Hi, welcome to Elliptic Labs' Second Quarter and Half Year 2023 Presentation. My name is Laila Danielsen. I'm the CEO of Elliptic Labs, and with me today is our CFO, Lars Holmøy. For today's presentations, there are three main takeaways. Firstly, in our second quarter, we started to see customer activities reflected in our revenue figures. Revenue more than tripled compared to the same period last year. Of course, this we are pleased with, especially considering the challenging market. With that said, we will continue to capitalize on the market momentum as we see a strong market pool. The market and our customers are starting to identify new user experience for our underlying AI technology platform. This is exciting. We continue to focus on well-crafted, long-term agreements, meaning we are not sacrificing our long-term position for short-term gain, as we are in such unique position, market position.
The second takeaway, in Q2, we have broadened our customer base to now include four of the top six PC makers. Let me remind you who they are. Lenovo is number one, HP, Dell, Apple, ASUS, and Acer. Additionally, we signed expansion contracts with Xiaomi and Lenovo. Note that we already launched on 18 Lenovo laptop models to date. This latest recent expansion contract is for a larger number of models than the 18 we already shipped. As a reminder of our business model, we will also dive deeper into this throughout the presentation. Normally, we charge a minimum commit and thereafter a license fee per laptop unit shipped in the market. Thus, as more laptop units are shipped, we generate more revenue.
Thirdly, we continue to invest in the development of our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform, ensuring that our 100% software-only AI platform remains at the forefront of technological advancements. By prioritizing innovation and staying ahead of the curve, we will be rewarded when the market rebounds. We are firmly committed to deliver cutting-edge AI-based software for broad deployment across multiple verticals. We are forging strong and enduring relationship with global OEMs, operating systems, and system-on-a-chip partners, ramping future sales that will drive the value of our company. Our recent acquisition of top talent from Intel will accelerate these processes. We are dedicated to maintaining a light and lean organization and contain costs. Prudent financial management allows us to navigate these volatile times effectively. By carefully allocating our resources, we ensure that our operations remain highly cost-efficient.
Our goal is to strike a balance between conserving capital and driving growth to position us for long-term success. We are capturing a large market opportunity, and we will emerge stronger when the market recovers. We are dedicated to drive innovation, strengthen strategic partnerships, and to position ourselves for long-term success. We have confidence in establishing ourself as the industry standard with our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform. Our technology has now been deployed on more than 500 million smartphones and laptops. We have contracts with four of the top six global OEMs and a POC with one more PC manufacturer. By securing long-term agreements with globally recognized brands, we solidify our technological leadership and expand our market opportunities. These agreements validates the trust our OEM customer place in our AI platform and its potential to shape the future.
Our favorable timing and market traction provide us with a solid advantage, and we are poised to drive long-term growth and value for our stakeholders. Let's jump in a little bit further to our presentation. Elliptic Labs works with global leading partners and customers to redefine user experience with our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform. As the market becomes more familiar with our technology, they discover completely new ways for consumers to engage with and utilize their products. Both the market and our customer turn to us for innovation, leading to creating of exciting new applications. Let's share a little bit more information about our platform. Our platform is entirely software-based and leverages AI, ultrasound, and sensor fusion to deliver exceptional user experience to companies across various industries.
As our technology becomes more widely known, both the market and our customers uncover novel ways to engage customer and optimize their products. They rely on us for innovation, leading to development of exciting new applications. If you look at the upper right-hand corner on the slide, you will find our AI Virtual Custom Sensor, which is the direct result of the market and our customers gaining a deeper understanding of our underlying technology. As we collaborate with large global companies with revenues exceeding $60 billion, they gain greater visibility into the project and the user experience they aim to create. Consequently, as their awareness of our capability expands, they request customized solution for additional use cases. Over time, naturally, these new Virtual Custom Sensor will be integrated into our core product portfolio, making them available to all of our customers. All right.
