the EV charging industry in the UK. So there's been a big increase to your cost, which I guess is putting pressure on margins. On the other side that there's, there's the price that EV drivers are having to pay to access those chargers. You're paid whatever it is 75 times per kWh. How do you see, to what extent do you see there's the opportunity to bring down those costs with scale because presumably there is an element of scale and, and that will allow you to, to bring costs down on a sort of charge point basis. And to what extent will that allow CPO such as yourselves, but but not you specifically to to perhaps bring down the the the price to to charge using public charging assets? So I think one of the another factor of this sector being immature previously was that I think there were pricing behaviours sitting in our market which were long, long term unhelpful and destructive because I think some people got hooked on a drug that wasn't realistic in terms of some of the pricing that went into the market early. Charge in Scotland? Exactly. Yeah, thank you. So I, I think what we see, yes, you're right. The the costs of, of of running public rapid charging have increased a lot. But to answer with you, the, there's again been a maturity in the, in the behaviors of the Cpos in this regard. The electricity cost is a very small element. It's about 23% the raw electricity cost of, of what we're doing. So shifts in the global energy markets won't, won't have an impact on, on pricing or a margin in, in the main. I think again, you're seeing a maturity, you're seeing all the Cpos who are now established needing to either either to maintain profitability or to demonstrate a clear path to profitability. And that is the overriding determinant here on pricing for for EV drivers and for the the enthusiasts and the journalists to enjoy the level of EV charging costs they'd like to see. So you know, sub 60 etcetera, etcetera. Prices of 2021 and and beyond that would need structural changes in either UK grid costs, UKVAT or, or we need the UTA to get into some of the RTFO subsidy carbon credit schemes that some of our European peers on the call here and join. But at the moment we, you know, we don't, we're not dealing with an early adopter market now that we were a few years ago. We're not, we're not opening our emails every day to questions about the price. You know, utilization on a macro level is growing every day there's more and more drivers using the network. So no, look, we, I, I, we don't, it would take a structural change to deliver a significant price decrease. In fact, if you look at CPO behaviour in the last 18 months, it's going the other way. Yeah, Thanks, Ian. I think again where we're at with the time, I think we might move over to take some questions from the audience. So if you haven't already asked any questions yet and would like to then know the time to put your questions into the Q&A box. But let's come to a couple of these now. Daniel, have you, have you spotted any that you want to address so far to start with? Yeah, we just in the, in the spirit of the headline of the presentation today, the webinar around consolidation, there's been a few questions around what would be the characteristics of a perfect acquisition target for somebody like Osprey as ACPO who's expanding and maybe for Massimo, some of your holding companies have we've touched on financial discipline, but are there any other things that you'd like to see or hear when it comes to inorganic expansion? I think for us there's there's 42 things we look for. Firstly, because we've built a platform and we now have the O&M and network corporation function, but also we built our own back office. So we're not paying any of those costs that some of our competitors will be paying where we could bring in contracts that we we didn't secure in the past that are still attractive to us. They will not only be additive to our network, but obviously there'd be an immediate profitability benefit because we wouldn't have to pay all the operations cost that the small operator is currently paying. So I think where there's a site that well, there's a, a contract that net net adds value to our estate. And we know that overnight, the minute it goes onto our platform, it makes more profit than it did yesterday. That's really exciting for us. So again, you come out to the key question, how many of those are are out there at the moment? Yeah, pretty much the same answer, Pretty much the same answer. All our companies have their own platforms. So what we will be most interested in is attractive locations that maybe they've been secured by these companies that the target company and perhaps maybe commercial abilities in a specific niche of the market. But by and large is the locations that is what you are most interested in. And there was a question here from JB Hutchinson who asked, OK, what about any barriers to consolidation? Are there things that would, would would make it a little bit harder? You talked about technology you don't want to duplicate, but any other things that you need to be aware of, whether it's regulation, regional duplication, anything that you come across so far, Massimo? Barriers to consolidation. Maybe misalignment for example on actually that time? That like I said, it depends what you want to buy. So if you're clear what you want to buy and if you're interested in, in mostly the assets there and that many barriers, I mean these probably the transaction structure where by definition there might be duplications in the, the level of the all the of the companies that you want to avoid. And that is usually a difficult discussion, right? No, I don't think there are any major. But clearly, if we look at the assets, if the assets are in a good status, if they can be operated, it can be integrated in your own platform. Because if you're running your own platform, you want that to be on all your charges. And maybe the commercial agreement, the underlying commercial agreement because there are a number of people out there that just essentially bought their way into the market, entering into unsustainable contracts, right Paying too much the hosts or setting up unrealistic expectation about utilization so on and so forth for that that might not be attracted to buy essentially. So that was the feature of the early market where people thought that it could put together a few 100 charges and flip the company and therefore they were prepared to pay a realistic prices to the host of the infrastructure. So we've seen that probably. Yeah, you know we've seen that quite a few times. So I and and hopefully those days are over. There is always for any conscious CP, there is always a new entrance that is particularly enthusiastic say the oversight they they will go away. If you need to buy their their contracts, you might face a situation which these contracts are just unprofitable and you need to pass right or re discuss with the host a more realistic arrangement. Yeah. I'll just move on to one of the next questions. And there's a question posed which related to customer experience, user experience in an era of Apple