Good morning and welcome to Smartoptics Q1 2024 Result Presentation. Welcome to you in the room and also welcome to those who are following us online. I will jump into a slide that we have been using now for some time to initiate the presentation and then later go through, break down the revenue as usual, and look at where the business is coming from. We will end up with talking about, and my CFO Stefan will join me here to talk about the financial details. Then last but not least, talk a little bit about the aspirations going forward. So quarter one, 2024, it is a quarter that is telling us a couple of things. First, which is obvious, that we are still operating in a market that's a little bit softer than it was a year ago. That has not changed.
I will talk more about that. It's also obvious to me where the problem lies. Number two, I think the positive side of Q1 and the happenings during Q1 actually strengthens my belief in a return to a more normal growth for Smartoptics going forward. That's the positive side, and I will talk a lot about that shortly. Small revenue drop overall, which is exclusively related to our business in EMEA. Taking you back now to quarter four and the presentation we did back in February, I talked about an elevated activity level in the U.S. in particular. We're seeing in quarter one that we actually have growth in America despite the fact that we're still not yet out of the softer market. That high activity level has accelerated, so it's even higher now.
So great belief in what we're doing, great belief in what we are going to do from second half of this year and onwards. So continuing to invest to capture that growth, continuing to develop our products to broaden our market, addressable market, continuing to build our organization for that, and continuing to make efforts in the selected markets that we have talked about earlier. The gross margin in the quarter, small decline, nothing that worries me at all. You will see later on that it's exclusively related to the product mix. In the quarter, we're seeing our device business actually increasing as a result of us putting a little bit more focus on it. And when that happens, at the same time that our solution business, primarily in EMEA, is going down, we're seeing precisely this phenomenon.
I think that given where we are, we're seeing somewhat disappointing in the EBITDA, but I think it's acceptable and I think it's very good that we're continuing to show that we are making money even with the slightly softer topline. You will also understand as we go through this presentation that the pressure that's put on the EBITDA margin and EBIT margin here is nearly all related to topline. That's very positive. As we grow our topline, our EBITDA will come back to normal levels, and that's going to, of course, be a priority over 2024. Let me turn a little bit into the future now and talk about why we believe that we have a better-than-average opportunity to grow from the second half of this year.
I think the second half of this year, in my industry, when I talk to peers, analysts, and colleagues, and customers, everyone is talking about the second half of this year, predominantly putting that into the macro side of arguing. Macro will turn around, hence investments in infrastructure, which is to a large extent what we're doing. It will be easier to say yes for any manager than it will be to say postpone. Postpone has happened over the years from time to time in this industry, and it has always resulted in growth after a period. And why is that? Well, because the ever-growing demand for bandwidth is not slowing down, quite the opposite. So specifically for Smartoptics, we have a number of very good reasons to believe in what we're doing and the fact that we are going to come back to healthy growth.
Those are listed here, so I will go through this from left to right, starting to talk about the progress with our large account strategy. Those of you who have followed us remember that we have a list of around 10 major opportunities or larger than normal opportunities that we are progressing. And we have been progressing them very nicely over a long period. And we're seeing in Q1 some tangible results of that strategy. So we did receive the first order from a new larger U.S. regional operator in Q1 for 400 G technology that they are delivering to their customers. That is very positive. This is how these big accounts always start. You have to have the first PO to move forward with continued rollout in networks, et cetera. So it's very, very good news.
Prior to receiving such a PO, you have gone through all of the qualifications, all of the testing, and all of the network architectural discussions that are required. So for us, very good news for the future, very promising in the sense that it's now a qualified application that will be used for similar applications in the network. Of course, as always, we have already initiated discussions on more. How can they use the rest of our product portfolio and how can we essentially get a bigger share of wallet? The other news that is new for today that we have not talked about is an agreement that we have signed with a global cloud operator with presence in more than 800 data centers across the globe, offering hybrid cloud-type services and connectivity services to data centers. We have not yet received the first orders there.
We are in discussion here around a number of projects in different geographies around the world, but certainly another one of those accounts that can have a significant impact on our steady growing revenue over a very, very long time. So that's also very good news. And when you look at the list of 10 major accounts that we are entertaining, it is a mix of network operators, more traditional telco style. It is these types of cloud data -centric operators. And it's even a few more enterprise-type customers building very, very large networks. So it's a healthy mix within that group of potential accounts. The activity level in America, turning to the second bullet here in this slide, is continuing to be very high. In fact, I would characterize America as record high activity now.
