Good day, and welcome to the Fastned Q4 trading update call. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Mr. Victor van Dijk, CFO. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, operator. I would like to say welcome to everyone on this call as well as to our webcast viewers. My name is Victor van Dijk, CFO of Fastned. Michiel Langezaal, CEO, and one of the founders of Fastned is also present on this call. Together, we will present this webcast. The pre-presentation used during this call is also available at our investor relations website, which is ir.fastnedcharging.com. Slide two, please. With reference to the information provided in these slides and discussed during the call, please take note of the disclaimer. Slide three, please. Today, I will elaborate on the highlights of the Q4 of 2022. Thereafter, Michiel will take you through some developments on Fastned's charging concept and location strategy. Thereafter, I will take you through the financial results, and we'll look back at some of the key targets of last year. We intend to take one hour for this call, including Q&A, and end at 12:00 P.M. Slide four, please. We've had an amazing quarter with lots of positive developments inside and outside of Fastned. Let me take you through it. We continue to see great momentum in the electric vehicle markets. In all markets, we see an acceleration of electric vehicle uptake. In the last quarter, Fastned again provided a lot of charging capacity to our customers at key locations, allowing people to make the switch to electric vehicles, which of course, is our mission. To this end, we added 30 stations to our network last quarter, our highest build pace ever. Michiel will speak about that later. We added 235 chargers in the last quarter and now have more than 1,200 chargers online above our 2022 targets. More electric cars means more charging demands, the electric vehicle uptake has a direct impact on Fastned's top line. As a consequence, revenues almost tripled compared to last year. The annualized run rate revenues in Q4 came in at EUR 53 million. When I started at Fastned in 2019, we had four and a half million in annual revenue, we ten-folded our revenues in only three and a half years' time, which is amazing result. Last quarter, our network development teams were able to add 16 locations to our pipeline, all on the commercial side, as there were no major tenders being decided last quarter. The commercial locations are a key part of our location strategy. Michiel will talk about that later. Utilization came in at 13% versus 10% last year. The like-for-like utilization was 18%, showing the effects of our station expansion program, which is key to cater for strong demand growth. Last quarter, we were very happy to welcome Schroders Capital Infrastructure Funds as a long-term strategic investor. Schroders invested EUR 75 million in equity in Fastned, taking us at around 10% stake and are part of our supervisory board now. This investment completed the funding of our near-term station target of more than 400 stations before year-end 2024. As you know, we aim to accelerate the transition to electric mobility by providing a best-in-class charging experience to our customers at high traffic locations. We are therefore very proud this was recognized by electric vehicle drivers and associations across Europe when we were awarded best charging network in the U.K., in France, and in the Netherlands in recent months. We'll obviously continue to work hard to provide our customers with an excellent charging experience, encouraging people to make the switch to electric vehicles. This all was made possible by a very passionate team of people at Fastned that all want to drive this energy transition and make a dent in this world. We were very happy to welcome 60 new talented employees to our team over the course of 2022. I now hand it over to Michiel. Yeah. Slide five, please. Thanks for talking us through the highlights, Victor. It has definitely been an amazing quarter with, again, very positive commercial traction and delivering a record number of stations to our network. I wanted to highlight two stations we built last quarter just north of Paris. I'm talking about Aire de Vémars Ouest and Aire de Vémars Est. Two stations covering both directions on a very busy route from Paris to Brussels. Two stations with each 16 chargers capable of delivering 300 kilowatts. These stations are exemplary of the direction we're moving towards. We target the acquisition of very high traffic locations with long-term contracts like these. With the number of electric cars and the demand for charging rising rapidly, the number of charging positions required quite quickly from the start is becoming bigger and bigger. How do customers like this development? Well, the volume ramp up at these locations has been amazing. It is already higher than the average station within a few weeks. Just so you know, with several legacy car makers, it takes even more than a few weeks to see a new charging station popping up in the car navigation. Many drivers might not even be aware of these stations yet. Slide six, please. One of the ways to satisfy demand for charging is to build larger stations with more charging positions. Another way is to put the desired kilowatt-hour into the batteries faster, so installing even faster chargers. We believe faster is always better for our customers. This is why we were one of the very first charging companies to provide 175 kilowatt charging to our customers. This is why we have recently upgraded again many of our stations from 175 kW to 300 kW chargers, especially in Germany. We will continue to do this. This is why we recently also announced to be testing the 400 kW charging platform announced by EVBox. Of course, we will continue to work in close cooperation with ABB and Alpitronic, who have both been announcing steps towards higher power levels. Given this announcement, I thought it would be interesting to share a bit more on our approach to testing chargers and how we manage and develop relationships with charger manufacturers. An approach that is quite unique. Well, it starts with that bigger charging companies or CPOs often talk about testing the hardware. We see the hardware more as a part of the package that in the end