Hello, welcome to the Alfen 2023 Q1 trading update call. My name is Laura and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Marco Roeleveld, the CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you, Laura. Good morning to this webcast regarding the 2023 first quarter trading update of Alfen. We appreciate the fact that you've taken the effort to participate. The webcast and the questions that may come forward are handled by the management board of Alfen, being Jeroen van Rossum, CFO, Michelle Lesh, CCO, and myself, Marco Roeleveld, CEO. In this first quarter, we have increased our Q1 revenue with 90% and 2023 will be for Alfen the breakthrough year for Energy storage systems with a revenue growth of 280%, 285% in Q1. Next, we will go in more detail regarding our financials and outlook.
We now continue with slide three with the highlights of the first quarter of 2023. In this quarter, we realized EUR 113.2 million in revenue. This represents a growth of 90% compared to the same period of last year. This growth was driven by growth of 22% as market solutions and especially by Energy storage systems with 4x the revenue compared to the same quarter of last year. The European EV charging market is still hampered by destocking in the distribution channels, leading to a temporarily slowdown of our EV charging revenue. The overall gross margin was 32.1% compared to 35.7% in the last quarter or the same quarter of last year. This is purely driven by a shift in business line revenue mix towards Energy storage systems.
As a percentage of revenue, the EBITDA declined from 17.9% in the first quarter of last year to 12.7% in the same quarter this year. For the Smart grid solutions revenue, it is notable that we will be awarded a long-term contract with Stedin, being the Netherlands third-largest grid operator. We will confirm our 2023 full year revenue outlook of EUR 540 million-EUR 600 million, supported by strong backlog in Energy storage systems exceeding EUR 165 million, of which a major part is expected to be executed in 2023. Lastly, I want to mention that we have set new medium-term financial objectives during our Capital Markets Day last week, Wednesday. Jeroen will go in more detail on the financials later on in this presentation.
In the coming three sheets, we go into a little bit more detail on each of our business lines. We start on sheet four with EV charging equipment, where in Q1 the revenue was EUR 47 million, being 14% less than in the same period last year. I would like to note that in Q1 2022 was an extraordinary quarter with extremely high demand for EV charging stations as COVID-19 mobility measures were coming to an end. The market still faces excess in inventory in the distribution channels, particularly in the home segment. The destocking takes longer than we expected. We do expect the market to improve after summer due to positive signals we have from our customers and increase in battery-equipped vehicles that are registered.
In the market of battery-equipped vehicles, we saw a 33% growth in Europe in Q1 compared to the same quarter of last year. In the first quarter, approximately 65% of our revenue was generated outside of the Netherlands. In production-wise, we produced 43,800 charge points, a decline of 32% compared to the same period last year, where we produced 64,600 charge points. The gross margin for EV charging equipment amounted to 41%. We now continue to sheet five with smart grid solution, where the revenue was 20% higher than in the same period last year and amounted up to EUR 41.7 million. Both grid operators and private network businesses contributed to the revenue growth.
We continue to see a long-term growth trend in Smart grid solutions underpinned by electrification of society's electrical energy needs. The grid operators announced sustainable higher ambitions in their 2022 annual reports to roll out substations into until 2030. The production in Q1 was 777 substations, an 8% decrease compared to last year in the same period. The start of production for the new substation for Liander. The Liander contract caused a lower number of substations produced in Q1 2023, and we also see a trend towards higher value substations. The gross margin for Smart grid solutions amounted up to 31%.
We go now to sheet six regarding Energy storage systems, where in the first quarter, the revenue was EUR 24.5 million, an increase of 285% compared to EUR 6.4 million in Q1 last year. This increase in revenue was driven by both stationary applications and our mobile applications. The momentum in the energy storage market continues to grow, and our backlog is growing significantly due to new commitments, and is now exceeding EUR 165 million. The gross margin for the energy storage amounts to 18%.
This is at the lower end of the 15%-80%, to 15-30% provided at the Capital Markets Day, but, due to the relative high portion of large stationary projects in Q1, this is, more or less expected, but as, and we expect also in the remaining part of the year, this will balance out. Our CCO, Michelle Lesh, will now continue with the most relevant market developments.
