Hi, and thank you for joining us for the Elliptic Labs third quarter 2023 investor presentation. I'm Laila Danielsen, the CEO of Elliptic Labs, and here with me today is our CFO, Lars Holmøy. Let's delve into the key highlights for today's session, focusing on three main takeaways. First, let's talk about revenue growth and Elliptic Labs market position. In Q3, customer activities continued to positively impact our revenue figures. Year- to- date, our revenue is up 40% compared to the same period last year, and we are already 14% above full year 2022, a noteworthy achievement given the challenging market conditions. Despite market challenges, we stand well-positioned for long-term growth, both operational, operationally and financially. Our proactive approach and attention to emerging trends position us to thrive in this dynamic landscape. Secondly, let's talk a little bit about new products and milestone.
Because we achieved a significant milestone by securing a proof of concept contract with a major PC OEM, introducing a groundbreaking product set to revolutionize device-to-device interoperability. Subsequently, we formalized this achievement by signing a license agreement with the same PC OEM, announced in early October. This customer relationship is set to introduce seamless user experiences across different systems and devices, aligning with the vision of more interconnected and user-friendly technological world. And let us, let us be clear here, our new product, the AI Virtual Seamless Sensor, is chipset and operating system agnostic. So yes, we do support iOS, meaning we support Apple iPhones in addition to Android-based phones, smartphones from companies such as Samsung and Xiaomi. We will dive, of course, further into the details later in the presentation.
Okay, so our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform, leveraging our technological leadership in AI machine learning, ultrasound and sensor fusion, is at the core of this innovative breakthrough. Also, in the last quarter, we expanded our footprint by signing agreements with existing laptop and smartphones, launching our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform on new devices, new smartphones. Okay, third and the final takeaway, and this one is, I would say, is really interesting, because it's a significant paradigm shift is underway in the PC market, with our partners like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and AMD, developing new Arm-based chipsets, in addition to the x86-based Intel and AMD chips targeting the PC market. This shift is underscored by industry giants like Microsoft and Google refocusing on the PC space.
With these six major companies competing in the PC market, we already see a strong need for differentiation in their product offering, targeting our joint OEM customers, so our joint PC customers. Elliptic Labs is at the forefront of this paradigm shift, with these key ecosystem partners seeking our innovation around AI and device-to-device interoperability. The increasing numbers of connected devices, with the average household having over 20, is driving the PC to become the central hub, unifying the user experience. Our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform is pivotal in creating this seamless user experience, and this position open up for new business model. Of course, we will share more details later in the presentation. In conclusion, we maintain unwavering confidence in establishing ourselves as the industry standard with our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform.
Our strategic timing and market traction provide a solid advantage, positioning us to drive long-term growth and deliver significant value for our stakeholders. All right, so let's dive in further to the presentation. Elliptic Labs works with global leading partners and customer to redefine user experience with our AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform. As the market becomes familiar with our technology, they discover new ways for consumer to engage, to engage with and to utilize their products. The market, our customers, and the ecosystem partners turn to us for innovation, leading to the creation of new and exciting applications. Our platform is entirely software-based and leverages AI, ultrasound, and sensor fusion to deliver exceptional user experience to companies across various industry. As our technology becomes more widely known, both the market and our customers uncover novel ways to engage consumers and optimize their products.
They rely on us for innovation, leading to the development of exciting new applications. So if you look on the slide on the upper right-hand corner, you will find our new AI Virtual Seamless Sensor, which is an important new product that's that sees significant interest for both our large partners as well as our customers. We share more information about the importance of the seamless device-device connection and interoperability later in our presentation. All right. So it is clear that our value proposition is resonating with the market, customers, and partners, demonstrating in our year-on-year growth. Our AI software-based solutions are an obvious choice when compared to expensive, single-purpose hardware components. Our smartphone business continue to remain robust as we as we are continue to launching more models with our smartphone customers.
Then you can see that we, this year, too, we have launched a lot more smartphones already, and this will, we expect to just continue. In the PC, we continue to launch on more models, signing new expansion contract, so this quarter, this past quarter, excuse me, with Lenovo, as well as converting a POC license contract for our latest new product, the AI Virtual Seamless Sensor, and turning that into a license contract. Talking about the new product, we just announced also the launch of our new AI Virtual Seamless Sensor. This Virtual Sensor brings multi-device interoperability that would revolutionize how user interact with technology. As a result, our platform's interoperability functionality will truly empower our customers, our OEM customer, to innovate new value-adding user experience, thereby broadening their ecosystem and strengthening customer loyalty.