needs to deliver a great charging experience on our stations. That package is something like the charger, the software that runs on it, the connectivity options towards our back end, the tools provided with it, and the manufacturer providing services and parts to keep the charger running. We therefore don't do test centers. That is what the manufacturers do to certify their products. How do we do it? Well, first of all, we will only start testing and working with the partner if we believe in the specifications and design. That is a decision we take after months of due diligence, following a design process, and seeing how a potential partner deals with the feedback provided by us. When we go testing, we focus on other stuff. Therefore, we test in real life and gather tons of data from real people on how they use the charger and how the charger performs in all these various circumstances. Field testing means exposure to a much larger variety of vehicles and a far larger number of charging sessions. Next to a different view on testing, we also look at the relationship somewhat differently, perhaps. If we decide to work together, it is often in a close relationship. We don't just here and there buy hardware. We build long-lasting relationships with our charger suppliers in order to together continue to improve the charger and with those chargers, deliver an outstanding customer experience. When selecting partners, we also carefully assess the team and their capabilities and whether or not we believe they can deliver great products and services in the long run. This approach led to close relationships with several charger manufacturers that today are amongst the very, very best in the industry. For Fastned, having selected the best chargers is one of the important building blocks to deliver that great charging experience that allows us to win prizes, as Victor just mentioned when discussing last quarter's highlights. That brings me to slide seven. Logically, buying great chargers and in partnership with manufacturers improve them, is not the only part of what we do to deliver that outstanding customer experience. During Charging Day, our Capital Markets Day last summer, we talked about the many building blocks that make up a great charging experience. From an agile and efficient supply chain to operational excellence and great design, all of it is important. The fact that there are so many elements to it makes delivering the very best not easy. Which makes me even more proud of having been awarded with prizes for the best charging network in three countries last quarter. Prizes based on real EV driver feedback. Delivering freedom to electric drivers is why we started this company and why we started to build charging stations that people could rely on. Being given the chance to expand our network to countries like France, Belgium, or the U.K., meant that toll road operators and ministries of infrastructure put a lot of trust in our company. Quickly thereafter, also getting the reward from EV driver associations about what we are doing for them is really astonishing. An amazing result that I'm very proud of, a result that is very promising to the success of Fastned and our mission to accelerate the transition to electric mobility. Slide eight, please. Over the last year, we've made a giant leap in Belgium and France in the number of stations built. I thought it would be nice to give you a bit of color on how our suppliers have looked at working together with us and how our location partners, such as toll road operators or ministries of infrastructure, look at us delivering on our promises. I think we can be very happy with what we hear. For example, the element of being an agile and efficient builder of stations is something we hear a lot in responses. Also, the experience our team brings with our standardized station setup and a well-thought-through construction process is something we hear back again and again. Next to happy EV drivers, our concept resonates well with partners. We saw this in the tender results and feedback from recent construction projects confirms, again, very happy location partners. Slide nine, please. The left part of this slide we've seen before in talking about the results from tenders in the various countries. What we've seen happening in the policy landscape across Europe over the last year makes us believe that we can more or less start talking about the first and the second decade of developing charging infrastructure. The first decade is really about showing the market and policymakers about the importance of separate fast charging concessions to accelerate the transition of electric mobility. Fastned was given the chance to do so, and where we have seen fast charging being considered as a dedicated business, the electric vehicle market and the associated charging infrastructure thrived. Take the Netherlands as an example. We started more than 10 years ago. The country is now one of the leaders in terms of electric vehicle uptake in Europe. All in all, in the first decade, Fastned evidenced that separate fast charging concessions on MSAs are key to accelerate the transition to electric mobility. We've built a fantastic track record. In the coming decade, governments and municipalities will continue to build on this experience with more tenders in more countries. Fastned will be there for these institutions to share its decade-long experience in markets where electric vehicles and their charging stations thrived and are thriving. This provides a huge pool of opportunities for Fastned to capitalize on its track record and expand its network with more and many, many more stations. Slide 10, please. Last quarter, we shared some of the developments in Italy. Policy moving into a direction of competitive tenders for fast charging stations, for separate fast charging stations or service areas. Just before Christmas break, the Dutch government issued their proposal for future MSA policy to the parliament. What does it contain? Basically, all aspects we believe are important to accelerate the transition to electric mobility and serve interests of EV drivers best. Setting a vision that service areas are zero emission by 2050, phasing out the fossil stations on service areas one by one. Petrol and charging services