Tritium finds a buyer for its insolvent high-speed EV-charger business

Tritium, the insolvent Australia-based manufacturer of EV-charging equipment, has found a buyer for its assets — India’s largest EV-charger manufacturer Exicom. The acquisition provides hope that a major provider of fast-charging equipment for the U.S. market will be able to avoid layoffs and reduces the risk of further supply disruptions.

Under the definitive agreement announced last Thursday, Exicom subsidiary Exicom Power Solutions B.V. Netherlands and other subsidiaries will acquire the businesses and assets of the Tritium group of companies. Those assets include the manufacturer’s Brisbane, Australia–based research and development center — and its massive factory in Lebanon, Tennessee, which opened in 2022 and can produce up to 30,000 fast chargers per year.

“Exicom and Tritium have a complementary sales and product footprint and have each established leadership in their respective regions,” Exicom CEO Anant Nahata said in a statement. ​“We look forward to working with Tritium’s employees, customers, partners and other stakeholders to grow the business further and provide faster, more reliable charging experiences to EV users across the globe.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But news reports pegged the price at just under $30 million. That’s a lot less than the value of Tritium’s assets. But it’s also presumably much less than the financial liabilities that forced the company into insolvency in April.

“The cash purchase price was never officially disclosed, but rest assured, it is a small number,” Pavel Molchanov, managing director and equity research analyst at Raymond James & Associates, told Canary Media in an email. ​“What matters is that Exicom will take on Tritium’s liabilities — corporate debt and also all of the supplier relationships — and will start covering the paychecks of the workforce.”

Tritium is a significant global supplier of the high-voltage direct current fast charger (DCFC) equipment used at highway rest stops, fleet depots, and other sites to quickly charge electric vehicles. It has sold an estimated 13,000 chargers in 47 countries, and claimed roughly 30 percent of the U.S. market share for DCFCs in 2023, with customers including BP Pulse, ChargePoint, EV Connect, EVCS, and Shell Recharge.

Tritium focused on the U.S. market, debuting on the Nasdaq exchange via reverse merger with a special-purpose acquisition company in January 2022 at a $2 billion valuation. It announced plans to open the Tennessee factory at a White House event that same year, marking its commitment to meet the domestic content requirements for chargers deployed via the $5 billion in EV charging incentives created by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Tritium chargers have since been part of federally backed projects in Hawaii and Tennessee.

But the company struggled to contain costs and achieve profitability, forcing it to repeatedly appeal to investors for injections of capital. Its efforts to secure a $90 million investment from the Queensland government to keep its Australia factory open were rebuffed late last year, sending its share plummeting from a high of more than $290 to the single digits. Months later, Tritium was insolvent.

Tritium’s insolvency threatened the jobs of the estimated 500 employees at its Tennessee factory, the ongoing delivery of new chargers to customers, and the maintenance and upkeep of the chargers it had already deployed.

Given those risks, the acquisition by Exicom ​“is definitely a better option than the alternatives,” Molchanov wrote. ​“Exicom is a solid company, and hopefully a large portion of Tritium’s personnel will find a good home there.”

New Delhi, India–based Exicom manufactures a range of EV chargers, as well as energy storage systems for telecommunications and industrial customers. The company employs approximately 1,200 people and serves customers in more than 15 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Molchanov contrasted the outcome of Tritium to that of another bankrupt EV-charger manufacturer, FreeWire Technologies. The Newark, California–based FreeWire revealed in May that it planned to shutter its headquarters and lay off all its employees. ​“As far as I can tell, there has been no buyer for FreeWire, and the business is defunct,” Molchanov wrote.

Tritium is far from the only company in the U.S. high-speed EV-charging space. More than half the country’s existing DCFC market is served by Tesla, although the company’s decision to lay off much of its EV-charging team has cast doubt on its continued expansion plans. Other DCFC manufacturers include global electrical equipment giants ABB and Siemens, which have expanded U.S. manufacturing capacity, and companies such as Delta, Kempower, Lincoln Electric, and Wallbox.

The U.S. needs a lot more public DCFC chargers to give drivers the confidence that they’ll be able to quickly recharge electric vehicles. Lack of ubiquitous and reliable public charging stations is a key barrier to expanding EV adoption at the pace needed to meet the Biden administration’s goal of EVs and plug-in hybrids making up half of all cars sold in the U.S. by 2030. Hitting that goal is itself crucial to the country’s broader goal of halving economy-wide carbon emissions by 2030.

Right now, the U.S. has just over 41,000 fast chargers, but the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that the country will need 182,000 fast chargers to support between 30 million and 42 million EVs on the road by 2030.

That’s a lot of chargers to build over the next six years. With its new buyer, the hope is that Tritium can still play some role in helping the U.S. meet that lofty target.