Director Strategy & Investor Relations

Suppliers of sustainable and smart energy solutions have enormous potential. Alfen is one of the key European players in this field and operates at the heart of the energy transition with its unique business model. The company is looking for a Director of Strategy & Investor Relations to help further boost Alfen’s growth potential.

About Alfen 

The transition to sustainable energy is irreversible. Electric driving is becoming increasingly popular and the demand for EV-charging stations is growing rapidly. Additionally, more and more energy is generated by renewable sources such as wind and solar power, driving the need for energy storage and smart energy management.

Alfen engineers and manufactures smart and innovative energy solutions and offers these as products or as turn-key projects. Alfen was founded in 1937 and has 84 years of history in smart grid solutions. Over time, it has expanded its portfolio to also include energy storage solutions and charging stations for electric vehicles. This unique combination of activities enables Alfen to offer end-to-end solutions for its customers and to support them in becoming more sustainable.

For example, Alfen combined its activities in the field of smart grids, EV charging and energy storage in a project for a large football stadium. During the day, energy is generated by solar panels on the stadium’s rooftop. This energy is mainly needed at night time, to provide light for the stadium and also to charge the increasing number of electric vehicles of visitors. Additionally, these EV’s lead to peak energy demand beyond the capacity of the grid connection. Alfen supplied the EV charge points, optimized the local grid and provided its energy storage system. With the latter, the solar energy generated during the day can be used in the evening and it prevents the national grid from overloading.

Unique market proposition
Alfen has a market leading position in the Netherlands and is growing rapidly throughout Europe. The company currently employs about 620 FTE’s. In 2020, Alfen generated 189 million euros in revenue and more than 30% came from outside of the Netherlands. More than 60% of revenue came from smart grid solutions, around 30% from EV charging and 10% from energy storage. These three business lines provide Alfen with a unique market proposition. Every business line faces competition, but none can offer integrated solutions like Alfen.

Vacancy: Director Strategy & Investor Relations

This is a high-visibility role with a two-fold focus: supporting strategic business decision-making on the one hand, and maintaining an active dialogue and relationships with stakeholders including investors on the other hand.

Strategy
Alfen is growing rapidly as a business and organization. There is a need for strategic support for key business decisions for Alfen as a group and also for its three business lines. Key stakeholders are the executive team consisting of Marco Roeleveld (CEO), Jeroen van Rossen (CFO) and Michelle Lesh (CCO), and the management teams of the business lines.

The Director of Strategy & Investor Relations will be jointly responsible for strategic choices, both at company level and at business line level. This includes critically addressing important business questions such as: which strategy should Alfen follow per country to reach its objectives? Which partners, suppliers and processes are needed? Where should the company continue to innovate and adapt its portfolio to market developments, competition and customer-demand?

Identifying the right choices supported by the right arguments requires a profound market knowledge. The Director of Strategy & Investor Relations will build a network of connections within and outside of the sector to consult to build the case; retrieve relevant data; critically analyze it and build story lines and presentations in order to convince internal stakeholders such as the executive team.

Investor Relations
As a publicly listed company, Alfen maintains an active dialogue and relationships with investors and other stakeholders such as banks and analysts that cover the Alfen share. Here, everything revolves around strategic positioning of Alfen’s business activities and performance. To be successful, the Director of Strategy & Investor Relations will have to rapidly build and maintain a deep understanding of the entire company. In close collaboration with the executive team, this professional will prepare the quarterly financial publications with comprehensive reports and to-the-point presentations, and will present these to existing and potentially new shareholders.

Strong relationships with investors requires actively engaging with the investor community. The Director of Strategy & Investor Relations will define how this can be done in the best way and will determine the planning for international events and conferences, roadshows, investor calls, and other engagements.

All in all, it’s a high-impact consulting-exit opportunity with an influential participant on the market for sustainable energy. 

Interested?

Alfen is working with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.
To express your interest, please contact Imke Peters at imke.peters@topofminds.com.