Welcome to the presentation of the fourth quarter for Zaptec. My name is Anders Thingbø. I'm the CEO of Zaptec and.
My name is Kurt Østrem. I am the CFO in Zaptec.
The highlights for the fourth quarter is that we achieved positive working capital development with a strong balance in the cash by the end of the quarter. The turnover growth was 66% as we reported in early January. Even though we had a lower than expected gross margin due to a higher than expected sales of a low margin product, we achieved an EBITDA of NOK 11.1 million, which represent the 14% of the revenues. The operating cost as a share of revenues has been reduced and we see that the electrical vehicle markets in Europe was very strong in the fourth quarter. About the technology development, we have been able to keep our plan to launch a new product and also done a lot of software and service development and updates.
We also listed the company in the 6th of October with a successful share issue and a secondary sales of existing shares. Now a summary of the key numbers.
Yes. The revenues in Q4 2020 was NOK 79 million compared to last year was NOK 46.3 million. This is a growth of 66%. For 2020, the revenue was NOK 219.7 million compared to NOK 156.4 million last year. This is a growth of 40%. Our export share was 31.4% in Q4 against 8.9% last year. For the whole year, the export share was 26.2% against 9.3% last year. Gross margin was 36.4% in Q4 against 39% last year.
For 2020, the gross margin was 36.8% against 43% last year. The adjusted operating cost was NOK 21.9 million in Q4 against NOK 30 million in Q4 2019. For 2020, the operating cost was NOK 56.8 million against NOK 43.8 million last year. The adjusted EBITDA was NOK 11.1 million in Q4 against NOK 5.1 million in last year. For 2020, the adjusted EBITDA is NOK 29.8 million in 2020 against NOK 23.4 million last year.
The EBITDA margin in percent is 14% in Q4 against 11% and 13.5% in 2020 against 15%. This is due to the lower gross margin last year. Available liquidity is NOK 273.2 million in 2020 against NOK 43.4 million last year.
Going back to the electric vehicle markets, we saw a strong growth, 60% in Europe, in the EU countries in our part of the world. All the main markets where we operate today has a significant growth. You see the light blue bar, which is Norway. A very strong quarter in Norway, also Sweden and Denmark is really picking up the number of EVs sold, as well as Switzerland. Those four countries are the biggest ones for Zaptec as of today. The reason for this development is that we see a larger and a wider assortment of EVs in hitting the market. The car manufacturers are launching a lot of new models that fit the market better than the previous quarters.
We would like to comment on the supply of lithium ion battery packs is increasing mainly in China, but also we need to see new factories coming up to keep up with the demand of these battery packs. That's also a lot of new factories being set up closer to the consumers in Europe with renewable energy as the energy source. Going back to the charging markets, Norway and the Pro system is our biggest revenue generator as of this quarter. We've seen a significant increase in selling and the sales numbers for this product. The multi-family homes and the professional buyers in Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark is really on a growth. Our strategy going forward is that we will establish subsidiaries in several countries by the end of this year.
We have recruited country managers in U.K. and Germany, which are the two biggest EV markets in Europe. We expect sales to start late 2021 in these markets. Regarding the Pro product, a Pro installation is a large parking facility where we equip the parking facility with infrastructure for Zaptec charging systems. We managed to add 878 new Pro installations in the fourth quarter. We have a total of 2,540 Pro installations in all markets as of today. There's some numbers. We charge electric vehicles with 250,000 kWh every day as we speak. The graphics you see on the bottom of this slide is the increase in the energy consumption going through our charging systems. There are a big market and growth potentials within these Pro installations. It's the Pro chargers that fit into this system.
There's a large revenue potential in the already installations that we have today. We sell an automatic payment system for the energy that is used in the charging systems. We added 127 new contracts, and the total number of contracts is about 1,000 contracts today. It's easy to pay for the energy that you use as a user of Zaptec, and it makes the whole system more attractive and easy to use. This is also a service that will be international in the third quarter of this year. Regarding the production, we still produce everything at the Westcontrol. They have decided to expand with 3,800 square meters of new production buildings and also more robotic equipment, and recruitment is on its way.
By the end of this year, there will be a significantly higher production capacity as we also have launched a new product for the single-family home market now just earlier this week. About production capacity from 2022, we are working on increasing the capacity, and it's very high on the agenda for the management of Zaptec as we speak. The technology development department has increased in the number of full-time employees in the whole of 2020, but also we will add more capacity and competence. Our main focus has been to a swift onboarding of the new charger that is pictured on the right-hand side of this slide so that it's very scalable when we ramp up the sales and production in March. We have also been able to enter into an agreement with Basefarm.
