Hello, and welcome to the Alfen Q1 2021 trading update. My name is Rosie, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded, and for the duration, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question at any time. If you require assistance, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to Marco Roeleveld, CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you. Thank you, Rosie. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this webcast regarding the 2021 first quarter trading update of Alfen. We appreciate the fact you have taken the effort to participate. This webcast and the questions that may come forward are handled by Jeroen van Rossen, CFO, and myself, Marco Roeleveld, CEO. We are happy how the first quarter has resolved. A solid quarter with further revenue growth in combination with a positive development of our profitability and a strong outlook for future growth. In this webcast, we will start with an update of COVID in relation to Alfen. We will continue with the highlights of the first quarter, followed by a short review per business line. Next, we will go in more detail regarding our financials and outlook. Assuming you've noted the usual disclaimer, we can now go to sheet three with an update of the COVID situation in relation to Alfen. We are in the midst of the COVID crisis, and therefore, our number one priority remains the health and safety of our employees and partners. Up to this point, we have managed to keep our business going. To continue safe and responsible operation, we continue to enforce strict safety measures, and we expect COVID to still have some impact on revenues in the short- term, where we continue to anticipate a long-term positive market development for all our business lines. We will continue with slide four with the highlights of the first quarter of 2021. In this first quarter, we realized a revenue of EUR 53.8 million. This represents a growth of 22% compared to the same period last year. This growth was driven by a strong growth at energy storage and EV charging equipment. The gross margin was 36.5%. This is in line with the average gross margin of last year, but almost 2 percentage points higher than in the same period last year. As a percentage of revenue, adjusted EBITDA improved from 10.4% in the first quarter of 2020 to 13.3% in the same period this year. We are positive about all the drivers for future growth. COVID has had an impact on our markets, but most European governments have expressed their commitment to further facilitate the energy transition, and we reconfirm our 2021 full-year revenue outlook of EUR 225 million-EUR 250 million. Later on in this presentation, Jeroen will go in more details on the financials. In the coming three sheets, we'll go in more detail on each of our business lines. We start on sheet five with Smart Grid Solutions, where the revenue was slightly higher than the same period last year. The moderate growth is driven by a combination of COVID impact and the production ramp-up of a new innovative substation range for Enexis, which now has been successfully completed. At the same time, the momentum in smart grids is increasing, and the backlog at the end of the first quarter was 27% higher compared with the same period last year. We produced less substations in Q1 2021 compared to the same quarter last year. However, the product mix shifted to larger and more complex substations, and we executed relatively more project work. We now continue on sheet six regarding EV charging equipment, where we have realized a revenue growth of 46%. We benefit from a growing market for electric vehicles, and as a consequence, more demand for home, semi-public, and on-street public chargers. Further internationalization is also a strong growth driver. Our revenue outside of the Netherlands more than doubled and is now approximately 60% of our revenues. Although COVID has an impact on the delivery of EVs, we are convinced of the long-term trend towards e-mobility. Therefore, we keep expanding our sales teams in the various European countries. To support the strong growth of our EV charging business line, we continue to further optimize our production facility. From a supply chain perspective, a high demand for electric components is putting pressure on the supply chain throughout the world. We are also experiencing some supply chain challenges. However, up to this point, we have been able to mitigate them. We now continue slide seven regarding energy storage system, where we have realized a strong revenue growth compared to the same period last year. We benefited from new contract wins and progress of completion of earlier secured contracts. Decision-making in some projects is still being delayed as a result of COVID, although the momentum continues to grow in this market. The growing number of renewables, so solar and wind energy, are increasingly driving the need for energy storage to offset the mismatch of electricity supply and demand. Jeroen, may I ask you to continue? Yes. Thank you, Marco. Let's have a deeper look at the Q1 financials on slide number eight, starting with the graph on the top left hand of the slide, where you can see that our revenues increased from EUR 44.1 million in the first quarter of 2020 to EUR 53.8 million in the first quarter of 2021. This growth of 22% was predominantly driven by energy storage and EV charging equipment. Our gross margin was 36.5%, compared with 34.8% in the same quarter of last year. Our adjusted EBITDA was EUR 7.2 million, being 13.3% of revenues, compared with EUR 4.6 million, being 10.4% of revenues in Q1 2020. This increase of our adjusted EBITDA is the result of a combination of gross margin increase and operational leverage. From the highlights of the financials, we now go to the outlook on the next slide. We expect COVID to continue to have some impact on our markets until the vaccination schemes successfully get the virus under control and restrictions can be fully lifted. At the same time, as Marco also mentioned, the transition to a clean, carbon-free energy system is building more and more momentum across Europe. We continue to anticipate long-term positive market developments for all of our business lines, and thus continue to invest in our organization, production facilities and innovations for the future. For 2021, taking everything into account, we reconfirm our full year revenue guidance in the range of EUR 225 million-EUR 250 million. 