are separate concessions, ensuring market access for change makers. Competition on ambition and charging stations are exclusive rights like petrol stations and have the same amenities. Logically, we are very happy to see the Dutch government making this step as it gives us confidence on a thriving charging market with great opportunities for Fastned and companies alike. It is another example of a country, again, choosing for tenders for separate fast charging stations. A choice they make because they realize it is best for the electric vehicle driver and to accelerate the transition. Before you think we only work on tenders and governments, let me now show you some of our recent location wins. Slide 11, please. The first one to mention is the development on the route from Aachen to Cologne, a site very similar to great locations like Limburglaan or Kreuz Hilden. A location just off the motorway, accessible from both sides with loads of space. Slide 12. We've been on the lookout for a great location in the city of Paris for long. Well, this is definitely one. It is located in one of the most densely populated areas of Ile-de-France. Moreover, it is visible and accessible from the A 86, which has more than 92,000 vehicles passing by each day. Slide 13, a location with a roadside diner and a hotel along the M1 from London going north. A station with access from both sides of this motorway with more than 70,000 vehicles passing by each day. Slide 14, a greenfield development of a big Fastned station on a commercial area right at the intersection of two big A roads that already has a petrol station, a McDonald's, a Costa Coffee, a KFC, and so on. I can continue for a while like this with many great new locations. Like for example, this one in Knokke, Belgium. Brings me to slide 16, a summary of all these developments. A great and efficient charging concept is important to deliver value to landowners and make deals for such new stations. That great concept is what allows Fastned to win tenders from governments, municipalities, and toll road operators. With the number of tenders continuing to grow, we see great opportunities to grow our network with hundreds of interesting locations. With thousands of private landowners looking for a great charging concept to monetize their location, we see a second great opportunity to again grow our network with hundreds of good locations. Last but not least, thousands of petrol stations will need to transition. They will need to choose whether or not they go for an average or a great concept as well, providing again an opportunity to hundreds of interesting locations. On that note, I will now hand you over to Victor, who will finalize our presentation with the financial review of the quarter. Thank you, Michiel. I'll take you through the financials. As usual, I'll start with the station economics on this slide and discuss the energy market and the growth margin on the next slide. Our average station last quarter serviced around 38 customers per day throughout the quarter. As a company, we serviced 787,000 sessions this quarter, coming from 219,000 unique customers. With this, annualized megawatt-hour sold per average station grew very strongly again at +78% year-over-year. The main driver of this is an increase in electric vehicle fleet penetration. The BEV fleet grew strongly again, with close to 50% year-on-year growth in the Netherlands and around 70% in our other markets. Our station sales outgrew electric vehicle growth again, with newer adopters fast charging more than early adopters. This volume growth confirms our view on future volume growth potential. On station revenues, those increased to around EUR 240,000 annualized. We think our stations in high traffic locations can have more than EUR 1 million revenues by 2030. Knowing that the BEV fleet will 5 to 10-fold in that time frame, and knowing that newer adopters will fast charge more, this looks increasingly attainable. At Charging Day in June last year, we indicated to target a 40% operational EBITA margin by 2025. If we average the Q3 and Q4 margin to normalize for the time lag effects, the price increases and decreases in both quarters, we reach an around 30% operational EBITA margin, up from an average of 25% in the first half of 2022. We are tracking well towards the 40% by 2025. We show our top five station on the right as it provides a glimpse into the future for our average station. This top five station has three times more general traffic than the average station, meaning three to four times more electric vehicles traffic passing by, leading to three to four times more sales. When electric vehicle fleet penetration is three to four times higher, our average station performance will look like the top five station now. The sixth charger station serviced close to 150 customers per day on average last quarter. This is in line with our view that Fastned's large fast charging stations at high traffic locations at a sufficient electric vehicle fleet penetration can service hundreds of customers per day. Stations like these are one of the most efficient and best ways to service EV drivers, and thereby one of the most efficient ways to stimulate EV adoption by providing a huge charging capacity. They provide for a great business case if located, designed and operated well. Let's talk about utilization, because we sometimes hear that utilization above 20% is not possible. If done well, we definitely think it is, and the numbers provide proof for that. We had a 36% utilization on the 6th charge station throughout the whole quarter. If we look at our top 15 stations, they had a utilization of 26% throughout the whole quarter. In December, these same stations had a utilization of 31% throughout the month. Note that utilization is an operational question. The demands will be there, we need to add charges to keep the customer experience at a great level. Compare it to a supermarket. The location and the supermarket concept determine the number of customers that come in. You need to add cash registers to keep the waiting lines in check. We reached the mentioned utilization strongly above 20% without significantly hampering the customer experience. This is a great data point towards our thinking that we can achieve 30% on average across the