And that's, of course, difficult to paint that picture, what that looks like for you guys, because this is something that we are dealing with every day. But to give you some taste, and I have no intention of introducing another parameter for you to analyze around this company, but of course, we're seeing this in our backlog. The number of qualified leads that we have in our backlog that we are actively pursuing right now is higher in number and it's higher in value. And it's double-digit percentage higher than it was precisely one year ago. And if we look at our total backlog, the total list of opportunities that we are working with at the moment, it is actually significantly higher than that. It is around 40% higher than a year ago. So that's how we can kind of paint this picture for you.
Of course, more meetings, more people at trade shows, more qualified discussions with more customers. Really phenomenal activity level in America. As you saw, a few quarters or a quarter after this high activity level, it results in orders and business for us, like in Q1 here, then. We're also seeing a very meaningful contribution from our LatAm business that we initiated about two years ago. In fact, it's a record quarter in LatAm in Q1. It's north of $1 million. Very significant contribution from new markets. As you know, we have a couple of those also in the pipeline where we have been doing business development for quite some time and we're expecting revenue to start to materialize, which is also adding to the whole picture here. Third bullet, new products.
So we talked about this in Q4 that we are going to significantly increase our attractiveness and our competitiveness in certain parts of the network from middle of 2024. That product development is progressing really nicely. It's a number of products that we will release and of course, increased functionality in our software platform, or rather platforms, to build those types of network applications and manage and monitor and orchestrate those types of network applications. At the heart of this whole solution is a new reconfigurable optical ADM, a 34-degree ROADM, we call it, which is on track to be released here in quarter two, contributing to revenue in the second half. What does this mean? Well, it means that we can build larger networks. We will be more relevant in regional networks versus today when we are very competitive in the metro areas.
This translates to larger projects and bigger deals. Last but not least, AI has started to materialize as yet another contributor to the ever-growing demand for bandwidth. We have seen the first signs of real tangible proof that it may bring a positive contribution to that already this year. It's one of our customers that we have supplied with equipment in about 30 major U.S. cities connecting their data centers that have announced that they are going to roll out an AIaaS offering across that footprint, which will inevitably result in more bandwidth demand. AI has been discussed in the industry as something that sits within one data center. Of course, CPU- CPU, and GPU- GPU communication doesn't go across the network. That is the old news.
And everyone has been waiting for that traffic, that to happen between the data centers, which is to a large extent where our products sit. And I mean this is kind of proof that that will start happening. The customer is called vapor.io. And we have announced them earlier in 2021. Very good. So very good reasons to believe in this over and above the macroeconomic turning around. As expected, things look fairly good for the future. Before I move into the revenue breakdown and the normal slides, I will reiterate for new viewers some of the basics around Smartoptics to allow everyone to follow along. So going back to the very basic, what is it that we do? Well, fiber optics and transport networks, that is the art of transporting lots of data over optical fibers. And that is exactly what we do.
Where are those networks built? Well, I've already hinted at data centers being instrumental here, connecting data centers to each other, but also building metropolitan and regional networks to connect cities to each other, to connect various access technologies such as fiber to the home, 5G, or whatever it might be, to the heart of the network. The fiber, we're not really dealing with that. We're building the software solutions, the hardware solutions, and we provide the services associated with that in order to light up those fibers. And the fibers are the same as everyone is used to, the same fiber that you have to your home or summer house or whatever. But the technology is completely different. So when we talk about high capacity, we are often talking about terabits per second rather than a normal consumer discussing megabits per second. So several orders of magnitude higher.
We're using a number of technologies to achieve that. One instrumental technology is listed on this slide. It's called wavelength division multiplexing. It is the simple art of using multiple frequencies or colors on a particular fiber. So if you look at the high-runner products from Smartoptics today are typically 40 different colors, each transporting 400 Gbps , resulting in a total network capacity of 16 Tbps . So very, very high capacity. And it's also answering what is the limit to what I can get to my home. As an example, well, practically there is no limit. You can get whatever bandwidth you want if you're prepared to pay for it. So who are the customers? Well, they are listed down below. Broadband providers, enterprise data centers that can really be any vertical.
We have customers in anything from automotive , retail to banks to Fortune 500 , industrial companies, hospitals, schools, various state government data centers that we are connecting. So a wide range of customers in that vertical. Of course, communication service providers, the network operators, which has been a focus of ours in the past three to four years to develop a more attractive offering for communication service providers. Why? Because they are bigger and they buy products, roll out products over very, very long periods. And then last but not least, the whole cloud community with content providers, Internet Exchanges, CDNs, et cetera, is a big consumer of these types of products. And we have lots of customers in that space. So that's the what, the how. So what is our edge? Why do people buy these products from us versus, for instance, Cisco or whoever?
