Ampol’s $225 million Evie deal creates a major Australian charging platform

Ampol Buys Scale in Public EV Charging

Ampol Limited (ASX:ALD) is paying $225 million for Evie Networks, making a sizeable bet that Australia’s electric vehicle charging market will develop quickly enough to justify buying scale rather than building it from scratch. The deal would add 1,031 charging bays across 322 sites to Ampol’s AmpCharge network, creating a combined platform of approximately 1,425 bays across more than 400 locations.

The acquisition gives Ampol a materially larger position in public DC fast charging, where the company says demand is expected to grow as battery electric vehicle sales rise. Ampol’s presentation says BEVs accounted for more than 20% of new cars sold on average over the five months before the announcement, while public charging infrastructure has not kept pace with vehicle uptake. Those figures are company-presented market data rather than an independent forecast by Ampol.

Lease Tenure and Grid Access Form the Core Assets

Evie’s attraction is not simply its charger count. Ampol says the network has a weighted average lease expiry of approximately 10 years, including options, with sites concentrated around metropolitan access points, regional areas and highway corridors. Some locations also have around 20 megawatts of spare grid capacity, potentially allowing faster chargers or additional capacity to be installed without securing entirely new sites.

Evie brings nine years of operating experience and approximately 380,000 registered app customers. Ampol says the two businesses also offer complementary customer bases, including an opportunity to extend charging services to its existing fleet relationships. The combined network would include chargers ranging from 50 kilowatts to more than 350 kilowatts, covering a range of use cases from destination charging to highway travel.

Earnings Targets Rely on Utilisation and Integration

Ampol is targeting approximately $10 million in mostly cost synergies within three years of completion. It expects the combined charging business to reach EBITDA breakeven in 2028, described as the first full calendar year after completion, and is targeting annualised EBITDA of more than $30 million within three years, with double-digit annual growth thereafter.

Those numbers are forward-looking targets, not reported earnings. The presentation states that Ampol has not independently verified the Evie network information supplied by Evie management, while the forecast depends on public charging demand, network expansion and the integration of the two businesses. The transaction will be funded through existing debt facilities; Ampol says the effect on leverage will be nominal and that it intends to maintain its Baa1 investment-grade credit rating.

ACCC Clearance Is the Immediate Gate

Completion is targeted for the first half of 2027, subject to clearance from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and other customary conditions. Full integration is expected to take approximately three years from completion, leaving a lengthy period between signing and the point at which Ampol’s synergy and breakeven targets can be properly tested.

The strategic logic is straightforward: buying an established network secures sites, grid connections and customers at once. The harder question is whether the enlarged footprint can generate enough energy sold per bay to turn network scale into durable returns. Ampol’s own timetable puts the first clear financial checkpoint in 2028, when the combined charging business is meant to cross EBITDA breakeven.