Okay. [Both are live ]. I think we are live, and I would like to welcome everyone to this quarter three presentation from NEXT Biometrics. Just gonna make a quick check with Eirik Underthun, our CFO, who will join me. Eirik, can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you very well. Thank you, Peter.
Perfect. Again, welcome, everyone, and to this quarter three presentation. The material we will go through today, you can also find on nextbiometrics.com. During the presentation, you are also very welcome to send your questions to events@nextbiometrics.com, or even better, you can drop your questions right here in the chat function in the Teams application. At the end, me and Eirik are gonna run through the Q&A. I see we have a few questions that have arrived already, which we appreciate. With that, I think we should get going. We have just a couple of slides. Andrea, maybe we can go to the agenda, please. You see here, we will start with a quick business update.
I'm gonna tell you a little bit of at least some of the main takeaways that I see important, that has been going on during quarter three. Then we're gonna, of course, run through the financial report and the summary of that. At the end, a little part of an outlook and a Q&A session. With that, Andrea, if we start with the first slide. I would like to start today by basically summarizing that we at NEXT Biometrics, we see a very long-term favourable growth of the biometric market. We see that not only we have that perception as a company, we see that several sources that are following this market are mentioning that it is a favourable market.
There are several aspects to this, but there is a lot of development going on which favours biometric solutions in different shapes and forms. You can see, for example, that Microsoft now have permitted users to replace their passwords with biometric authentication methods. I do believe this will create ripple effects among many different businesses, organization, and other tech companies. There are so many use cases, whether it's smartphones, IoT solutions, passport, and multiple different kind of use cases and devices that can benefit from biometric solutions. Overall, we are very positive. I think that's the main message I wanna have on this first slide for you guys. All right. Andrea, if we go to the next slide, and we go a little bit closer to NEXT Biometrics.
One thing that we have talked around quite a bit, and you guys have also started to see some positive effects from it, but I wanna give you a little bit of an insight. We did introduce around the March timeframe, 2021, that we signed an agreement with a tech giant. We have communicated that we are engaged in several customer projects related to different projects and products and different markets. You could then see that shortly after, and I say shortly because it's around six months from the announcement of this partnership, you saw the first purchase, the initial purchase order from this tech giant on our FAP 20 sensor.
It was in the range of a little bit more than NOK 5 million, which is for our company, quite a sizable purchase order. I think it's very good for us to see that only six months after the announcement, we got the first and the initial purchase order. We want to also inform you that we are engaged in different tenders, both smaller and larger globally, with this partnership and with this customer, and we are in pole position in one of the world's largest biometric markets together with them. The tenders could be anything from biometric readers to other portable devices. We demonstrate a few examples here to the right.
It's not pictures related to devices to exactly this partnership, but there are several potential devices and use cases where we are engaged with this customer. We think it's a good start. We know that some of these potential devices and use cases will take absolutely some time, but we do feel very comfortable that we are in good hands and in good progress with this customer. Also positively, as an end note, you can see the last point here on the slide. I do believe that the market that we are operating, even though the name is not public because the customer do not want us as a, let's say, a component provider to them, they don't want us to mention the name.
I think many organizations and businesses in the biometric market knows who this tech giant is. This has created a ripple effect, so we now see other OEMs contacting us or that we can easier get into contact with other OEMs since this tech giant have decided to go together with NEXT Biometrics. I think it's positive that quite quickly after announcement of this design win and this partnership, we got an initial purchase order, a first one, and we do expect more to come. That's one good takeaway. The other one is, of course, that this has also helped us and verified our technology, and that gives a ripple effect that we have easier to communicate with other potential new customers. I see this as very, very positive. Andrea, if we go to the next slide.
During quarter three, you saw that one of the most important design wins that we introduced during quarter three was a design win with a large Asia-based PC OEM, a new PC OEM for NEXT Biometrics. We won this fingerprint sensor design win with this PC OEM. It's gonna start with smaller purchase orders. We have already received some of them. The customer will use one of our standard sensors that we normally provide to PC OEMs. Interestingly enough here, we have managed to step in through the door with this customer and got the customer to implement a dual source in their supply of fingerprint sensor technology. Their current provider will now be challenged by NEXT Biometrics. We have already won one new PC model with this manufacturer.