We still use Microsoft Azure as the cloud solution, but we are now using the Basefarm setup. We are able now to put new containers of this cloud solution in different countries so that we can scale up going forward. There is a heavy traffic with 64 million messages every day between all the chargers and the cloud. We need a scalable cloud solution going forward. Yes, of course, the development of the new charger has been a focus. We have been able to finalize everything with this charger, and we have started selling now this week. The production and the deliveries will take place from March. There are a lot of software and service development going on to improve the user using processes and the user processes of our charging system, both for the electricians but also for the end users.
We have also started the new hardware development for launch in 2022. Regarding the outlook, we told the market that we aim to achieve 35%-50% annual growth. What we see is that the growth in EV demand is so high and the speed of development in technology and the business models in the market is changing so fast that we are not able to be precise going forward in forward-looking statements. What we have decided is to give a quarterly update to the market and provide information so that you can understand the development and the growth in our company. That being said, we see that the growth perspectives is very good and that we are able to have a growth at least on the level as the market, which was like we told you earlier in Europe, 60%.
We will release these growth and revenue numbers by the end of each quarter going forward. We're going over to the Q&A sessions. If you have any questions or comments, please provide them.
Yes. The question is: Are these figures in line with the CEO communication from early January?
Like I said earlier, we guided on 35%-50% growth on an annual basis. The growth in 2020 on the fourth quarter was 66%.
Yes, 40% for the whole year. Our guiding earlier was going up from 15%-20%, then 25%, then 30%, and then last 35%. The final, it got 40%.
Yes. Going forward, you can change the question now. We will achieve the 50% we said earlier. We are comfortable with achieving that number and even higher growth rates going forward.
The question is, what is the investment on your balance sheet?
This is R&D on our products. That's the main thing in our balance. How much is the cost of share option for Q4 and for 2020? The cost for the share option is NOK 7.2 million as a salary benefit due to the higher market share price from IPO and to the end of 2020.
Why have you stopped reporting pro and home sales?
I'm not sure what you mean, if you mean the guiding and the number of chargers, it's because the very strong growth in the market and the strong growth in the sales from Zaptec have done it challenging to make the right guiding. Therefore, we prefer to give you the numbers shortly after the quarter is finished.
We can take that as an input to provide revenue numbers on each product. That's a good input to us. What market is next to target is a question. We get a lot of incoming calls from different parts of the world. Sometimes we can establish sales in a new country quite fast if we have a partner that is motivated and have the resources to succeed. We are focusing now on U.K. and Germany. That's the kind of active job that we have decided to be one of the major players in these two countries. We've been able to recruit competent people and the business plan is under development as we speak. Those two markets are the main focus. We've achieved, like in Denmark, quite high growth in the fourth quarter. It's a lot of incoming kind of questions and calls to also go into new markets.
Can you say anything about the expected gross margin on the new charger per unit?
Yes. It will be a much stronger gross margin on new product, is staying at home charger. We expect the gross margin to be up from 40% and maybe it will be about 45% on new charger.
Is your revenue higher than expected? Also, is earnings better than expected?
I can say that the revenues for 2020 was altogether higher than expected. The earnings is like we expected. We had a tight cost control in 2020. The second quarter of 2020 was weak due to COVID-19, but the markets recovered quite well in the third quarter, and then in the fourth quarter it was a steep growth. Yeah, I would say that we performed better than expected in the total of 2020, at least when we look at the situation in the second quarter. Thingbø, do you have more?
No, that's right.
Are you seeing any issues within the supply chain now or for first and second quarter that could affect Zaptec?
What we can say is that the COVID-19 has kind of created a lot of issues in the component market. We use a lot of sourced components for the production of our chargers in the world market. Due to some close downs of factories and also the higher demand in the third and the fourth quarter for consumer goods and people at home shopping a lot of new stuff, not going to holidays, they're spending money on products. We see that there is a risk for not being able to source enough components. That's the main risk we see. We have not experienced this problem as a major problem for us. We've been able to deliver all the time.
We also recruited and increased the capacity on supply chain management with a new supply chain manager starting in the company in the second quarter of this year. Also how raw material could possible affect your gross margins. I would say the pricing on the components is not an issue. We have a fixed agreement with Westcontrol regarding exchange rates, so the exchange rate can alter the gross margin a little bit. I feel that we are quite secure on achieving a gross margin above 40% with the new product and the Pro product as we phase out the existing Zaptec Home.
To avoid this, we have already secured the production for the next 12 months.
Has the sales momentum from the end of the fourth quarter continued into the new year?
I can answer on that.
You can.
The answer is yes.
Very good answer, Kurt. It's a strong market. Your exports have increased, the countries you export to are still early in the EV adoption. Do you see yourselves as first movers, or at least early movers in these markets?