We are really excited to bring this technology to the market together with our customers and partners. The AI Virtual Seamless Sensor offers significant potential, boasting a range of capabilities such as distance tracking, positioning, initiating communication between two devices, and determining angles. Notably, this virtual sensor is hardware and platform-agnostic, compatible with all major operating systems, including Microsoft, Google's, and Apple's. Completely can run on all the different chipsets, Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, et cetera, MediaTek, for that matter, as well. This versatility ensures that when our PC customer design a seamless user experience, it will work with all Android phones as well as the iOS Apple iPhones. As stated earlier, we have already secured a customer who has entered into a software license agreement using a derivative of our AI Virtual Smart Sensor.
Of course, this AI Virtual Seamless Sensor has such an enormous capability, so meaning the customer would just use a piece of this capability. This strategic move aims to enhance customer loyalty by delivering a consistent, seamless user experience. To be clear, the contract, which is highly confidential, I may add, is signed for several PC models and would aim to support both iOS, so Apple iPhones, as well as Android smartphone. Furthermore, for this contract, we will also collaborate with a large partner together with a customer. Okay, so how do we price our new product? I wanna underscore and just make a note of this is just the first data point that we have with. So obviously, it's the first contract we're doing with the AI Virtual Smart Seamless Sensor.
But the first data point is that we were able to price this Virtual Seamless Sensor a bit higher than our initial AI Virtual Presence Sensor that we currently have running in the market today with the PC OEM customer. All right. So we can all agree that we are well-positioned in a very large market. And in the PC, we have solid traction with multiple opportunity for expansion. We have signed with four of the top six OEMs. As you can see here, we have five products launched in the market. Launched, meaning announced in the market, not signed contract for it yet. We have a signed license contract for two of these products already, and we have lots of models in the market using our technology. So how we are growing?
More models, more customers, more AI Virtual Smart Sensor across more verticals. So due to the traction and the push from our PC customers, so we see a big push into the ecosystem from our PC customer. And of course, this is based on it doesn't exactly hurt that we already run on hundreds of millions of smartphones in the market. So the ecosystem partners have extraordinary interest in working with us because our PC customer, in particular, appreciate our technology leadership in AI ultrasonic sensor fusion, as well as our proven ability to scale on a global level. This combined with what we stated about the paradigm shift in the PC industry and the need for the ecosystem to differentiate themselves, we are well-positioned in this ecosystem.
So just to sort of be clear, and just add a little bit flavor to the paradigm shift. Thus far, if you look at the past, Intel has had 80% of the PC market, AMD 20%. Now, Apple has their own chipset, so Apple has about 13%, Intel around 70%, and obviously AMD a little bit less. What's been announced recently, you may have seen this in the news, is that NVIDIA is also planning to enter into the PC market in 2025, and Qualcomm have already made several announcements. This is, we did some joint press release with Qualcomm as well, for their latest chip that is targeting aggressively into the PC market. So we see a big shift here, going from two key chipset vendors to five PC chipset vendors.
We work with all of these partners, and we are very well-positioned. How are we gonna capitalize on this position? Well, we are leveraging our leadership to become industry standard, making it easy to expand our product through our ecosystem partners, which also opens up for other business models. For example, our partner can embed their software into their product and deliver this as a standard out to their PC customer. That can be one other, business model, for example, that we can take a look at. It's a very interesting time here now for Elliptic Labs. Okay, let's talk a little bit about our revenue models, and obviously, we have talked about this many times.
As always, we are in ongoing negotiation for more contracts, and we have already signed contracts that are, as usual, highly confidential, and this is simply the nature of our business. Our advantage, the advantage of being 100% software company is that it allows us to have a flexible business model and revenue model. The dynamic nature of revenue numbers quarter to quarter is influenced by various factors that we proactively address, and we are growing year on year. We have taken proactive measures to adapt to the market conditions, including structuring our deals with upfront, upfront commitments. This approach enables us to offer competitive pricing per unit, which position us for substantial growth as we continue to ship more products into the market. Okay, so of course, we're getting a lot of questions around pricing, so let's shed a bit more light on it.
