Good morning, and welcome to the Nordic Semiconductor Q3 conference call. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there'll be a question- and- answer session. To ask a question during the Q&A, please press five star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Ståle. Please begin.
Good morning, everyone. We are recording this presentation, and it will be available on our Nordic website under the IR section. On the IR webpage, you will also find our earnings press release, quarterly report, and the presentation. Joining me today, we have the CEO, Svenn-Tore Larsen, and CFO, Pål Elstad. They will be talking about the latest financial results, as well as review recent business activities. After the presentation, we will open for Q&A, both as call in and written question via the webcast. We will start with the call-in questions and end up with questions from the webcast. As usual, the presentation contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements.
We encourage you to review our full Q3 quarterly report and annual report for 2022 for more information on risk and uncertainties that may affect our business. With that, I hand over to our CEO, Svenn-Tore Larsen.
Good morning. My name is Svenn-Tore Larsen, and today I have my CFO, Pål Elstad, with me. As you know from our trading update in September, we see a decline in a challenging market. Overall, revenue for the Q3 came in at $135 million, and Bluetooth $120 million, both down by 1/3 from the same period last year. Gross margin came in at 50% and EBITDA margin at 10% for the quarter. Looking ahead, the visibility remains low, but we guide for revenue decline further, unfortunately, and we expect to land in the region of $110 million-$130 million in Q4, and we maintain our gross margin around 50%.
As you understand, we are currently working to manage a cyclical downturn that is both sharper and has lasted longer than both we and the industry players had anticipated. We are now lowering our forecast during the year, and we are currently operating at significantly lower revenue levels than we expected when we went into 2023. Even though we have been very cost-conscious, we need to adapt to this new market, and this means that we need to take further action to lower the cost base and reallocate resources. This means that we will spend less than I would ideally like to spend on future opportunities, given the huge long-term potential of our technology.
On that note, I want to be very clear that we will continue to protect our unique position and the unique platform we have, with solution covering both short range, medium range, and long range connectivity. We will be moving forward with the main R&D programs on all three areas, but we will seek to reallocate resources from longer term project to projects that will generate revenue and profits in the near to medium term. We focus more on the first and the second wave of innovation, and we will do more D and less R. The cost measures will include less use of consultants, and we will also carry out a detailed run-through of all projects to assess the total level of resources required.
These cost measures will have effect from 2024, and will reduce quarterly operative expenses in the order of $5 million. It's hard to do, but it's the only way to adapt to the situation where Nordic is fighting against the market. Taking one step back to look at revenue development, this graph shows that different customer groups are developing very differently. Measuring on a 12-month basis, revenue from our top 10 Bluetooth customers has grown so far this year. As we talked about earlier, we have put a lot of resources into developing strong, very strong relationships, lasting relationships with these customers. This picture shows that the strategy has been successful, and we are glad to see that we are being included on more and more designs with these customers.
On a negative side, we have seen a sharp contraction in the revenue from other Bluetooth customers, from what we usually call the broad market or the long tail. As a result, we've seen increase in customer concentration, with the top 10 now accounting for more than 50% of our Bluetooth revenue. If you look at the Q3 isolated, it was more than 60%. We hope and expect to see the broad market recovering over time, and we still believe our market position in the broad market will remain intact. This is confirmed actually by the steady and high market share within Bluetooth Low Energy product certifications. Nordic still are at 42% market share for both the quarter and the last 12 months. Actually, we are more than five times as large as number two and three in this market.
Every quarter, we look at some new launches. We see a lot of different products across very different types of application. I think the most exciting development is to see that increased number of products combining short range and long range. We here show some environmental monitoring solution and a mobile gateway, and basically contain short range, long range, and that's the picture we're going to see going forward. If you look at Cellular IoT on the financial side, we're not where we want to be. We are used to revenue fluctuation between quarters, and we have seen a decline from last year, but when we look at the revenue on 12-month rolling basis, but we also know that we are winning more designs than we ever done.
The same weak economy is obviously affecting demand also in the area, and we've seen that unfortunately, a lot of projects being pushed out in time. In terms of innovation, and that's basically the DNA of Nordic, and a result of our R&D program, we have recently announced a new series of the 54 family. This is the 54L series. The successful 52 series were introduced eight years ago, and since become the world's most sold Bluetooth Low Energy devices. The 54L series is taking these type of devices to the next level and will be a natural step for customer that's using the 52 family today. During the supply shortage and given the current geopolitical landscape, we see more and more customers caring about supply diversification.
