Hyperion Q2 2026 Market Review

David Hunt (00:01)
Hello and welcome back to the Leaders in Clean Set podcast where we’re going into a market review with the team from Hyperion Executive Search. No we won’t because that’s the old company name so we’ll start again. It’s only been three months.

Stephen Robinson (00:11)
You

David Beeston (00:11)
You

Stephen Robinson (00:16)
You

David Hunt (00:19)
Hello and welcome to…

David Hunt (00:26)
Hello welcome to the Leaders in Cleanseq podcast. Today we have an extra episode with the team from Hyperion Search looking at the key themes for across technology, investment and talent from the Cleanseq sector. So firstly, welcome Steve and David from Hyperion Search.

Stephen Robinson (00:41)
Hi David, great to see you again. Thanks for having us.

David Beeston (00:43)
Yeah. Yeah, good to see you, David.

David Hunt (00:45)
People will be of course aware that I founded Hyperion but it’s over a quarter now since I jumped out of the business and Stephen and David long-term members of the team have take over the running of the business. I’m delighted to see both the success of you guys into the business but also looking at what’s happened in the last quarter where I’ve been a little bit more as you can probably tell from the suntan enjoying the back garden a little bit too much. So one of the key themes from the review

David Hunt (01:13)
And in the episode notes, we’ll put a link so people can obviously access the review, but we’ll talk through some of that. But one of the key themes that came out was this movement from sort of announcement to alignment. Perhaps you can share a little bit of what that kind of means, what some of the headlines have been in the trends of the last quarter.

Stephen Robinson (01:32)
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. think it’s that, I think there’s a couple of phrases that we could have used, we were sort of bouncing around the team, that announcement to alignment, sort of almost promised the performance and then even sort of ambition to execution. And I think the key theme is around execution and David, you can jump in as well. But I think broadly, whether it’s renewables, whether it’s storage, whether it’s, know, e-mobility, V-charge and infrastructure rollout, I think the biggest.

Stephen Robinson (02:01)
The biggest shift that we’ve seen is actually now it’s, you know, less talking and more walking. The biggest challenge obviously is, is still, you know, accessing that capacity, those grid constraints, you know, everyone’s facing those challenges. But I think we’ve really started to see the emergence of some of the real market leaders now. And we’ll talk about the sort of the transactions that we’ve seen from M &A and so on in Q1 that have…

Stephen Robinson (02:29)
still continue at a decent pace into Q2, yeah, lots of deals, lots of capital still flowing into the sector, lots of &A activity, but I think the key themes now, what we’re seeing and what we’re hearing from investors, as you know, I was over in Bilbao for the Energy Tech Summit back in April, and a lot of the key themes now is…

David Hunt (02:48)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Robinson (02:53)
standalone solar, we’ve seen a slump for instance, we’ve seen a big drive in co-location projects, we’ve seen a big push forward in sort of behind the meter, CNI storage and then on the EV infrastructure side. We’ve almost seen and you’ve been around a lot longer than me David, but we’ve almost seen some of those smaller operators now are starting to kind of disappear and it’s those with the most experience, the most expertise, the deepest pockets.

David Hunt (03:18)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (03:23)
and the most scalable business models that are really starting to take a bit of a bit of a healthy lead. And increasingly, as you know, I’ve been very focused on the immobility and the infrastructure side and David’s always been very focused on the energy storage and grid side. And correct me if I’m wrong, David, but we’ve seen those those two worlds collide even more this quarter. You know, businesses like InstaVault that are implementing BESS

Stephen Robinson (03:52)
a lot of businesses on the fleet electrification journey now that are less worried about the vehicle. It’s no longer a vehicle issue. It’s actually more of an energy issue. it’s bringing in those, I guess, those deep systems and platform thinkers. When we link it to talent, we’re bringing in those, those experts that aren’t just thinking about hardware or aren’t just thinking about software, they’re actually thinking more about energy and energy management and optimizing and bringing it all together under one roof. So.

David Hunt (04:00)
Mm-hmm.

David Beeston (04:07)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Robinson (04:20)
Yeah, it’s been a massive shift. David, don’t know if I’ve missed anything there, but feel free to jump in.

David Beeston (04:25)
No, think, no thanks. I think you’ve, you’ve covered the key themes there. think Q1, Q1 we saw a lot of, a lot of discussion and a lot of debate about where integration was going to be. how are we actually gonna, I think maybe identifying the challenges ahead. I think this quarter we’re seeing and hearing from clients that a lot of them now are razor sharp, focused on actually executing a plan to tackle that.

David Beeston (04:54)
And a lot of that is shaped by talent. It’s, we know exactly what our expectations are, whether that’s return on investment, whether that’s expansion into a new territory, whether it’s &A as Steve said, but it’s primarily now we need doers. We need people who are going to come in and actually make this happen rather than the strategists and the kind of bigger picture thinking, which is all relevant, but.

David Beeston (05:23)
I think we’re now at a point where risks are high, energy security has never been greater of importance. And I think if you don’t act quickly, then you’re suddenly going to get left behind or you’re going to be ultimately in a whole lot of bother. So I think that that’s really what we’re seeing is companies are waking up a little bit to the reality of what’s actually needed and then going out, finding very, very precise.

David Beeston (05:53)
talent and whereas you may have got away with in the past someone who is a little bit sort of multi-dimensional I think that’s still important but I think there are fundamental absolute must-haves that you need now in the talent and clients are getting much more sharp and and picky with who they bring in I think that’s what we’ve seen a lot at the moment.

David Hunt (05:54)
Yeah.

