Playing Gran Turismo 7 and wondering how you get more helmets and racing suits for your avatar to wear? Here's everything you need to know.

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Being able to massive tune cars in Gran Turismo 7 is a big part of the experience. Ever since the first PlayStation release all those...

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Independent theaters located near Encore Boston Harbor are concerned about entertainment competition from the casino or at a proposed entertainment complex located near the Everett, Mass. venue. They worry it could hurt their bottom line. Already, the gaming property has sold tickets to well-attended entertainment events. More performances are coming if the East of Broadway […]

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It’s been 84 years… Back when Gran Turismo was one of the only simulation-heavy racing games, it was an institution:...

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Infrastructure Bill's EV Charger Funding a Good Start, but More Funding Likely to be Needed to Meet Growing Demand

IHS Markit expects US infrastructure bill to supplement only 66 percent of required US EV charger growth through 2026

Today President Joe Biden signed into law the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. The bill is expected to support the automotive industry in many ways, from improved road conditions, cleaner commercial vehicles, electric vehicle battery factories, battery recycling, and lithium mining and refining. However, one of the largest EV appropriations will be toward vehicle charging. Some $7.5 billion has been allocated to alternative fuel charging, primarily for electric vehicle chargers and supporting infrastructure across the country.

IHS Markit estimates that the US federal investment will directly contribute to the construction, maintenance, and operation of approximately 400,000 newly installed Level 2 AC and Level 3 DC Fast chargers in the US between 2022 and 2026. Under the details outlined in the bill, chargers must be open-sourced, meaning funding cannot go to Tesla's proprietary Supercharger network, unless it opens it up to non-Tesla vehicles.

However, IHS Markit believes this investment is unlikely to meet the growing demand of the US plug-in EV fleet. Along with the nation's current electric vehicle charging infrastructure of 100,000+ chargers at 50,000 publicly available locations, IHS Markit estimates there will need to be about 600,000 additional chargers installed at another 100,000 public locations by 2026.

The figure does not include the 3.2 million domestic, private Level 2 chargers expected to be installed in residential homes - mostly in garages - over the investment period.

This bill represents the first large-scale national investment in EV charging infrastructure. "The Biden administration's investment isn't hyperbole and will have a significant impact on US electric vehicle charging supply," said Mark Boyadjis, IHS Markit global automotive technology lead. "However, even an investment at this scale will come up short against the rapid growth of electric cars hitting the road soon, pointing to a need for additional support from municipal, utility, and private investments to fill the gap."

IHS Markit expects that the EV Vehicles in Operation (VIO) on the road in the United States will increase from 1.5 million in 2020 to about 9.3 million units in 2026. IHS Markit estimates that the nation needs approximately 700,000 cumulative chargers by 2026 to meet that demand, and the 400,000 that the US bill will support is not enough to get us there entirely. During the 5-year investment period, Federal subsidies are only expected to fulfill two-thirds of what is required to energize the future EV fleet in the US.

Additionally, IHS Markit forecasts EV battery capacity to steadily increase over the coming years. "This will allow the average EV to travel further on a single charge, in principle lessening the need for such abundant infrastructure, said Graham Evans, director, automotive supply chain & technology, IHS Markit. "However, from a consumer perception perspective, abundant EV charging is needed to encourage skeptical consumers that a BEV is workable for them."

75 percent of US EV owners prefer to charge at home, but a successful transition to a national electric vehicle fleet requires a way for those without that capability to charge in a convenient manner at public facilities. Overall, only 63 percent of US households have access to a garage and that figure is less in urban areas where more than 50 percent of EV sales occur. "If EVs remain impractical for apartment, condo, and historic home dwellers, we cannot adequately reach the administration's stated EV goals," said Colin Bird-Martinez, automotive consulting principal analyst, IHS Markit.

The bill sets aside $5 billion to be granted to states to deploy EV charging stations in US; and $2.5 billion in grants to public entities to deploy publicly-available EV charging, hydrogen fueling, propane fueling, and natural gas fueling infrastructure through 2022-26.

Background

By numbers alone, Appetise looks like one of the worst value IPOs I have reviewed on this blog. To explain, let me give a few simple facts presented in Appetise’s own prospectus:

After starting in 2008, Appetise was acquired for only $230,000 in May 2016 by Long Hill, an American investment company. After acquiring the business, Longhill poured $2,260,000 into Appetise to improve the company's website and increase the number of restaurants on the platform. However, despite these investments, revenue decreased from $91,715 in FY16 to $49,172 in FY17. This IPO now values Long Hill’s stake at $9 million, with total market capitallization on listing between 13.8 and 15 million, more than 200 times their 2017 revenue.  If the IPO is successful, this will be a 261% return on investment over 18 months for Long Hill, despite no measurable improvement in Appetise’s performance. If you are getting flash backs of Dick Smith right now, you’re not the only one.