As you have seen, we keep expanding and launching in both verticals. We are now have launched 83 smartphone models, and we recently here assigned yet another top PC OEMs as our customer. Great traction in both verticals. This is really positive. A little bit about the competition, what we're seeing in the market. I wanna reiterate, we are 100% software that are competing with high-cost, single-purpose hardware sensors. The point is also it's single purpose and it is hardware. Their price in the smartphone market, it's between $0.10 or $0.1-$0.3. In the PC market, which we expect to be our highest future growth market, is between $2.5-$4.
What we are focused on is starting with replacing this single-purpose sensor with the same functionality, and then as we are working closer with the customer, we're adding on more and more capabilities. A very straightforward and strong value proposition to the market. This is overall very positive. Let's look a little bit closer how we are turning world-leading AI software into revenue. We will try to explain as much as possible about our revenue model, but note, we are in ongoing negotiation for more contracts, and we already have signed contracts that are highly confidential. The advantage of being a 100% software company is that we don't have to worry about supply chain issues and high inventory costs. 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 future revenue. First, we start out by evaluating our product with the customer, and when successful, we move into negotiations. From there, we craft long-term agreements with world-leading manufacturer to secure future revenue. Upon agreement, we sign a contract, which we will then announce to the market. This is typically a contract for a number of models with a minimum commitment volume. When the respective model is launched by our customer, we will then send out a press release to let you know that this model has been launched. Note that this doesn't mean that the product is physically shipped yet. The dynamic nature of our revenue numbers quarter to quarter is influenced by various factors that we proactively address.
While occasional inventory backlogs and a temporary cool down in the end user demand may present challenges, they also offer opportunities for our customer to adjust their volume forecast upwards. We have taken proactive measures to adapt to this market condition, including structural deals with lower upfront commitments. This approach enables us to offer competitive pricing per unit, which position us for substantial growth as we continue to ship more and more products into the market. It is important to emphasize that we are well-funded and possess the necessary resources to achieve our growth targets. Understanding these dynamics is critical to grasp the full picture of our revenue trajectory. We remain confident in our ability to navigate through short-term lumpiness and to drive sustained growth in the long run. As mentioned, we continue to see solid market pull and interest for our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform.
Customers in the market identify our underlying technology as an enabler or as the enabler for existing new user experience. This is very positive. We clearly see that our strategy, our go-to-market strategy, and our product strategy is working. We are in a much stronger position technically and commercially. We continue to expand in both verticals. We continue to add more customers in both verticals. We continue to sign more expansion contracts with customers across both verticals. We also see that in the PC market, customer are more interested in a larger portion of our product offerings, so we have excellent market traction. Now I'm gonna have our CFO, Lars Holmøy, to talk a little bit more in details about our finance. Thank you.
Thank you, Laila. Elliptic Labs is poised for long-term growth. In second quarter of 2023, our company demonstrated significant financial growth, evidenced by an increase in revenue to NOK 33.5 million, a 248% increase from Q2 last year. Laptop revenue emerged as our key contributor to this growth, thanks to the recognition of both incremental licensing revenue and license revenue based on shipped units. Even though our growth, we managed to keep our increase in expenses on a reasonable level. Employee benefit expenses rose by 23% year-on-year to NOK 19.3 million, reflecting the scaling up of operational activities, strategic initiatives, and our core markets, such as Asia and the U.S. Quarterly revenue from contracts with customers, maintaining a light and lean organization.
We allocate our resources efficient and use a strategic growth for our organization has allowed us to maximize our sales opportunities and push forward with our product development while keeping costs under control. We have focused on maintaining a lean organization and reflecting this in our operating expenses as well, which is up by 21% from Q2 2022 to NOK 6 million this year. We also have, in this quarter, appointment a new Senior Vice President of Client Artificial Intelligence Architecture, and a VP of Product Management. Our strategic moves aim to driving our growth trajectory even further. We have a continued strong cash position to support our growth. We have cash and cash equivalents amount of NOK 134 million, reflecting our strong cash position.