Thanks, Marco. We'd like to quickly share some of the market insights across our business units. We shared some of these last week at our Capital Markets Day. Today we wanted to use them as some additional context for Q1. First, in EV charging, what we do is regularly look at our customer base and want to be sure that we're both keeping our loyal customers as well as adding new customers. What we saw is that when we looked at our top 50 customers from the last few years, we see that 98% of them are continuing to place orders in the last six months. While the order volumes may be of a different magnitude, we still see customer retention. Second, we continue to see growth in our smart grids business, and we'll be awarded a long-term agreement with Stedin.
This agreement's in the final stages of signing. It'll be a four-year framework contract similar to our other grid operators, with the option for additional two-year extensions for a total of potentially eight years, and we'll see 50% of that contract. Third, we continue to see the momentum build in Energy storage, as Marco mentioned, and is evidenced by our strong backlog, where we've got line of sight to more than EUR 165 million that will mostly convert this year and into 2024. Fundamentally, we see really strong market developments in each of our business lines and expect that long-term trends will support our continued growth. Now I'd like to hand it to Jeroen to talk through our financials.
Thank you, Michelle. Let's first have a quick look at the Q1 financials. Our revenues increased from EUR 95.5 million in the first quarter last year to EUR 113.2 million in the first quarter this year. An increase of 19%. This growth was driven primarily by Energy storage systems with a growth of 285% and our Smart grid solutions business with a growth of 22%. As Marco addressed earlier on in the presentation, the EV charging revenue decreased and is still hampered by de-stocking in the distribution channels. The gross margin decreased from 35.7% in the first quarter last year to 32.1% in the first quarter this year, which is purely driven by a shift in the business line mix.
The adjusted EBITDA decreased from EUR 17.1 million, which was 17.9% of revenues last year, to EUR 12.7 million, which was 11.2% of revenues this year. This is caused by a lower blended gross margin percentage and a decreasing EV charging revenue, which creates deleverage in this quarter. We achieved three out of the four financial objectives set at the time of the IPO in 2018. We felt it was time to set new medium-term financial objectives, which have been announced last week at our Capital Markets Day, and we rephrase them here. Let me first start by defining the medium term. That is three to five years, meaning in a time span of 2025 up to and including 2027. From a revenue perspective, we want to achieve a revenue of at least EUR 1 billion.
Next to that, we want to keep the adjusted EBITDA in the range of mid to high teens, meaning between 15% and 20%. Next to these quantitative objectives, we have a couple of more qualitative objectives. We feel we are well-positioned to continue to outperform the market growth in all of our business lines. We want to not only support sustainability through our product portfolio, but also through reducing our own CO2 footprint by adopting Science Based Targets initiative-based targets. We continue to be asset light, but we will continue to invest in new developments to stay at the technology forefront. Of course, this cannot be done without an excellent workforce, and thus we will continue to grow and educate our people. From the new medium-term objectives, we now go to the outlook for 2023 on the next slide.
What we see is that the transition to a carbon-free energy system that is not dependent on fossil fuels is building ever more momentum across Europe. In addition to that, the energy transition is a priority for the European Union, reflected in stimulative policy towards 2030. Therefore, we continue to anticipate long-term positive market developments for all of our business lines and continue to invest in our organization, production facilities, and in innovations for the future. From a revenue perspective, we reconfirm our 2023 full-year revenue outlook in a range of EUR 540 million-EUR 600 million. Currently, we do expect it will be more likely to end up in the lower half of the bandwidth than in the upper half. We are now at the end of the presentation, where I will hand over to the moderator for any questions.
Moderator, could you please take over?
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll now take our first question from Ruben Devos at Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. I've got a question on EV charging. I think in the press release you mentioned that European EV charging market is still hampered by destocking in the distribution channels, and obviously you flagged that in February, and now we see the impact, which of course, if you compare it to what consensus was forecasting is quite more pronounced impact than what was forecasted. How do you see maybe your performance relative to where the market is? I believe you also talked about your ability to continue gaining market share this year. Is that still what you expect? Thank you.
Yeah. I think when we look compared to market, we've done some internal analysis on country by country, segment by segment. You know, we don't feel that we're losing share. I think what we really see is the stock levels with our resellers, primarily for the home segment. In the public segment, that's driven by tenders. We still see tender volume.
