Easee went half a billion in plus after three years of operation.
The Stavanger company Easee missed the target, but quadrupled revenues and passed the billion NOK revenue (€100m) by a good margin last year. Now the real chase for growth begins.
Last year, the young Norwegian electric car charger company Easee set a hair- raising goal of selling 550,000 chargers. Pandemic and component shortages ensured that they only managed half. Last year, the company produced 300,000 chargers, and sold 250,000 of them.
However, the accounts do not look so bad. In line with the trend for the previous two years, the company is delivering cannon growth in turnover and solid figures. Easee itself reports NOK 1.4 billion in revenue and a profit of half a billion kroner before tax.
In comparison, the turnover was NOK 377 million in 2020, and the result was NOK 90 million.
We have come out of it strengthened. We will be at the forefront, and try to plan even further ahead, says founder and general manager Jonas Helmikstøl about how the company is positioned after last year’s challenges.
Scary
In addition to the worldwide lack of components, Easee also had to deal with growing pains, including overloading the system and a subsequent relocation process to Amazon’s server solution (AWS).
Now we will always make sure to be at the forefront, both when it comes to hiring and the way we design our cloud infrastructure, says Helmikstøl.
One result of that strategy is that Easee has units and components in stock, even though the delivery of such has been postponed well into 2022. The reason is that the company placed large orders early, up to a year in advance.
– How do you assess the risk of buying so much, so early?
– I’ve known it for a long time. Until August last year, when things started to go a little better. It’s scary, because it’s not a given that it’s going as well as it does.
New billion goals
Thus, it is now time to set new goals. Helmikstøl does not save on gunpowder. This year, the company aims to sell one million charging boxes, and have a turnover of between 5 and 7 billion kroner.
Given that the margins are about the same as today, the company will steer towards a profit before tax of between NOK 1.5 and two billion if they succeed.
The margins are a result of the way we have planned scaling. From day one. As well as the way we have built up the product, completely new thinking, and how our volumes also help to reduce costs in several areas, says Helmikstøl, and mentions supply chains, purchasing, production and logistics, cloud infrastructure and 4G, as well as customer support such as examples of it.
We are constantly working to reduce our costs and to make things even smarter and better.
According to the entrepreneur, the new products and services Easee plans to launch in the future will enable such a margin.
– That said, we are very concerned about not milking our customers, says Helmikstøl, and points out that last autumn the company halved the price of the product Easee Charge for housing associations.
Because we thought it was most fair and we saw that we could do it.
Demanding start to the year
The start of the year, on the other hand, has been demanding. Despite the preparations Easee has made, they notice that there is still trouble in the component and production stages.
– There are 700 components in the product, so bottlenecks appear, Helmikstøl admits.
The goal for the first quarter they can already just forget.
– Now we look at the second and third quarters. But we have been out so early to place orders, have a good reputation, and are starting to get big volume. Then we will be given priority, the entrepreneur assures.
Helmikstøl also says that the company now has good equity, and will grow organically in the future. Thus, the door is closed for interested investors.
Will spend “hundreds of millions” on infrastructure for electric cars
Burning hot market
Easee is not the only Norwegian electric car charger company that has gained momentum in recent years. Zaptec, which Helmikstøl broke out of to start for itself, is running so fast on the stock market.
This week, Zaptec presented key figures for the fourth quarter. They showed that sales last year more than doubled, to NOK 488 million. This corresponds to 122 percent growth from 2020, reports Finansavisen . More and more sales are made abroad.
How do you assess the competition?
As it has been now, we see that our products are getting better and better, and we are getting stronger and stronger, for example in the market for housing associations. The advantage of having a smart charger is that it can be updated continuously. The competitors are there, but you have to scale the supply chain . Many have struggled there, says Helmikstøl.
He emphasizes that he does not want to talk about other individual players in the market.
We are not so afraid of competitors. We focus on ourselves. As long as we do it, have the culture we have, and value is created for the customers, I am happy.
Source shifter.no
https://shifter.no/nyheter/easee-gikk-en-halv-milliard-i-pluss-etter-tre-ars-drift/232378