network without hampering the customer experience. There will sometimes be waiting lines, running stations at a high utilization will enable us to provide charging at an efficient rate to our customers. It's a balance. We're optimizing for high utilization, which we do through our drive- through station design is clearly key. Next slide, please. On energy prices and margins. Overall, we have seen energy prices, both current and forward prices, decrease dramatically over the last months and weeks. They are, in fact, right now back to levels last seen before the Ukraine war started. There are a multitude of reasons for that. In any case, it is very good to see that the worst case scenarios did not materialize in the end. Of course, energy market prices could go up again, especially next winter or in the run-up to that. We draw a lot of comfort from the fact that we were able to put through price increases. Definitely not something we enjoy doing, but it allows us to keep on investing in new stations and provide more charging capacity to electric vehicle drivers in line with our mission. Our gross margin came in at EUR 0.46 per kilowatt-hour in Q4. There was a positive effect from the timely lag effect in passing through market price decreases, where we had the opposite effect in Q3. Next slide, please. To round up on our 2022 targets. A key target was to have 250 stations operational by year-end, which we did not attain as we indicated already in December. Reason for this is that we had a record number of stations in finalization phase in Q4, and a number of those slipped over the year-end due to a variety of reasons. We will open these stations in the coming days and weeks to get to the 250 stations. We did overshoot on our number of charge targets, where we ended up at 1,237 charges versus a 1,200 targets. We will provide you our 2023 guidance at our Q1 trading update at the beginning of April. Next slide, please. This finalizes our presentation. I would like to thank you all for listening. I now hand the word back to the operator for questions. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We will pause for just a moment to assemble the queue. We'll now take our first question from Thijs Berkelder from ABN- Amro. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning, Thijs Berkelder, ABN- Amro, ODDO BHF. Congratulations with this, beautiful quarter. First question is on, client behavior. Can you explain how the much higher retail prices have affected EV charging behavior in the past few months? Whether you see an effect? Second, question is, whether you maybe can update us on the timing and planning of the German highway tenders. Is there any clarity there? Third question is on, Tesla. Tesla shifted its business model to, different prices during the day. When can we expect Fastned to maybe also introduce such a business model? Thanks, Thijs. I think it's quite a broad set of questions, right? Maybe let's start with Germany, because I think the answer there is relatively simplistic. We're awaiting a decision on that tender. The process in that sense has been delayed a bit by the government, as a consequence of them replying to comments from the market. That is happening. We still expect that in the end to lead to a decision only a few months down the line. That regarding the German tender. If we look at sort of prices, behavior and elasticity, I think, we said before, we've seen relatively, none to very, very small impact on price changes, on our volumes. The price elasticity in that sense has been very, very low. We basically saw very, very little influence. I think if we look at sort of the behavior of customers, I think it is, for us, difficult to see, you know, what is happening in that market because we see a very cold month in, let's say, the beginning of December, with now a relatively warm climate, which has a significant influence on demand for kilowatt-hours of the car park. While on the other hand, we see the influence of home pricing and slow charging prices. With, for example, the slow charging price of charging poles in Amsterdam being doubled in the last days. Measuring, let's say, that influence of charging behavior is very, very difficult. If there would be any effect, it would be small. Does that give you a bit of color on that topic? Yeah, I think so. Is that what you were looking for, I think? Then maybe towards Tesla, I think, we've seen them making a choice to look at, let's say, happy hours in night hours, when prices of energy would be somewhat lower. Definitely this is a development that we have been looking into, we will be looking into. On the other hand, what we see today is that there's so much intransparency on that charging market, that it is not necessarily the first thing that we have on our list, what we would like to do. Okay, clear. Thank you. Does that, does that provide you sort of the amount of color that you were looking for? Yeah, that was good enough. I have more questions, I give the floor to others. We'll now take our next question from Lasse Stueben from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three as well. The first one is linked to the delays in the project that we have seen. Can you maybe give us a bit more color on the reasons why these projects have been delayed? Is it related to grid connections or something else? Can you just provide more information on that? With that in mind, how many, you know, projects and stations do you have in the pipe that you think you can open in the next few weeks? The second question is more related to the ramp-up in stations to basically reach the 400 stations by 2024. How comfortable are you to reach that guidance? Do you have enough visibility in your view to reach that guidance in 2024? Last but not least, you spoke about the 400 kilowatt chargers with EVBox. Do you expect an upward trend in the CapEx per station, driven by more of these more powerful, I would say, chargers that you guys install in the next coming years? Or is it, you know, the difference between the 400 and 300 kilowatts chargers are not, you know, used enough to expect that? Thank you. You wanna start, Victor? On the 400 kW. Good morning, Lasse. I'll start on the CapEx. I think overall, what we see on chargers and the charger manufacturer market is that