For Nordic, it made a whole lot of sense to be part of enhancing the supply chain diversification and work with TSMC and the i22 ULL technology, together with GlobalFoundries on the 22FDX. We are very excited about the nRF54L15, and we are currently sampling lead customers and expect to see initial revenue towards the end of 2024. Common for both the nRF54H series and the L series is the focus on innovation. The IoT application of today are more demanding than the ones yesterday. So providing more processing power at lower power consumption, improve the integrated security, and continuously improve the radio, and obviously, connectivity are natural points where Nordic bring innovation.
We did select the 22-nanometer node for these products, as it is best technology today for mixed signal designs and will be the leading IoT technology node for the next decade. As always, our products are multi-protocol to cater a wide range of application. The high end, the 54H, was the first chip we announced in 54 Series back in April. We have so far been sampling 50 lead customers, and the feedback have been good. Our target is to have sampled more than 100 customers by end of this year, and we are on track to realize initial revenue towards end of next year. Recently, we also reported record-breaking performance, both absolute compute power for our processors, as well as we are leading on energy efficiency. This had previously been compromised, where one had to choose one or the other.
With the 54H, you get the best of both worlds. This was validated by external benchmark and is a testament to our relentless focus on low power. With the two products in 54 family, we will cover a wider range of IoT product with world-leading products. This system on the chips has everything required to make a ultra-low power, secure, innovative product for years to come. Turning to another matter, Nordic is now investing in open source, customized processor architecture. Together with industry leaders such as NXP, Qualcomm, Bosch, and Infineon, we are establishing a new company aiming to accelerate and adopt the RISC-V and building a strong ecosystem around it. We look forward to share more about this when the company is up running. I'm rounding off with an exciting acquisition of the AI/ML learning, technology and team from Atlazo in San Diego.
This type of technology will be core to IoT going forward, especially when it comes to making edge devices smarter, and making this technology available on our future SoCs will be a key differentiator for us going forward. As we believe it's important to build a strong in-house IP position in this area, to remain in front and continue strengthening the value proposition to our customers. Transaction is dependent on regulatory approval, and we expect to see a completion end of 2023. I will expect to see benefits for our revenue 12-18 months from the closing. I think with that, I leave it to Pål, and he will take you through financials.
Thank you, Svenn-Tore. My name is Pål. I'm the CFO in Nordic. I'll now go through the financials for Q3 2023. Nordic reported total revenue of $135 million in the quarter, which was a decrease of 33% from $202 million in Q3 2022. Total revenue was 12% lower than the previous quarter. For the first nine months of 2023, total revenue decreased by 26%, from $585 million to $435 million this year. The company continues to see changes in the revenue composition, with significantly diverging developments across different product technologies, customers, and end user verticals and geographies. Bluetooth revenue amounted to $119.8 million in Q3, a decrease of 33% year-over-year, and down 16% compared to previous quarter.
The main reason for the decline is weaker demand, especially in the broad market, as well as a continued inventory adjustments. Proprietary revenue amounted to $10.3 million in Q3, which was a decrease 20% year-over-year, but up 60% from the previous quarter due to seasonally stronger demand. The decline mainly reflects continuing weak demand for PC accessories and other home office equipment. Cellular IoT revenue amounted to $4.2 million in Q3, which was a decrease 51% year-over-year, but up 63% from the previous quarter. The reduction compared to last year reflects a strong Q3 in 2022, where we, at the back end of some delivery issues we had in the first half of 2022, had a very strong quarter in 2022.
Compared to last quarter, the decrease reflects higher demand from some of the key customer within these technologies. For new technologies like PMIC and Wi-Fi, we're seeing increased design-in, and we'll start reporting details when we have meaningful revenue in these technologies. When comparing reported numbers to last year, revenue per vertical was largely driven by allocations of finished goods to customers in each specific market. The pressure on the supply chain has eased this year. Nordic no longer sees any supply constraints, given the current demand and supply outlook. In terms of verticals, with overall decline in revenues, most verticals are also, of course, down. The consumer markets, our revenues declined by 36% year-over-year, reflecting both lower consumer spending on electronics as well as inventory adjustments among equipment manufacturers.
