Next Biometrics Group ASA
OSE:NEXT
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Next Biometrics Group ASA
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Good morning, everybody. I think we will just wait a few more minutes for attendants to join the call. We'll just stay quiet for 1 or 2 minutes. So I gave everybody 2 minutes. I think let's get started. So good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. You can swap to the next slide. Thanks. So welcome to today's Q1 presentations. It will be me Ulf, CEO of NEXT Biometrics and Eirik, CFO, that will present today's slides. If you swap to the next slide, I will go through the agenda. So we will show in the beginning the Q1 summary. And we will continue on a bit more on business update, what's going on and what have happened. We will continue that with the Q1 highlights and outlook. And we will finish off with a Q&A session for everybody. And there's a Q&A in the program where you can ask questions.
Next slide, please. So I'm very, very happy to present the Q1 report. We have increased our revenue with 88% from the Q1 2023. And we have a record high gross margin of 56%. It's improved from 21% in 2023. This is mainly because the product portfolio was quite different from the 2023. The revenue, as such, if you remember, we have had expected a 20% growth from Q4. But due to integration challenges with our customers, the -- at the OEM side, I would say that the product itself shifted the shipment from Q1 to Q2. However, on the long-term projections, we are on track on reaching our revenue targets. We added 4 new design wins. I will go through 1 or 2 most important in the next slide. We are now on accumulated 50 paying customers in NEXT Biometrics. And also a very good milestone for the company is that our FAP20 sensor received the China ID certificate, which is a very, very important milestone going forward.
So on the business update side, we start shipping sizable volumes of our FAP20 -- our flagship FAP20 sensor during the quarter. And those went both to India and to China. So a good milestone, good stepping point. And as we have communicated earlier, Q1 was actually the start of -- especially China. Starting with India, the first design win of an Indian point of sales terminals. You remember, we have now gone from the specification L0 to a new specification called L1. And this is a very important first milestone for ACPL, our partner in India. They have made the FAP20 sensor into an L1 module together with a component called MCU. This component, they are selling on their own to the Indian government. But most important here is that this module can be sold into third-party OEMs like this one we announced, the first design win for an Indian manufacturer point of sales terminal.
So this is the first time the ACPL module actually is qualified and actually going out to the market. This one is already on the market actually. It was already in the market in April, which is great. And we will see more of this going forward. There's a lot of potential in the point of sale terminals as that is outside the readers, which is big in India, the point of sales terminals are almost as big as that market. We also continued the FAP20 sensor shipments to India to ACPL for their L1 product. And this time, always in the end of the quarter was, I think, almost the last working day, and it was a NOK 6 million order. So a substantial order from India.
If you look at the China business, if you remember, the -- in February, we announced a strategic partnership with the Chinese Tier 1 OEM for healthcare and medical insurance market. This is some -- we have great progress. I actually myself, met them in March, and we will see orders coming in Q2 with this collaboration, both with -- in terms of a reader and stand-alone sensors, which they are now qualifying. Very good strategic partnership. Also, the aim is to get into the specification of the healthcare and medical insurance market as our anti-spoofing is highly valuable and valued in China.
In the China ID area, we have multiple new customers projects. We have -- last Friday, we announced the first OEM to actually approve our China ID product, which is a great milestone. We -- next step for them is to place the purchase order and ship out to customers. So they have already said yes to the product. They are doing all the qualification, integration and software porting and everything ready and done. So looking forward for this new segment, and again, this is the first milestone for China ID, and there's multiple OEMs coming along in this case.
So after the quarter, the China ID were completed, both internally as a product as well as approved by the Chinese OEM. We also yesterday, very happy to announce that we managed to sign a multiyear agreement with a totally new market. It's in Bangladesh. And it's a NOK 95 million purchase order that we will continue on reporting and the first delivery are in -- already in Q2. You can move to the -- I will come to -- with these 2, I will come to more detail later on. So you can swap to the next slide, please.
So just to get an understanding of what the product developed are. So the new China ID product, it's what we call in terms match on chip. So there's actually a FAP20 sensor, there's an MCU and there's an algorithm on the device. You can see it on the bottom of the slide. That's the actual product. This will then go into the banking application, in ID, government applications and so on, all these parts. And this is the one that is actually approved by the OEM in this case. It's in mass production ready and ready for sales. So now we're actually starting all the actual sales. And first purchase order, yes, is expected during early Q2, I would say.
And I mean, key features, as we have communicated previously and what's actually the key feature of the active thermal technology is the excellent anti-spoofing capabilities, including the liveness detection, which is key, both for biometrics, but also key for highly secure applications. And this is then a target for all relevant China ID applications, including, as we said before, healthcare, ID cards, banking applications, et cetera, et cetera. So this is a fantastic achievement from the product development team. You can take the next slide, please.
So as we saw yesterday, we announced a completely new market, completely new product and completely new order. So it's a NOK 95 million purchase order in the agreement. It's delivering starting Q2 and the contract and agreement is running over 5 years. The name of the company is Commlink Infotech. It's a Bangladeshi company. And it's one of the biggest biometric players in Bangladesh. So we are very, very happy to announce this. And this is the first time we see, we go outside the regions we are actually present in India. So that -- this is perfect. The application as such, in this case, will be a USB reader, so for bank application. And it's similar to India, it's a part of their national ID program.