David Hunt (06:17)
Yeah, that key theme of execution is there, isn’t it? Because obviously the market is, as always, very dynamic, but we are now moving to a point of maturity where, you know, I think we’re seeing that investment you touched on that. innovation is tough, but that seed funding, that early stage funding from what I’ve seen for the VCs I’ve continued to speak with seems to be still quite challenged. But companies who, like you say, they would have a really clear focus, a technology that works and a very clear ability to execute. They’re both receiving the money and therefore because of that, they’re able to

Stephen Robinson (06:17)
you

David Hunt (06:46)
to expand. it’s almost like, yeah, that maturity that makes it somewhat harder for the core for real startups. But actually, we’re getting more traction because companies with a focus and a clear roadmap to their product to market, are getting the investment and getting the talent and getting some traction. So it’s an interesting theme. If anything, that is kind of exciting because from a broader perspective, that means the sector as a whole and the

David Hunt (07:14)
the electrification of transport and mobility is moving forward because perhaps we’ve got less companies but they’re doing more.

Stephen Robinson (07:20)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that narrowing down of focus as well is absolutely spot on. We’ve seen sort of, whether it’s in the hardware, OEM world of EV infrastructure or the software, CPMS world, you know, we’ve seen businesses spreading themselves thin in the last 18 to 24 months where they’ve tried to have just this huge portfolio or product suite.

Stephen Robinson (07:45)
It’s just not scalable. So we’ve seen a lot of businesses actually take a step back, take stock on things and actually say, you know, we’re going to lose it. We’re going to launch a fleet product and that’s what we’re going to focus on. And we’re not going to do all the other stuff. We’re just going to narrow down and do a great job at that rather than trying to spread ourselves too thin.

David Hunt (08:05)
And one of the key themes clearly is that we’ve seen this year is that new touch on its day, that kind of the integration of where storage and electrification of transport and hubs are very core. So we can dive a bit more into that. And of course, also in the latest report, you talk about data centers and energy, which of course is a hot topic and a lot of hype, but equally a lot of real challenges and opportunities there as well. So we can dive a little bit into that. looking firstly at that kind of storage and electrification of transport.

David Hunt (08:34)
hub kind of integration. You’ve both got obviously expertise and I guess a collaboration there. But what are some of the key trends, perhaps key investments that have happened in the last quarter around that kind of hub or electrification of transport, energy storage as an enabler to a lot of stuff that’s going on still?

Stephen Robinson (08:57)
Yeah, it’s a super exciting space and me and David find ourselves sort of messaging each other on the internal Slack and Teams channels daily with updates. There seems to be an update every week just with… And it still continues to surprise me that despite some of the more established and mature players in the market, there still seems to be new entrants coming and despite the challenges with the grid and despite the challenges with that seed funding, we are still seeing those entrepreneurs that are still, you know…

Stephen Robinson (09:27)
really ambitious and trying to find that gap in the market. And we’ve seen obviously a lot of seasons execs as well that have, you know, learned some hard lessons over the years and are now trying to find, okay, well, where does our play and where does our place in the market now? And I think one of the real standout deals this quarter for me was Decade Energy, who’ve had some investment from our friends over at Contrarian Ventures and SEP Ventures.

Stephen Robinson (09:55)
you know, where that sort of convergence of energy storage and fleet electrification sort of meets, you know, they’re doing some real super exciting things. I think that the latest round was around 22 million euros. And I think increasingly with that as well as you, you know, you’re looking at the leadership team there and it ties back into the talent trends. It’s sad to say, but.

Stephen Robinson (10:17)
One thing that we’ve always tried to do a hype here and has tried to bring people from outside of the sector where there’s that transferability of skills. And it’s always been difficult, but we’re finding it even more increasingly difficult. And you look at some of these real emerging businesses like Decage, they’ve got a wealth of knowledge across transport electrification. They’ve got a wealth of knowledge across energy infrastructure, across storage, across energy management, across trading. And it’s no longer just, hey look,

David Hunt (10:22)
Mm-hmm.

David Hunt (10:45)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (10:47)
You know, I’ve got five years EV infrastructure experience. It’s actually okay. Well, watch your time with energy because it’s, as I said before, it’s less a vehicle issue. It’s more of an energy issue now. And there’s lots of interesting things. And David, you can probably talk more about the I wells and some of the key clients that we’ve been working with, but that full sort of end to end service of sort of, you know, finance and install and.

Stephen Robinson (11:13)
managing the energy, operate and maintain and then even, you know, on the exchanges being able to trade the energy and share some of the profits with customers. We’re seeing that full end to end cycle now, which is, super exciting. And, know, it doesn’t mean to say that standalone software is dead or standalone hardware is dead. There’s still an important place and increasingly we are seeing more and more hardware players coming to market. But I think those that are really, really grabbing the attention of the investors and those that are really, really growing.

Stephen Robinson (11:42)
and a pacer are those that can bring it all together.

David Hunt (11:45)
Yeah, it’s an interesting point you pick up there on that the execution piece and and people size because obviously I don’t know if you’re fully aware but I think the 14th of july is the official 12th birthday of of hyperion so it’s when is that is that today this this week next week anyway so you 12 years in when when we started the business go back to your point steve there were very few people who had experience in any of those sectors that obviously it was it was you know there were some but it was very small still so effectively 12 years later we now do have

David Beeston (11:46)
Yeah.

David Beeston (11:59)
Next week, yeah.

Stephen Robinson (11:59)
actually next Tuesday.

David Hunt (12:13)
not a huge pool by any means, but we have people who have seen some of the cycles. They have seen some of the maturing of markets. They have been in perhaps companies where they’ve got burned and learned a good level of experience from going through some of those challenges. I guess, how does that sort of, how does that lean into companies who are hiring at C-suite or senior level talent now? You touched on Steve being slightly harder to bring people from outside of the sector. Is that because there are so many lessons and slightly more

David Hunt (12:43)
people who’ve been through that journey so far and what are the sort of clients coming to you initially and saying we must haves.

