Hi, welcome. This is Laila Danielsen, the CEO of Elliptic Labs. Joining me is our CFO, Lars Holmøy. I'm pleased to share our Q1 2023 report to you today, and I want to highlight these three main takeaways. First, we have achieved successful launches on nine models of Lenovo laptops in the first quarter. Additionally, since the first quarter, we have introduced our AI software on eight more Lenovo laptops, bringing the total number of laptop launches with Lenovo to 17 year to date. This demonstrates our scalability and highlights the market interest in our AI software platform. As we stated before, our aim is to achieve widespread adoptions. When these laptops ship, we expect to generate more revenue over time, so the key is that we generate revenue when products are shipped, not just launched.
We will share more about our revenue model in the slides ahead. Secondly, we have secured new contracts with two of the top five smartphone customers, and we're following the same business model as the PC for the two new smartphone customers. This mean we anticipate to generate additional revenue as these contracts come into effect and the smartphones begin to ship. We expect to continue to grow with new and current smartphone customers over time. Third, looking back at the first quarter, we can confidently say that our technology is in a better position than ever before. Our technological leadership in AI, ultrasound, and sensor fusion has been highly valued by our esteemed global partners and customer. This shared vision has enabled us to establish long-term relationship with key players in the market.
While we remain cautious about the long-term outlook, we focus on what we can control, executing consistently on technology delivery, landing new contracts, launching new products. Our strategy has proven successful in the PC industry, our next growth market. Currently, we have signed agreements with three of the top five PC makers, and as a reminder, the top five PC makers are, Number one , and leading, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Asus. These five top manufacturers accounted for 80% of all PC laptops sales globally in 2022. We see that the market is in the process of replicating the approach Lenovo took, starting with our AI Virtual Human Presence Sensor, and do broad deployment quickly, and plan to add more products per device.
In conclusion, we plan to add more PC customer, expand broadly over time, include more products per unit, and last but not least, expand our reach into their product portfolio, such as display, speakers, conference system, et cetera. We are also, of course, expecting to grow our smartphone business. While we're excited about our current success, we consider it only the beginning of our entry into the PC industry and their larger and broader product portfolio, making every device smarter, more human, and environmentally friendly. The principle in what we're doing is that we leverage existing single-purpose sensors that are already on the devices. We apply our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform, and we generate new capabilities, what we call Virtual Smart Sensors, that we can charge a per unit, per device for.
This is our principle and our key technology that is leading in this market. Okay, the market that we're going after is large. We started off in the smartphone market, and we have worked our way into the large PC market. Just to be clear, fluctuation in this market does not affect our long-term opportunity. Let's say we use the 2022 as an example. Between Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Asus, 223 million units were sold in 2022, according to Gartner. Our competing hardware sensor, the single-purpose hardware sensors, are selling at the unit price of $2, $2.5 - $4, and they only deliver one single capability, human presence detection. Today, in addition to deliver...
For us, in addition to deliver human presence detection, we have three more AI Virtual Smart Sensor ready for deployment in the PC market. The top five manufacturers represent 80% of the market, we are currently in business, early stage, with three of them. I use the word currently because we will become the de facto standard in the market. In 2023, we have been in discussions with management in world-leading OEMs, beyond our current customer, who truly sees the value of our product. I have to repeat, our product is 100% software, meaning that we're not directly hit by any supply chain challenges or component prices increases, directly, but indirectly through our customers, this is why we could continue to expect short-term lumpiness in the quarters to come. Okay.
Of course, we have a lot of focus on the laptop vertical, and the adoption rate in the laptop vertical, and what we're really pleased to see, is faster than the smartphone market. If we look at this graph to the left, you can see it took us five quarters to launch with 18 laptop models, and it took us three times as long to launch with 18 smartphone models, about 17 quarters. It is also worth repeating that we started out with the world's largest PC maker, Lenovo, and their best-selling laptop, Lenovo ThinkPad T14. Thus far, we have solid traction in the PC market, and it's a strong validation of the broad opportunity we have in the PC market, as in total, we have launched with 18 models. We now have three of the top five manufacturers as our customer, and this is phenomenal.