And I just gonna say, before you get too excited, we are not at this point for competitive and general market exposure. We will not give the exact license fee amount that we are charging our customer per unit. However, let's take a little bit closer look at the recent contract we signed for our new product. For this one, we have one price for the Virtual Human Presence Sensor, and we charge a bit more for the Virtual Seamless Sensor. This means that the customer indeed is paying a double license fee per unit. So I'll just throw a high number here, so we don't get speculation, but let's say we charge $5, which we are not, but let's say if we did, for the presence sensor, we will then charge at least the same amount.
Actually, we charge a little bit more. So the total price then would have been $10, just to, to clarify with, an example and a price that we are not, not, not charging exactly. So, but please note that this is just one data point, and we are very early in the market. Okay. Everything we have talked up to this point demonstrates the great position we're in. We have multiple growth and value drivers as we move forward. We're scaling our laptops revenue, we continue our smartphone expansion, and we're certainly driving more AI Virtual Smart Sensor products per customer. When with this new AI Virtual Smart Sensor products, we are expanding.
It gives us also new opportunities that we are starting exploring and working and talking to customers about, into peripherals and devices and accessories and into certain segments of the IoT market. So overall, we are in a very good position. So, I'm now gonna leave the word to our CFO, Lars Holmøy, that would talk us through some more numbers.
Thank you, Laila. We have demonstrated a strong revenue growth year to date, 2023. Growing revenue from customers 40% compared to the same period in 2022. At the same time, we are already 14% ahead of the full year, 2022. We are still in the early stages in building our laptop business, but we are well-positioned as we have secured contracts with four out of the top six PC OEMs. Our smartphone business remains robust, and we expect a balanced mix of smartphone and laptop revenues throughout 2023. We are expecting continued growth with quarterly fluctuations. As we have seen in the past quarters, we are also expecting it to continue somewhat further. Q3 2023 revenues from contracts with customers of NOK 21.9 million, compared to NOK 27.1 million in last year.
This year, NOK 59.1 million versus NOK 42.2 million, a 40% uptick, as already mentioned. This quarter, we had a laptop milestone revenue as a significant contributor to our Q3 revenue. We continue to prioritize long-term growth over short-term gains. Our organization is still a light and a lean organization, which we prioritize. Employee benefit expenses of NOK 20.6 million, and that's up from NOK 19.3 million last quarter, and up from NOK 16.3 million same period last year, which include an increase of seven full-time employees in Q3 2022, from Q3 2022. Our operating cash flow of minus close to NOK 12 million, NOK 11.7 million, is primarily attributed to a higher level of operational activity, travels, and so forth.
And we also have an NOK 11.4 million increase of accounts receivable, which is not yet due from sales that we have had. Investments reflecting our R&D of AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform, which increased 17% compared to the last year. Financing, mainly reflecting proceeds from our issuing shares from our option program, among others, and repayment of short-term borrowings, a positive of NOK 4 million. Our cash position is strong. We are well-funded for our strategic growth target. The current operational levels and the increase in receivables from customers align with our expectations. As I said, we maintain a robust cash position of NOK 120 million as the close of Q3 2023. The increase in current asset is due to not yet due accounts receivable from our customers.
Aside from the disclosed dispute of $425,000 that we are in a dispute over, there are no other outstanding receivables that are due. Our long-term liability are in primarily composed of loans from Innovasjon Norge. We boast an equity ratio of 89%, a testament to our solid financial structure. Our balance sheet reinforces our strong funding position, enable us to pursue growth and opportunity as we progress. And with that, I will leave the closing to Laila. Thank you.
Thank you, Lars. All right. Successful expansion into the PC laptop market supports Elliptic Labs' long-term growth ambitions. While customers in both smartphone and PC markets currently face uncertain near-term demand, there's a growing trend among PC customer to incorporate Elliptic Labs products into more of their models. This ongoing expansion will contribute to additional revenue. We have signed multiple significant contracts throughout the year. Although, or however, some of these main contracts we are currently negotiating with large new customers, these have taken a bit longer than initially anticipated. Based on this, Elliptic Labs expect solid revenue growth in 2024, and to be on track to meet the NOK 500 million revenue goal in 2025. So now we will have a short break, so we can just review quickly the questions that are coming in, and then we'll be right back. Thank you.