David Beeston (12:49)
Yeah, I see it in two ways. I I’ve had conversations recently where they’ve actually, it depends where the kind of power sits really. Cause I think the companies who are investing and owning the actual end operation, particularly in C &I, many of these are coming from traditional

Stephen Robinson (12:49)
Yeah, it’s a good point David, do want to jump in there?

David Beeston (13:15)
asset management backgrounds. they’re familiar with the financing, the investment cycles that operate in those large commercial building real estate settings. So I’ve seen that there’s a lot of demand for people who understand that domain particularly, particularly in C &I. But then importantly with alongside that they’ll then bring in people.

David Hunt (13:32)
Okay.

David Beeston (13:39)
who are razor sharp on the actual technology integration. And that’s where the energy piece is really important because a lot of these companies now are looking to trade, as Steve said, behind the meter, peak load shifting, maybe looking at even revenue stacking in lots of different ways. And I think that’s where understanding utilities, energy supply is gonna be really important. I don’t think…

David Beeston (14:05)
I don’t think generally you’re going to have an influx of so many people coming from outside energy, but it might be that they come outside of EV or they come outside of BESS and they understand the broader energy utilities mix. I think that’s probably what I’ve seen. And then you also, you’re always going to get people who are just high quality project delivery people who know how to execute with high risk.

David Beeston (14:31)
We’re sometimes hundreds of millions of pounds or euros worth of investment here. So you need people who’ve been there, done it. And often that’s come from broader areas of infrastructure in general, I would say.

David Hunt (14:44)
Yeah, look, you touched on that behind the meter, the CNI space. I’ve just joined the board of Greenbridge Renewables, which is an integrator of solar and battery storage for CNI. So Steve, also in mobility, we talked about fleet transportation, electrification. You’ve also got those like VV and Delta doing like the big and Millen’s doing these big hubs, but actually companies themselves, logistics companies looking after their own fleets and stuff is clearly thing I well, of course, one of your clients, David.

David Hunt (15:13)
doing that sort of storage piece for the FISI and iMarket. Are we seeing much more in that behind the meter in terms of investments and roles that you’re seeing as opposed to perhaps some the established grid and utility scale stuff? Is there a bit of shift in that or am I just seeing that because of my perspective at the moment?

David Beeston (15:34)
I’m certainly seeing that. think people are waking up now to the actual benefits to having behind the meter energy, clean energy assets. Whereas a little while ago they were probably looking at that as a nice to have. Now it’s actually, we can really drive some significant revenue savings here. And I think I had a conversation with a client this week and he, hit the nail on the head really. think many of those businesses haven’t really found

David Beeston (16:03)
the product market fit until recently. And this particular client was very much, we’re going to focus on load shifting. We’re going to focus on clients who are spending tens of thousands of pounds on energy a year. So only that SME level, but really honing in on how do we best utilize opportunities to not only save you money, but actually

David Beeston (16:29)
generate revenue on the back of it and I think some of these are more complex in existing facilities because if you look at the tapestry of all the technologies assets they have on site you’ve got old school sort of boiler technology CHP even and now kind of the new field on site solar EV charging so it’s a real it’s a real complex mix of technologies that you’ve tried to to manage

David Hunt (16:55)
Yeah.

David Beeston (16:55)
And I think that’s where people maybe with more of that holistic C and I know how can actually add a lot of value. That’s what we’re finding at C level in particular.

David Hunt (17:00)
Mm-hmm.

David Hunt (17:05)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (17:05)
Yeah, no, that’s spot on. I was just going to just just going to tag on to that. Like we’ve been speaking and we’ve I don’t think there’s ever been a time where all of the you look at the core pillars for which Hyperion have sort of embedded ourselves and where our core focus has been over the years across solar storage, mobility, smart buildings, energy efficiency.

Stephen Robinson (17:27)
We’re speaking to customers who may be in the energy efficiency in the BMS and the BAS space who are talking about, you know, optimizing buildings and getting buildings essentially through the use of AI and other tools to think for themselves. the way I see it’s almost like you’re driving a car you put into cruise control. It tells you if you’re shifting out of the lane, you know, it tells you what speed you should be going. If there’s a speed camera coming up.

Stephen Robinson (17:49)
You know, we’ve had some interesting conversations. Most noteworthy of our friend Thomas Keesling recently has just announced his new role. But you know, the company that he’s joining now, whilst we’re trying to make buildings more energy efficient and smarter, there’s conversations around Lincoln Solar and conversations around putting on-site BESS in place as well so we can store that energy and, you know,

Stephen Robinson (18:12)
the worlds in which we’ve always played, they’re coming together even closer now. We were speaking again to a family office recently who we introduced to one of our clients in the CNI storage space who, you know, they manage, I think 40 to 50,000 ground rents, got a huge portfolio of properties in the UK and they wanted some information around EV infrastructure rollout, but in the same breath, they wanted information around…

Stephen Robinson (18:37)
best implementation as well. And we’ve seen that with ChargePoint operators now. You know, they’re starting to think about site design that incorporates BESS. So the world’s increasingly converging.

David Hunt (18:49)
Yeah, convergence has always been a sort of an ongoing theme and it seems more now than ever. that side, let’s have a look at the world of storage, David, and grid and flexibility, because all all hinges essentially, everything we’re looking to achieve here is all hinging ultimately on the ability to transfer and generate clean electrons and get them where they need to be efficiently. So what have you seen as the trends, big deals, significant things in the last quarter from a storage and grid perspective?

