Hansen Technologies Limited

ASX:HSN

Hansen Technologies Limited

ASX:HSN
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Pinned straw:
edgescape
Last edited 12 months ago

A bit of history on Powercloud and past ambitions

In 2022, Powercloud did a collaboration with AWS and wrote a case study on using AWS resources to deploy Powercloud for their customers.

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/powercloud-case-study/

Most importantly it gives a hint of technology stack behind Powercloud and ambitions to enter the US market

"powercloud now has plans for international expansion. Its pipeline of new customers includes businesses across Europe, North America, and Australia. The scalability of AWS supports this growth. “As we expand to new countries, with new customers, we know we can confidently and easily deliver our solutions,” says (Zoran) Petrovic. Chief growth officer - Powercloud"

However Powercloud was already losing money from expansion into other regions such as US and Spain. In 2022 Powercloud made a loss of 19m Euros.

More importantly, their other investment in Chargecloud was losing money and in 2023 they decided to make an exit and sell their stake to the last 2 major shareholders

c1a7780a8adf2c5b7f1d0268afd632589ab6a7.png

After the takeover by Hansen in 2024, further cuts were made which forced Powercloud to focus on the German, Swiss and Austria market https://www.energate-messenger.com/news/247504/powercloud-to-shrink-into-the-profit-zone

5d170053fa9d4d1aec259b4af8c935fd1ec8c7.png

This meant that Kraken was able to migrate Powercloud customers onto their platform. Some may know that Origin Energy uses Kraken and has a stake in Octopus energy (another company I'm looking into).baa576b5f2c73258c35fb9fd1ea866efbc9aac.png

It's hard to figure out what went wrong with Powercloud

Perhaps it could be the haphazard energy policy in Germany?

Apparently Germany has the slowest rollout of Smart Meters in the EU which is Powercloud's (and now Hansen's) key market.

This article about a draft policy to delay the smart meter transition rollout doesn't help.

Ah well, I had fond memories of backpacking in Germany and learning about the history. Was such a great country and industrial powerhouse when I visited. Not sure about it now.
jcmleng
Added 12 months ago

@edgescape , thanks for all the posts around powercloud, GTK, Kraken, SAP etc. Intending to deep dive from next week onwards after I get back from a short holiday and hopefully be able to compare notes and thoughts with you then.

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edgescape
Added 12 months ago

@jcmleng No worries. Hope it helps

I think Hansen are buying Powercloud when sentiment in the company is at rock bottom as well as the lack of change in the German energy markets..

At the same time Hansen still see some value in Powercloud's existing customer and partners as well as intellectual property including software code.

In summary, this is a typical acquisition strategy of buying when cheap.

Taking the knife into Powercloud might be a good short/mid term strategy.

What really matters long term is the will for major policy reform and changes that will benefit the energy market in Germany.

It is quite clear that Hansen is betting on German policy reform with their acquisition of Powercloud as that will create a big growth runway where things like smart meter adoption is only 5%. But also you can never be sure about politics and it seems sentiment of the German community towards smart meters is widely negative when I went through X / Twitter.

In short, I think this is a typical contrarian acquisition from Hansen. Buying when the asset value has fallen and maybe with a bit of luck from German macro factors, things will improve.


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