We're still winning tenders. In the business segments, that's project driven, so units are ordered to support a project, but the project volumes tend to be smaller than the home volume. We really do feel that it's just a time lag and inventory destocking challenge. Then I think over time, we will see that start to pick back up. We see in Q1, for example, 33% increase over Q1 of last year. As we get into the second half of the year, we do see a time lag in registrations versus infrastructure, that it will start to come back in the second half.
Okay. Okay, but basically the idea is that EV sales, and we said it in February that would grow at 20%, right? If you look at EV charging infrastructure and private charging, basically the idea could be that you're still growing 15%-20% as well this year. If you're now down 40% in Q1, and you only expect a recovery as of September, is it then, I mean, it's then quite hard to believe that you still would gain share, right, this year? Is that a fair assumption?
Yes, that's a fair assumption. I think what you saw in 2022 is there was such an outperformance that in some of our markets, as we've done the analysis, we actually outperformed for more than a one-year timeframe. From a 2022 including into 2023. Yes, I think that's a fair assessment.
Okay, thank you. Just on the 30 kW DC charger, which you expect to launch in H2, could you maybe share the progress on how far you're advanced in this? You know, if you think about maybe R&D, but also regulatory compliance and certification, maybe your production readiness, you know, and sort of sales and marketing strategies you've put in place. Any update on sort of getting this new product live, it would be very helpful. Thank you.
Now in the safe stage to do all, say, certification testing, where we are, say, at 90%, done, for, say, the product to have the technical compliance to all the different regulations. We now more or less, have run our first, let's say, what we call then, say, serial production number to validate that we have all part numbers in the bill of material, that we can do the test at the certifying bodies. After summer, we will start up, say, the first production.
We also will, in that level, are in discussion with, say, what we call them, maybe not launching customers, but customers where we can start more or less, validating that all elements in the product are really meeting the demands of the product, so that we can, step by step ramp up production, but also, tune, I would say, commercial activities in the second half of this year.
The demand was driven by our existing customer base. From a go-to-market perspective, we'll maintain our current channel structure, and this will really help build out their portfolio. If you think about a parking infrastructure project, for example, you can deploy both AC and the smaller DC to support a project like that.
Okay, thank you. Then maybe a final question, just thinking about the cost base for this year. I think in the press release you mentioned that you do not intentionally did not decrease the fixed cost base with the same speed as you may see some softness in EV charging. How is that for the rest of the year? I mean, are you looking at maybe recruitment of temporary personnel, maybe a bit of a, maybe a bit of a lesser spend in R&D and SG&A? How do you think about the cost base for the rest of this year?
We always try to balance the cost base as much as possible, but I think we explained earlier on in a couple of webcasts how operational leverage works within our company. The highest operational leverage is in the indirect staffing and in the other OpEx. The same is also valid. If you have an organization, for example, in EV charging, which is capable of handling far more revenue than we are currently handling today, then also the leverage is quite strong. I think that's what we are currently seeing. We more or less build on an organization which is capable of handling further growth.
Yeah, if you then in a quarter are hampered by, let's say, a growth which is not as you would have hoped for and as expected, then it also creates deleverage, which can then also have a significant impact on the bottom line. We saw the opposite effect in 2022, when we saw a huge leverage kicking in, also contributing to the bottom line. Maybe to explain, if you have an EV charging organization which is capable of handling, let's say on a yearly basis, EUR 80 million more revenue, then the majority of the growth margin that you generate with that revenue trickles down to the bottom line. Then operational leverage really kicks in very fast. That's the way to look at it.
What we decided for now is that we say, well, fundamentally long term, all the drivers are still intact. We do still see positive market signals in all our business lines, also in EV charging. We are not optimizing the short term profitability and then jeopardizing the long term growth. That's the balancing act that we constantly play.
All right, that's helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from David Kerstens at Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got three. First, maybe following up on the destocking, do you have visibility on the channel on how much excess inventory is left and how much there is more to go? Also, when you look at the ASP and EV charging, it was pretty much in line with Q4, whereas the mix shift was probably much more pronounced. Does that imply that you see a negative impact on pricing in the home segment? That's my first question.
