Meridiam-backed pan-European electric vehicle (EV) charging company Allego is considering partnering with investors as it looks to convert some of its sites in Germany.
NYSE-listed Allego earlier this year mandated Macquarie Capital to find equity partners to convert around 100 sites in its German pipeline into fast charging stations, sources said, which could represent up to 300 charging points.
Allego is planning to set up an SPV with the preferred bidder, which it would service, according to sources.
The Arnhem, Netherlands-headquartered developer would possibly look to run a financing process for the sites once the equity investors are in place, sources said.
Allego declined to comment. Macquarie Capital did not respond to a request for comment.
Last May, Allego announced its expansion in the German EV market with plans to deliver around 900 new charging points across 400 stores owned by German tyre retailer ATU.
The company planned to start work on 85 new locations by the end of the year, although it is unclear whether that target was met.
Allego had already installed its chargers across 41 ATU locations at the time of the announcement, which it also plans to upgrade with faster chargers.
Founded in 2013, Allego currently has an international charging network of around 34,000 public and private charging ports operational throughout Europe.
Allego reported an operational EBITDA last year of EUR 7.8m versus EUR 14.8m the year before, according to its annual report published on 16 May.
Last year, the company sold 154.6 GWh of energy, an 86.8% increase on energy sold over the course of 2021, according to the report.
In December, the company refinanced an existing credit facility of EUR 170m and raised a further EUR 230m of debt.
The new green loan added further debt to support Allego’s “significant backlog” of signed contracts, including those signed in the third quarter of 2022, Allego said at the time.
Meridiam bought the Dutch EV company from Dutch electricity utility Alliander in 2018 and remains its majority shareholder.
Allego, which started trading on the NYSE last year, in November 2021 reached financial close on a project to install a network of more than 2,000 EV charge points in Carrefour’s French hypermarkets.
The network was set to be operational by this year, although is unclear whether all charge points are up and running.
The total investment from all parties to develop the network was estimated at EUR 138m, and approximately EUR 55m of the total was set to be financed by senior debt contributions from seven European commercial banks.
In a similar deal, last month EDF Energy won a competitive tender to install thousands of electric vehicle (EV) charging points across McDonald’s restaurants in France.