We are, of course, hoping and aiming for getting into more and more PCs with this customer. What can you expect now as a shareholder from this new design win? Yeah. The first initial product where we will be integrated into the customer target to launch around Q1 2022. Their initial production is gonna start somewhere around the end of quarter four of this year. It's gonna be smaller quantities that the customer will start to order in the beginning. I want to give you my own conclusions and expectations on this.
Since I started as a CEO, I have gone back and checked how long time did it take from design win for NEXT Biometrics to get into a little bit more of a regular order volumes from the PC OEM of our historic PC manufacturers. Like we wrote, I think, in the press release during quarter three, it normally takes up to almost a year before you get the customer up to a decent volume level. I think you should not expect a dramatic increase in revenue in very recently from the announcement that we do, but you have to expect that it's gonna take up to a year before the volume starts to be there. I think we are in a good position.
We have entered the door, and we are gonna try to just bring a larger share of wallet from this PC OEM with our technology. Okay, Andrea, we can go to the next slide. I think this is, like I have probably stated before, one of the most important slides that me and Eirik can communicate with you as shareholders. I think it's one of the best slides that demonstrates when I say that I think that the team I have now in NEXT Biometrics is doing a decent job in trying to really establish a foundation for growth and revenue growth and going towards profitability.
This is the design wins since we kind of started the reset of the new NEXT Biometrics at quarter four, 2019, where we basically had one customer utilizing our great technology. As you can see now at the end of quarter three of 2021, we have accumulated up to 21 design wins. This means that there are 21 customers that have now implemented or are about to implement and have confirmed to us that they will implement one of our NEXT Biometrics sensors into their products, into their devices. Like I've said many times before, I think this is the absolute best measurement that I can use as a CEO in the company to enable the company to, in a steady and a structured way, get the company into revenue, long-term revenue growth and profitability.
You can see here that we have extrapolated because with the current pace of design wins, we have now accumulated 21 in the last 21 months. I think we have demonstrated for you as shareholders that the pace that we are adding design wins is of course with approximately one design win per month or three design wins per quarter. If we then extrapolate and let's assume that we're gonna be able to keep that pace, and I can guarantee you we are of course trying to increase the pace to add even more design wins.
If we just look at, let's say that we manage to keep the same pace. You can see here going three, four, five quarters ahead, it's quite easy for you as shareholders to understand how many products, how many devices are gonna utilize NEXT Biometrics sensors and our technology. I think the team is doing a decent job here. Other important aspects for you to understand here and why maybe the design wins doesn't reflect directly the quarter, the next quarter's revenue is of course that there is a lag from the design win to initial production and of our customer and their products.
We say that we can see now with the more we learn from these design wins, that it takes from six months up to 24 months for certain use cases before our customer is really in production and starts to sell their products. That's when we're gonna get the volumes, and that's when these design wins are gonna be reflected in our P&L, in our revenue. It's also good to see that around 50%, and this differs a little bit quarter-to-quarter, of the design wins are with our FAP 20, which provides a higher revenue per sensor as well as a much improved gross margin for us. I think this is really the foundation for a long-term recurring revenue growth for the company.
I wanted today to since I find this very, very important. The number of design wins and the pace how we are adding them, I think this is a crucial, important step for NEXT Biometrics. Other important aspects of these design wins is of course, what is their average revenue per design win, and what is the time from design win to order for you as shareholders to understand how you should value these design wins. I wanted to give you one example of one design win that you can find in this graph. I think I will pick a design win on the next slide, which is from quarter four, 2020. Andrea, if we change to the next slide, please.