Management

When Long Hill bought Appetise they did the usual private equity thing of installing a completely new management team, getting rid of the original founder in the process. The newly appointed CEO, Konstantine Karampatsos, has had experience both setting up his own online business as well as a stint at Amazon, and the CFO Richard Hately has had a number of senior roles at both start-ups and established businesses. While the CEO and CFO both seem like logical choices, appointing such an experienced management team to a company of this size leads to some pretty ridiculous statistics.

Konstantine Karampatos will have an annual salary of $204,050, post listing, plus a bonus of $122,430. Richard Hately, the CFO, will have a salary of $195,888, and will receive a listing bonus of $81,620. The marketing director will receive a salary of $138,750, though no listing bonus. All up, this is an annual cost of over $700,000 for the three highest paid employees, for a company that had less than $50,000 in revenue last year. Even if Appetise’s FY17 revenue increased by 1000% in FY18, it would still not come close to covering the salary of its three most senior executives.

This is a perfect demonstration of why a public listing at such an early stage is a terrible idea. A $50,000 revenue company should be being run out of a garage or basement somewhere by a few dedicated founders on the smell of an oily rag, not burning through cash on highly paid executives.

This cost has real consequences too. Under their proposed allocation of funds, with a minimum $4.8 million raise, Appetise will spend $1.55 million on executive and head office expenses, vs only $2.15 million on marketing. Given that their primary goal over the next few years is to raise their profile, this seems like a ridiculous allocation of capital.

Product

As Appetise is currently only operating in England, the closest I could get to testing Apetise’s product was spending some time clicking through their website. Overall, it was a pretty underwhelming experience. There are three large tabs that block a significant part of the page, which makes scrolling through options difficult, and the colour scheme and overall design feels a little basic. 

On the positive side, they seem to have invested some time into making the mobile experience work well; if anything the site actually seems to work and look better on a mobile phone. It is also worth mentioning that while the prospectus mentions that the business has a national footprint on numerous occasions, their coverage in London is pretty minimal, and at this stage they seem to be focused solely on the city of Birmingham.

The company’s social media presence is similarly disappointing. The prospectus talks a lot about social media engagement through their loyalty scheme, where users can get credit by sharing Appetise on their social network but so far they have failed to get much traction in this area. The Appetise Facebook page seems to only post bad food puns, and each post gets around 2 to 7 likes on average

(I also noticed that a company director and their marketing executive are two of their most common Facebook fans.) Compare this to Menulog’s page, an Australian food ordering and delivery service, where you’ll see content featuring available restaurants, slightly funnier puns, and as a result much higher engagement with customers. While Facebook posts might seem like a trivial thing to be hung up on in a company review, one of the key things that will affect Appetise’s success is how easily they can build an online following. The fact that so far they have demonstrated little nous in this area is definitely a cause for concern.

Market

Online food ordering is an industry with massive growth potential, and this is probably the main reason Long Hill felt they could get away with the prospectus valuation they have gone for. Appetise has a different model to the likes of Menulog or Deliveroo though, as Appetise does not take part in deliveries, instead, restaurants featured on the Appetise platform need to deliver the food themselves. The idea is this will allow them to scale more easily and not get bogged down with logistical complexities. While I don’t doubt this approach might work in the short term, (and Just Eat, a successful UK company with the same model as Appetise has proven that it can) in the long run an Uber Eats type model of flexible contractors, that can be sent wherever there is demand seems much more efficient. As websites like Uber Eats become more popular and economies of scale start to kick in, I feel there would be an incentive for restaurants to fire their delivery drivers and move from an Appetise type platform to an Uber Eats one.

Appetise makes the argument that their patform is currently cheaper, as Uber Eats charge delivery fees to customers, but just like with Uber, you would assume that these charges will eventually decrease as the site grows in popularity.

Verdict

Appetise’s response to a lot of what I’ve said here would be that the company is uniquely placed to experience explosive growth in the near future. They have a workable website platform, and their only major competitor in the UK Just Eat has demonstrated that there is money to be made in this market. While a $50,00 revenue company with a board of directors looks ridiculous now, if in 12 months’ time their revenue is closer to $1,000,000 no one will be complaining. The problem I have with this argument though is it requires a lot of faith with not much evidence. If Appetise is really uniquely placed to grow so quickly, why not hold off on the prospectus for a few months so they can demonstrate this? Appetise runs on a March end financial year, so their first half FY18 figures should be available now. Once again, the cynic in me thinks that if revenue was actually growing, these figures would be included in the prospectus. 

Even in a growing industry you need to be ahead of the curve and have a clear point of differentiation to succeed, and after reading the Appetise prospectus and looking over their website I simply don’t see this for Appetise. In one of the easier decisions I’ve had to make with this blog so far, I will not be investing in the Appetise IPO.