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? Yes, of course. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Should you wish to withdraw your question, you can press star two. You will be advised when to go ahead. Again, it's star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Peter Olofsen from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, Jeroen and Marco. I have two questions. The first is on raw materials. What are you seeing in terms of raw material cost inflation? To what extent is that affecting your gross margin, or are you able to compensate for that? I will be particularly interested in the EV charging business. My second question is on energy storage, where on the one hand, you mention that Q1 sales benefited from some new projects. On the other hand, you also state that you're still seeing some delayed decision-making. Could you shed some light on the overall momentum that you are seeing in energy storage and in the market, and what your current sales funnel and pipeline look like? Yes, Peter. Thanks for the questions. I'll start with the question on raw materials and supply chain. There's pressure on the supply chain throughout the world, mainly related to electrical components, which is referring to your phrase about EV charging as well. Well, we have been able to mitigate those and keep our supply chain intact. We have a multiple sourcing philosophy, we're in a constant contact with our suppliers. We have a diversified supplier portfolio. We also are in direct contact with manufacturers of those components. Fair to say that sometimes you have to take a decision, for example, to get the components through air instead of through boat, which is then slightly cost increasing. All in all, you also know that we have our purchasing programs in place, which are gaining power every day and ahead in time. All in all, we can say that at the moment, we are still able to compensate for these price increases. Also, for example, with copper, we also take positions in there. That's how we monitor that supply chain and those pricing on a more or less daily basis, I would say. We're really on top of that. I think the second question is related to energy storage. Well, yes, at year-end, we said that you saw that we felt that the momentum was coming back into the energy storage market. Fair to say that we cannot always communicate about a project because that's also depending on whether a customer wants that to be published. All in all, we definitely see that we have been able to execute and have progress on the backlog that we have and on the orders that we have. At the same time, we said at the annual accounts, we feel that the momentum is coming back into the energy storage market, and that is unchanged. We definitely see that our project pipeline is evaluating and is growing. We feel that the energy storage market is making a next step in maturity. Okay. I know that in terms of guidance, you're usually not too precise on the individual segments, but would it be fair to say that despite some softer order intake last year, that with the renewed momentum, energy storage would see revenue growth this year? It's a good question, for us, a complicated aspect to answer on is that in general terms, we don't disclose numbers per business line. You have to also take into account that we always stated that at the first, let's say, of January in a year, even on the 1st of May every year, we have the full order backlog for the whole year already in portfolio so that we can more or less predict what the revenue will be, depending on the site progress or project. We need quite a lot of orders, more or less to finalize the year in revenue. We are more or less convinced of the change in momentum. On the other hand, we have also seen in years past that sometimes even if the momentum is there, the final decision-making is always an aspect is we cannot enforce clients to finalize it on a date where it's convenient for us. Therefore, we have taken the approach that when we look at our overall revenue for the end of this year, for us, the best way to guide what it is going for is to reconfirm the range in what we are. That range reflects more or less the positive aspects in market trends and also in getting more momentum, but also has to take into account some negative aspects like what happens if corona stays there longer and decision-making is delayed, or are there other market aspects that we cannot influence. At this moment, say, the best valuation of the market situation for us is to reconfirm our revenue statement of EUR 225 million-EUR 250 million. Although we also say that, say, the outlook, the market trend is positive for us when we see it not only for this year but also the years after. Peter, and I understand the question. We always said that the fastest-growing market segments are energy storage and EV charging. Yes, of course, we are aiming for a growth compared to 2020. The final question on energy storage. Back in February, you talked also about you being capable to do larger projects than you did in the past. Are you already seeing larger projects in the pipeline, in the sales funnel than before? Yes. Okay. Thanks for that. The next question comes from the line of Thijs Berkelder from ABN AMRO- ODDO BHF. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. Congratulations. Good results. I got some questions from Lotte. A question on smart grids, how your revenues in Q1 were up 1%, but you state the backlog is up 27%. Is this backlog up 27% in euro terms or in number terms? This backlog, I presume, is for the remainder of the year. Is that correct? Yes or no? Maybe can you give an update on the ramp-up in the number of FTEs right now and maybe what you're targeting there to end up with at the end of the year, and similar maybe on sales costs. Finally, coming back on energy storage, as I recall, let's say the prime battery packages you were using were BMW packages. Do you already have plenty BMW packages than let's say, in your inventory to, let's say, at least do the energy storage projects you envision for the coming year or maybe two years? How should I look at that? Well, let's start with the question on the backlog. That's indeed in euros, it's 27% higher in euro value. It is the backlog situation at the end of Q1. That is reflecting the period in time compared with the same situation last year. Of course, we continue to have new ordering and new production. We emphasize this increase in backlog to give the momentum in the smart grids market, whereby you see that we had a moderate growth of just 1% in the first quarter, which we explained in the Q3 trading update with the issuance of the annual accounts, where we said, okay, we have some impact of COVID there, and we also see that we are still in the ramp-up of. Hello, it's the operator here. I just want to check that there's no difficulty with audio. I'm not hearing anything right now. Okay. I do apologize. If you could please stand by. The host line has disconnected, so we will just be reconnecting it for you very shortly. Okay. Okay. Apologies, Thijs, if you could just bear with us for a moment. Yeah. Okay, we should have our host back with us very shortly. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much for reconnecting us. Thijs, if you would like to continue. I don't know precisely what you heard. FTE and sales. Ramp-up FTE. Ramp-up FTE. You heard everything about Smart Grids, is that correct? I heard reflecting momentum in Smart Grids market in Q4 and Q1, some COVID related problems, and then I was disconnected. Okay. Because I was saying that we also show by this increase in the backlog that we see that the momentum is getting back into that market area as well. That is reflecting the outlook that we have on the Smart Grids business. The question related to full-time equivalents and sales costs, well, we always said that we continue to invest in the organization, but that the pace in which we will grow that will be slower than the growth of the top line. Well, that is still the aim and that's still where we are striving for. Of course, you can imagine that from a period to a period, a quarter to a quarter, that can be slightly different. We don't give the precise numbers, but we increased our FTEs, and we keep on continuing investing in the organization to anticipate all the future growth and the further growth that we see. That's what I can say about that. Then Marc, for you. I will take the aspect of storage. Like we always have stated, that we are, for our battery storage system, battery agnostic. We're not dependent only on one brand or one make of battery manufacturer. Of course, what you can assume is that when we see that the market is growing, we see also that, say, the demand for batteries is quite high and we've secured, say, with different suppliers, the production capacity for batteries in, say, the remaining part of this year, to be able to translate that to orders that we are having in portfolio now and that we foresee that we will get in the coming period. We're quite confident that there is a balance between, say, our outlook for orders in combination with the amount of batteries we have secured and that we try to balance that as best so that we not have too much in stock. On the other hand, that we have enough batteries in the pipeline to be able to cope with new contracts. Yeah. Okay. Just a short follow-up on the Smart Grids backlog. What is more or less the lead time of that Smart Grid backlog? Well, it's of course a combination of project and products backlog. In the products, that's around six weeks delivery time. You should think about that. In the projects, it's a bit depending per project. We have projects which have same lead times, but we also have projects which tend to have longer lead times, depending on the execution of those projects. It's a mixture, but it's definitely not that this is the backlog, which is the only backlog for the rest of the year. Okay. Yeah. Clear. Thanks. Our next question comes from the line of Jan Richard from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three of them, please. I'm coming back on Peter's comment on raw material cost. Jeroen, you did say at the end of your comment that you take position on copper. Could you please elaborate a bit more on this? I think this is a key raw material for you guys. Yeah, just wanted to