Yeah. From a visibility perspective, we are in constant communication with our channels. For the most part, they will share with us, and we do have visibility, and we understand their current run rates. We don't have 100% visibility, but we certainly see a majority of it. That is informing what's happening in the market. They obviously want us to partner with them to help drive demand in the end market. We work well together to help maximize the destocking and move it as quickly as possible. Yes, it still is a mixed issue. We're not seeing any negative pricing trends. You know, there's always a price lever you can pull.
For us, when we look at the markets we serve and how we want to stay positioned in those markets, making a price decision was not something that we wanted to do. You don't see any pricing impact there. It's purely mix.
Yeah. Even the ASP is in line with Q4, and you have more, a more pronounced impact of destocking in Q1. How can that ASP not be lower than... Why is it in line with Q4?
Maybe you have to look in that one, because I can reproduce your figures. Say, we know that we have not lowered our prices in any of our product ranges, so, we have been able to maintain our price levels and therefore our gross margin. Due to, say, individual mix effects, then the average sales price can differentiate quarter to quarter, but it is not so. We also watch more or less our price level and our growth margin. There is no fundamental change in our pricing and our growth margin.
Okay, understood. The second question, with the outlook for the current quarter, second quarter, the mix shift, that could be similar or maybe even more pronounced than in the first quarter due to the tougher comps as Q2 last year was your best quarter of the year. Does that imply that you have more operational deleverage and likely an EBITDA margin below the 15%-20% range? My question is what needs to happen in the second half of the year to make 15%-20% EBITDA margin objective achievable?
I think there are two parts to that answer. The first one is that we will never give a profit outlook for the year. We've never done that, and we are not doing that, so I cannot answer the 15%-20%. What I can say is that, of course, when there is a decrease in the EV charging revenue, and as I explained before, we built an organization which is capable of handling far more than they handled than the deleverage is also ongoing. On the other hand, it's also a fact that you need to build your organization upfront. If you anticipate on a growth of smart grids, and if you anticipate on a growth of energy storage, then you cannot balance that directly in the quarter.
If you think that in the second quarter the revenue of battery goes up, then it's very convenient if you have your organization already in place before that. That is also an effect. What we will see is some operational leverage in other areas. At the moment, the deleverage in EV charging is ongoing. That's correct.
On the other hand, also to make clear, if we would see the effect of whether it is due to pricing or market share loss, that we would assume that it will be impact on our long term strategy, then we would have indicated so. At this moment, we have no reason to doubt on our midterm objectives, and whether it is in a quarter of two quarters, an impact due to practical circumstances. On the other hand, we are also sure of the fact that we can maintain our mid-term objectives. It's also a reason why we try to balance it out, that we only say on one hand. Say always a short term impacts. On other hand, we have also to put that in perspective of the medium term capabilities we as an organization, seem want to have and also will have.
Yeah. Yeah, that's clear. Then maybe final question, if I may. I was wondering if you could please comment on developments in operating cash flow and free cash flow in the quarter, and also as this year looks likely to be a relatively asset CapEx intensive year with the new production capacity and the acquisition of production capacity, and also the development and working capital, please.
Yeah, I think what you've noticed is that we have a facility in place with the banks, which is separate from the RCF for both the financing of the new building and the acquisition of the new building. That's more or less neutral from that perspective, going through the whole RCF financing. We don't give balance sheet numbers in the Q1. That really depends also on the deleveraging which is going on, and then what we will see also in the destocking which will go on.
If the destocking is gone after summer and we are able to drive down our inventory levels within EV charging, then still we should also be able to further optimize. It is difficult to give you a precise element of that now because that also depends on to a large extent on timing and on those kind of elements. It's not per definition that then you are only in a negative free cash flow this year. That's not per definition the case. That really depends on the replenishment of the inventory levels as well.
Yeah. Do you normally not give qualitative statements on operating cash flow and free cash flow in your trading updates, or is it only at the half year, full year stage?
It's only at the half year and full year stage.
