So, we're live. Welcome to this Q4 Inside FOM. Three months since we last had one of these. We'll go through the last quarter's news, and of course, you can always ask questions throughout the whole presentation. We have some from the other platform, Stock.io, the community, our investor community platform that is also co-hosting, co-live streaming this event on their platform. Other than that, now, I've talked a little bit, but can you hear me? Could, please, in chat or question, just write that the sound is actually going through, so we're sure we don't miss anything. Other than that, I think... Let's see. So if anybody - Yes, there's "loud and clear," I get told. So on that note, I'm Anders Zølck.
I'm a digital marketing manager here at FOM.
Yeah.
This is Michael Stadi, our CEO-
Yes
... as you've seen and heard from before. So, I will start the presentation and give you the honor of going through it.
Yes. Thanks, Anders. Yeah, happy New Year, all of you. To start with, apologies if my voice is a bit rusty and if I might be coughing, but, you know, this time of year, and I think that we all have been a little sick over Christmas and New Year's. But, yeah, we can start. We are just continuing our tradition with this inside FOM. We are publishing the last quarterly news, and then quickly following up with a digital webinar, where we are sort of elaborating on some of the stories, and it's an opportunity for your investors and other stakeholders to ask questions.
So we're beginning, as you might have seen, we are ending another good year with a lot of positive elements that we would like to dig into. So starting off with, for us, what was the absolutely major news for our 2023, we managed to get additional funding raised from one of the largest institutional investors in Scandinavia. Two of them was ATP and BankInvest. And, why is that? Well, the reason for that is that we have taken in a fairly small amount of capital when we got on the stock exchange and got listed back in 2020. We did another small round in 2022, and now we felt that this was the opportunity to take a larger amount of capital into the company.
And we succeeded to do so, and naturally, we will do our utmost to make sure that we will increase the valuation of the company, and also the future growth potential. So that is what we will be working strongly for. We have had a few questions regarding this topic, and one of the questions that has come in relation to this is what the funds will be used for, what the proceeds will be used for. And there are three major things that the money will be used for. One is the innovation of future products. We think it's super, super important to maintain in the front line of our technology and be among the leading companies. We would like to continue to grow the organization.
As you have seen on some of the last slides, we have doubled the organization from the beginning of 2023 until the end. We will continue to grow the organization, probably not double that, but continue to grow the organization and also to improve the stock and have machines on the shelf and on the stock for immediate delivery. So these are the three major elements that the funds would be used for and to have a stronger balance sheet. Then we have also received questions, actually two questions, regarding this topic from Stock.io. One of them is that if we can provide a plan or vision, a strategy, I think that this session will probably be too short to elaborate- ...
On a bigger plan and vision, other than we will continue to work within the area. We will continue to focus on the three geographical regions, that is U.S., North America, it's Europe, and it's Asia. Yeah, just continue what we do, and hopefully with an even stronger pace than what we have been doing previously. Last, but not least, we have a question where an investor or stakeholder is congratulating us about this funding deal and is asking about if this would change any of the markets that we are looking into, and that won't be changed. As I mentioned before, geographic-wise, this would be completely the same, and we will still focus on solar and batteries, so energy harvesting and energy storage.
That is still unchanged, and we will continue to focus on these two areas.
Before you continue, there's one more, and please interrupt, or I will interrupt Michael during this session, if you have questions, just type them in the bottom of the screen in chat or questions. But there's one coming in, is: when do you expect to go on the main market now that it was-
Yeah, that's-
Postponed because of... Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a question that we have received a lot of times during the last few weeks. I won't be able to simply because I can't, and we haven't decided that, but in this sort of cooperation with the investor consortium, we have decided that we will stay a little bit longer on the Nasdaq First North platform. We will grow the company, grow the company stronger and bigger in terms of turnover, revenue, organization, and then we will re-look at it. So it's not because that we have discarded this opportunity, we have just decided that the timing is not now, but at some point in the future.
That is, I think, the closest that we can get, simply because we haven't set a specific date or a target.
Okay. I think that covered this one. We'll continue to the next topic on from our newsletter, which is the patent trademark.
Yeah. It's also mentioned a few times before that we don't have a patent, or we don't hold a patent for the slot-die coating in itself. So what we can do is that we can try to apply for process patents, meaning that if we do things in a certain way, then we can apply for a process patent. And we have done so and have received a Danish patent for the Danish Patent and Trademark Office, and that happened back in the end of last year. We had a question in relation to that about this new patent, if that means if we're changing directions. And the question or the answer to that is again, absolutely not. We believe that solar is very interesting to us.
Batteries is at the same, but we also see a semiconductor industry using the same wafers, the same type of cells as you do in some of the other core sort of strategic areas. So for us, there's no big difference, so it won't change anything. We have just decided that we think that we can have an even stronger case if we have process patents on what we do. The problem about patents is that you also need to defend them, and it's very costly to get and to maintain. So that is sort of the flip side or the back side of issuing patents.
Yeah. If no more questions to this one, we'll continue to MIT purchases last seconds of last year, actually.