Here, as we say, an example of one of these design wins who were in the previous graph. This is a product, a very interesting product. The company who is producing this product is called NGRAVE ZERO, and they state that it's the most secure hardware crypto wallet on the planet. It's a startup company from Belgium, and they are producing this hardware as well as some software related to it. We introduced this in a press release in quarter four, 2020 with a smaller initial order from NGRAVE ZERO. You as shareholders have not seen much revenue from this one out of the 21 design wins yet. What you might not know is that the NGRAVE ZERO has not launched their digital crypto wallet yet.
They have only until now taken pre-bookings on their website, and we have received repeated orders from them, not in a larger scale, but this is what has been going on. Remember, NGRAVE ZERO has not launched their product yet. Still, I believe they have a very interesting demand, and we, from NEXT Biometrics, we have a lot of and high expectations on NGRAVE ZERO. They are just about to launch this product, and the official launch is planned any day now. Then remember, we announced this design win already in quarter four, 2020. Our customer has not launched their product yet, only placed initial smaller orders with us. Now they are gonna go in full production, and they're gonna launch and sell their product.
This is one of the design wins which we know very little about, but we have high expectations on it when we have started to learn more and more of this design win. This is one example of the design wins, and we can provide more examples. As I told you in the beginning, one of the other design wins in the previous chart is of course the tech giant who already placed an initial order of more than 5 million units. I do believe that with the many different use cases and with many different design wins in different markets, that enables and is what we call a structured growth agenda of design wins that will lead to a long-term recurring revenues and growth. You will not see them immediately after introduced design wins.
This is an important, and we are excited to have NGRAVE ZERO as a customer, and we are working very close with them, and we are really anticipating that this product is gonna do great. It is a fast-growing and a very interesting market where we are then integrated into. Okay, Andrea, I think we should go to the next slide. Before I hand over to Eirik, these were some of the business update and business highlights from quarter three. We have the tech giant, we have a new PC OEM, and I talked quite a bit about these important design wins, and gave an example of that. Now, Eirik, if you run through the quarter three financials and the report, and then I will come back later.
Thank you, Peter. Please, next slide. On this slide, you can see the key KPIs and figures for quarter three, 2021, and you can find more information in the quarterly report about the details in the financial position and the profit and loss statement. During this quarter, we had orders received of NOK 17.4 million and revenues of NOK 12.4 million. The revenues were still impacted by the semiconductor shortage. If we had the components available, we would have been able to ship products to achieve NOK 17.4 million revenue. Unfortunately, we have not been able to secure the components as we also indicated in the presentation we had for you investors back in August. That's still the situation.
Peter will get back to talk about the impact of this in the future. During this quarter, we had a gross margin of 22% versus the 14% in Q3 2020. Relative to 2020, we had an improved product mix, but relative to earlier this year, when we had a some higher degree of FAP 20 shipments, we are still lower on the gross margin due to the limited amount of shipment of FAP 20 products during this quarter. The OpEx ex options was NOK 11.9 million in this quarter, relative to NOK 16.3 million in Q3 2020. We're continuing to deliver on our operational cost efficiency measures, and we are hoping your shareholders are happy with this.
The EBITDA ex options improved by NOK 5 million compared to quarter three, 2020, both as a result of the reduction in the operating expense, but also as a result of the improved gross margin in absolute Norwegian kroner numbers. The operational cash flow was at NOK -1.7 million. This is an all-time best quarterly operational cash flow from NEXT Biometrics. I think that's really a good development. From the finance point of view, we're really happy with that. We obviously will see the operating cash flow fluctuating going forward, but now you're seeing some of the improvements that we have done on the finance side of the business. The cash position was NOK 116.9 million, versus NOK 86.8 million in quarter three, 2020.
To sum up, we have an improved growth in orders received, and we're continuing to deliver on our quarterly OpEx level, and we're also now improving our operational cash flow. With this, I will leave it to Peter to take you further into the key takeaways for quarter three.