there's an industry that is ramping up very, very rapidly. I think if you look at the sheer amount of chargers that are needed in this industry to support the transition to EVs, that, yeah, that makes it that they have to ramp up capacity very, very strongly and that we expect that to come with cost efficiencies. That industry is experiencing a cost curve and running that cost curve decline. That is sort of the broad picture. That said, that resulted in, for instance, over the last year, we saw a lot of inflation of course, but we didn't see price increases on the chargers. The manufacturers were able to absorb that. I think that could well also impact this question you have. It might well be that those chargers, and it's definitely what we would aim for, get offered at the same price basically. That's, I think, the verdict's out there, but I think that's definitely what we're trying to I think it will not happen in, at day one, right? You'll see bumps. Introduction price of these chargers might be somewhat higher. We've seen that in the past with the 175 kilowatt times 150 platforms. As soon as it sort of matures, let's say in the years after that, you see it actually coming down. Today, we see that a 150 kilowatt charger is not, let's say, 3 times as expensive as a 50 kilowatt charger was at the time. It's more like, let's say 30% to 40% more expensive. It's definitely not euro per kilowatt hour, sorry, per kilowatt installed. It's more like, as Victor says, it trends towards lower prices. Okay. All clear. Thank you. Maybe a bit about the planning that we communicated in Q1 last year. At that time, we had a construction planning that made us feel very safe to communicate 65 stations built. In the end, we realized 59. What we've seen is that that year was very back-end loaded, so there was a lot of construction works that was planned for the last months. What we've seen is that a very significant amount of them just basically tripped over that year-end line. They will be realized in the coming weeks. So in that sense, for the business, for us, it means, we're delayed by a couple of weeks, but we're very much on track. We're very, very happy with the realization. That's also what we get back from, let's say, the toll road operators in France. That is what we see in Belgium from our realizations with the Agentschap Wegen en Verkeer, so the ministry in the in Flanders. In that sense, we're very, very happy. Of course, it's, it, yeah, there is delays that cost this. If you look at what is behind that, it's just a variety of a lot of things from a crane falling over, tipping over as a consequence of a wrongly instructed crane driver, up until grid connections that have been delayed because of permit procedures, et cetera, et cetera. It's a mixed bag of things. I think the main reason why this happened was in the end because the year-end was backloaded. Basically, that's it. If we look at the ramp up for the coming, let's say, one or two years, what we look at is, we've seen the ramp up of locations in our portfolio, continuing, so we're very happy with that. There's a lot of tenders to be decided in the coming, let's say, half year, with a, yeah, with focus on Germany. That would allow us really to fill that pipeline, and grow it beyond that 400 location mark. If we look at the supply chain that needs to build the stations, we've now evidenced that we can build 30 stations in a quarter. That team is capable of doing this. The ingredients are there. Now, the coming year, let's say the coming, two years, are getting it into a flow of making that not one quarter, but a continuation of quarter by quarter. That is really the challenge that we're after. Does that give you a bit of color on that, Lasse? Yes. Perfect. Thank you very much. Cool. Good. Any other questions? The next question comes from Paul de Froment from Bryan, Garnier & Co. Yes. Good morning. You, you mentioned cold weather over the past month. Could you detail what's the impact of low temperature on the utilization rate in Q4? Regarding your partnership with EVBox, do we have to expect a greater increase of EVBox charging points at the expense of Alpitronic and ABB? My final question is, do you plan to target heavy-duty mobility at some point by designing specific stations for trucks, buses, or coaches, for example? Thank you very much. Victor, do you wanna start with the topic utilization? Yeah. Thanks for the questions, by the way, Paul. What you see with cold weather and quite extremely for the month, cold weather has. I think we were having minus 5, minus 10 degrees centigrade at some stage. That has a quite a strong impact on both utilization and volumes. That is order of magnitude around 20%, 30%, potentially. Simply because the battery is less efficient or an electric vehicle is less efficient at lower temperatures. In the end, that leads to higher volumes. They just basically need more kilowatt-hours to drive the same amount of kilometers. There's more people that take their car versus, let's say, choosing a bike or the train because it's convenient at these low temperatures. It's really, it's a consequence of a lot of, a lot of single elements. Yeah, maybe then a bit about EVBox. Yeah, the way we look at it is we have a good relationship with Alpitronic. We have a good relationship with ABB. We don't wanna be fully dependent on one party in a rapidly growing market. We see that they are, let's say, challenged to put more volume to the market in terms of number of chargers. We really see that it's more about, like, sort of putting the ramp up in the amount of chargers that we need through to several parties. We will try to ramp up the volume with Alpitronic, and our ramp up probably requires us to put a percentage to EVBox and to ABB. Does that give you a bit? Okay. an idea on that? We're not Yeah. fully decided on that yet, but we'll, let's say, step by step, based on the confidence that we have in that product, put volume on that. A bit about trucks, buses, let's say logistical transport. I think, the way we look at it is we don't think that Fastned is a, let's say, B2B business brand, to, let's say, do, maintenance, operation of chargers, at, let's say, a distribution center of a supermarket. That is not our business. That is much more operate and maintain type of