After participating in the Portugal Smart Cities Summit in Lisbon last October alongside three other Hungarian companies, EPS-Global Zrt. signed a strategic partnership with Urban Motion, a Portuguese smart cities firm. Under the agreement, Urban Motion will support the Hungarian company locally in acquiring new clients. Talks have already begun with a Portuguese municipal company, said Zoltán Gyarmati, board member of EPS-Global Zrt., to MTI.
He added that with EPS Global’s comprehensive parking management software, clients (municipalities, companies) can monitor parking occupancy and manage fee payments. The system also assists with parking enforcement and even includes a penalty management process. This enables clients to know exactly how many cars are parked in a given area, the average parking duration, and the resulting revenues—key insights for municipalities when organizing transportation, explained Gyarmati.
Expansion from China to Portugal
Gyarmati also noted that the company, founded in 2012, launched its solution in China after 2016 and has been operating in Hévíz, Hungary, since August 2020. In China, majority Hungarian-owned joint ventures were established, winning the rights to build and operate smart parking systems in two cities under 20- and 25-year concession contracts, covering a total of 30,000 parking spaces.
He added that following this Chinese expansion, in 2016 and 2017, Hungary’s state-owned EXIM investment fund acquired a majority stake in EPS-Global through significant capital investment. According to publicly available company data, EPS-Global Zrt. had revenues of HUF 213.3 million in 2021, up from HUF 3.341 million in 2020. The company closed 2021 with a HUF 553.861 million loss, compared to a profit of over HUF 3 million the year before. The losses are related to the ongoing implementation and investment phases of the Chinese projects, Gyarmati explained.