All right. Thank you, Eirik. With that, Andrea, we can move to the next slide. Okay. To summarize a little bit the numbers and the actual Q3 report, you saw that, and I talked about it earlier. We received the first purchase order from the tech giant. We had two design wins during the quarter, of which one is something very interesting for the future of the company. I think you remember we talked about rejuvenating our PC business, and I think this is one of the good proof points of that, with that design win.
I'm happy that we all have managed to accumulate and have 21 design wins in 21 months, and we are doing everything we can to keep that pace and maybe even trying to increase the pace. The revenues and orders. Strong PC sensor order bookings during the quarter, and we basically have that for upcoming quarter four as well. As Eirik stated, we have some challenges with the supply chain, and we have an unfilled backlog of around 5 million NOK. That would have put us at, like Eirik said, 17.4 million NOK in orders booked. The FAP 20 shipments is rather low during the quarter, but they will increase during quarter four. Quarterly OpEx still lower than the communicated target.
I think the very low cash burn sets a new record and hopefully demonstrates a little bit of a trend where we are getting closer to in terms of profitability and so for NEXT Biometrics. With more design wins, very strong and good handling of the company cash, I think we together are doing everything we can to get to a very good point. I mean, the numbers are not that wonderful, but I think the important underlying aspects of the business in treating the cash with a lot of respect and trying to work very efficiently and have a very strong focus on the design wins is really what we are doing in NEXT Biometrics. Okay, we can go to the next slide, Andrea.
That's gonna be me, I think, talking about a little bit of an outlook. If we go to the next slide. Once again here you see what I have stated is an important graph, but we'll take the bullet points one by one. As I said in the beginning, there is a favourable market trends, several of them, and with Microsoft latest announcements, I think it's gonna create a lot of ripple effects. Because when a company like that basically say that traditional password might not be the smartest way, and they will allow for more biometrics, I think that opens up the eyes for many different parties in the market. Structured increase of FAP 20 design wins.
Yeah, I talked and spent a lot of time on that, and you're gonna see to the next point that in quarter four, we have both historic design wins and hopefully some new design wins on the FAP 20. Of the design wins, currently, we are a bit over 50% of all the design wins is on our sensor, where we have the highest revenue and the highest gross margin. We do expect other of these design wins to place larger purchase orders with us, but we wanna be very careful with communicating any anticipation of exact timing or so of that. The basis for getting these is working with both potentially smaller companies who start to grow dramatically or working with large companies who has the potential to drive volume.
I think that's exactly what we are trying to do here with our design wins. With many different use cases, many different markets, I think that's something underlying and very good from a structured growth agenda. Like we said, three new design wins per quarter since quarter four 2019, and we're doing everything to keep that pace or potentially increase that pace. You can expect during quarter four that you're gonna see some more design wins. We are close to signing a few more, and you should anticipate that during the last weeks, months here of quarter four.
As you saw in quarter three, it may be a point that we haven't spent too much time on today, but we have initiated a partnership with Paravision in U.S. for face recognition, and we are actually in a few dialogues with customers right now together with them, and that it would be a way for us to be even more relevant in the general biometric market and providing a potential for customers who are looking for dual biometric authentication methods that we can be very relevant with a very strong partner. On top of that, hopefully we could add a little bit of software revenue. A strong FAP 20 design win, development.
We have a general market development going in the right direction, and you should anticipate a few more design wins for the rest of this year. I think with that, Andrea, we are done, and we can go to the next slide, and I think that is the Q&A.
Thank you, Peter. I will start then on the Q&A.
Mm-hmm.
We have one question here. Again, you announced a new customer in the Asia-based tech company, and you haven't told us the name. Please explain why you cannot tell the name of the company that you have a design win with.
Yeah, y ou know, that all questions are good. It's very straightforward, I think. You know, we are providing a fingerprint sensors into companies who produce and launch products. If they, when we have a design win, tell us that we are not allowed to publicly state their name, which could be the reason, for example, that they are gonna launch a new line of products with new lines of functionality or features, they don't want us to go globally public with that company before they have done that themselves. That's normally the case and the few cases where companies don't want us to use the name.