Okay. Understood. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Thijs at ABN AMRO - ODDO BHF. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO - ODDO BHF. Part of my questions have, well, have not been answered. I have additional questions. Can you maybe indicate whether your inventory level end of Q1 was higher or lower than at year-end, and maybe explain a bit the mix in there. Second question is on energy storage gross margin. In Q1, it was 18%, more or less at the low end of your guidance range. Is it logical to assume this quarter will be lower than the full year because you're now in startup mode?
Batteries at this moment are very expensive, but prices are on the way down again, as well as that the delivery phase of the battery projects is more towards the second half of the year and therefore higher margins. Energy storage gross margins, what should we assume in our models?
Thijs, I'll take the first question on inventory. We do see the inventory levels coming down over time. Fundamentally, we do see things reducing over time in EV charging. From a mix perspective, we still see similar mix as what we saw from an inventory perspective as we did previously, primarily in the home segment. We do see it moving. That's why we feel second half of the year it'll start to come back.
Thijs, maybe to add to what Michelle says, I think if you look at our stock, in our own inventory levels at year-end, and compare it to what we see now, I think they're slightly higher than than at year-end, last year. Without being able to give you the precise numbers, but, let's say, the elements of energy storage and EV charging are quite significant in that overall, inventory level, mechanism. It's also fair to say, and you know that we bought a lot of batteries up front, to make sure that we could also execute on that huge backlog that we have for 2023.
We also do expect that we are able to replenish part of that inventory in the course of the year when the projects are in execution.
Is your EV charging inventory level higher than at year-end still?
That is slightly higher than at year-end, because you know that you needed to buy upfront, let's say sometimes a year, one and a half in advance. It takes some time before you can really drive those inventory levels down. Honestly, the decrease in the revenue, of course, doesn't help in driving that inventory level down. That is a fact. It's slightly higher, but we do expect it to come down again in the second half of the year.
Okay.
If you take.
Gross margin. Yeah.
Gross margin of the battery revenue, in the first quarter we saw, it was more or less linked to Stationary app-applications, and in the remaining part of the year, based on what we already have in our portfolio, in our backlog, we expect that the gross margin for the battery will balance out in the remaining part of the year, towards maybe what we anticipated for the full year average.
Okay. Clear. Thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Nikita Lal at Deutsche Bank. The line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have also two regarding the charging segment. The first one, if you're looking at the development of the charging segment for this year and going then to the next year, do you expect that the DC charger will help you to regain the momentum back in this segment? Secondly, just as an addition to this question, you are guiding now to the lower end of your guidance for this year. Should we expect that this is primarily due to the development in charging segment? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for the question. We do expect DC to help us regain. However, that will be launched in the second half of this year, so it's really more for the longer term, midterm, longer term. We do expect that to help us support with our existing channels. Yes, the mix from EV is driving that guidance towards the lower end. What you'll see is energy storage will be a larger percentage this year.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now move on to the next question from Maarten Verbeek from The IDEA!. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. It's Maarten Verbeek of The IDEA!. Just a clarification, you mentioned that the gross margin is lower, purely caused by the change in revenue mix. When you say purely, does that imply, or that's according to me the definition, that each of the separate divisions has recorded a higher gross margin, but again, obviously, due to the mix, the average is lower. Is that the way to interpret it?
As we interpreted it, is that the gross margins per business line are in accordance with our own expectations, and it's purely a blended mix effect, and not a price declining effect or a decreasing gross margin effect.
The only thing we added to that, we added that is in the battery storage, we also indicated, let's say it was at this moment, a little bit below the average due to the composition of the revenue in the first quarter, but that is not, let's say, outside of our expectations. It's also not that we think this is a reference point to take into account for the remaining part of the year. We expect that due to the revenue mix that we can anticipate on, based on our order backlog, that it'll balance out in the remaining part of the year, say to more to the midpoint of the, our own growth margin range for battery storage.
What you need to understand is that when we take into account the blended rate, then it is more or less purely the impact of the different, revenues in each individual product lines that makes the shift in the blended rate.
The conclusion that the gross margin of Energy storage... Sorry, of EV charging and of energy, and of the Grid solutions, that it is higher than last year, that's an incorrect one.