This quarter's operating cash flow was minus NOK 12 million, reflecting increase in account receivables and operational activities. This is in line with our expectation. We also have repaid, as always, NOK 1 million in our short-term borrowings to Innovasjon Norge, along with NOK 0.7 million in other short-term debt. Lastly, our balance sheet remains robust as of Q2 2023. Our assets include NOK 134 million in cash, and also, NOK 52 million in intangible assets, NOK 80 million in other non-current assets, and NOK 76 million in our current assets. On the liability side, equity as at NOK 322 million, long-term liabilities at NOK 5 million, and short-term liabilities at NOK 15 million. These figures underscores that we are well funded for continued growth and ready to seize new opportunities in our journey. I will leave the floor to Laila. Thank you.
Thank you, Lars. In summary, we have a lot to look forward to. We tripled revenue this quarter, and we are capitalized on the market momentum that we are experiencing. In spite of market's ongoing lumpiness, our long-term prospects with global customers remain solid. We're capturing a significant market opportunity and anticipate becoming more robust as the market bounces back. We are dedicated to drive innovation, strengthen strategic partnerships, and to position ourselves for long-term success. We have a confidence in our technological leadership with the AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform. Leveraging our successful position in the smartphone and PC markets provide us with a solid advantage, and we are poised to drive long-term growth and value for our stakeholders. Now we will take a quick minute break to just review some questions, and then we'll be right back. Thank you.
Welcome back. Thank you for the investors that have sent some questions in beforehand. Why don't we jump into the question?
We have gotten a question from Oliver in Carnegie. Are there any bigger milestone payments from PC OEMs in the Q2 revenue numbers? There is payments and revenue, different parts, but payments we of course receive from previous quarters. In terms of milestone revenue, there is no other than the PC milestone, as mentioned in both the presentation and the report.
Okay. I have another one for you.
Yeah.
Are we planning to communicate revenue divided by business area quarterly?
Not quarterly. Last year, we did. At the annual report we did, and we also will do that, next year. This year.
Okay.
Yeah.
Very good. There's a few questions. Well, still about revenue, but can you provide more color on what's driving the triple-digit revenue growth?
More clients.
More contract signed and product shipped.
Yeah, basically.
Yeah.
Of course, we can add to that. Yeah, contract signed, product shipped, but and again, also the milestone revenue, as we have spoken about.
Yes. Here is under customer expansion. You have now customer base to include four of the top six PC makers. How have you been able to achieve this? Are you expecting to add more laptop customers? I'll start with the end first.
Yeah.
Yes, we are planning to add more laptop customers, and of course, expand with all these laptop customers. How we've been able to achieve this, I mean, we have, you know, we offer unique products that outshine our competitors, clearly. Also, we have, we have a very, you know, in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, U.S. Here in Europe, we have our development team. We have, we can support our customer on site, globally, we already established that.
The relationships have been over time.
Exactly. For, you know, been CEO here for a decade now, believe it or not. And then of course, we have a very strong, clear value proposition. Replacing single-purpose hardware sensor with software only for that feature, and then we add more capability. You know, we have also competitive pricing. All of these factors enables us to achieve this wonderful relationship that we have. On top of that, we recently also hired somebody from Intel. Nilesh Shah from Intel, as our VP of AI architectural platform. Of course, he has 2 decades of strong relationship with the whole PC market. Of course, coming from Intel, there's a strong partner with us. Of course, he also know AMD, MediaTek, all the other partners, as well as the customer. You know, we're in good shape. Strong relationship. Okay. Another one is, let me know if you—
Yeah, we'll just do this first.
Okay.
Yeah.
The POC agreement signed with a leading PC manufacturer, is this for existing Elliptic product platform or new products? That is not yet been communicated. This is for new product. This is part of what we talked about in the presentation about AI Virtual Custom Sensor where customers in the market start to really understand about underlying technology. Then, of course, they know these are like $60 billion plus company, so they understand more of their needs. Now, when they understand our technology and learn more about our technology company-wide, they come back with ideas and to create unique features, unique capabilities, and of course, these are on a strict NDAs.
As soon as these are launched, we can put it back to our core product portfolio and sell that broadly. Also just want to highlight, this particular POC that we announced is with a fifth, so a brand-new PC OEM.
Top OEM.
Top OEM, yeah. Go on.