Every time a customer, if we can have a design win and they don't want us to state the name, but we believe this could be a great design win for NEXT Biometrics, that, you know, we are just gonna follow that contract obligation until the customer has potentially launched. Then we will ask them, of course, as soon as possible to be able to tell everyone that who it is exactly we are working with. But some customers don't want us as one of the component or features that they are gonna launch in their product. That's why we don't say it and we always have this dialogue with our customers. Many are totally okay that we make public if we work with someone.
Some companies don't want us to be too quick on doing that, and then we don't do that. We are gonna try to come back when products, et cetera, are launched to make public also from our side who exactly our customers are.
Good. There's another question. You said you have 21 design wins by the end of this quarter. Why is it not impacting the Q3 financial revenues with increased growth relative to last year?
Yeah, I think that's a very good question, and a little bit like I stated there is a time lag from design win to revenue recognition. When I mean revenue recognition, there is a whole process behind. When our customers decide they wanna utilize NEXT Biometrics fingerprint sensor, they are gonna have to produce products, they're gonna have to start to sell these products. You know, there will be a natural lag from design win. Like I think I stated on the slide there, that could be from six-24 months, depending on the situation of our customers. That's why there is always a time lag.
I think what we should try to do as a company, since we started here now a bit 20 months back, we're gonna try to not only demonstrate to you shareholders the number of design wins, but also be more precise in maybe an average timing from design win to revenue. This is basically the explanation why you can't see a direct effect from a design win in the next one or two quarters. There's always gonna be an example. I think the NGRAVE ZERO example I gave, we won the design win in December 2020, and not until now is that product gonna be launched. That's like a 12-month. Hopefully it's gonna launch now and that market will take off, and then we know we're gonna get much more orders.
Right. There's another question here. How satisfied are you with the FAP 20 sales on your design wins?
No, I'm very satisfied. I mean, if we could, I don't know the question exactly, if I answer it correctly now. You know, I'm happy if we can keep more than 50% on our design wins on the FAP 20 sensor, 'cause I think that's gonna gain our shareholders a lot more than the traditional sensors since we have produced it in a very cost-effective way and we are very well-positioned in the market. The market price for these sizes of sensors, 'cause it's a little bit larger sensor, is much, much higher. That is a great benefit for us. I'm happy if we can be on that pace. As long as we can be on that pace, then I think that's something we should be fairly satisfied with.
To the audience, you can still submit questions in the Q&A live event, then I will get to you later on here in this call. There's another question.
Yeah, Eirik, I see a question here as well in the chat, which is,
Yeah.
Related to what I just talked about on NGRAVE ZERO. The question is: The product seems very interesting. Could you please tell me what is NEXT selling to them, and how much do NEXT earn on these sensors? Yeah, I agree. We find it a very interesting product. If you really look into a little bit more market dynamics of the NGRAVE ZERO crypto wallet and some of their competitors and how many wallets they have sold and how much more secure the NGRAVE ZERO product is, that's why we believe this company has a great potential. We are selling one of our standard sensors to NGRAVE ZERO. We are not selling them the FAP 20.
That has to do with the form factor perspectives and others, where NGRAVE ZERO wanted to have a little bit smaller sensor, so they decided finally to go for one of our more standard sensors. We normally do not tell explicitly, you know, the gross margins, et cetera, on the specific sensor that we are selling them. We find it, like I said, a very interesting company to work with. They are just about to launch their product, and they have bought one of our standard sensors.
Peter, I actually heard you. You're gonna get that sense of this product yourself now.
Yes.
This NGRAVE ZERO product.
Yes. Absolutely.
Yeah. Maybe next time we will show it to you in the call. There's another question. With all these design wins, when do you think NEXT will be able to start making money?
Yeah. That's the holy grail question and the ambition that the whole NEXT team is working on. I'm gonna try not to be too specific or anything on it. I think the foundation that we have started to create with all these design wins, and if you extrapolate that like we are trying to demonstrate today, without saying that that's exactly or any exact guidance or so in the number of design wins, I think the foundation is what we are doing.