First of all, I would say for the Pro offering, we need to see a certain degree of EV adoption in a country or in a city to create a demand for the Pro system, because when you have 4%, 5% of people using a building or living in a building, there will be a pressure to establish charging systems for that parking facility. You need to have a sales for some months or maybe years to achieve that EV adoption. With the new charger, it's more like to single-family home. The decision process is quite easy.
It's just a single family has bought an EV, okay, let's buy a charger. It's a very non-complex decision process. The market for single-family home charging is more competitive and price competitive than the multi-family homes charging. I would say we are competitive in both markets, but the single-family home offering we have launched, this will probably be higher in volumes quite fast compared to the Pro. There are several competitors in each market. It's not that we are alone but we have a brand, we have technology, and we have the resources to become one of the dominant players in these markets. What plans does Zaptec have for the U.S., North American market? We need to certify the products we have for the U.S. market. One example is that they will have the charging cable attached to the charger.
We have a plug-in in both the car and the charger today in our offering. We need to do some changes and I would say that Germany and U.K. are high on the agenda for us. U.S. and especially California and the Bay Area, we've been there. We know this market is big. I would say 2022 will be the right time to travel to the U.S. and either we will establish a subsidiary or make an agreement with a partner. Is increase in capital for the company raised by selling additional shares of stock necessary to finance additional company growth? I would say that as of today, we generate cash when we grow organically. To grow without acquiring companies, we will not need new capital. If we bought a company or several companies, we will probably issue stock in such a transaction or use cash.
As of today, we have NOK 270 million in our bank. Depending on the opportunities in the M&A space. We focus, we analyze companies, we have discussions, but we are not in negotiating with any of these potential acquisitions as of today. We focus a lot on the investments in products and organization to grow organically in these countries we mentioned.
In Denmark, you have partnered up with Spirii. How do you support their growth in Denmark to become market leader?
We are able to deliver chargers and charging systems with very low delivery times. We provide the training. We are available for them to use the resources in Zaptec to gain growth in Denmark. We also have another product, Zaptec Go, that we launched to provide them with a new product and system for the single-family buildings.
Regarding Denmark, we have a few agreements, but we will be able to also establish a subsidiary in Denmark when the timing is right for that. It's close to Norway, and we see that the EV adoption is picking up. Today we have Spirii, which is a very good partner, but they don't have any exclusivity. It's more like a tight and close partner to Zaptec, and we will also expand with more partners or subsidiaries in Denmark.
"What is your growth forecast in revenue for 2021?"
Going back to my earlier points regarding this question, we don't know. It's so hard for us to say what the revenues will be. What I can say is that we will exceed 50% growth, and it's just a matter of how much more than 50%. We really look forward to a very exciting 2021 with a new product, with the new markets being on board.
How big effect has COVID-19 had on Zaptec?
I would say that we had some temporary kind of layoffs in a few months. We controlled the cost base of the company in the second quarter and then reversed everything in the third quarter when we saw the markets picking up. I think that we didn't lose any revenues. We saved some costs. We were able to deliver all the time during the worst part of the COVID. When we saw Norway closing down again in the first or second week of January, we saw a small dip downwards on the sales. It's picking up again when people get more insight into their own situation and also how everything is working out in the world regarding COVID.
It's an insecurity for the company, but I will say that we see high growth numbers even though we have more types of viruses and all the negative information regarding the COVID-19 situation. Yeah.
Yes, Swedish question. "Do you have any plans to deliver your chargers through the wholesalers, or do you sell directly to the installers?"
The positive thing about delivering directly to the installers is that we can keep a larger margin, and we have developed a charger that is packed with technology, and you just need the electricity out to the parking bay and then hook up the charger. You don't need a lot of parts. We have done all the packaging of what you need and it's cloud connected, so we will fix the software if we need to do that or update the firmware. That's the main reason.
It's easy for the installer just to get the chargers from our producer. As long as the installers can be comfortable with this situation, we will keep it that way. We are able to scale a lot of electricians and installers, and we have a robust IT ordering system and et cetera, and a high stock of chargers. We will keep it this way. This is a way that we disrupt the value chain, and we feel that this has been an important choice. We keep an eye on everything that we have set up with our business, but we don't see any good reason to change this as we speak.
Yes, the last question, I think we could probably continue a lot more and please follow up with contact directly to us so we will try to answer if you have more. One question, "Good morning. Is it possible to buy the Zaptec wall boxes in Germany right now?"
We don't have any installers, electricians as we speak that we have an agreement with, I would say no. We have three installation of the Pro charging system in Munich working, we're testing. It works quite well. It scales up it's only to establish the organization and the partnerships that we need. We will do that the first half of this year. In the third or fourth quarter, you will be able to buy the Zaptec wall boxes in Germany. I think we should summarize and say thank you for joining and please get back to us with questions and wish you a very nice day. Thank you very much.
Thank you.