work and less, less sort of a commercial operation of a location. That said, that commercial operation of locations, we're after acquiring great locations and selling kilowatt-hours to the public there. A certain percentage of that public is logistical sort of movements, right? Trucks from, let's say various operators. The angle that we take is we don't go into these sort of the operate and maintain sort of environment. That's not really our sort of angle. We do work on a route where we can welcome more and more larger types of vehicles at our stations. That is already happening today. We see 40, 30-ton trucks charging at some of our stations using those 300 kilowatt chargers. Yeah. Does that give you a bit of, sort of, content on that topic at all? Yeah. That was very clear. That's. Yes, in fact, I was asking this question because with 400 kilowatt charging points, I mean, you can address trucks as well. That's why I was wondering. Yes, it was very clear. Thank you very much. Yeah. I think maybe to add a bit on it, what we do see is we're working on what is the MCS, so the 1 megawatt charging standard for long-haul trucks for the heavy long-haul transport. What does that mean? We'll see that coming in the coming years. We are working on a number of pilot sites to deploy that. We are designing our locations in a way that we could adapt them to add these kind of larger vehicles as well. It's definitely something that we take into account, but we look at it from a location perspective. That's, I think, what is really important. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Good. Thanks. Any other questions? Marc Hesselink from ING, please go ahead. Yes, please. First question is actually on the Netherlands. The new proposal and also maybe the opportunity for extra locations in the Netherlands. I think can you elaborate that a bit more? I see also you won a location in the Netherlands, what kind of new locations are out there for you to add to the already very strong position that you have? Yeah. Well, first of all, we're still working on a very significant pool of locations along the Dutch motorway. A lot of sites which were basically just difficult for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Fastned to really find a well-working proposal. The good thing is that over the last, let's say, year or two years, we've given that a very serious push. We'll see a realization in the coming year, coming two years, yeah, to build out that network really to a final stage. That means that basically all those service areas will have great infrastructure, let's say, in a year or two years' time. That is one. Two is the policy proposal that we've also mentioned in the call here, that is out there. It mentions yeah, let's say an extension of charging infrastructure to currently unserviced service areas, so to add capacity using those locations. They wanna sort of see how they bring those to the market through competitive tenders. That potentially adds up to, let's say, 150 locations on the motorway network, that would potentially be very interesting for Fastned as well. That is one. Two, we are continuing to work on locations like Tafelbergweg in Amsterdam, locations with commercial parties, basically a very simple land lease. What we're doing is we're expanding our teams, to build those relationships and to add more and more of these locations to our network. That said, if you look at where the focus and the balance in that equation is, it's been less on the Netherlands and more in France, the U.K., et cetera, because we already have a very great portfolio in the Netherlands. In that sense, the focus there was more on other countries. Does that give you a bit of, let's say, ingredients to an answer? Yes. That's clear. Actually, my second question is actually also for the more international rollout and then actually to the regions where you're not active yet. Other regions you discussed in the at Charging Day. What are your ideas there and what kind of timeframe? Have you now looked at the markets? Which markets are very attractive for you given how they are structured and when can we expect something? Well, you look at it in that sense, like, neighboring countries. We look at it with a European angle. What we see currently is that we talked about Italy in that sense in the last quarter, and I mentioned it this quarter again. We see very good steps from a policy angle. We do expect a large amount of tenders happening in the coming year there. Tenders for separate fast charging stations in a very large market with hundreds of service areas to be equipped with serious infrastructure. That is definitely something we have on our list. We see developments in Denmark. The Danish government is working on tendering out their network of locations they have on their motorway system. We've been looking on the developments in Spain. There, the government basically went sideways. They mandated petrol stations to add chargers to their petrol station. That is something we're talking about with the government. We're trying to influence policy there, in the, let's say, the interest of electric drivers in order to accelerate that transition. That said, we also see that mandate is already today stalling the market. Operators in that sense are talking to us saying that it isn't materializing in acceleration. The interesting thing of that is that it is providing us opportunities to again, work with toll road operators to build stations. Although the policy is not great in Spain, it is providing us opportunities. We're looking at that. We see developments in Austria, and let's say Poland, Czechia, we're looking at that. I would say probably the heavy weight is on Italy, Spain, Denmark. Does that give you a bit of color on new geographies? Yeah, yeah. If I read it a little bit correctly, like, Italy seems most prominent to do something like what we've seen in France, like, coming from where you're not active and then being quite sizable in a very relatively short period of time. Bit difficult to hear, Marc. Can you You compare it to France, right? I Yeah, yeah. In France, with France, we started with nine stations with one toll road operator. That provided also a bit of a blueprint to the market. Yeah. to the government. It's definitely a sort of