David Beeston (19:09)
Absolutely.

David Beeston (19:18)
Yeah, no, it’s obviously never slowing down the storage and grid space. think what we’re seeing probably in two categories, one on the technology side, there is now a growing appreciation and realization that

David Beeston (19:34)
Europe can’t do this alone and I think for a little while there was head in the sand of we’re gonna have Gigafactories littered in all these different places and reality is We know what happened with Northfall. We know sadly Morro batteries went the same direction Earlier this year. So I think I was in Stuttgart for the battery show a few weeks ago and a lot of the themes of that are now twofold one Chinese integration we have to

David Beeston (20:04)
accept that we’re going to have to partner with the dominant market, supply in particular, but then also concentrate on how do we domesticate our own battery supply. And a lot of that’s now through recycling circularity, rather than trying to build your own new fleet of batteries. It’s allowed, how do we better recycle, reuse, repurpose? We’ve done some great work with clients like Connected Energy in the past and

David Beeston (20:31)
business out in Norway, previously called Evian, who were doing some great work in that space. I think on the best side, which is increasingly dominating our focus at the moment, utility and CNI scale, the existing challenges that were there for the last 12, 18 months remain. So grid challenges, albeit we’re seeing some quite radical grid reforms going on that are helping.

David Hunt (20:57)
Yep.

David Beeston (20:58)
to smooth some of those bottlenecks. The UK went through a big NISO gate two reform, which had its teething issues, but are now starting to help bring the right projects into construction phase. Germany’s had its Agnes grid exemption fees confirmed. It’s only going to kick in in 2029. So we’ve got this big rush of developers and IPPs. Now we need to hit the ground running now before that date applies.

David Beeston (21:27)
And then ultimately, I think we’re starting to see an emergence of alternative options. So long duration storage is getting more and more traction. Something I’ve banged on about for probably five years now. client of ours, CM Blue in Germany, flow battery business, just hit unicorn status has secured really big funding from Samsung ventures and they’re going to be rolling out.

David Hunt (21:39)
Okay.

David Beeston (21:55)
best for various different applications using a non-lithium technology. We’ve seen the same with infinity and then we even see a now sodium iron coming into the mix lead by cattle who are the world’s leading battery business. So I think generally from a technology and a market’s perspective things are revolving and people are waking up to the realities.

David Beeston (22:21)
On the market side, think increasingly pure wholesale or merchant exposure is not on anyone’s appetite at the moment. think we’ve seen, not just UK was a standalone market for this for a good while, but now in Germany and multiple countries, Italy, we’re seeing a more advanced route to market opportunities, whether it’s tolling, whether it’s floor structures.

David Beeston (22:47)
whether it’s sort of the capacity mechanisms that are coming in. I think generally investors are looking for that more risk mitigated approach. And that’s meaning people trying to trade the assets on pure merchant is becoming less of a strategy. So, so no, think it’s a consolidated market in some places like the UK, Germany’s flying, but then we’re starting to see

David Hunt (23:05)
you.

David Beeston (23:14)
pockets in like central Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, et cetera, where the right experienced developers and IPPs are actually getting a really strong foothold and they’ll be able to actually see some great revenues. So, and all this sort of trickles down on the talent side to really, really good project directors, operational leaders, technical and commercial.

David Hunt (23:16)
Mm-hmm.

David Beeston (23:39)
asset management. And then also, I think those people who know how to navigate the grid connection complexity, which is always going to be there. So none of the talent demands of, would say, have radically shift from last quarter, but they’re probably, as we said earlier, more and more precise and clients are now, we’re not going to compromise on these things. We need someone who’s either got it or they don’t. So yeah, that’s how I’m seeing the storage space.

David Hunt (23:47)
Right. Yeah.

David Hunt (23:58)
Yeah.

David Hunt (24:08)
It’s interesting. Your first point you make, because I was speaking at CWIME in Berlin, is a supply chain event, electrification supply chain event, essentially. And of course you’d get a lot of companies from China there, but it’s trying to balance that realization that batteries in particular, solar, obviously all these things are dominant from, and EVs of that matter are dominant from China, but actually how do you balance utilizing and partnering with those companies and trying to maintain an element of both energy security in Europe

David Beeston (24:13)
Yeah.

David Beeston (24:26)
Mm-hmm.

David Hunt (24:37)
and also obviously job creation and wealth in Europe as well. So it’s an interesting dynamic because obviously I know that we have, and you do work with companies globally, but predominantly obviously European entities, I think. So it’s interesting that balance with how do you maintain energy security and manufacturing viability in Europe, but equally not try and take on a mammoth that you just can’t achieve on mash.

David Beeston (24:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

David Beeston (24:42)
It is, it’s…

David Beeston (24:47)
Yeah.

David Beeston (25:04)
No, it’s, I think that’s always been a tough balance because, and don’t get me wrong, there’s some great businesses, Vercore, who we’ve worked with in France. There’s a company in the UK, Emerging Volkleck, who we’ve, we know quite a few members of the senior team there. And it’s just the reality to do this at scale with the kind of almost how far behind we are in terms of manufacturing capability.

Stephen Robinson (25:10)
.

David Hunt (25:13)
Yeah.

David Beeston (25:32)
We have to be sensible around. not going to necessarily have the majority of manufacturing done here. We may still have a lot of our IP. And I think what I think will emerge in Europe is there’ll still be that high performance battery capability kept here. And you’re looking at, there’s been a shift of applications now into even performance vehicles, F1, aerospace and defense where there is actually energy security is more important than the price.