Welcome back. So we have received lots of questions, so why don't we just jump straight in?
Some of them up front-
Front, yeah
... from some of you guys, and we truly appreciate those questions.
So-
Laila, Seamless Sensor, a lot of questions around that.
Mm-hmm.
Explain the functionality. We have done it already.
Yeah
... but please do a little bit more elaboration around that.
Yeah, even more. Yeah, sure. So obviously, as we are seeing in the market, is that basically, we see the whole industry is focusing on positioning themselves a lot around Apple true ecosystem.
Mm.
You know, the interoperability between the iPhone, the Mac-
Mm
... and the rest of their products. So what we're doing with the Virtual Seamless Sensor is that we can also deliver a true interoperability device, device connection, with a software-only solution. Because it's clear that obviously, the iPhone and the Apple product has a lot of sensors-
Mm
... physical sensors, which, you know, let's say if I'm a Lenovo, HP, and Dell, I don't control the whole smartphone ecosystem. I don't control what Apple is putting into the product, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo, et cetera.
Mm.
Therefore, you have to solve many of these interoperability with software only-
Mm.
- and that's what the Seamless Sensor is truly solving. So to be clear, too-
Mm
... because this is essential for the PC industry, non-Apple products, is that they can also support iPhone. With our technology, we can do so.
Mm.
And we, with this contract we sign, I also want to underscore that we are doing this together with a very large partner, for this particular case. We have also other partners and customer approaching us as we speak. So this is about, of course, initiating this device-device communication. And another beauty here with this Virtual Seamless Sensor, for this particular customer, it's a derivative of the Seamless Sensor, and when they launch, this will be visible.
Mm.
It will be visible functionality, so it will be clear that it's our technology.
Mm.
That's, of course, a big change because with all the other products that we have, for example, presence detection and proximity, if you... You don't really notice...
Mm
... our technology. It's you notice if it breaks, you know-
Yeah
... but you don't notice it when it works.
Yeah.
But this one is, I mean, I'm super excited about this one because it's so, such a visual, visible technology. Furthermore, I just want to also talk a little bit about this whole because a lot of companies are coming out now with seamless device-device connection-
Mm
... but they are missing this capability, this, to truly create this interoperability-
Mm
... a product like Elliptic. So, this is very, very positive. And, of course, we didn't start overnight working on this. We have been working on this product behind the scene for quite some time.
Yeah. I would just cover a few questions here.
Yeah, sure. Please do.
And then we can come back to the Seamless Sensor again, actually.
Oh, even more.
There's multiple, even more questions.
Yeah.
We will give full granularity between the revenue mix at full year, not on the specific quarters. I think reason why is the still, the numbers are still quite low, and we don't want to give away the mix. And it's not to the market, it's basically to our customers and partners-
Mm
... and so forth, as we, as it's a part of what we sell to them.
Mm-hmm.
We will also not give short-term revenue targets for this year alone, in terms of visibility and so forth. What we addressed in the presentation as well, that we do see fluctuations from quarter to quarter still. We're not at the level that we have a steady state, rolling license revenue yet. And then, in terms of the milestones and so forth, as we said, as stated, in Q3 this year, we do have a milestone revenue coming in, but we are also having a more healthy mix of running license revenue. And last year in the market, we just had one PC that was an upfront commitment and then license revenue. This year, we have 18 models or 17 new ones, which was an upfront commitment and then running license revenue.
To meaning, coming into a running license revenue, it will grow, already, and also when we're launching more PC models, of course. And to the dispute, it's, we haven't given much. We are arguing about $425,000 that we, of course, mean that we are entitled to.
Mm-hmm.
There will be an arbitration court in late February, 29th of February. We are very certain that we will have a positive outcome of that one.
Mm.
And cash burn. Cash burn is within our expectations. We do have a very prudent approach to cost in the terms of we're hiring people with the idea of having a project, not before we're having the project. So we need people to deliver on some of it, but we do not expect to increase hiring without very high rate at this point. We do have a very prudent approach, and we are very comfortable with the funding that we do have now.