I'm going to give one question in that realm from Jonathan. Can you comment on whether any of your PC laptop customers have adopted more than one product? This comes back to what you just spoke about.
Yes, as a POC, obviously, we have not announced any. We will specifically announce when they're launching in the market with a new with a new, capability. We see a clear interest. Back to sort of some of the things that we have or some of the items we have communicated, before. A nd our value proposition, creating true interoperability between all the devices. Really, these companies that we're working with, they don't only have PC, they have accessory, they have, conference system, a lot of other products. To have these work nicely together, this is not a capability, and these are some of the products that we have communicated out. You know, Connection Sensor, Position Sensor, et cetera. Yeah, for sure, we have a strong interest in more of our products.
The key is we lead. When we go and sell our technology, we lead with like: Okay, let's replace-- You plan to use a radar sensor, time-of-flight sensor, for a human presence detection, or you can use software only from us. We start just it's a very nice way to get into the organization, and then we have more. We talk about our total sort of product vision, and then we say, "Okay, well, let's start by quickly just get going with the human presence sensor, and then let's talk about the broader picture, so what you wanna do in the long term." We expect over time here. W e will have more and more products out in the market, per model.
Yep. I have a question, very quick cash-related question in terms of, if you see any risk of cash injections necessary? We can just say no. At this on current business level, we do not expect that. We are sufficient in a way, now, that also gives us, gives us also back to the working capital question coming in here. We do expect that to improve by during the second half.
Yeah, then this, I mean, I feel like we over answer this, I can just sort of over communicate this. What is the status on settling commercial negotiation with new laptop OEMs? Is this progress as hoped? Absolutely, yes. We're getting really good traction . With these OEMs, c learly, we, you know, we see expansion. You know, it's gonna be interesting to see when the market starts recovering, you know, how this gonna unfold for us. We are very optimistic about the future. I also wanna just reiterate that, of course, when we are, since we're talking about these commercial contracts, we have a strong focus in negotiating long-term, solid contracts that we can-- because we gotta work with these companies for the years ahead of us, and the best is yet to come.
Yes.
It's important that we don't panic, and this was a little bit we talked about last quarter, that we should not sacrifice long-term opportunity for near-term gain. This time, you know, we have good numbers, so but we have to be smarter, but we will continue to be smarter because we are in such a unique opportunity here. So we have to capitalize on the market momentum, we have the cash to build our business. You know, one step at a time, and we see excellent traction, so this is very exciting time for us here at Elliptic Labs.
Our third vertical that we haven't spoke too much about. It's a general question of barriers to entry into that market. J ust to give a little bit flavor.
Yeah, sure. You know, I was talking about the IoT market.
Yes, sorry.
Yeah.
The IoT market, yes. Our third vertical.
Yeah, yeah. Well, IoT market is not just a market, there are multiple markets within the IoT. IoT market, sort of in general, is a very fragmented market. You know, we have different strategies in how we're approaching that market. Because it's fragmented, it's a more complex market, even though it's overall very big as a big lump, but each vertical, each sort of, each vertical within the IoT market is, it's, you know, many companies with small numbers. We take a multi-prong approach here. In the PC market, because they also have lots of IoT products. This is, and one of the avenues that we are working on, where we will look at their product. At this point, we are already in with the contracts, we're already in with the relationship, they already understand our technology, they start bringing in accessory team and conference systems, display, et cetera.
This is also another avenue for us to get in, to this market. In the IoT market, you know, we have sales sort of reps, partners that goes out in the market and look at these various company. We will that too. We expect, and what we are seeing, is that the PC market, and we have to be focused, is gonna be our greatest growth, and combined with the smartphone. We cannot panic here. It's very important that we have a strong focus. It's very easy to start moving in other direction, but we have a very strong focus in the PC market, in the smartphone market, and we are growing, and we're also looking at the broader product portfolio for the PC market.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's good.
I think I don't.
I think we've covered.
I don't think I have to hammer that anymore.
Yeah. That's good.
Okay.
We're good here.
Any other questions?
No.
No? Okay.
I think that's fine.
All right. Thank you very much, and have a good summer. Thanks.
Thank you.