David Beeston (26:02)
And those markets will still require local manufacturing, but I think for the mass scale EV market and broader ESS, I’m struggling to see how that’s going to change from the current dominance that we have in Asia. And then it’s a case of trying to maybe look at your local assembly being done here in Europe, but ultimately the sell and sort of upstream through to midstream done overseas. yeah, but it’s a…

David Hunt (26:18)
Yeah, yeah.

David Hunt (26:31)
Yeah, then it becomes a lot more about systems integration and business model. I guess innovation as well, isn’t it? That a lot of our clients and customers are able to create business models and integrate systems.

David Beeston (26:32)
It’s a fascinating space.

David Beeston (26:36)
Yeah, exactly.

David Beeston (26:41)
Yeah. And the smart optimization of those as well. A lot of that still lies here in Europe. So absolutely.

David Hunt (26:46)
Yeah. Yeah. On the, on the immobility side, Steve, obviously there’s a, there’s a dominance from battering from some really fantastic cars coming out of China. I’m super American. As you know, I’m really excited about some of these cars coming out of China at the moment. But actually on that, look at obviously the UK, Germany, some core markets and obviously the Nordics in terms of immobility, the U S is clearly lacking significantly for obvious reasons. They’re not allowed to import a lot of

Stephen Robinson (26:57)
You

David Hunt (27:12)
just kicked out Polestar and everything else. there is opportunity for Europe to lead, but it does seem that again on this heavy duty transportation, there’s a good lead from businesses in Europe, not so much in the vehicle side, but actually in the sort of the infrastructure and the creation of fleet enablement, whether that’s hardware, software. So perhaps what are some of the key things that you’ve seen then last quarter from a electrification of transport point of view?

Stephen Robinson (27:13)
Yeah, she know.

Stephen Robinson (27:39)
Yeah, no, absolutely. think again, much like Q1, I think Q2 has been dominated by bus and truck momentum and news stories in that segment. You know, top of my head, the likes of Zenobi, you know, securing 980 million for fleet electrification, which just, yeah, it’s huge. They’ve done a great deal of work in that space anyway, but then even smaller operators, you know, and smaller startups like Next, Ashford Instance based out of Germany, who had actually

Stephen Robinson (28:08)
acquiring outright smaller operators, flipping their fleet entirely and then embedding software and energy management platforms so that that whole sort of energy pieces is thought about. And over time, that total cost of ownership piece will play out profitable for them. So there’s some small operators, as I mentioned before, that are still finding their place in the market.

Stephen Robinson (28:34)
You know, they’re staying lean and they’re able to execute quick and they’re getting stuff done and maybe they haven’t experienced some of the hard lessons that some of the more seasoned execs so that they’ve almost got that boldness and bullishness to them. But yes, certainly in the bus and truck segment, you know, even the likes of Tratton, again, secured 850 million for, you know, the heavy duty electrification of buses and trucks. And it’s right across the board, whether it’s, you know, whether it’s hardware or software.

Stephen Robinson (29:03)
Ken Power, a big client, Hyperion, who we know well continue to innovate and lead the way with megawatt charging systems and deploy a new products. But then increasingly we’re seeing the emergence of new, newer, let’s say hardware manufacturers like ADS Tech in Germany, who’ve integrated sort of a battery buffered charging solution into their DC portfolio. You’ve then got the likes of Elmi Power, who are doing similar out in Germany. So there seems to be still like, there still seems to be.

Stephen Robinson (29:33)
sort of some movement with some new entrants. The software market, know, the CPMS space is still, you you’ve got your dominant players like Ampico who’ve announced this week some partnerships with Alleggo to manage their network. You know, you’ve got Valens as well who are doing some great work on the fleet side to help underpin some of those big transition projects. And there’s still movements, but I think some of the themes that we touched on before, there seems to be a bit more of a narrowed focus now.

Stephen Robinson (30:03)
It’s actually, let’s not try and be sort of a jack of all trades, but let’s be a master of doing one thing really, really well. When we flip over to kind of the, you know, sort of the big momentum, regards to trucks and buses, it’s that sort of depo electrification. So it’s less on strategy and now more on execution. And increasingly, as I said before, we’re starting to see, you know, players that are, you know,

David Hunt (30:11)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (30:32)
partners of ours that are collaborating together for instance. you know, hardware manufacturers collaborating with ChargePoint operators that are focused specifically on depot and then best players that are coming in and integrating. So we’ve seen this week one or two of our clients that have announced partnerships together and it’s been really, really interesting to see, which is great. The ChargePoint, the CPO landscape is still challenging. If we flip over to that conversation for instance, you know, you’ve got

David Hunt (30:42)
Mm-hmm.

David Hunt (30:49)
So one of sickly here.

Stephen Robinson (31:02)
just a continued sort of &A activity in Q2 much like we’ve seen in Q1. So I think the big talking points of Q1 were the likes of BV acquiring MERS UK network as we shift into Q2. We’ve seen the likes of Podpoint acquiring EO. We’ve seen InstaVault actually take a step back from some of their European operations.

Stephen Robinson (31:30)
They sold the Spanish and Portuguese network. think it was some five and a half or 6,000 assets were sold to Power.2 again, two years ago. not really a familiar name, but they seem to really be ramping up operations over in Europe. And yeah, there’s a lot of activity still, but I think it’s, yeah, it’s much more focused around, I’d say less volume, I think.

Stephen Robinson (31:57)
There’s still origination and we’re still seeing a need on the talent front. We’re still seeing a need for commercial talents who can find those sites to develop. But I’d say it’s more around trying to find those substations where there’s additional capacity that they can tap into rather than purely brand new greenfield sites. Because as we’ve said, those grid bottlenecks are just, yeah, they’re really, really, really tough to tap into at the moment. We had lots of momentum that bus and truck market.

