One of the UK’s largest charger companies is facing a fight for its future, after the slowdown in EV take up wiped more than £10 million from its market value overnight.
On the release of its 2024 results, which revealed a £7m shortfall on its revenue target of £60m, Pod Point’s share price fell 41%.
The EDF-owned company, which has installed 250,000 chargers since 2009, blamed its downbeat forecast on the UK government’s recently launched zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate review, saying this is causing uncertainty and worsening an already “challenging backdrop”.
In real terms, it said this meant fewer private buyers were choosing EVs, resulting in a drop in sales of its chargers during 2024.
CEO Melanie Lane said that although Pod Point “achieved a lot in 2024 against a difficult market backdrop”, it “proved to be a transitional year in terms of our financial performance”.
She continued: “We made good progress on our costs but the weaker-than-expected private EV market has negatively impacted revenues.”
Pod Point’s troubles shed light on some of the key challenges shared by all parts of the EV market as it feels its way towards 2030 – by which date 80% of a car manufacturer’s total sales in the UK must be electric, up from 28% in 2025.
Like designing and building EVs, developing EV infrastructure costs a lot of money, and investment plans are hit by any slowdown in demand.
“No charging operators are making a profit today,” said Ben Fritsch, head of growth at Connected Kerb. “We’re all investing to meet future demand.”
Connected Kerb installs chargers in areas where driveways are a rarity but the population is large enough to justify an investment. Pod Point, meanwhile, installs chargers at homes and workplaces. They are two very different businesses, but both are spending big in expectation of better times ahead.
Last month, the government announced that Connected Kerb, which has 100,000 subscribers, will be given £55m from the National Wealth Fund. A further £10m will come from Aviva Investors, one of the company’s investor partners.
“We doubled our charging network last year, from 3500 sockets available to 6200, so we’re capital-hungry,” explained Fritsch. “We need this £65m to keep going as we work to almost quadruple the size of our network to almost 40,000 by the end of 2027.”
Of the 9000 chargers that Connected Kerb has installed so far, 6000 are operational while a little under 3000 are dormant, some of these ready to go live when demand justifies it and others waiting for power to become available.
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