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ADS-TEC Energy PLC (ADSE)

Q4 2024 Earnings Call· Mon, May 12, 2025

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Transcript

Thomas Speidel

Operator

Yeah, thank you, Dennis. Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear investors, thank you for joining today. Let me just go to the agenda. We have prepared today to present a review of the full year 2024 about how we want to strengthen the partnership with our existing and new customers and what we believe can be done in further and accelerating revenues, especially recurring revenues. And we want to present our strategy for Europe and North America. And after that, I will hand it over to my colleague, Stefan, the CFO, who will take you through the financials. And then we will sum it up and be open for Q&A. Let's go to the review for the full year 2024. First of all, I'm really pleased and happy to say that first time ever we can announce a positive cross-profit and also a positive adjusted EBITDA for the full year, and that is what we said. And so, we are happy that we have been able to deliver that. Also, a prediction of what we always said is that service and recurring services will get more and more important. And so, we can see that last year the service revenues almost tripled to EUR5.6 million. It might be not the very highest number, but it's growing and it's significantly growing. And so, we always explain that we start with hardware, with the eco-platform, and then with the hardware and the operations services will come in. We have last year increased our customer base by more than 200%, so more than doubled to 55 customers across Europe, U.S., and Canada. Customer, in this case, means that they have ordered, from ADS-TEC and at least got the first units, from ADS-TEC. We are focusing on a long-term resilient business model, and we explained…

Thomas Speidel

Operator

Thank you for the question. So, the opportunities, I think they are still the same. So, we see the transformation is ongoing, and it will not stop. We see that worldwide, even if we are concentrating now on Europe, North America. So, the opportunities are the same. And even what we see now is that EVs are coming back. We saw that last year it was a little bit going down. Now, we see that it comes back. So, we don't have any hints that the transformation can be stopped. That's a very important thing. And so, flexibility will be key. Not only the renewables with photovoltaic and also wind and others, but also on the consumer side, on the demand side, we see more and more need for flexibility. And that is why also the large-scale battery storage comes in more and more. We see that flexibility gets prices, and it's a highly regulated market. So, and that is maybe something about the challenges. So, we are facing a very diverse situation. So, not even Europe, but even Germany, is just one region. It's split up in many, and it's split up in many different regulated zones. And now, ADS-TEC comes into place. Ability to act, I'm mentioning all the time. That is why it's so important because we can adjust the system, the operation, the software to the local needs. And it's not just having one component in a container and ship it from wherever to Germany or to Europe or to the U.S. It's about the whole scope. And it's an end-to-end business, and it's not for three years. It's for 10 years or even more. And so, the opportunities are still the same. And the challenges, I would say, they are opportunity for us because we can manage the challenges by following the demand and by having the ability to act. Nevertheless, we saw also some difficulties in the press, in the news. So, charging in some segments was under pressure, and we see that as well. And we see that some customers having delays in installation, that the market is, I would say, paused a little bit in some regions. But the overall red line is still the same. Dennis Müller: Thank you very much. There's another question, not the same, but it's, could be one addition to that. How do we see the competition with regard to the large corporations in the same business?

Thomas Speidel

Operator

Well, what are the large corporations in the same business? We are not a utility. We never want to be a utility. We are serving utilities in the big companies. So, we see ourselves rather in the second row by being a very strong partner. And now, with the expansion of our business in owning and operating the units and taking care about a very complex operation model, that is our business. And we are not trying to be the Google for the next energy system because we believe that it's more decentralized. It's more, a case-by-case. I always said it's like a fingerprint. So, we are not seeing corporations, where we could say, the winner takes it all, but rather see, who can enable others to participate in the business. And therefore, you need the technology. That's what we do. It could take a little bit longer because that's very complex. And please, realize that also regulation and politics are playing a big role. We see that now last year, we lost our government in Germany before the regular election time ended, and we have a new government in the U.S. And with these changes, you always get impact on the regulation. This is also an opportunity for us, but it did slow down also some of the integrations. And to answer the question, we don't see that there is one big player; rather, the big ones are looking for companies like us, who are able to help them and to support them on the long run. Dennis Müller: Great. Thanks a lot. There is another question regarding the large-scale BESS project. Can you provide some view on the financials for the large 500-megawatt project? Who has this been signed with?

Thomas Speidel

Operator

It's not signed. As I said, it's under development. So, what we did now and that is how you do the business. So, we want to, the, we do not want to sell just batteries to somebody who is taking the role as an EPC and operating the units. In this case, we are developing the project ourselves. And the first step of doing that is that you have to secure the sites. And there is no project without sites, and the sites have to be close to a grid access, which is strong enough. And so that took some months now to get that done. And this first step, we have closed now. So, we have access to the sites. And the next steps will be that the application for the grid access can be fulfilled. And if you are in this business, then you know that can take some months. So, we expect that during 2025, we would get that second very important step being closed. And then the next step will be then talking about the financials. And of course, we will then communicate the details also with potential investors. Because, as you can imagine, these kinds of projects have a high demand for CapEx, and they are running for more than 10 years now. And so that's a long-term business. And so, we believe that it's very important for ADS TEC to be in that market. We have been there. Remember 2015, we have been the first commercial -- we got the first commercial frequency regulation power plant as an EPC. ADS TEC provided that to Starcraft, which is a Norwegian utility, a huge one. And that's up and running until today. And we have some 100-megawatt hours installed base in different applications. And we want…

Thomas Speidel

Operator

Thank you very much for your time. Thank you and for your support.