UK EV Chargepoint Loses 2020

[NewbieT]

Another thread sent me down a rabbit hole and I thought I would share my findings. I was interested in who made or lost money operating EV chargepoints in the UK. Rather than assume I thought I would go and find out. I couldn't find anyone making a profit. Not entirely surprising but still. Here's just a sample of household names for the Financial Year Ending 2020 (some do have newer accounts).

This bunch (and they're most of the largest operators) lost £41m between them. In the scale of UK EV charging I'm looking at the sums of money and thinking EV charging isn't the most expensive problem to solve if there was a will to do so. Glad the UK Gov stumped up some money for the Rapid Charging Fund last year to help though.

 

[init6]

Isn't some of this down to clever accounting? I note for example that due to the losses Chargepoint had an effective tax rate of 2%. Substantially less than the UK corporation rate of 19%.

 

[NewbieT]

I’m not an accountant but I understand there are accounting rules they have to abide by. Surely there’s only so much you can do with clever accounting. I can’t see them claiming loses just to avoid corporation tax. Surely the shareholders are liking fit them to show how quickly they’ll be profitable?

 

[init6]

I’m not an accountant but I understand there are accounting rules they have to abide by. Surely there’s only so much you can do with clever accounting. I can’t see them claiming loses just to avoid corporation tax. Surely the shareholders are liking fit them to show how quickly they’ll be profitable?

Well they spent £11m on staff costs for a company that only brings in £18m. They do say that's to support expansion, so maybe the figures so far are about building up the company to reap the rewards later.

 

[MrBadger]

Well they spent £11m on staff costs for a company that only brings in £18m. They do say that's to support expansion, so maybe the figures so far are about building up the company to reap the rewards later.

Well they certainly are not reaping any staffing benefits at the present. I've given up chasing BP for either an email address change or to cancel my account and get a refund of my credit balance. If they cannot handle a simple email address change, I have no idea how they will cope with the more complicated stuff.

 

[Avendit]

Aren't they all in massive build out phases just now? Investing in points, land, installs, software and attracting customers? With big names associated I would assume they are building loss leaders ATM, possibly experimenting a bit with what works and doesn't, all with the intention of milking it all later?

Also, these are all rounding errors in the parent corps numbers so they probably aren't overly worried - they probably get more positive coverage from their green washing through this than any amount of Sacchi&Sacchi exposure could get them.

I've no experience at looking at company accounts, but if you can separate the build and investment costs at all it would be interesting to see if they are fundamentally making cash on providing power through the points that exist, or if that is in its self unsustainable for them?

 

[init6]

I'm in the same boat with regards to reading company accounts, but they all wax lyrical about how well they are doing. They don't appear to have the same concern about a loss as perhaps we would have. IIRC the Chargemaster accounts mentioned they had plenty of money to keep going, so likely a lot of green £s from BP.

 

[NewbieT]

With 353 employees and about 8000 there must be lots of growth activity going on at BP Pulse.

Comes back to where they set your prices. If you’re losing money it’s a question of how big your loses are. Price for growing footfall/demand? What the market will bear? Peg petrol/diesel equivalence? Relative to your competitors? Where you think it will land? Fixed Gross Profit %. No wonder we see a spread of prices with different strategies.

 

[gorghimself]

Would be interested to know how much they have spent on investment of new builds, I suspect that if you could see this breakdown it might be clearer that just a large net loss across the board…

 

[eddycrim]

I think what we are seeing here is pretty typical for growth companies exploring a new market. As other posters have said there is a lot of expensive build out going on. IMO the brits(especially compared to Americans) get way to hung up on profitability when in most companies growth and investment are the important measures.

That said will all of these companies succeed? Probably not. I also worry they overestimate the size of the market. I almost alway charge at home and it’s pretty rare for me to use a public charger.

 

[Fursty Ferret]

Is it all that surprising that BP Pulse lost money? Their sole working charger probably had an ICE car parked in front of it.

 

[init6]

I should have said earlier that it was good of @NewbieT to start this conversation. Interesting figures and a subject that's likely of interest to most EV drivers (and taxpayers )