David Hunt (32:16)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (32:27)
When we look, we’ve historically done a lot of work in that sort of public charging space as well. And we’re now starting to see those Levi contract awards coming to fruition. So Chargiu, we’ve done a lot of work. They’ve been getting a lot of wins with local authorities in London and the South. There’s an Irish operator actually, Izzo, who won a West Midlands contract. I think it was around 176, 186 million, which was a major contract. So.

David Hunt (32:47)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Robinson (32:55)
There’s still a lot of activity and rolling out infrastructure. But I think with some of the more mature players now, it’s more around utilization. So one of the key themes at Intercharge, the Hubject Conference that we’ve attended for the last five or six years ago last year, was around utilization and the pathway to profitability.

Stephen Robinson (33:18)
Less around we want to have the biggest networks, but more around we want to have the networks that are attracting the most footfall. And the exciting thing for me here is we’re starting to see some of these AI integrators and MSPs playing a big part here. So, you know, real promising businesses like Evaluable, for instance, coming out of Germany that are helping ChargePoint networks with almost predicting things that are going to go wrong before they go wrong through the use of AI and

David Hunt (33:21)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (33:47)
making sure that networks with these reliability standards that they’re to adhere to and uphold, making sure that we can actually, you we can be ahead of the curve before things go wrong. So actually, you know, the customers, by the time, you know, we figured out there’s a fault on the customer side, there’s no fault and networks can continue to run. So yeah, that big focus on utilization is then having a massive impact on a massive impact on the talent side as well. So we’re seeing.

Stephen Robinson (34:15)
businesses really focusing on that network performance, that asset management, bringing in people that have, you know, I’m almost contradicting myself here when I was saying before that, you know, it’s hard for people outside of the industry to come in. I think where there’s loose links, you know, where people have managed critical infrastructure, that critical infrastructure piece now, I think both on storage and immobility, these assets are being defined as critical infrastructure now.

Stephen Robinson (34:43)
Especially when you look at the figures coming out of SMMT in terms of the EV adoption. think Germany have just released figures this week that it was sort of 28 % market share for EVs, which is probably still not where we need it to be, but it’s month by month increases. And when we start to get into that, third of market share is adopted with electric vehicles. We’ve got to be really, really, that infrastructure is critical and we need to make sure that

David Hunt (35:10)
It’s there. Yeah, yeah.

Stephen Robinson (35:12)
you know, we’re keeping on top of it, it’s working, you’re not going to turn up and it’s not going to be any fault of it. yeah, it’s a yeah, there’s still challenges, mainly centered around policy and uncertainty. But, you know, we’ve seen Europe really digging the heels in and pushing back and, you know, in terms of their net zero targets, they’re pushing back and saying, no, we don’t want to dilute them, we need to stay on the pathway. We’ve obviously, with the UK election,

Stephen Robinson (35:40)
a certain Mr. Keir Starmer and him soon to transition out of number 10. You know, there was talk around the ZEV mandate being diluted somewhat, which again, the last time it was diluted, there was a lot of uncertainty with operators. Some went on there. There was a lot of uncertainty with investors. So I’m less worried this time because I kind of think that the industry’s moved on somewhat. You know, we aren’t where we are today because someone has…

Stephen Robinson (36:08)
announced a certain shift in policy. We are where we are because of the private companies that are really putting the money where the mouth is and leading forward with investments.

David Hunt (36:18)
Yeah, yeah, cool. Just making the time see if David can jump back in.

David Hunt (36:28)
if his internet issues resolve otherwise, yeah.

Stephen Robinson (36:28)
think he was having some internet issues, yeah. He having some internet issues and some dog barking issues as well, think, today. Exactly,

David Hunt (36:34)
something. There’s always some dogs kits and into that.

David Hunt (36:44)
He jumps back in on us.

Stephen Robinson (36:48)
Thank

David Hunt (37:01)
if it responds.

David Hunt (37:05)
36 minutes done pretty well already. But yeah, we could have a dive into a headline at least on the data center stuff and then yeah, point people to where they can get a copy of the Internet. So there’s Internet style. Let’s check if he’s able to jump in. If not, we can wrap it up.

Stephen Robinson (37:08)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (37:13)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (37:18)
race.

Stephen Robinson (37:21)
Yeah.

David Hunt (37:24)
Where is this message?

Stephen Robinson (37:33)
me try and hotspot.

Stephen Robinson (38:01)
Ahem.

Stephen Robinson (38:29)
you

David Hunt (38:31)
Excuse me.

David Hunt (38:35)
I wanna go to the holes, it’s not this, that’s me.

Stephen Robinson (38:39)
Yeah, we’re actually heading to Amsterdam early hours in the morning. Big, big country music fan, aren’t I? So there’s a well, he’s the biggest US country singer and one of the biggest in the world guy called Luke Holmes. He’s on in the Johan Cruyff in Ajax’s stadium. So me, Holly and two of our friends are heading over there. got the 6am stoner flight to Amsterdam.

David Hunt (38:43)
Nice.

Stephen Robinson (39:06)
So, Mum and Dad, wrote Mum and Dad in to come and look after the little ones. And then, yeah, we haven’t got a summer holiday until September. Holly’s sister gets married out in the Dominican. So, kind of killed two birds with one stone because it’s a bit of a trek to get to and expensive. We’ve, yeah. But you’re away next week, aren’t you, David? I think to Majorca with the family. It’s all right.

David Beeston (39:24)
Yeah, sorry about that guys. I’ve just completely died all of all of a sudden. Yeah, I’m away next Wednesday, yeah.

David Hunt (39:26)
Alright, swivel.

David Hunt (39:30)
No worries.