However, compared to last quarter, consumer is mainly flat, driven by stronger proprietary revenue than last quarter. Consumer electronics is now 60% of total revenues, up from 55% last quarter. Revenue in the industrial segment declined by 54% year-over-year, and 21% from the previous quarter, reflecting temporarily lower deliveries to some of the major industrial customers. Nordic has long highlighted the healthcare market as a future growth engine, and amongst others, Q2 this year was very strong, generating high revenue to a few customers. Gross profits were $68.2 million in Q3, down from $115.7 million a year ago, with the gross margin decreasing to 50.5% from 57% same quarter last year.
The decline in gross margin reflects increased concentration in the customer base, as Svenn-Tore mentioned in detail, with some of the major Tier One customers maintaining very high volumes, while broad market customers sees weak demand. As earlier indicated, this affects gross margins negatively, as higher volume customers, on average, carry lower gross margins. In addition, we see a continuing effect of changes in the product mix during the quarter. We do expect gross margins to be around 50% also for Q4 2023, and we also reiterate our long-term ambition to maintain gross margins above 50%. As communicated earlier, our operating model is very sensitive to revenue. Last year, we saw our EBITDA margins above 25%, driven by high revenue growth and very strong gross margins.
A combination of lower revenue and gross margins shows how sensitive the model is, and we, in Q3, reported an EBITDA margin of 9.5%. However, during a difficult period, we have come out with several new products, including the all-new nRF54 Series. We are continuing to develop on Wi-Fi PMIC and also Cellular IoT. As such, we're in a much stronger situation compared to a year ago, product-wise. Total R&D is down from $38.2 million a year ago to $36.7 million this year, but compared to revenue, it's up from 19.9% to 23%. The reduction in the underlying spending is mainly driven by higher capitalization.
In Q3 2023, we capitalized around $6 million, while the same number in 2022 was $2 million. The reason for this increase is that we, in 2023, have several products in the last phase before capitalization, and that is the trigger for, sorry, the last phase before commercialization, which is the trigger for capitalizing the spending, the investments. SG&A, up to 18.5 from 17.4 a year ago. Total cash operating expenses amounted to $58 million in Q3, when adding back capitalized development expenses and deducting depreciation and equity-based compensation. This compares to $55 million in Q3 2022 and $58 million, or the same number, last quarter. $38 million relates to payroll expenses, which is flat compared to last year.
This is despite the number of employees are up 11%, year-over-year, to 1,530 employees. The reason that salaries are flat, despite the increased number of employees, is that we have significantly reduced the variable pay element in 2023. Yeah, we commented last quarter that we adjusted the cost base and are growing less than OpEx, less than previously, where despite headcount growth, able to mitigate the effects of inflation. The reason for the 11% growth in employees is that we added significantly in the second half of 2022, really impacting the comparables year- over- year. If you compare to last quarter, number of employees are more or less stable. Svenn-Tore will elaborate more on additional measures to manage the cost base.
CapEx was a low $2 million in Q3. The reason for this low number is that we've postponed some investments to Q4, and we are also, in addition to OpEx spending, we are maintaining focus on CapEx spending. CapEx intensity overall remains below the previously indicated levels of 2.3% of revenue on a yearly basis. During Q3, we decreased our cash balance by $23 million and ended at $229 million at the end of September. Operating cash flow outflow $18 million, adjusted for capitalized items, mainly driven by profits in the period. Net working capital in percent of revenue increased to 37%. The reason this comparably increases is, of course, that we are increasing working capital, and we have lower revenue.
The increase in working capital comes as a result of higher inventory, which increased by around $10 million in the quarter. Nordic no longer sees any supply constraints, as I mentioned, but given the current demand and supply outlook. However, Nordic has made strategic decision to increase inventory to support future growth ambitions and take advantage of the current supply situation. In addition to the cash on the balance sheet, we have an undrawn credit facility of $150 million. Svenn-Tore, I'll now hand over to you to do the final comments on the Q4 outlook.
Thank you, Pål. Before opening for questions, I would just like to repeat our guidance for the Q4 . We operate in a market that remains in a challenging cyclical downturn, and we expect the revenue decline to continue from Q3 to Q4, with a relatively flat gross margin around 50%. We continue to have relatively limited visibility beyond the current quarter and are, as I said earlier, taking action to reduce costs further and to reallocate R&D resources to projects that will generate revenue and profits in the short to medium term. So thank you all for listening in this morning, and we'll hand over to Stale to start Q&A. Pål, can you join me?