Netflix, Monzo, is the lack of focus on user experience a misstep until the structure comes along and really, really nails the customer experience and and I guess actually just from my perspective, the. Maybe I should should let Iana comment first, but let me let me get this is one of the things that actually is a peculiar feature of this because people approached it initially a bit like renewables, right? You need to secure the land, you need to secure a connection, put a piece of keys on top of it. And here I'm in business reality is business too could not be to see type of business where you need to interact with clients that could put a comment on Facebook or X or something and destroy your business because there are experiences bad. So you need to invest a lot in the customer experience and make it very easy for them to locate and utilize this infrastructure. This is, this requires a lot of investment in software in on the commercial arm of the company that I would say initially has been underestimated and probably today distinguish the good from the bad, right the platforms out there. And certainly it requires a little bit more effort across the industry because in for example, interoperability is the big things that in Europe is mandatory. But I think in UK there is still some, some way to go to, to, to to facilitate the experience of an improving experience of customers. Yeah, up to you, you know. No, I completely agree. I think that, you know, we, I, I think it's quite unfair to say that the, the charging networks and the hardware manufacturers are not focused on, on customer experience. I mean, people again hold this very high bar of the Tesla, you know, world experience where they get to control all relevance of the, of the pie. We're trying, we're trying to provide a, a charging networks and charging hardware that works on every single vehicle, whether it's from China or the US and we need the OEMs to come to the party in terms of that. So I think that there's no doubt that there is a huge opportunity to enhance that experience. As Massimo says, This is why the businesses are investing a lot of money in software and their software team, so we can interact and make that transaction smoother. But again, this is a key. This is again, it's a key maturity point that the businesses that are surviving and are excelling are the ones that have got this early and are reacting to it. And we have to be skilled and we have to have the software systems to react to whatever the OEMs eventually align on slug and charge, auto charge, whatever it is we will deliver for the. Yeah. I don't know if you jumped out about there Ian, but I think the message was clear in the sense that technology agnostic you're going to provide the best, your strive to provide the best customer experience over time. And we've probably got, John probably got time for maybe one more question before we before we wrap things up. Is there one that you've spotted that you want to ask for for for our panelists here? Yeah. Well, let's end with a fairly open question. What was 20-30 look like from an EV charging infrastructure perspective? So industry perspective, so five years time was it going to look like? I mean, we can just each share our quick perspectives on, on what the industry will will, will look like. Then. I mean, I think from my perspective, if I start and I think there, there will be a much bigger focus on, on the customer and, and, and the topics around reliability, having really nice places to charge, which are just seamless when it comes to that whole driver experience. But we're clearly seeing a trend towards higher power charging. So I think that will become the norm, not just on the infrastructure side, but the cars will be capable of taking much higher power charging in those public charging sectors. So I think as we, as we're now in, in this stage of actually the early mass market, I think having that focus on the customer is going to be really important. And I think that will that will manifest itself in, you know, high reliability, higher power and much more in the way of, you know, convenience. But but interesting to get the views on on the wider panel on on this as well. Ian, you go next then Massimo. OK, Yeah. I, I think, I think again there will be winners and but the difference isn't by 20-30 there will have been winners in the different lanes of the sector. So there will be people who've won at on street charge and there'll be people who've won AC charging, public charging or motorway charging. But I think that's the key point right now is there's been many players. You've got business plans where they were going to win everything. And what's clear is we're seeing the shakeout taking place now. You needed to get far enough ahead in your lane to be able to win in that lane now. So I think we're going to see a quite defined marketplace across the different sectors because they're very, very different business models. And I'm sure even within, uh, the companies that Massimo's invested in, there are very different structures and models within those different businesses. Whilst we're all in public charging, I think that's that's what will become more defined as we go forward. OK, I'll give you 2 two things. One more practical. I think people will Realise that installing charges at home or in private locations, a lot more complicated people Realise. So a lot more energy will be sold for the public charges. So that is one point that we've seen already the trends in your slides in Germany. But more importantly in 20-30 this there will be a lot more cars in the road and these networks will will start to turn a lot of cash. And I'd like to think that the big investors will Realise that these networks are quite valuable and it's not that easy to build them because it requires decades sometimes and a lot of investment in people, in processes, in software and so on and so forth. And they will look around for the best in the industry. To why I'd like to think of some of that would be no portfolio. We will be able to sell them. But I'm a private equity, right? So, yeah, that's what I believe. Yeah. These will be very valuable assets in five to 10 years. I agree with you. I agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you, Maxima. What I expect that we will see is the maturing of the sector driven by a growth in utilization across the board, which will mean that we'll see a new type of investor taking more interest in the sector, particularly core plus and core infrastructure. Whereas previously it's been characterized by value add strategies in infrastructure. And I think that will be an exciting development over the. The next half decade or so, unfortunately, we're now at time. So I'll turn back to John to maybe say one or two closing remarks. But thank you to Ian and Massimo for your time so graciously afforded to us and for all of the participants for their excellent questions. Thank you for having us. Yeah, Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Thank you, Ian. And you said it. So thanks everyone for attending. 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