Mm.
We do spend quite a lot on R&D still, and we will continue to spend, and that's coming into the patent question.
Yeah.
I think it's a nice.
Sure
... leeway to that. And the reason why that we have to continue developing, and that's we have-
Mm
... a question directly on patents.
Yeah, sure.
Do you wanna, like, say something about?
Oh, patents
... longevity of patents and how we do this? And I think it's...
Sure. Of course, we have a whole strategy around patents, and you know, we are close to 200 patents at this point.
Mm.
We continue filing patents. Patents are valid from application date for about 20 years, so we're covered there, quite well. Also, it's important to note that it's not a single—when we—the way we are, we call it strategy sort of picket fencing, but the way we are, you know, filing patent, it's not that one product is just covered by one patent. There's multiple patents. So you create a sort of like a minefield around all your products. Yeah, so you know, we are well-covered there. But we will continue filing, obviously, because one of the beauties is that we are first in the market-
Yep
... with this Virtual Smart Sensor approach here. So we discover also a lot of things very early and before any of our partners and customer-
Mm
... discover things, so we continue filing patents.
I think there's a question here. It says, "Why do you need to collaborate with a large partner on the Seamless Sensor?
... We don't necessarily need to.
No.
However, for this particular case, we are.
Yeah.
I would not share more details. Obviously, I am super excited to find when we launch this product because it's very visible, and I would love to share more because I'm very excited about it. But we have extremely strict confidentialities. Even within the partner, there's only one group that are allowed to even understand exactly what we're doing. So I'm not comfortable to sharing more details around why we are leveraging this application together with the customer.
Yeah.
Okay.
Of course, launching of models in 2024 with other vendors and so forth.
Is with other PC vendors?
Yeah.
Yeah. So, of course, I mean, we don't control when our customers are launching their-our technology on their products. However, I can state that we have received confirmation from the customer that we will be launching in 2024 more PCs with more different customers. However, that may not happen-
Mm.
because it's beyond our control.
Right.
But we do expect this to happen.
Yep.
Okay, so it is planned for. They sign up for certain target models, et cetera, for this to be-
Mm
... planned to be launched.
Right.
But thing may, you know this, thing may change.
All right. Just a follow-up question on the, on the cash. Yeah.
Okay.
And I will address it immediately.
Sure
... So, it is, we are currently, as I said, very comfortable at this point. And we will continue gradually increase cost, but not as much planned as our revenue, of course.
Yeah.
I think also there's a question around the 2025.
You wanna take that?
What has changed since we now have moved, taken away the 2024? I don't know, you want to address it, or shall I?
No, go, go for it, and I can chime in.
I think it's fair to say we have signed multiple significant contracts. But they, some of them, they are negotiating with very large vendors, and it, they take some time. It does. And what has changed is nothing has changed, basically. We're still very much in, I will say, safe... not safe, but, I'm struggling with the word here. Based on our solid revenue growth in 2024-
Mm-hmm
... we expect then to reach that in 2025.
Mm-hmm.
It's nothing changed. It's just the timing, and we're not comfortable. That's the word I was looking for, to-
To continue guiding for the
2024.
... to 2024.
Yeah.
You know, so I can also say, like, you know, the... We talked a little bit about this in the presentation. It's a paradigm shift that is happening-
Yeah
... also in the PC industry with all these large, chipset makers
Mm.
That I stated between, you know, AMD, Intel, and now Qualcomm coming into the mix, and then Apple creating their own chips and NVIDIA. And so, you know, there are a lot of these, you know. We have discussions also with the various partners to talk about larger contract and so forth.
Mm.
So it's more that it's sort of we don't have good enough sort of visibility-
Mm
... on the timing to be comfortable to state in 2024. Can it still happen? Yes, it can.
Yes.
But, you know, we are more comfortable just stating that we will have an excellent growth in 2024, and that we are comfortable and, or we are, you know, feel good about the 2025 revenue for NOK 500 million.
Yep.
I think that's a fair statement.
You covered quite a lot on prices during your presentation, so but you can reiterate a little bit around that?
Yeah, specifically around, of course-
For the seamless Sen-
... Seamless Sensor
The Seamless sensor again.