As I've said before, we are confident in our products and people, we will not let short-term commercial gains come in the way of our long-term value creation potential. Note, that we are in a cash position to take us to our growth targets. We will keep expanding with our PC customers, and we are on track, not only on track, but confident that we will add more customer in this vertical, and we will also see interest in many of our products. Let's really dive into a little bit more about business model, turning the world-leading AI software into future revenue. Here I will try to explain as much as possible about our revenue model, but note, we are in ongoing negotiation as we speak, and we already have signed contracts that are highly confidential.
We acknowledge that it's difficult to appreciate our future opportunity when we deliver a decreased year-on-year revenue this quarter, even though we get more and more contracts. Let me be clear, since we have a strong cash balance, we do not need to, nor will we, jeopardize the long-term opportunity for short-term gain. The advantage of being a 100% software company is that we don't have to worry about the supply chain issues and high inventory cost. It also, it allows us to have a flexible business and revenue model. Let's take a look at the process of how we turn our world-leading software into the future revenue. We start by evaluating or do a POC with our product, with the customer, and when successful, we move into negotiation.
From there, we craft a long-term agreement with the world-leading OEMs to secure future revenue. Upon agreement, we sign a contract, which we will then announce to the market. This is typical a contract for a number of models with a minimum commitment volume. When the respective model is launched by the OEM customer, we send out a press release to let you know that this model has been launched. Note, and this is important, that this does not mean that the product is physically shipped yet. What makes our revenue numbers lumpy quarter to quarter? Due to inventory backlogs and cool down end user demand, makes it harder for our customer to forecast volumes. This have impacted our upfront minimum commitment and volume shipped, consequently impacting our near-term revenue.
This means, though, that we structure our deals with a lower upfront commitment, which means we charge an even higher price per unit. Thus, over time, as we ship more products out in the market, we will grow significantly. Let me repeat again, that we have the cash to take us to these growth targets. This is critical to understand. With that being said, I would have to remind you who we're competing against or what we're competing against. Our software is head-to-head with hardware sensor, single-purpose hardware sensor. In the PC and the laptop market, we are competing against products priced from $2.5-$4 per unit, so per laptop. Cost cuts is not the only benefits, as our AI Virtual Smart Sensors are also enhancing user privacy, adding capabilities, and eliminating sourcing risk.
Basically, in conclusion, we deliver capability for less cost. These are the reason why we are moving at such a high pace into the laptop market, with three of the top five customers and more than 20 models. In the last 10 years, we have successfully developed a robust technological infrastructure and platform leveraging AI, ultrasound, and sensor fusion. This accomplishment has made it possible through extensive collaboration with our ecosystem partners, including Intel, AMD, MediaTek, Qualcomm, and et cetera. As a result, we have established a strong foundation that present numerous prospect for expansion and growth. Now I'm gonna leave the stage to our CFO, Lars Holmøy.
Thank you, Laila. Elliptic Labs is financially robust. Although we had the decline in revenue year-over-year in the first quarter, we are confident knowing that we are launching our software technology on models to be deployed in the market. These models will in turn generate revenues to us. What we can do in this market is to contract as many models as possible for future sales, de-risking our long-term revenue and inbound cash flow, meaning we have a strong cash position to take us to our target growth. Our cost base is up 36% on employee benefit expenses. We believe we have the right size team and capabilities in our organization to support our current growth opportunities.
The increase in other operating expenses can be tracked back to increased travel activities in and to the U.S. and Asia, reflecting increased commercial activities, customer meetings, partner meetings, on site, of course, and trade shows. Our EBITDA was hence negative NOK 20 million, which was offset by positive net financials and income tax expense, resulting in a loss for the quarter on NOK 15 million. Looking at our cash flow, sales results in the quarter subsequently affected our cash flow from operation, which ended at negative NOK 17 million. Investments increased 9% compared to Q1 2022, reflecting continued work to further our leading technological position. Financing reflects repayment of debt to Innovasjon Norge and other short-term liabilities. It leaves us with a strong cash balance of NOK 154 million, which will carry us through our growth target.