Yeah, and that is interesting, because this is what we call a recurring business or recurring customers coming back to us and asking to buy more advanced equipment. And MIT is one of the most prestigious universities in the world. They are sort of in the forefront of a lot of areas where they do science and research within. So, naturally, that is a story that we have been proud to share with you. We have received a few questions about that topic and that story. One of them is if there's any more, like, high-profile customers coming our way? We certainly hope so.
Yeah.
We certainly hope so.
We do our best in marketing and sales to get that done, yes.
Exactly. And to add on that note is that it's not all the times that a customer is interested in us mentioning that they are customer with us. So one thing is to deal with these high-profile, prestigious, either academic customers, also corporations. Another thing is whether they're interested in us sort of mentioning that they are buying equipment from us. So those are the two sides that we also need to always have to have in mind. But yeah, we are sort of stressing that we are providing some of the most advanced equipment in the world, and we have the customers' words for that, and we'll continue to seek for those kind of customers, and hopefully other customers coming our way.
We also had one from Stock.io in relation to these returning customers. And that's more in general, if we in general see returning customers, and the answer to that is yes, we actually calculated on it, and last year it was 11%, so one out of ten customers last year was returning customers, coming back and buying either the same level of equipment or even more advanced equipment. We never see customers sort of going down in the complexity level. To that question, it's a clear yes.
Okay, seems we have more questions to this one. So, first, sales in Portugal is also a nice story, which I then from it, from what it states here, 30 countries globally now?
Yeah, you can say that, you learn at the business school, that if you're a small company starting up, you need to go global. And we have been proud to say that we have been born global. We have almost zero revenue or turnover in Denmark. So we have always been global and a lot of countries on all the six continents. So for us, Portugal was also an interesting country in Europe. So we thought that that was a nice little story to add, and have been calculating all the countries where we have sold equipment to. So yeah, a small story, but still significant for us to continue the global journey.
... Before you continue, Michael, there's a question here: Is the competitive landscape changing? Are more players entering the market, or do we see the same, I guess?
Yeah. Yes, that is a very good question, and the answer to that is yes. And that is just stressing that the market is becoming more mature. The more mature it becomes, the more competitors is entering the market. So the only thing you can do is embrace it. You need to be on your tiptoes and work hard and have the best technology and the best products. And that's also stressing why we thought that the timing was right for us to raise capital and continue to be that. But we don't see it as a sort of a major problem, because it's also underlying that the market is starting to be more mature.
You both have customers that is academic, but also corporates. So but we see an increased competition out there.
And then a follow-up, a little bit, in the same direction. Are margins coming under pressure because of this?
Yes, with increased competition, there will be a squeeze on margins. So that means that you need to produce more optimal, you need to optimize on your lead times and your whole way of how you run your business. So, but that's just the natural way that all kind of corporations or markets that are maturing, they will go through these patterns, and so will we. So, yeah, there's not much to do about it other than just to optimize and have a super, super lean business that you run.
Then we have... if that answered at all, please follow up if you have more questions. But we have a question coming in live from Stock.io platform. Is it an advantage for you when you get a customer in a new country? Does it give more business in that country, or is there no geographical connection in this that provides you with more business in the same country?
Yeah. It's always a major advantage for us, because what you can say when you talk to other customers in the same region, it's easy to say, "Well, we already have customers that are within your range or your geography, and maybe they're even within the same application field. So, you know, go and talk to this professor, go and talk to this university or this customer." Of course, we will check if they're interested in sort of sharing their knowledge, if they're not competing. And it's much easier if you know the region, the country, the culture, the language, and so forth, to reach out and talk about their experience.
So, we are very much sort of collecting on new geographic areas and countries, and thereby can be able to to get more ambassadors for our technology. Yeah.
I think that covers that for now.
Mm.
Next up is the workshop our dear colleague César attended at Fraunhofer.
Yeah, we do many workshops and have arranged a handful of workshops for 2024. But sometimes it's just really interesting, both from our customers, but also for investors and other stakeholders, to see that you're out there, you do the research, you do the science, you have sort of real people who is cooperating with customers. And also the fact that we are participating in a lot of R&D consortiums. Right now, we are active in six global R&D consortiums for the time being. This was one of them, and this is within the PV, photovoltaic, and the solar application field. And this was a workshop in Germany.
Yes, we continue.
Mm.
A little bit about the conferences. We had the last conference in of 2023 in Boston. We sent a few people over. And I don't know if you have anything else to add, but as in general, we will continue, as we've done in 2023, with conferences, attending conferences. We see leads coming in. We see more and more of the customers that we meet again, have then seen our machines from previously and want to learn more, and thereby continue all the marketing around these conferences. But also from a sort of learning perspective, we also send our science team to sort of keep up to speed with what's happening in the different application areas and different industries.
You are, you are correct, Anders. What I would like to add is that the MRS stands for Materials Research Society-
Yeah
... and is one of the most prestigious one within our field. So this is definitely a sort of an exhibition that we participate in every year. We would often have a booth and be sponsors. And Boston is just stressing that U.S. is a major market for us, and is accounting for more and more in our sort of global pipeline-
Yeah
... or portfolio of our total revenue. So, U.S. is important, and particularly this MRS, Materials Research Society, is very important for us.