hear a bit more what that mean exactly, please. Yeah. What we do with copper, so we use copper, of course, in our products. Copper is manufactured by one of our suppliers. For critical components, we tend to monitor and keep control of the supply chain ourselves. The situation here is that we directly buy and fix the pricing on copper, both on a quantity as well as on a pricing perspective. That copper as a component is supplied to the manufacturer who is then putting it into the raw materials that we use in our production process. That is how we look at that. We are not depending on a supplier to safeguard the copper. We safeguard the copper ourselves. Okay. How successful are you in passing on increases in raw material cost to your customers? I guess it depends if the increase is sudden or not, but just generally speaking. Yeah. Generally speaking, what you see is that if there are increasing raw material prices, that also gives rise to, of course, discussions with your customers. You know that in the contracts with the grid operators, we have indexation clauses, but they are not directly one-on-one related with raw material pricing. There are a couple of factors that you take into account, and then you discuss that at the end of the year and define the indexation for the year to come. You can imagine, especially in the more projects part, in selling transformer substations to other parties than the grid operators, there, of course, if raw material prices are increasing, you also discuss that with your customers. Okay. That's clear. Two questions on storage. The first one is, could you please give us a bit more color on the proportion of Q1 revenues attributable to contract won in the second half of last year, as opposed to contracts which you won end of 2019, early 2020? Yeah, I appreciate the question, Jan. We don't give that precise split. The only thing what we can say is that it's partly related to contract won in 2020, but it's also partly related to new ordering in 2021. It's a mixture of elements there. Okay. That is how it's built up. Okay. Can you please tell us how much of revenues and storage in the last, let's say, six months, come from framework agreements as opposed to more one-off projects, just to see what sort of momentum you can see in this business? Well, we cannot give that precise split, but what we can say is that we emphasize the fact that there are framework agreements that we concluded last year to also show that we feel that there is a next step in the maturity of the energy storage market. We also see that first ordering is coming from those framework agreements. That's what we definitely see. We do have a mixture of customers who are looking at one or two projects. We have customers who have framework agreements and are already planning ahead in time. It's a real mixture of all elements. I think the most important thing is that where you saw that COVID definitely had an impact on the energy storage market, and it seemed like that the step up in the storage market was back again, we already emphasized that the issuance of the annual report, that we felt that the momentum is coming back in that market. We definitely see that today, that that momentum seems to be getting back in the market. There's a lot of requests, and there's also a good development of our sales pipeline in that area. Mm-hmm. Very clear. Lastly, still on storage, talking about software, it plays a critical role in, of course, delivering value to your customers. We've seen some interesting trends over the last few months as energy companies boosting their digital capabilities through M&A. My question here is, do you feel you're in a position to continue to develop your software on your own and keep up with your peers? You're potentially looking at potential targets in the software space? Just give a bit more information on that would be very helpful. Hello, Jan. Marco here. I will try to answer this question. If you look at the position we take in the value chain, maybe starting with EV charging, we're not in the area of making back-office system. This all software related to back-office systems and in billing through back-office systems and all kind of protocols that are in that area is not the area we're talking about when we talk about software development. We are more or less within the charging station, try to envision what are the requirements in relation from, say, those back-office systems relate to our product, and we try to come up with all kind of smart software features, whether it is load balancing, et cetera, et cetera, that's within our product. We don't interfere with the business cases and software capability of our customers. We don't see a risk there that we are developing the wrong set of software. If you take the same approach to battery storage, we don't develop, say, SCADA systems that are valid for, say, our end customers that have to value, say, how much energy from a wind farm is being translated to, say, the trading aspects of when to store, when to stop transferring energy to the grid. We are fully controlling our own set of hardware with all kind of software features to optimize the interconnection to the SCADA systems of the customer. We don't interfere into the SCADA systems of our customers. We are more or less quite well secure, more or less happy with this approach, because it's more or less one that we don't expect customers to interface directly with our hardware, because that is very complicated for them to envision how to control the whole product performing in itself. That we more or less limit ourselves to the interface and leave it to the customers to do all trading aspects and control of their overall site. Okay, this is very helpful. Thank you, guys. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your keypad now. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Maarten Verbeek from the Idea Driven Equities Analyses Company. Please go ahead. Good morning. It's Maarten. Couple of questions from my end. First of all, within the Smart Grid, we have seen quite a jump in much larger and much more complex substation. Is this a trend to continue, and is this also favorably for your profitability? If we look at, say, the FPS markets, Smart Grid market, we see that the grid operators relationships to the tenders they did already years before in different type of switchgear, where we have to accommodate our substations to be ready for those bigger installations. That makes it as a more direct consequence that the substations are to be bigger also. We have seen that in the tender with Enexis, where this was combined with, say, quite advanced requirements related, for example, with fire safety. It meant that the substations are bigger and more complex, and that has a reflection on, say, the overall price, not directly in relationship to the margin, but indirectly to the overall price of a substation. We've seen a shift earlier on, that they shifted to a different type of switchgear, and we had to more or less accommodate that with a bigger substation to cope with that. That is purely in first step related to the price of a substation in relation to size. Of course, as an aspect on margin, we of course always trying to look at, say, savings in our production process, savings on materials to be able to increase our margin. Those are two independent processes. Okay, thank you. With respect to EV charging, you have now disclosed the breakdown between the Netherlands and outside the Netherlands. To get a feel for the different growth rates, could you also provide that ratio for the first quarter of 2020? Could you also rank your top three countries outside of the Netherlands in the first quarter of 2021? Yeah, we don't give the precise numbers there. We have an internationalization strategy, what we show here is that we definitely see that this internationalization strategy is working. We sell our charge points in more than 25 European countries, and we spread out our sales people over all these countries. It is fair to say that you see that the Netherlands is one of the most developed EV charging countries, and still there's a lot of new charge points which are needed, especially if we want to reach the 2030 climate goals. Also in the Dutch market, there's still a huge growth potential, but we definitely see that the countries surrounding the Netherlands are now starting up. Especially Germany and the U.K. are fast-growing markets at the moment. Thank you. Lastly, could you say something about your development of your net debt situation? We don't give the numbers on net debt. We are strict on monitoring our working capital. You can expect us to keep strict on monitoring that net working capital in time. Okay, thank you. We now have a follow-up question from the line of Thijs Berkelder from ABN AMRO-ODDO BHF. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thijs again. Maybe short question on your entity in Finland and/or Sweden. Can you shortly describe what the progress has been there? The second question is on charging equipment. Just to understand it, revenue growth has been 46% year-on-year, but production of charging points + 58%, but the revenues are probably linked to the numbers of charging points sold, not the ones produced. Is the number sold also more like 46% or more like 58%? In relation to Finland, we are in a situation that Finland is making use of the effect that in the market there is a transition from overhead lines to underground lines, where we see a more stable development of the market. Where the market in Sweden, we are trying to develop its scopes slowly. It's more or less to be expected that you cannot in one day say, "Okay, let's make it. We need to go to Sweden." The next day you only have success. We are stepping up there slowly, but we are progressing. We're also trying to leverage, say, the cross-selling aspect of our company, and also the relationship we have, of course, with the substations to grid operators and parties in the market that are also busy with renewables, that we try to emphasize now the efforts in relationship to the energy storage possibilities in those markets. I think the second question was related to EV charging and the growth numbers. Well, to some extent that is indeed due to producing and selling. The major impact on that element is the product mix. You know that product mix can shift from a quarter to a quarter. The major impact on that revenue growth being slightly lower than the production rate is related to that product mix, which was slightly different in the first quarter. Should I understand that probably is primarily the German systems coming into the mix? No, it's an overall mix what we see there. We see a bit more on the single points instead of the double and the public chargers. Okay. Thanks. We have no further questions coming through, so I will now hand back to Marco for any closing remarks. Okay, this is Marco Roeleveld. I would like to thank everybody for joining in this trading update and appreciate all the questions to maybe enhance some aspects of our trading update, and speak to you again, say, in a few months' time. Thank you for joining today's conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.