We are well-funded for our growth. If you look at our balance sheet beyond our good cash position, there is a continued buildup of our current asset, which reflects upcoming payments from our customers. Our equity ratio remains at 93%, and our long-term debt, in large, reflects our loan from Innovasjon Norge. I will leave the floor to Laila. Thank you.
Thank you, Lars. Elliptic Labs is currently experiencing strong commercial traction with several ongoing strategic discussions, and our commercial team and I are meeting with top management from global leading customer and partners. This is a testament to our technological leadership and the relevance of our 100% software-based product based on artificial intelligence, ultrasound, and sensor fusion. With that, we will take a short break and open up for Q&A. Thank you. Welcome back. We will now address some of the questions. As usual, we really appreciate the gentlemen that have sent in many questions on behalf of the retail investors. We appreciate that, and of course, there are other questions ticking in. I don't know if you want to just start asking some of the questions.
Yeah, sure. We grouped some of them together.
Okay.
The laptop models, typical, and any estimate on when new models will be released, and money starts to flow in?
Flow in.
Yes.
Yeah. You know...
Yeah
Obviously, during the presentation, I just want to reiterate that we acknowledge and we understand that is difficult to really appreciate our business model.
Mm
And the future growth potential we, that we have here at Elliptic Labs. Answering this question is that we can, unfortunately, when we sign a contract, we can't announce the amount. We can, in most cases, announce the number of models that we have signed up with. Furthermore, we are not permitted due to confidential agreements, and this is extremely strict, with huge actually financial penalties.
Mm.
Should we not do it, to talk about launch date.
Mm.
After the customer launch, specifically like we did here with Lenovo, that has done launched 17 year-to-date, we can make that announcement. When it comes to shipping, even though the customer has provided us a set of forecast estimates for the future when they're planning to ship these models, we cannot announce that either. I can't give any more specific...
Mm
Beyond that, unfortunately. I know it's, it might be very stressful.
Just to-
Yeah.
There's a follow-up question in the same...
Okay
In the same.
Okay.
Of course, how many laptop PC models with Elliptic products in, does Elliptic estimate being launched in 2023? 17 so far.
I cannot.
Okay.
I can't comment that either.
Yeah.
It's worth reiterating that, you know, as we stated during the presentation.
Mm
... that our goal is to-.
Mm
spread us broadly.
Yeah.
Is to, you know, right now we have three of the top five-
Mm-hmm
laptop customer in the market, and we are confident that we would sign on more-.
Mm-hmm
... customers. We're also confident that we will spread over more models over time.
Yeah.
I'm sure there are more questions here.
There more questions coming in. This is very specific for the Lenovo PCs.
Okay.
In 2022, Elliptic announced the first contract, that was in 2021. 2022.
Mm
... with Lenovo covering Lenovo ThinkPad T14. After this, Elliptic announced, expansion, actually more, multiple expansion contracts.
Mm-hmm.
A further three announced expansion for more models.
Yeah
than we came. Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
How many of these announced model expansion does Elliptic Labs estimate generating revenue for 2023?
I can't, fortunately, I do not have the permission, due to the contract to say anything specific in regards to when they're even shipping.
Shipping, yeah.
... the contract. I'm sorry, shipping these launched models.
Yep. Okay, a little bit more technical question?
Okay.
Foldable smartphone seems to be a new trend. Do you see any advantage for your technology on these smartphones?
Yeah, absolutely. We have just been.
Attraction.
Yeah, we just have been released some of the foldable phones.
Mm.
We see many of the players in the market.
Mm
... have foldable phones, and, we have been signing on more customers with foldable phones as well.