David Hunt (39:34)
We’ll have a little bit chat after. So we’ll obviously pause there. kind of, yeah, we kind of got to the point of covering off the two main sectors. So if we can, I just had a question around, again, the talent piece and then we can have a sort of an overview on the sort of the data center energy piece and then we’re pretty much good to go. Cause I think we’re about 35 minutes in already. yeah. All right. So we’ll kick back in.

David Beeston (39:35)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (39:52)
Cool.

David Hunt (39:58)
So picking up on that, could you touch on this around some consolidation, some M &A? When that happens, of course, there’s both opportunity because they’re scaling and then you need people able to develop those businesses and jump into bigger businesses doing bigger stuff. But obviously, you’re also a victim sometimes, a very good people, know, a victim of when there’s an M &A and a duplication of roles. But without going into too much detail on that side, what are some of the roles that you are now being asked to find in those companies that are?

David Hunt (40:27)
in that fast growth and perhaps have been on the upside or the by side of that &A activity? What are perhaps some of the key leadership roles and challenges that you’re coming across in the last quarter?

Stephen Robinson (40:39)
Yeah, there’s a few to be honest. think certainly you’re right. think when there’s a merger or an acquisition, it does present opportunity, it also does, especially if you’ve been working for a smaller business that’s been acquired by a much larger entity. Some people just aren’t suited to those bigger enterprises and actually they joined a startup because they wanted to have a bit more impact and tangible involvement and autonomy. And often there’s bit of a fallout there.

Stephen Robinson (41:09)
Yeah, think there’s two ways of looking at it, but I think certainly, you you look at…

Stephen Robinson (41:15)
you know, if a company is acquiring another company, they’re clearly doing something right on that upper trajectory of scale. So it then becomes about like building out those functional departments and those integrators and people that can can actually put the right systems, the right people and the right processes in place. So, you know, there’s we’ve seen a few more transformation director roles coming out recently, which has been quite interesting. And then on the commercial side, you know,

Stephen Robinson (41:45)
We’ve seen if there’s a UK operator that has been acquired by a European operator, for instance, you know, it’s localized market knowledge, I think is still very much in demand. So, you know, we’ve seen what it’s like, you know, to,

David Beeston (41:56)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Robinson (42:00)
to manage a different geography remotely from one country to the next. It’s tough. It doesn’t work. There’s nuance to it. There’s different regulations and different things that you need to be mindful of. I think we’ve seen a real focus on actually on the ground boots on the ground talent. So, you know, that go to market commercial expertise is still is still in demand. You know, where we’re looking at that cross border expansion, you know, we’ve done it in.

Stephen Robinson (42:27)
you know, the Nordics, for instance, coming out, taking across to, you know, the broader pan-European landscape. So there’s still a big focus on the commercial side. David, don’t know if that translates into your world as well, but feel free to jump in.

David Beeston (42:34)
Yeah.

David Beeston (42:38)
I would

David Beeston (42:40)
No, definitely. Definitely. I th I think from from the best and the renewables side, I think there’s been a drop-off on pure development roles. So a lot of them are now already acquired the pipeline, either developed it and originated it themselves, or they’ve gone and bought a significant pipeline elsewhere. And I think what I’m seeing more towards our segments are

David Beeston (43:07)
execution so across the EPC life cycle. So high level engineering, procurement, and construction talent, operational leadership above that. That you look now everyone’s using AI, but I think there’s there’s that balance between streamlining certain processes and efficiencies versus the human side. And a lot of the demand we’re asking for now is people who have that ability to manage that.

David Beeston (43:35)
But also be able to zoom in and out of let my teams take care of the day-to-day, but then also be able to zoom out and think about how are we driving operational excellence across everything we do. and then I would say, particularly relevant to storage and renewables, asset management is probably the number one demand we’re hearing at the minute. So not only people who can come in and technically manage the assets, but

David Beeston (44:03)
It’s that piece I said earlier around all the sophisticated tolling revenue management side, which is is quite complex. And a lot of those people are coming more from finance and economics, coupled with some people who understand really how assets are dispatched, the grid side, all that kind of thing. So I think we’re probably more EPC and post COD hiring I’m seeing at the minute.

David Hunt (44:25)
Yeah.

David Beeston (44:31)
And then I think one thing, Steve, we’ve seen generally is a demand now for niche board level expertise. So they may already have a pretty strong founding team and board that understand their own landscape. But we’ve we’ve done this with a flow battery client of ours at the minute who needed some direction into the broader utilities segment, which they didn’t know as well. And we’ve been able to just not not officially announced yet, but been able to appoint a

David Beeston (45:01)
a new chair for them who understands that world inside out. So yeah, I think that there is a healthy demand at the moment, but it’s again r echoing the same sentiment. It’s about real precise missions that these people are doing rather than those kind of j generalist hires at the minute. So

David Hunt (45:21)
Okay, okay. Well, certainly people can obviously get hold of the report, which has both an indication of some of the roles that you’re working on at the moment, but also quite a lot of people moves in there across the renewables, immobility and storage sector. So you can take a look who have some of the key players that moving about and get a flavor for some of the roles that are being hired and recruited across the sector at the moment. Let’s touch on data centers because of course, it is a topic along with AI, you can hardly have a conversation without it coming up, but

David Beeston (45:28)
Yeah.

David Beeston (45:39)
Yep. Yeah.

David Hunt (45:47)
at least from an overview, because again, often the hype comes before the traction and the action. But what are you seeing from that perspective of energy? And we were already starting to see data centers talked about in sort of power capacity, gigawatts, as versus bytes, if you know what mean. So it is very much an energy play. So what are perhaps some of the headlines or some of the things that you’re seeing from that sort of data center energy world?