So please note that this is the first. We only have signed one contract, as you know, with the Virtual Seamless Sensor.
Mm.
We have a price for the Virtual Human Presence Sensor that we are charging lower than a physical-
Mm
... hardware sensor, which, so I have to say also our strategy is working because we are getting into the large volume-
Mm
... PC models. And also, we see that we already have started kicking out,
Mm
... some of these hardware technology-
Mm
... hardware technology sensors in the PC market, and that's exactly what we planned for-
Mm-hmm
... and expected. When it comes to the Seamless Sensor, we were able to charge the same as we did for the Human Presence Sensor, so basically one plus one is two.
Mm.
You know, not saying it is $1 just wanna... but, you know, basically little, we charge actually a little bit more than a human presence sensor.
Mm.
Yeah, so, of course, we have other negotiation and process and, you know, over time, we'll get more data points and then, you know. But we do expect to, of course, as we adding on more sensor, to be able to add more, a higher price per unit for each of our customers.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Again, Seamless Sensor, also usable for the smartphone vertical?
It is. It is possible to do so. What we're seeing now sort of in the ecosystem, it seems like it's more practical that the-
PC OEMs
... that more PC OEMs are signing for this.
Mm.
But it's certainly you can do that, the fact that, you know, we are supporting also all the smartphones as well.
Yeah, and, I've got a question around disclosing laptop models. As far as we are allowed to in contract, of course, we will- we expect to be. There is nothing at this point that seems like we're not gonna be, but we expect to disclose all models that are launched with our software, as we do.... I think we have covered most of this at this point.
Was it something about when we launching PC timeframe?
Yeah, timeframe around
Yeah
... launching of PCs.
Okay, what is the timeframe for shipment and launch to laptops of the contract announced? This asks specifically of ninth of October, 2023, when do Elliptic Labs expect the product to be included in customer laptops of products and ready for sale? So, I can say in general, what we are seeing is that, you can't take this to the bank, but just in general, we see nine to 12 months-
Mm.
From the contract to sign. It might be a little bit shorter, it may be a little bit longer.
Mm.
So that's what we are seeing now.
Mm.
This will actually vary a little bit from customer to customer. There are some customer that you expect it'll be more like 18 months-
Yeah
... you know, from signed contract. So for the launch, when they sign a contract from when they have forecasted to put our technology onto the product and launch in the market.
Yeah. I think there's also an elaboration on what you mean by interoperability with specific examples. I don't think we can go into specific examples, but...
Well, I mean, obviously, we can't give the specific example where, you know-
Use case
... the use case that we're doing, but it's, you know, it's... I can try to give an example where, let's say, if I come with a smartphone, and I'm walking towards the laptop, I use a set of, a combination of ultrasound, sensor fusion, and AI, to initiate that, "Hey, you are right next to your laptop. Make that connection, fire up Bluetooth or wireless, and start transmitting data," for example.
Yep.
It's, you know, it could be very seamless where the user don't really have to do anything.
Yeah.
But we see lots of use cases, very interesting use cases from the customer base, that they wanna sort of launch with, and we don't wanna give away the thunder. But the basic principle is that you can think about that we are doing. You know, you don't need Bluetooth, you don't need just to initiate the contact, the connection, and you don't need wireless. You do this with other sensor and ultrasound. And then, you then decide after or the system, which we power up after, like, okay, should we-- we're not gonna be replacing Bluetooth and wireless, just to be clear, but it's that initiation which is important. And I can just mention that, you know, Apple has been using ultra-wideband sensor, which is an expensive sensor, and I'll just reiterate that, too.
Yeah.
Like, I'll just mention this as well, because it makes sense. So in the smartphone, the iPhone, they're 100% ultra-wideband sensor-
Mm
... that can do this type of initiation. We can solve this-
Mm
... with software only. Because you need to understand, in the Android market, only 5%-
Mm
... of the smartphone has an ultra-wideband sensor, and they're not gonna have it anytime soon. All the PC, everything, they don't have it. There are so many devices that does not have it, so that's where we can come in-
Mm
... and really, play a, you know, important role.
Yep. I think we have covered all the questions.
Yeah, I... Okay.
Yep. Thank you very much.
All right. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
Thank you.