Yeah.
The advantage that we see here, which is quite nice, is that in the foldable phone, the proximity sensor, so the single-purpose hardware sensor that we're competing against.
Mm
... the three-in-one, the proximity sensor, that they use on the standard smartphone.
Mm
... does not fit. It's not a good solution for the foldable phone. They have to use a special sensor that is much more costly.
Mm.
Actually, between $0.20-$0.40 per unit.
Mm.
Or more closer to $0.40, actually. We see that, and plus, on top of that, they have to do some special software.
Mm.
We see that we have a chance to get into the foldable phone with even more customers. This is very positive.
Yep.
I want to also make a little side note that the foldable market, as of yet, is a small volume market.
Yeah, it is a small one.
I just want to set the expectation right here, but yeah.
Okay. Just came in another timeline-ish questions.
Okay.
going back to that.
PC.
Yeah, PC, back to the PC, and also a revenue question.
Okay
... just, what is a realistic timeline?
Mm
... when signing a new enterprise agreement for a PC laptop customer for the product, okay, presence-.
Mm
... human presence detection, from signing to launch? It's a multiple, sorry. I'll just come back.
Yeah.
With respect to the two enterprise agreements that we also have signed and not yet announced anything on.
Okay
... do we expect any models on that this year, on those two as well?
Okay.
Yeah.
I'll start with the last first.
Yeah.
The models that we have signed, I cannot state when they are if we're generating revenue, because then, once again, that will give the information when we make the announcement and launch. That I cannot. When it comes to, if I use the example as T14, I think over time, of course, we expect, we hope that this will go faster, but always when you go out with the first one, it takes a little bit longer. We signed with the agreement with Lenovo.
Mm
in summer of 2021.
Yeah.
We launched it in Q1.
Mobile
Mobile Congress.
Yeah
... in February of 2022. We started shipping, so we can go back and say that because it's already shipped, in that summer that year. They started June, July.
Mm
... and shipping it.
Q3 was the first time you had license revenue from that.
We expect. You get the follow-on when we receive the information on how much to ship, to send the invoice. We expect to follow the same trend. Of course, over time, when you have more models out in the market, the revenue is going to start, of course, even out and become more predictable.
Yep.
... I think it's more about competition.
Yes, more competition questions. What is the laptop OEM customers' feedback on our product, compared to infrared camera solution, for example, or yeah, time-of-flight sensors in general?
Yeah, it's not a coincidence-
Mm.
that three of the five top PC customers are coming to us, starting on, you know, with the presence detection.
Mm.
When you're using a camera, there's a few different solutions. You also have a separate chip. We don't like to criticize. We just receive feedback and just look at the market feedback that they have had some issues, but more so also it's a cost difference.
Mm.
It's a few things. It's a cost difference. There's also like a privacy issue, particularly with all the new regulation in Europe. You see some of these companies that has actually a camera, that they have a shutter on top.
Mm
of the laptop to close off the camera.
A physical shutter?
A physical shutter. What we are expecting and what we're seeing is that they're looking to replace that. Just want to mention also, this is interesting because if you look at Intel, which is one of our biggest or actually the biggest partner we have in the laptop market, a few years ago, they started focusing on camera for HPD.
Mm
... and they have closed that project. We worked with the company, with the people in the specifically on Intel that worked on a project, and they have closed that down. Obviously, they're working very closely with us.
Mm.
Overall, we expect that we will see a replacement. I do still expect that some high-end laptop would have that going forward.
Mm-hmm.
For the, in the broader market, we do not expect that.
Mm-hmm.
I can just sort of jump and almost into the next question here because we're talking about solutions, yeah?
Yes.
It's important also to note.
Mm
when, you know, we have our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform that can deliver so much more than these single-purpose sensors. We can You also have to understand that when you work with a company like Lenovo, you can go on a website, they have conference system, they have speakers, they have smartphones.
Tablets.