Well, our focus as a challenger in this market is to focus on cost efficiency. We are doing everything we can in our designs to provide the most bang for the buck, the most bandwidth for the dollars that you need to spend. And that is resonating very, very well, particularly in the application areas that I have been discussing, the metro and the regional networks. When we come to the long-haul technologies, because the same technologies that we use are also used to connect, for instance, Europe with the U.S. through undersea cables or connecting New York with Los Angeles, that's a slightly different game. That is all about performance. So the obvious analogy is that we are selling cars in long-haul applications. They are selling cars, but it's much more powerful engines. But the basic technologies are very, very similar.
So cost efficiency is what we do, and that is resonating very well with our customers. And also the technology we're using, to a large extent, our value add and our IPR sits in the software design principles and the software architecture that we're using to design our products. We design our hardware. We build our hardware. But I think that in terms of uniqueness, a lot of it comes from the software design principles and the software tools that we are developing. We have a world-class team. Scandinavia is a great place to build this type of technology, these types of products. There are not that many places around the world where you can find this type of competence. Last but not least, our market. So the market is around $16 billion in total. About half of that is the long-haul applications that I was discussing.
About half of it is metro. If you further cut out geographies that we do not address, such as mainland China and some other geographies east, we come to an addressable market of $4 billion-$5 billion. The key drivers for growth in this market is the ever-growing demand for bandwidth. I've listed a number of applications and drivers for that. Normally, this is not something we need to talk about because everyone recognizes this in their own behavior. No one is ever challenging the fact that bandwidth is an ever-growing demand around the planet. So diving into Q1 2024, looking at the revenue first from a geographical standpoint. This is what I talked about earlier. It's quite easy to see the negative in this slide. It is a little bit more difficult to see the positive.
I will point you to it in a second. So we're seeing EMEA is what is declining here. That's obvious. We talked about it in Q4 also that the activity level was much lower in EMEA compared to America's growth in Americas. Not the growth levels that we are used to, but still growth. And that's very positive for the future. So I said, what is the positive around EMEA here? Well, it is actually that Q1 is bigger than Q4. And that is nearly unheard of in our industry. Q4 is always the biggest quarter, has always been the biggest quarter, at least. So this is kind of indicating that the bottom was Q4. It's an early sign, I agree. But it's very good news that Q1 is bigger than Q4.
And in fact, since some months now, we have seen a pickup in activity level in EMEA in a similar fashion that we saw middle of Q4 in Americas. So it seems that EMEA is around two quarters behind. Growth in APAC, still to a large extent the biggest market for us, but still growth. Looking at our three product areas, it is also obvious here that the solutions business, which is what Q1 last year was very, very strong on, we had three larger projects that were kind of in the range between $700,000 and $1 million projects in Q1 last year. We do not have any such projects in Q1 here. So from that standpoint, Q1 looks exactly like Q4 and Q3 last year, that we are growing the underlying business with smaller customers, the $100,000 projects, the $200,000 projects, and similar.
That is what's driving the growth. And within that segment, we can clearly see growth. So as we start to add the bigger infrastructure projects, things will look significantly better. So solutions in EMEA is where we can see the decline predominantly. Good news, we're seeing growth in our device business, which is something we talked about some quarters ago, becoming a focus area for us. We have now started a number of initiatives that are related to kind of the backbone of that business, how we conduct that business, the quality of how we deliver products to our customers and the support systems behind that business, et cetera. And we're now seeing a slight growth in devices. And this is something that will be yet another focus area for us going forward. Software and services, very good growth, healthy growth.
Software and services for us is a number of things. It is customers buying perpetual software licenses to operate our products. With that, they are buying a software support subscription. Either a subscription or they buy one or two or three or four or five years of support, which results in deferred revenue for us in the latter case that you can see on our balance sheet. That's one thing, or two things rather. The third thing is the contribution from our new SoSmart Network Orchestration platform, which is more like a traditional subscription service, ARR type of revenue coming in. Of course, we see growth in all three of those resulting in 22% growth despite the fact that solutions go down. That is very, very good. Also, more customers using these types of services and products.
Stefan, I will hand over to you to talk a little bit about the balance sheet and working capital.