Thank you, Larsen. We will soon open up for Q&A. To accommodate as many as possible before the market opens, I recommend that everyone... Oh!
... I recommend that everyone only ask one question with one following-up question. We will first start with the call-ins, and then do questions that has been asked via our webcast's page. I hand it over to Rasmus to open up for Q&A.
Thank you. We'll now start the Q&A session. To ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press five star again. There'll be a brief pause while questions are being registered. The first question will be from the line of Harry Blaiklock from UBS. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Hi, there. Thanks, thanks for taking my question. I was wondering, do you have any indication from your various customers, like tier ones, smaller customers, distributors, how the level of inventory is looking in the channel? So is it a healthier level now, given the level of digestion you've seen? And if not, when do you expect inventories to reach healthier levels?
I think if you look at our distributor inventory levels, they are stable from last quarter. But in general, distributors have a very high overall inventory level. I think that's the comment we can give.
Yeah. And in the entire value chain, it's really mixed singles.
Yeah.
Some report high and some are more stabilized. So difficult to give a general comment on it.
We see pockets that are bright, but most of the situation is not bright.
Got it. Thank you. And then, one question, just I was wondering whether you could provide a bit more color around the comments on investing in products that will generate revenues and profits short to midterm. In the release, you kind of mentioned Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular, and then, Pal, you mentioned PMIC earlier, which seems to cover the whole portfolio. So I was wondering where exactly you'll be shifting investment from?
The importance here is about time to market, so we are going to accelerate the time to market on products. Really run full flat out on certain products that we pick out to sort of ensure that we are getting to the market as fast as possible.
And it's really within Bluetooth products.
Yeah.
It is not comparing Bluetooth to another technology. It's parts of the Bluetooth and customers-
Portfolio
... and portfolio within Bluetooth, for example, and the same with cellular.
Got it. Makes sense. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you, Harry. The next question will be from the line of Sébastien from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Yeah. Hello, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. On the OpEx side, could you please help us model the OpEx for Q4? What kind of OpEx we should model in Q4, and also moving into 2024, you have your $5 million OpEx savings targeted. What is the timing to reach this kind of $5 million quarterly savings run rate? And also, we are seeing Matter being gradually adopted in some, I would say, flagship devices like the iPhone 15. Do you see any specific opportunity building up during 2024, or it is more a story for 2025 onward? Thank you.
Okay, yeah. So it's it was first the question on the five million dollar target to in order of five million dollar in cut per quarter. So first of all, we communicate a $5 million cash spending, and if you look at our P&L, it's really a lot also impacted by capitalization. So it's important to look at the cash part, and also, of course, equity compensation. We have communicated earlier this year that Q1 is really the baseline for cash costs, and then, since Q1, we're more or less the same number of employees as we are today. And then, if you look at the cash cost slide in Q1, the number is around $65 million. So I'd say that that is the base.
From Q1, the current number of employees is, of course, yes, as I said, flat. When you look at Q2, Q3, also remember that we have a positive impact of vacation pay and reduced bonus accruals. These two items are not in Q1, so I'd ask you to use Q1 as the base for cash operating expenses. And then, Svenn-Tore, there was a question on Matter?
Yeah, the second,
Yes
... of your question was Matter, and we are going to see revenue on Matter in picking up from next year.
Thank you. The next question will be from the line of Christoffer from DNB. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Christoffer Bjornsen from DNB Markets here. So thank you for taking my question. So it seems to me in the numbers you shared, that this was kind of the Q1 where also there was-
... you know, downturn in revenues year-over-year for your tier, you know, tier one top 10 customers as well. So that kind of leads me to ask, is this maybe only the beginning of the downturn, given the down cycle, given that you're now finally seeing that tailwind from the tier ones starting to go away? Or just trying to understand, you know, maybe not the numbers, but the timing of the trough. You know, are you seeing any improvements into the first half, or do we have to wait until second half next year before we see, you know, inventory corrections being completed, given that we're not seeing it in the tier one until now?
Back when top 10 was around 30%, we said we are working on potential high volume project with some world-leading platforms and companies. These are driven volume through the pandemics, and we are very happy that we had those customer in our portfolio. It will continue to drive volumes even in this market.
Mm.