Tablets, they have lots of other, accessories,
Mm-hmm
... and products. They are looking, all of these companies are looking at more like a holistic, solution.
Mm-hmm
... to how to deliver new capability. Some capability that even some features we haven't shared yet.
Mm
... that we're working specifically with the customers on.
Mm.
When they come to us, we take the approach that, and why we're meeting with the management of these companies.
Mm
... is that because they take a strategic approach in saying like, "You know, we might have distance traction, we might want to have device-to-device communication," and so forth. There's a lot of other capabilities. Then they're saying, "By the way, you know, you're also doing HPD.
Mm.
Yeah, you know, we say we start with that, but we are having a much broader discussion, and this is why we are very optimistic about the future. We are not just a one-trick pony here.
Yep.
You know, this is really capitalize on our capability-.
Mm
of making devices, easier to use.
Mm
... and making them more seamless, making them greener. I just want to add this as well, because there's a lot of discussions around AI.
Mm.
We have, here in Elliptic, we have worked, a decade now, over a decade, building our platform using AI-
Mm
... using machine learning, having our own neural network. We have core expertise in that segment, combined with core expertise in ultrasound and sensors.
Mm-hmm.
We are very unique position because I think it's more thing, more I hear about competitions that's popping up.
Yeah
... is that, they talk about if somebody else see other solutions or similar solutions. It's important to recognize that we have already proven-
Mm
... our ability to deliver mature technology in other market, in the smartphone market. We had to start with the smartphone market because that's where the ecosystem started supporting us.
Mm.
smartphone was, it was more aggressive to adopting.
Mm
... new technology. Now, when this ecosystem is supporting, the ecosystem, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm is providing the appropriate support, well, obviously, we're embedding our software onto the chipset. With us, for the PC market, we can take that market. When these laptop... This is another aspect that's very important.
Yeah.
When you go into commercial laptops, the best-selling commercial laptops, like Lenovo, they go and sell these to big companies, a company may order like 10, 20, 30,000 laptops. If you do a mistake on these laptops, you can risk that they turn all these laptops back.
Mm.
it's not just about another newbie coming in with like something similar like us, they can walk into the to these products.
Mm.
It's very different than the smartphone market.
Mm.
They're more conservative in the laptop market. Even they're conservative, yet we are on the best-selling. We started with the biggest customer and the biggest company in the market, the highest volume selling laptop for them. We're adding more.
Mm.
We are in a very different, it's a very different position, a very different sort of path than we have with the smartphone. Of course, we're more mature as a, as a company.
Yeah.
As a technology.
I think it's also fair to say last year, we had one model in the market.
Now we are launched with 17. Yeah.
Yeah.
So-
Building it.
I'm gonna reiterate this, too, I'm gonna be hammering this in, is that it took us 17 quarters to reach the same number of models in the smartphone market. Here it took us only five quarters in the laptop market. It's definitely a sign of maturity.
Yeah.
So-
Okay.
Do I have more?
There's lots of questions. Well, let's do. Okay, this is a two-sided question because it's also one question that comes in here, and it.
Okay, just read it.
Yeah, yeah, I will just continue.
Just read it.
Yeah, okay. How far is Elliptic in the long term or midterm strategy to becoming de facto standard in the laptop vertical? Of course, how to reach our midterm target of revenue, which is.
Okay.
Related, I will say.
Yeah, no. Okay. I've already explained about the process.
Yeah
... when companies are launching and spreading out. We have signed with three of the top five.
Mm-hmm
... companies. Let me be clear, we are planning to add more, and we are planning to spread broadly. And I think that if I look two years ago.
Yeah
Back when we went public, we said that we were gonna go out in the market. We expected to be the de facto standard. We expected to deploy broadly. We expected to do many laptop customers, and this we have. I would say I'm not going to put a percentage, but I think we are fairly good track on, you know, hitting that.
Yeah.
Of course, I can, I wouldn't mind to just sort of... We spend a lot of time explaining our business model. Of course, what is disappointing, admittedly, of course...