Thank you. We have a strong balance sheet with an equity ratio of 64%. We have non-current assets of 6.9%. It's an increase from 6.5% and it consists of mainly capitalized product development costs, tangible assets, and deferred tax assets. Current assets amount to $30.1 million compared to 28% last year. It's mainly inventory and trade receivables. We have a strong cash position with $11.5 million in cash. The business is profitable, generating cash. We have also available credit facilities of around $7 million that is not utilized. The board has proposed a dividend of NOK 0.5 per share. That will impact cash in Q2 with $4.3 million approximately.
On the liability side, we have non-current liabilities of $1.8 million compared to $2.7 million last year, which is mainly lease liabilities related to office lease of $1.1 million and favorable loans from Innovation Norway of $0.7 million that is falling due in 2026. Current liabilities, excluding deferred revenue, amount to $9.5 million and is related mainly to AP tax liabilities and personal-related liabilities. Deferred revenue, $6.3 million compared to $4.8 million. And it's an increase related to larger revenue share from business area, software and services. The working capital amounts to $14.9 million compared to $15.8 million last year. Inventory has reduced to $13.5 million from $15.4 million, which is a result of that we earlier had longer lead times on our purchases, which resulted in higher inventory. That has now gone down. We are constantly working with our inventory levels.
We have a healthy level now and in good control. Trade receivables have increased to $15.5 million compared to $11.5 million last year. There, I would say last year's numbers were relatively low due to high collections in Q1 that year. And that was also based on that we had invoicing pretty early in the Q4 2022 that was collected in Q1 2023. We see a trend that there is later invoicing in the quarters that is building up a little bit of trade receivables. But we have a healthy balance of trade receivables. We have no losses. It's in good control. Net other short-term liabilities increased to $9.9 million from $5.2 million. That is related to an increase in deferred revenue and tax liabilities.
So looking on our financial performance, first, we have a revenue that declined 10% to $12.6 million compared with our strong Q1 last year. We have a stable, high gross margin of 48.6% compared to 50.7%. That is a result of a product mix change. The EBITDA is a result. And that's an acceptable level now of $1.1 million compared to $2.6 million last year. And the reduction of $1.5 million is then mainly related to revenue and margin drop that impacts $1 million. And $0.5 million is related to higher OpEx levels. That is driven by organizational growth, mainly in R&D and mainly in 2023. We have a moderate growth in Q1 2024 since we have this revenue drop. So we're mindful about our investments. But as a result, the EBITDA margin is 8.4% compared to 18.5% last year.
Operating cash flow, it's a solid, good cash flow this quarter with $2.5 million compared to $5.8 million last year. In Q1, the trade receivables collection was high, as I mentioned before. That was $4.4 million in Q1 last year and $1.5 million this quarter. Inventory has decreased, which has a positive impact on our cash flow. So thank you. Thank you, Magnus.
Thank you. So just coming back to growth drivers going forward, how do we get back to growth, well? I've talked about all of this. The market is expected to return to more normal. We will see more investments going forward, which is nearly always a result of a holdback of investments in these types of technology. We are continuing the communication with our larger accounts. That is progressing nicely. Yeah, earlier, I've talked about some tangible proof points of those activities. I'm very, very pleased with that. And I have super high belief in more success going forward. Product development, increasing our addressable market. That is a significant impact, potentially, over many, many years as we grow into building larger and larger and larger networks. Revenues go up. And the project sizes go up, which is very positive.
And last but not least, new geographies that we are seeing now making a meaningful impact in our revenue numbers already now. And there are more geographies to add as we move along. So all in all, summarizing our long-term ambitions. And I will go back now to what I said in Q4. We believe in this. We will continue to work towards reaching $100 million in 2025, 2026. And we can see how that is to happen. What I said in Q4 was that I'm quite pleased that we had a range. This is a target that's been with us for a very, very long time. And as you can see, we are around 60% there already.
I'm happy that we did have a range because, as I said in Q4, if you have a pocket calculator and we assume that we return to a normal growth from second half of 2024, you can quite easily see that we are going to reach it in 2026 rather than 2025. What I also said is that there are opportunities that can take us to $100 million in 2025 out there that we are in conversation with. Those exist. It would be to do a sports analogy, kind of a slam dunk we're talking about in that case. So again, I'm happy with this. I'm confident that we are on a good journey towards these $100 million with these types of profitability levels. So with that, we conclude this presentation. Happy to take questions.
Maybe if there are any questions in the room, we can start with those. Yes?