strategy that I would like to do in countries like Spain and Italy. In that sense, we're pragmatic, so that might be the way if it's a full-blown tender for the whole country. We're logically interested as well, but I would expect it probably to go a bit more like the French route. Yeah. Okay. Final question is actually on EBITDA. At Any other questions? We have a question from Hans Pluijgers from Kepler Cheuvreux. Yes. Morning, all. One follow-up question on the last question with respect to EBITDA and especially the cost side. On operating costs, I think that the picture is a little bit clear, but you've added quite a few people last year, and I think mainly focused on expansion. Can you maybe give some feeling in how far ahead, let's say, a little bit of the curve you are with respect to your FTEs for your year to support your future growth? Yeah, how many do you expect maybe also to add this year? Then with respect to the planning of the rollout. I understand you don't want to give, let's say, already numbers guidance for the total number, but give maybe some feeling on, let's say, how the spread over the year? Last year, it was, of course, more back-end loaded. I understand you will open several, in the coming weeks. Yeah, how does, let's say, will the rollout a little bit look like more evenly spread over the year or again, a little bit more back-end loaded? Give some feeling on that. Yeah. Maybe on FTEs. We added, yeah, 60 new employees last year. We were very happy to welcome them. I think they're, yeah, like Michiel explained, we're ramping up the organization. We built around 40 stations in 2021, 60 stations last year. We want to increase that build base, that means increasing the size of the organization. That 60 last year, yeah, it's order of magnitude similar, probably a bit more than that I would like to add this year to help it out. In that sense, if you look at the ramp up, you asked about the rollout. If you look at that base, we went from, let's say, 40-ish construction base to 60-ish this year. We want to get it to 100 in 2024. We want, if you, if you pick it in the middle, you're somewhere at 80-ish. That is sort of the trajectory that we're on. I think that's also what we communicated. We need the people, the amount of people to get that done as well. That will grow in line, but somewhat front-loaded in that FCE planning as well. We're talking probably about 20% to 30% sort of year-on-year growth of the FCE hiring. Does that give you a bit of sort of, yeah, the color on how we look at it now? I think it's not Yes. It's not fully detailed out yet. We're also working on this. As said Victor, what Victor said, like, we will communicate a more clear guidance in April. This is a bit how we look at it. Yep, clear. Our next question comes from Emmanuel Carlier from Van Lanschot Kempen. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three, and I will do it one by one. First of all, on cost inflation, is there any guidance you could give on the salaries, how much they will go up on average in 2023? Yeah, on salaries, there is, has been cost inflation for employees as well, of course. There is a difference per country. Honestly, I think what you're seeing in, for instance, the Netherlands, people are exposed to the energy price increases. That led to cost inflations of 10% or higher at some stage last year. In other markets, like for instance, France, their customers were protected from that, and there was lower inflation. It differs a bit per market. We'll definitely, yeah, raise salaries to compensate for part of that or a large part of that. Hope that answers your question. Yeah, sure. Is there any other important buckets where you see a lot of inflation? Maybe to complement on the salaries, I think if you look at our salaries, at the average salaries, you can see them in our annual reports. I think as a company, we always wanted to manage that in a, in a proper way in line with, company being a small company, unprofitable, a few years back. We were quite efficient in that. In that, you should also see that any cost increase in that light. On other inflation, I think what you see in general in the market, is that raw material prices are coming down very, very strongly over the last weeks and months. That is definitely supporting. On the other hand, for instance, a lot of our construction, work is simply labor. There you will basically see the same effect as we just discussed. There potentially is room for cost increases. It's hard to estimate what the mix of that will be and what the outcome of that will be. There could be increase again, but it's very hard for us to give guidance on that. Okay. I think if you go through the P&L right, like things like for example, grid connections, there will be cost in inflation, partly because of the energy transition, partly because of general inflation. That process all has a time lag of roughly a year or so. Mm-hmm. That's for many elements, I think, in our P&L. Okay. No, that's clear. Thank you for that. The second question is on the retail price cap in the Netherlands. If I understand well, you have a kind of a basic kilowatt-hour that you could use, and then you get it at around EUR 0.40, and then above it's EUR 0.80. How do you believe that this mechanism is impacting fast charging? Does it help you in supporting pricing? Does it mean that maybe more people decide to charge at fast chargers versus at home? Do you believe that there is not really a big impact from this mechanism? Yeah. We always say that home charging and fast charging is not really interchangeable basically in both directions. That is one element. Second is that basically a price cap is yeah, effectively covering for households usage at 50 usage and not EV charging. People indeed will get their rates, their normal rates or their market rates effectively for EV charging. And they had that market rate already over the last couple of quarters. That won't change much in that angle in terms of behavior. I mean, maybe thirdly, what might be more interesting is that what Michiel mentioned already is that we see AC charging, public AC charging prices going up quite strongly over the last weeks and months. Where for instance, EnBW in Germany increased their AC pricing to match their DC pricing. They have said