Yeah
is that, you know, when we looked at summer of last year, and looking even, as close as, towards the latter half of last year, we saw that the customer initially wanted to do a much more higher upfront commitment, and had a much more control of the forecastability. Of course, that has changed over the past quarter. We saw in this last Q1 here.
Yeah
... for our customers, that they have, you know, the whole market would some between 25%-40%.
I think it's-
You know, that's, that sort of is impacting our net revenue. Admittedly, that does, but as we are spreading out, and we are now pricing, and you're not gonna get a discount if you don't do a high commit. That's just end of discussion.
Yeah.
So, uh, we expected-
But-
... that's gonna-
Yeah, I mean, also, it's fair to say that the lumpiness that.
Yeah
... that we announced in the market, last year, we do still see that. It's. Yeah, the market is what it is at this moment.
Should I ask you a question maybe?
Yeah, I have one-
Okay, one more, okay.
... very specific upfront, and it's about the failed payment, that we're pursuing to ICC.
Okay
or arbitration court.
Okay.
We don't have any more updates on that. We will update and disclose that during our quarterly report, of course. It is timely, it takes some time, basically, but we are very confident. We have a contract. It should be all be good.
Yeah.
Yeah, please.
I'll ask a question now.
Yeah, please ask.
What are Elliptic Labs' expectation for revenue and EBITDA for 2023?
We do not give any guidance on that. Our midterm targets is our 2024, 2025 target on NOK 500 million.
Yeah.
We do not give specific on 2023, and we explained that very thoroughly, the last quarters. Of course, it's difficult to forecast under these circumstances that we are in now.
Mm
lumpiness that we see in the market.
Mm.
Yeah.
I guess I got a few more.
Yes.
Please.
yeah.
Do-
What is the risks?
Okay.
Yeah.
One or two, top two risks.
Yeah
... towards reaching.
Top two risk to reaching our target in 2024, 2025. I think that was a nicely follow-up, Laila.
Yeah. Okay. What is important that we focus on?
Mm.
It's clear that we have a demand for product on the market.
Yeah.
Not just for human presence detection. It is clear that the market, as what we see today, that they want a broader use of our technology.
Mm.
What we have to focus on, is that we have to deliver on our technology. We have to deliver on the capabilities.
Yeah.
We have to continue to build a solid roadmap.
Yeah
In alignment with the customer and with our partners. I would just mention here, which is also very important, we have the cash, and one of the reasons that, you know, we initially went public was that when we saw we could capture this large market, that you needed to have a strong balance.
Yeah
... balance sheet to go after this market, because, you don't know exactly how long the sales cycle will be.
Mm.
Of course, you know, we had war and other geopolitical concerns that have been.
COVID.
Throwing COVID, throwing at us. You know, what we have to focus on, I won't even look at, think about it as risk, what we have to really, really focus on is to deliver on our technology.
Yeah.
Then, you know, obviously, we're early in a large market.
Yeah, just to reiterate, we do have the cash to pursue.
Yeah
our midterm targets.
Yeah.
Our growth expectation and targets.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have one here at the end.
Yeah
I guess.
Considering Elliptic Labs' knowledge in signal analysis with other applications, you're working on in addition to presence detection, other sectors than consumer electronics?
Yeah. You know, obviously, as I mentioned, we have lots of other products that we have already announced and working to implement. What we're doing also, is worth mentioning, is that we're doing an EU project with our partner, Infineon, that's for future potential commercial applications-
Yes
... that we are working on. I believe this is might even be public information.
It is public.
... on the website, that they can read, more about, but that's, there's several other use cases that we're looking at, and those can be very relevant in conjunction with our partner for commercial applications.
Yeah.
So, uh-
it will be not being coming tomorrow.
No.
It's in the future.
that's a longer term.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think-
Okay. Is that it?
I think we covered most of all, if not all.
Okay. All right. Thank you.