David Beeston (46:04)
Yeah, yeah.

David Beeston (46:14)
Yeah, so I I think sorry, go on Steve. No, I was gonna I was gonna say I I I’ve I’ve seen

Stephen Robinson (46:15)
Yeah, it’s… Go ahead, David.

Stephen Robinson (46:20)
No, I was just gonna say for me.

Stephen Robinson (46:25)
You go ahead, it’s gone.

David Beeston (46:28)
Right. So yeah, we we we’ve seen obviously we have a lot of European focus, but we also do work in North America as well. And I think when we look at data centers, it’s primarily from the energy infrastructure side, obviously. I think what I’m hearing and seeing is the challenge no longer is supply. So I think there’s been a lot of regulatory change, particularly in the US through the FERC, where it’s now making

David Hunt (46:28)
Go on David.

David Beeston (46:57)
renewable developments much closer to the actual use case for the for the data center. So I don’t think we’re no longer fighting that energy supply, renewable energy supply mission. It’s more the connectivity. It’s that integration with the grid. It’s that understanding of transmission planning, of resilience, kind of backup systems. And and I think there’s this big conjecture at the minute as to can batteries really solve this?

David Beeston (47:27)
flexibility issue on their own. And we’re always team electrification. And we will say, yes, that can happen. But reality is there is also that elephant in the room around do we also still look at gas assets for flexibility? And I think we we’re trying to work with clients to bring them the talent that understand the storage and renewables piece. But I think a lot of the the talent demand that we’re seeing is more around those

David Beeston (47:55)
real experts around power systems engineering, grid engineering, people who understand control system optimization, dispatch optimization. And it’s it’s the real, the probably the most challenging people to find in the market because sometimes these people are hidden. They’re not publicly looking for roles and and often they’re on the operator side or they’re in hidden in a utility.

David Beeston (48:24)
And we’ve got to go and extract them and convince them to come onto the supply side. So it’s definitely a growing movement. I think Europe is still finding its feet on where that that’s going. But I think a lot of the developers’ IPPs we talk to naturally have to have data centers as part of the portfolio planning. But again, the talent needs are going to be the same. And we’ve done a really good piece around on the market review around.

David Beeston (48:50)
what actually that talent really is, not the buzzwords, not the kind of high level fluff side, I would say, but actually the real tangible people that are needed to make this integration happen. Because if we can’t navigate

David Hunt (49:05)
Right.

David Beeston (49:05)
two year grid queues or transmission integration, then unfortunately this this infrastructure’s gonna really struggle to take off. So yeah, that’s how I’m seeing it, Steve. I don’t know how you’re seeing it from from your end.

Stephen Robinson (49:21)
Yeah, no, exactly, exactly spot on. think, you know, looking at looking at the landscape, you know, this AI and this data center boom, think data centers are, you know, constrained by ESG. And we talk about this in the market review, I think that it’s physical reality. those grid constraints. I think fortunately, you know, we’re talking about seasoned execs and people that have been there and seen the scale and done it before. I don’t know if you’ve seen David, I’m sure you did.

Stephen Robinson (49:50)
previous podcast guests and previous clients actually at GridServe, Toddington Harper, you know, was directly trying to address that sort of critical power constraints with the new venture gigatons, you know, looking at, you know, that renewable energy generation, water production, compute capacity, all into an independent platform and trying to solve that critical power constraint. And we’ve seen it with the likes of Renalpha DC that are doing similar stuff, integrating renewable energy and

Stephen Robinson (50:18)
trying to sort of provide additional capacity to the already constrained grid. And with that, as I said before, you know, it’s those deep systems and platform level thinkers that we’re seeing on the talent side, those that can integrate and converge all of these worlds together. So yeah, it’s…

David Hunt (50:34)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (50:38)
I think you’ve nailed it spot on David, but yeah, that’s just my piece. think the exciting thing is that our companies out there that are trying to address this and Hyperion’s players working with those companies that are trying to integrate those renewable technologies to support this data center build out. And then, you know, it will then eventually it’s like anything, it’s an evolution, you know, it’s the, it’s the build out phase, but then it becomes around the asset management phase as well. So.

David Hunt (50:53)
Yeah.

Stephen Robinson (51:03)
talking about the smart buildings piece before, know, increasingly seeing and hearing and speaking to more clients around, you know, that real estate piece where data senders fall under. So making a building speak and think and operate for itself, you know, the same will apply for data centers, the sheer amount of water and the sheer amount of power needed to cool these big industrial units is obscene. yeah, think renewable energy players have got a huge, a huge…

David Hunt (51:26)
So.

Stephen Robinson (51:31)
part of playing this and yeah, that’s where we’re involved and where we see the real growth moving forward.

David Hunt (51:37)
Okay, well people can obviously take a much deeper dive into the market review where that piece of work is done. So thanks guys for sharing some of that. obviously we’ll put a link to the review on the episode page, but clearly if you go to the Hyperion search website or LinkedIn page, I’m sure you’ll find some links there also, but great to have those insights on both the people and the trends from you guys. And hopefully we’ll see in a quarter’s time what has evolved yet still, but thanks very much for sharing that. And like I say, from an audience perspective,

David Beeston (51:56)
Absolutely.

David Hunt (52:06)
dive into the links and you’ll find much more than we’ve been able to cover in the conversation this morning. But great to join us both guys and we’ll speak to you again soon.

Stephen Robinson (52:16)
Yeah, thanks David.

David Beeston (52:16)
Yeah. Thanks for having us, David. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Stephen Robinson (52:19)
Be sure to.

David Hunt (52:22)
So we’ll just put a stop 52 but with a chunk in there to add it out so we’re pretty much on bob on.