Yeah.... Mm-hmm. Continue to a little bit more of an internal, but also, of course, dropping into the environmental, yeah.
Yeah, we exactly, down to earth.
Yeah
... again, but sometimes it's also interesting to look at the small things that matters, sort of not a secret that we care about ESG. We have issued our first ESG initiative publication that was last year. It will be follow up with the new ESG report. So for the first time, we would have our real ESG report. It will be published alongside our annual report in a month from now, approximately. And looking at every single aspect of the ESG, in this case, it's sustainable packaging and so forth. So it's a very good example of what our team also is looking into.
Yeah.
We have, yeah, before we go on to the last bit, we had a question actually beforehand that was related to our guidance. Normally, you would have, each company would have a guidance, and if that changes, you need to report and inform the market, and so do we. The formal rules is that, before you are publishing your annual report for the last financial year, you would need to issue a guidance for the next financial year. And that would mean that we will formally have to issue a guidance for our 2024. We are following the calendar year, and we would be doing that by the end of February and beginning in March.
So before that, we would issue the guidance, financial guidance in terms of revenue and EBITDA for 2024. And I don't think we'll wait that long, so expect our guidance most likely to be issued maybe in the beginning of February. That would be my best guess.
Cool. Then we continue to five of our new colleagues.
Yes.
So yeah, in almost covering most departments, I guess.
Yeah.
Almost.
One of the questions that I have received many times last year, if there was a specific department that we are ramping up on, and it's not. We're trying to see if we can balance the organization. So in Q4, we hired five new colleagues. And for the whole of 2023, we hired and doubled the organization from 17 to 33. So we welcomed Mustafa, and I will start with him because he will be heading up our Service Lifecycle Management. Also in the daily mentioned as SLM, Service Lifecycle Management.
And then also on logistics, we have strengthened our finance team, and also on the customer management side, and also in the engineering team, so across all levels in the organization. I have noted here that we had a question-
Mm-hmm
... and the question was in relation to the service lifecycle management department, if we have started to see any traction on leads and revenue related to this service after sales. And the answer to that is, yes, we have partly hired new people, but also relocated in the organization. So the team consists of four people, meaning that is around 15% of the total organization, and that is because that we see a major potential within additional revenue, after sales, good service, helping the customers. Often, there's nothing wrong with our technology and equipment, but we need to advise them to get started. We can sell services, we can sell training, and simply sell sort of know-how and knowledge.
So that whole part we is expecting a lot of in terms of revenue and after sales and improved service. And we know it from ourself if you have been treated well in a shop, you went maybe to buy some fashion clothes, whatever, and if you have a good experience, you would often come back, same with restaurants and so forth. So service is a major sort of focus areas for us, and not only to create ambassadors, but simply also to increase revenue, earnings, and so forth.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Then I think we're at the end of the news that that we had to share in our Q4 newsletter. If you have any follow-up questions, I can see one came in while I was talking here, so let's jump to that one. If you can disclose, did you have interest from any U.S. investors regarding the capital raise?
I get inquiries from U.S. once a month, but not very serious inquiries. Often it's project-based, and it's more in terms of loan, where you would need to borrow money and pay an interest. So serious interest, no, but we get a lot of not so serious requests at a fairly consistent basis. That is once a month. Yeah.
... Yes, we'll just give it a couple of seconds for follow-up questions and new questions for that matter. We have some time to spare. We've set off half an hour for this, and we're getting there, but we still have time. In the meanwhile, if there's any last questions, as always, as I normally end with, please follow us. There are various places we share news on a regular basis when they are new on our social media platforms. But as you always say, Michael, you can always send us an email on ir@fomtechnologies.com with any investor related questions-
Yeah.
we will take care of them.
Never hesitate. We try to respond for investor relations inquiries within 24 hours, and always trying to provide as efficient answer as possible. And we record this,
Yeah.
So, if people don't have time this specific evening, they can always go in, browse, and they can see it when it's more convenient for people during the weekend or whatever.
Yeah.
Mm.
Any last ones, dying to get a question to, to Michael before we, we end up, this session?
We have a last question for you, ladies and gentlemen, the audience here, and we have been discussing internally whether we should make two days in between sending out the digital newsletter and then hosting this webinar, if two days would make a difference. So, if you have any opinions on that, right now it's one day. We sent out the newsletter yesterday, and then we are hosting this webinar tonight. But if you feel that it would be more convenient, that it would be two days in between, you know, you can give us a shout or just write a comment. So we are playing a little bit what is the optimal format for these sessions here.
Yeah. Comments on that so far, but, again, we will-
We'll then continue.
We'll listen, so by all means, contact us on any platform. Else, I will give you four minutes back of your time.
Mm-hmm.
Thanks for joining. Some joiners again, and thank you and welcome to the new ones that I hope we'll see you again in a couple of months when we have the next one.
Yeah. Yeah, and we can see, we see an increase of every session that we make, more and more-
Yeah
... is participating. So, for us, we think we're on the right track.
Yeah.
All right. But, yeah, thanks for joining.
Thank you very much.
Have a nice evening.
Yes.
Take care.