So -- and then you can, of course -- my first question would be, will it be as delayed as L1? Will the certification be taking 1 year? No, actually not. It's totally different in Bangladesh. It's not as complex as it is in India. So the product is already ready, which is far better for us. Again, it's the FAP20 flagship product from us. That's actually the product. We can move to the next slide, and I hand over to Eirik.
Thank you, Ulf. Next slide, please. I will now run you through the Q1 financial highlights. As mentioned, from Ulf, the revenues was NOK 12.8 million versus NOK 6.8 million in quarter 1, 2023. And the adjusted gross margin was 56% in quarter 1 2023 -- no 2024 compared to 21% in Q1 2023. And this is due to significantly higher FAP20 share in the product mix for the quarter. On operating expenses, we ended up with OpEx ex options of NOK 16.3 million compared to NOK 13.1 million in quarter 1 2023. And the quarterly OpEx ex option is increased in line with the plan to increase R&D and sales efforts. And in this quarter, the share price increased.
And for this reason, NEXT had noncash OpEx related to options social security cost of NOK 4.5 million. This explains the main part of the difference between the reported OpEx and the OpEx ex options that you can find on this slide and also in our alternative performance measures that is included in our quarterly report. The adjusted EBITDA was negative NOK 9.1 million compared to negative NOK 11.7 million in quarter 1, 2023.
And on cash and cash flow, we had cash of NOK 54.6 million at the end of this quarter compared to NOK 67.8 million at the end of quarter 4 2023. And our operational cash flow was negative NOK 14.2 million. So the main message from this quarter is that NEXT achieved a record high gross margin at 56%. And the cash flow was negatively affected by higher accounts receivable balances due to low cash collection, higher revenues and sales concentrated in the month of March. With this, I turn over to Ulf again. Thank you.
Thank you, Eirik. So I would like to present to you -- I'm happy to present to you the outlook of what's coming up. So continue on the road we are in. You can swap to the next slide, please. So we, of course, expect the revenue to grow significantly compared to -- from quarter to quarter to quarter now. So the expectation is, yes, superior compared to previously. And NEXT, we are expecting the revenues for all of 2024 to grow at least with -- at least 250% of the -- from the 2023, which is a fantastic growth compared to previously. We have already secured contracts as we have communicated previously.
So if all customers are in full fledge, we are at NOK 200 over the annual revenue. Then you can add -- on top of this, you can add the NOK 20 million per year for the Bangladesh. So then we're adding revenue and contracts all the time. And of course, the year is not -- I mean the sales team is not standing still. So of course, we will continue working on receiving design wins. We will continue working on additional contracts. And so potential beyond this is large, it's very large, I would say, and with both existing customers and also new customers.
The gross margin for Q1 was exceptionally high. I would say that this is one exemption. I would say that we should expect the gross margin to be around 50%. And in this industry, that is fantastic as it is because in the semiconductor electronics business, it's almost unheard of. And we will continue our -- despite the -- we are adding sales and field application engineers, and we are adding what we are doing with FAP30 development. We are actually continue on the run rate OpEx cost at NOK 65 million. So I really look forward for this Q2 and the remaining of this 2024. For questions and Q&A for this session, you can take the next slide, maybe.
Yes. And the Q&A is -- there is a Q&A in the Teams app that you can use to announce your questions. Okay. There's one question here. You're not providing any detailed revenue guidance on Q2. Do you really believe that you will achieve EBITDA breakeven in Q2?
So I have already now good visibility of the POs that we are working on. And then of course, we have risk, we have always risk in our business. As we saw in Q1, there was one order shifting from Q1 to Q2. That can, of course, happen again. But I wouldn't stand here and say that I didn't believe in it. I believe we will do the Q2 and the numbers we have communicated. And I have good faith in our sales team and in our delivery team, operations team that we will secure this.
So yes. I already have quite a lot of orders booked, need to be delivered as well as -- yes, we can take an example, the contract we signed yesterday with Bangladesh, there's already commitments of deliveries in Q2 and onwards. So yes, I have a good visibility, and that's the aim to be breakeven, yes.
There's one more question here. So on this Q1 revenues growth, you said 20% increase. And now it's -- you didn't achieve that. So what happened?
Limited amount of orders we are receiving, as you see, I mean, we are communicating the larger purchase orders. And that are the purchase orders that will affect the company the most. If one of those larger POs shift from one day to another, which is out of our control, it's hard for us. We can always squeeze and we can always chase to get the purchase orders into the right quarter. But as long as the projection and the orders are there and the volumes are there, I believe that is how we see going forward. We will do the utmost to get it into the right quarter definitely.
I don't have any more questions here. So I guess we end here.
Okay. If there's no more questions, I mean, we're happy to answer questions over e-mail or you can give us a phone call. Looking forward to keep the relationship and communication channel open and look forward to hear from you and look forward for sending out some more press releases on -- and orders very soon. Thank you, and bye-bye.