We have prioritized this customer when wafer supply was limited, and we see this paying off. We are back to levels seen before 2015. However, compared to this, Nordic is a different scale and different size. The variation of this customer is large, and broad market customers are on average taking lower volume than forecasted due to lower end user demand and depletion of inventory. I would say Nordic retains a strong position also in the broad market, with a broad portfolio of products and solution, catering to both high-end and cost-constrained applications. So I can't guide ahead of Q4, but we will come back to the first half and Q1 for 2024 when we do reporting in Q4 2023.
Okay, thanks. Then my second follow-up is on the long-term growth trajectory. We can now kind of calculate your growth through the cycle, you know, comparing Q3 to quarters prior to the boom. It seems like we're down to 15% growth through the cycle. Is this kind of the new normal level that we should expect going forward? Are you more firm on expecting you guys to grow 20%+ when we get through the cycle downturn?
As I said, we will not provide any comment on 2024. But we see clear growth opportunities and remains confident in our long-term potential, both of the products and the market, but we don't know when it comes back. That's challenging for us to discuss, Christoffer. But we are continuing to win designs. We're winning important designs, and what sort of percentage rate that we grow going forward is very much depending on when market picks up.
Okay, thanks. I'll jump in the back of the queue.
Thank you, Christoffer. The next question will be from the line of Om Bakhda from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Thank you. I just had a one on pricing in both directions. So I guess looking at your suppliers, do you see any upward pressure from your foundry partners in terms of pricing that could cause a little bit more pressure on your gross margin level, particularly at 55 nanometer node? And then in turn, you know, regardless of what you're doing, looking ahead with pricing, I think you've put through a couple of pricing increases already to your customers. Do you have any visibility on when, or if, or to what extent you might have to do that again? Thank you.
Glad to get a question where I can answer on, because we don't see any price increase or reduction in 2023 to 2024.
Um, it's-
And then on the customer side, if we see any adjustments to customer pricing, up or down, what's the second part?
When it comes to customers, we are, we have understanding customers that understand that price to them is a function of cost to Nordic. So we have not adjusted cost down.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. We'll have a brief pause while questions are being registered.
Thank you. Yes, we have questions coming in on the webcast, and we have split them up in topics. We start with guidance. We have one question from Petter Kongslie, SpareBank 1 Markets. You expected $1 billion in revenue, but ended up around $500 million. How is that possible?
I would say that the current cyclical downturn has been much more severe and prolonged than Nordic had anticipated. The current run rate is well below the levels we have expected. You're right, we are surprised also with the big adjustment. Unfortunately, now, we don't have any backing to provide any guidance beyond current quarter.
Thank you. Then we have a question from Kristian Spetalen, Arctic: Can you please elaborate on why the visibility is so low? Doesn't your customer have six to 12-month forecasts?
Yes, our customers have forecast, and what we see also is a lot of push outs in this forecast, so they're not so reliable as we would have liked them to be.
Thank you. And then we have Øystein Lodgaard, ABG: Which specific areas do you see contribution to the additional weakness in Q4 compared to Q3?
There was no special area. It was basically generally lower order.
Thank you. Then we go over to technology. Petter Kongslie, SpareBank 1 Markets: What is your certification market share in cellular?
Unfortunately, there is no body that do certification of cellular. We hope there is, because we have currently more than 370 projects that have designed Nordic in. But if anyone can help us finding a good page and route for sharing those information, we will be very, very happy. Because we know we have a strong market, or strong design in ratio.
Thank you. Fridtjof Fredricsson, Pareto: A question on PMIC. Strategic smart move. It was a strategic and smart move to increase focus on short to medium-term profitability. That said, it is difficult to underestimate the upside potential in the future product portfolio. For example, PMIC is something that could revolutionize the electronic market. Could you please provide more information about the development and potential of PMIC?
What, what we see is that new projects, starting with Nordic radios, usually also onboard a PMIC, and as we know, it's 12-18 months from starting a project to finish and completing the project. And we have to gradually see these projects moving out in the market.
We just released a new product-
Yeah
... in PMIC this summer, that we get good feedback on.
That's correct, Stale.
Yeah.
Thank you. Then we go over to questions regarding the verticals and end markets. Markus Heiberg, SEB: How should, how should we understand temporarily lower deliveries to customers in industrial and healthcare? Do you see these segments below the Q3 level also in Q4?
We are guiding down in Q4, and the answer is yes. And these are customers of ours that are making modules to the industrial market, and they have significant lower volume now than they used to have the first half of the year.
For healthcare, is and has been one of the growth drivers for Nordic. We commented earlier that it does vary slightly from quarter- to- quarter, but overall, healthcare is gonna be a very important market for us.