You know, with the low cost base that we have right now, if we can get some of these design wins to start to launch their products, and then the orders will come to us, we don't need that much volume to actually start to reach a profitable level with these low operating expenses that we have right now. That's really what we are aiming for.
Right. I have one more question here, but after that, I don't have any more questions. If you have a question, you need to submit it through the live chat quite soon. Peter, you claim to have a substantial improvement in operational cash flow in the quarter. Is this something we can expect going forward to repeat?
No, I shouldn't guide on that. I mean, there was one-time activities in this specific quarter as well that influenced the so to say, cash burn. I think it demonstrates a little bit the combination of more and more design wins and then the low operating expenses and the good work by the organization here is starting to demonstrate the trend in terms of how close we will be. If we have a quarter where one of our design wins starts to pull a lot of requests on, for example, FAP 20s, we are not gonna be far away from reaching that profitability level. I think we shouldn't. You know, we are gonna stick to the low OpEx level that we have stated before, of NOK 15 million per quarter.
The cash burn was very, very low and very positive in that sense, having such a low cash burn this quarter. I don't think we should guide or so on that specific note.
Right. Yeah. I think that was it, Peter.
Okay. Very good. Yeah. I don't see many more questions. There might be some.
Oh, there's suddenly some more questions.
Yeah, there's a few more here, Eirik. I see.
Suddenly.
Is the company fully financed going forward and until profitability? That's a very good question and a trick question, I think. You know, I think we have a strong cash position. We have almost NOK 120 million. Like you saw, we burned very little cash this quarter. We are maybe gonna burn, you know, a little bit higher or maybe even lower a little bit going forward in the quarters. I mean, if as soon as some of these design wins starts to add on top of we already have, you know, I think we are, we have a long, much more long-term potential, and we have more time than the company has ever had with the strong cash position we have. I think that's one important aspect. I think another.
You know, if I should be very transparent, what's worrying me, it would not be the cash position, 'cause I think we are burning such a low amount of money per quarter in the way we run it. However, being transparent, what is worrying me a little bit is the whole global supply chain situation. As you can clearly see, we have a backlog. We have very good orders coming in also in quarter four, but there is a challenge for us for certain components, and this is in delivering these products in, for example, quarter four, and we have a backlog already. So that's one aspect. But maybe even more worrying and sometimes a little bit frustrating is the global supply chain situation for our customers.
Because as I state, we have at NEXT Biometrics a certain challenge. Our customers who are producing, manufacturing, and many of them complicated products or at least products with several different components in them, they also, we clearly see that they have a challenge building and manufacturing their products. Of course then, even though they could potentially place an order with us among these new design wins, it becomes delayed because they can't find other components to manufacture and build their products. I think that is what's currently hampering what I believe is I start to see very positively on the turnaround of NEXT Biometrics and the number of design wins that we are adding, but we are unfortunately being also hampered a little bit around that our new customers can't build their total products.
What I see the trend and when I read market reports, et cetera, I hope during at least 2022 and maybe the later part of 2022, this is gonna normalize. I think that would be very beneficial for us.
There was one more question. If the NOK 17.5 revenues were fulfilled in quarter three, what would the gross margin be?
Yeah. That's maybe more a question for you, Eirik, but we know-
Yeah. I don't think we can comment so much on that. I think you really have to figure that out yourself. I mean, this whole also this question on the break-even is really a calculation you can do for yourself in terms of revenues, EBITDA, the gross margin and the OpEx, which is already pretty much available in the quarterly report. We have also talked about the mix between the FAP 20 and other products where the FAP 20 has a higher gross margin than the other products.
Yeah. All right. With that, I think we are gonna close the quarter three presentation. Me and Eirik are gonna be available. You can always reach us over email or contact us, and we will try to accommodate any questions. With that, I think we should say thank you to everyone attending, and hopefully we meet you at the quarter four presentation. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Bye-bye.