that, EnBW have said in the past, if we are honest and we calculate the business case, AC pricing should be higher than DC pricing. That's one thing we've always said over the last couple of years. That is I think an interesting part to watch because in a way, AC charging is much more interchangeable with DC charging. We saw other parties like Vattenfall in the Netherlands, Allego also increasing AC pricing system. That is, I think, a more relevant development. Okay. With respect to your gross profit per kilowatt-hour, you stick to, I think, your earlier comments that you want to have it around, I think EUR 0.40 to EUR 0.45 in order to have the good customer experience and still a decent pricing, but not really having potential negative effects on station wins. Is that unchanged? Well, we haven't provided guidance on that. We have managed it between EUR 0.35 and EUR 0.40 over the last year. If you compensate for the timeline effects. That's probably the best reference to look at. In the past, we've had higher gross margins with lower energy prices. I think energy prices going down this year very, very strongly. Yeah, will give us a bit more flexibility versus last year. Okay. Thank you. My final question is on the Dutch government proposal. I need to do much more work on that, but is this also having details about what would theoretically happen if one of the concessions of you in the Netherlands would expire, and how you would get refunded? Or is that not part of this proposal? It partly is. Basically, concessions when they end, currently there is no, there is no scheme for it. They are planning to get a sort of a refunding scheme in there for all parties in the market. I think that is good. I think what is important from, let's say, this policy proposal is that it allows Fastned to when these concessions expire, bids on the new concessions, and they are separate. They're separate fast charging concessions. There is an ambition to accelerate that transition. Because they separated the two concessions in that proposal and said, "You have to choose which one do you want to have," means that, for example, a large oil major cannot say, "Hey, I would like to go for both." They have to choose for going electric or stay fossil. That provides much more opportunity for parties like us to really provide a competitive bid. I think for us, it's really an interesting policy proposal. It puts a lot of competition out there, and it puts market access there, also to smaller parties or to change makers like us. They've really thought that through, and I think that is very, very good. What do you mean that they have to choose between being petrol or electric? Yeah. The proposal is that if you bid on a certain service area, you have to choose whether you choose to bid for electric or you bid for the fossil station, but you cannot bid for both. Okay. A full service proposal creating that, they basically disallow that. They said, "We do that because we wanna nourish innovation. We want to make sure this market is as open as possible for competition because we want to accelerate that transition." That is a point that we have been making that, that is important to accelerate that transition. I think it's very good to see that the government is also making that choice now in the interest of electric drivers. Okay. That's clear. Thanks a lot for that. Yeah. I think. Yep. Go ahead. Sorry, I interrupted. Is there any questions left? I realize we're seven minutes over time. Any questions left? We have follow-up question from Thijs Berkelder from ABN AMRO. Let's do that, right? Yeah, let's. Here you go, Thijs. Yeah. Okay. Good to be back. Well, I'm surprised that maybe the key question of today has not been asked. Michiel, can you explain why you and/or the founders more in general, are selling part of their holding, while your market has just started to grow into profitability? Secondly, with Schroders coming in, does it mean that we also could expect maybe new acquisitions to come in, in the road forward or are you still almost fully focused on organic growth? That's of course difficult to answer on like, let's say, what kind of acquisitions could come in in the coming, let's say, period. We will, of course, look at opportunities that are on the market and see whether that, you know, whether that's interesting for Fastned or not. We are doing that, and we will continue to do that. We'll report on that when it's, yeah, let's say, when it materializes. Reason for selling, small part of our holdings in Fastned, both Bart and me, took loans from our families, let's say, at the start of Fastned to finance part of what we've been doing at that time. That has to be repaid at some point in time. We think the time is right to do that. If we look at, let's say, funding for Fastned, we've been awaiting a lot, the time that the company doesn't need financing. Basically, in the coming year, we have funding and the company doesn't need to go to the market for new equity. That made this a logical timeframe. Secondly, Bart's father has died a while ago, which leads to a lot of, yeah, let's say a lot of tax implications, paying Successiebelasting. Yeah, let's say that family investment from Breesaap, they financed a large part of the start of Fastned, and had a, yeah, the logic in that sense is to see if we can pay tax obligations out of selling a small portion. That said, yeah, we're selling a very small portion of our holdings and, we're very, very, very committed to what we're been doing and what we will be doing in the future. In that sense, no change in that. It's more a part of satisfying obligations that we have, you know, that we have to satisfy. Is that, is that clear, Thijs? Does that give you? No, that's very clear. Thanks for the answer. We let's say we keep a majority share in the company and we're very happy to be able to maintain an independent course because we see the value that we can create with that independent course. Okay. On that note, I think, yeah, if there's no further questions, I would like to finalize the call. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Looking forward to talk again, within roughly three months with the Q1 results and the annual report. Looking forward to that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye-bye.