Thank you. And Markus Heiberg, SEB, has another question: You still refer to weak end customer demand in PC accessories and home office, in addition to inventory adjustment. Yet, we see consumer application more stable in Q3, while other verticals are weaker. Can you please elaborate?
We have one customer that doing okay, and basically is holding up the revenue. We have a lot of Asian customers in consumer, that basically is not performing revenue-wise.
Thank you. Then we have a question from Petter Kongslie, SpareBank 1: During COVID-19, you were reluctant to prioritize the tail of customer due to supply constraints. What are the risks that many of these basically have swapped to competitors and/or are out of business, given the current macroeconomic environment?
I think that's a wise question, and yes, we have lost some of these customers. Some have gone bankrupt, yes. But also there is customers there that we maintain a relationship to, and we still bring offers to value proposition to new projects that these customers are in the development of now. So we are going to keep-
Yeah
... a good share of this customer, but some are lost.
But we still believe we have a broad enough portfolio and product and solutions to cater to this market segment.
We can see that on the design win tracker.
Uh.
We maintain our market share of above 40%, and that includes all the long tail customers.
Thank you. Simon Coles from Barclays. A question on top 10. It sounds like you expect the current revenue mix of tier one to continue in Q4 , but do you have any visibility on how that could develop in the following quarters? Are you seeing any sign of re-engagement from other customers?
I mean, we have restrained from commenting outside Q4, and it also relate to that question, unfortunately.
... I have a question from Owen Reigstad. How does your customer base look like today?
It looks extremely exciting if you look at our top 10 customers. Those are the customers that any semiconductor customer would like to have in their portfolio.
Mm.
These are the customers can help Nordic achieve a higher revenue.
Thank you. Then we have a question regarding inventory from Rob Sanders, Deutsche Bank. Your inventory is bulging. What can you do to get inventory under control? What is the die and wafer bank situation you are facing?
I think we have control on inventory. I think that it's arose an opportunity for us to buy more wafers on 55 nano. And we still see possibility that supply will be scarce going forward on this technology node.
Right.
And this will increase our ability to deliver when market comes back, and we don't want to set Nordic in a position with supply constraints as we were in 2022.
Mm.
To the second part of Rob's question, the composition of the inventory, we have slightly high on Cellular IoT products, which we've mentioned before. For the rest of the inventory, it's a healthy mix between wafers, semi-finished goods, and finished products. So we have good flexibility when revenue and demand increases.
On high runner products.
High run products, yeah.
Thank you. Petter Kongslie, SpareBank 1, has a question regarding gross margin. How can you be able to deliver +50% gross margin on a group level, medium term, when you have talked about 40% gross margin on cellular? How should we read this?
So, of course, it's. We are depending on increasing revenues also to the broad market. Our module does require a healthy composition of Tier 1 and also the broad market. Of course, you sell IoT at 40%, but we also have some of the other new technologies that should deliver higher gross margins than on average. So in total, the target is above 50%.
Again-
Yeah
... I will refer to design win tracker. I mean, 41% market share is not only on Tier 1 customers.
Absolutely.
We do have a lot of the broad market or the long-tail market that continue to design with Nordic. So we are dependent on getting these products in the market, and that will lift the margin-
Mm
... on Bluetooth Low Energy.
Correct.
Thank you. Then we have Øystein Lodgaard, and he has a question regarding design wins. Are there any new major design wins in the pipeline that could contribute to revenue in the beginning of 2024? Or do you see customer product launches being postponed due to the current weak environment?
I think very much we can agree with the question that we see postponement and push out of releases of products, unfortunately. We are not disclosing or giving any guidance, as I said, outside Q4.
Then we have one question from Daniel Peterson. Net working capital is not declining, although your sales is. Why is that?
No, and that's really back to the inventory levels that we... There's two things on the inventory. First of all, as Svenn-Tore mentioned, we have taken a cautious decision to actually utilize the opportunity to increase our wafer bank that was unnaturally low in the beginning of the year. And of course, secondly, we did plan for higher revenue this year, so naturally, inventory will increase. Yeah.
Thank you. I think that was the last question. Thank you, all. Then I'm concluding our Q&A session for today, and I hand over to Svenn-Tore Larsen for the closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you all for listening in, and look forward to seeing you again in the beginning of 2024, and maybe even more looking forward to second half of 2024. Thank you for listening.
Thank you.