No, that's not an incorrect one. We didn't answer that because we didn't give gross margins last year. That's the first time that we provide gross margins. I think we are always trying to optimize the gross margins. What I can say is that we don't see a decline in the gross margins.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll have a follow-up question from Jaseem Ahmed at ABN AMRO. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I'd like to have a bit more clarity on the number of substations produced or sold in Q1. You indicate a startup for Liander. You indicate close to be close to a new financial framework agreement with Stedin. Can you maybe give us a bit of clarity on what kind of number of substations then to expect in the following quarters? Is there a, let's say, a recovery from a startup phase at Liander to be expected in the coming quarters? Is there maybe a special volume effect or so from Stedin to expect in the coming quarters?
At this moment, we are, say, step by step, slowly ramping up the production of our substations. It's not that easy to ramp up substations compared to, for example, the charging stations. That means that, say, the startup volume, which is more or less was also anticipated by us in, say, the first quarter to slowly ramp up. It does not mean that we will be able to recover the numbers, say, in the second half year, but in the second half year, we will come back to, say, the numbers we already have planned for, say, and also were relevant, say, for the numbers of last year.
On the other hand, also, we expect to say, not only the second half year, but towards, say, next year, we will move our productionAlso through the new building that we will further ramp up our number of substations toward of 2024. It doesn't mean that we can compensate more or less the start-up in the second half year. There will be a gradual increase of, say, production units per week, in order to meet more or less our customer demands. Another end, we have also to be practical. Let's say if we had to...
When we have, say, introduction of a new model which has a fundamental different design, also different materials than the old ones, we have to be also realistic that we need time to be able to have a proper sort of ramp up. Also take all, say, minor elements within, say, our pathways and so to translate it to a proper way of working.
A follow-up question. Can you maybe also give an update on substation development in Finland? As well as what I still not fully understand how you introduced the walk-in substations and claimed you were certified by Belgian DSO. Does it mean you already have a framework agreement with the Belgian DSO o r that you're sort of awaiting a final signature for such an agreement.
What we see is in our product portfolio, we of course always evaluate where we see market opportunities to add products to our portfolio to further expand our market position. What we did here is we see a certain demand in the Netherlands for walk-in substations in some areas, especially in the stadium area. On other hand, we also see, and especially in Belgium, the opportunity to step in that market also with grid operators, because to this moment, our revenue on Belgium is purely microgrid-oriented our end customers and not with grid operators. We're now prepositioning ourselves to be able to step in the market of grid operators in Belgium. That's more of a step-by-step approach.
It cannot be expected, right, that we will double our revenues in Belgium next year. We are expanding our market position by having the products available and by step-step do the, say, pre-qualifications and then at certain point also be a relevant player in this situation in the grid operator market in Belgium. Your question related to Finland, we see there it's a fundamental different market situation than Netherlands. We're more or less there at a stable position with the grid operators, and we focus there on, say, also on what we call then the energy transition market segments with, say, fast charging station developers with solar developers.
Therefore, we follow more or less the same approach as we do in the Netherlands, but due to the, say, the market structure that is different in Finland than Sweden than we have the Netherlands. We say that the capability to grow there fundamentally is also different than we have a scale capability in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Paul de Froment at Bryan, Garnier & Co. The line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I have two. First, could you give us more detail on the product split in the e-charging segment, over Q1? I'm referring to home charging, corporate, and CPOs. My second question is, regarding your 30 kW incoming charging point, do you think that this product will enable you to gain new customers or is it a request from your existing customers? Thank you.
We don't give full details on our product breakdown and split. What you can see from an ASP perspective, you can start to see what's driving some of the mix. Our public and semi-public products tend to be on the higher price range, whereas our home charging equipment tends to be on the lower price. From a DC perspective, yes, we do expect to be able to sign up new customers, but right now the current demand is driven by existing customers. We want to make sure that we can best support them. We will, of course, be looking to expand, especially with customers that maybe didn't choose us because they wanted a full portfolio of AC and DC. Now we've unlocked those opportunities. We'll see both.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to your host, Marco Roeleveld, for closing remarks. Thank you.
Okay, Laura. I would like to thank everybody in for participating in this webcast and asking me questions that gave us the opportunity to further explain what happened in this first quarter and also that we get the opportunity also to express again that we are confident of the midterm future for Alfen. I would like to again thank for everybody for participating and speak to you again.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. Continue to stay safe. You may now disconnect.