Øystein Lodgaard, ABG. You're talking about an improvement in the second half of the year. I think, not to be rude, but I think every company that has had a bad Q1 is now talking about an improvement in the second half of the year. What is your visibility for that improvement actually materializing?
I think I talked a little bit about it in the early parts of this presentation. It is related to, of course, the amount of opportunities that we are working with. I said that the total pipeline or the total scope of what we're doing the 31st of March 2024 versus the same date last year, we're seeing a 40% increase in that. That is difficult data to analyze. Yeah, it's data that you have to know quite a lot about our business to understand what sits in that data. It is what we are using when we talk to our sales teams, et cetera. That's very positive news. The activity level is very, very high. That should result in growth going forward.
But I think also the conversations that we have with major accounts, the conversations that we have around our new products. Remember that Smartoptics has always had a purchase order for products before we release them, which is not the norm in our industry. I'm confident that we will have purchase orders for the new products before we release them too. So that's the quality of those discussions. So we have a number of reasons over and above just the macro turning around.
When you say that 40% increase, is that a 40% increase in discussions that you're having or in some orders which are firm for the second half of the year?
Those are not orders. That's very important to understand. Those are opportunities. And it's simply dollars that we have in the works now. And this is, of course, much, much more money than we're talking about as a revenue. The hit rate for us or the hit rate for any company is never 100%. You don't win every deal that you are working with. So it's money.
You reiterated here that the 34-degree ROADM solution is ready for launch in Q2, as you've stated previously. We've talked about this a number of times. It seems like a very important product launch for you. Can you say has this product been with customers? They've been able to test it prior to launch so that that could start contributing to revenue already in the second half, or?
It has not been in any customer lab yet. But we have had many customers in our labs where we have the product, where we have it running live traffic today. So the way this works is during the design phase, as part of an R&D project, we are, of course, including a pilot batch that will be delivered during the spring that will then be put into our demo pool and start to come out into labs and networks. We're not quite there yet. I believe that's going to start happening any day now. But yeah, we have had several customers testing and trialing the equipment in our labs.
Thank you. Last question from me now. We have not talked about Q2. You also face somewhat tough comps in Q2. Can you say what should we expect from Q2?
Well, you know we can just go back to what we said in Q4. The first half is much tougher comps, for sure, no doubt. I have no reason to change that statement. Yeah.
Some question for me as well, Markus Borge Heiberg in SEB. So going a little bit back to the product launches. Is it possible to give more sort of quantified the impact? I think in second half of 2022, you talked about 30% of revenues being from new products. Can you talk about potential cannibalization? Will this sort of add to the existing business? Or how should we think about the contribution? Is it possible to say anything more sort of detailed?
Yeah, very good question to begin with. Difficult to analyze, I have to say. I think, is there potential for new business there? Oh, absolutely. Yes, it is over and above what we are doing today. And that's in the sense that we are actually able to do stuff that we could not do. Or rather, we could do, but we are going to become much more competitive with these types of products. So yes, there is an element of over and above, no doubt. Is there cannibalization? Well, I think short-term, a little bit, yes, because the focus will be on the new product versus the older product. We are doing stuff to the existing platforms, et cetera, to fit into those architectures too. And eventually, it will be a mix when you build networks. So long-term, I don't think it's a big issue at all.
OK, thank you. So a little bit on the U.S. BEAD program. You've heard some competitors and peers of you in the U.S. talking about a very exciting market opportunity. They also talk about build and buy in the U.S. Can you talk about your position in sort of the upcoming growth in the U.S. fiber-to-the-home market?
Yes. To begin with, we've seen some of it already, both in Q4 and Q1. We have been winning new accounts in that Tier 3 market. I don't know the exact number, but it's well above 10 new customers from that space. The BEAD money, it depends on where you are. The way it works is that on a state level, the state applies for BEAD money. Then the individual users of BEAD money will then apply within the state with their projects. So I think we are. That's at least my understanding, that we are on that state level. Some states are done, have money allocated. Now people will start applying for funding from that pool. So it is still something that is in the future. But remember, specifically in the U.S., government programs live for a very long time.
We heard of a customer who were buying products. They were using funds from a program that had been around for tens of years to get funding. So they seem very difficult to kill those government funding programs once they are set in action. And as you know, it's always an awful lot of money in those programs. When it comes to the other act that's relevant here, which is the BABA, Buy American, Build American, there we have done, I think, the necessary investigations we need to be safe with the fact that our products, which is predominantly made in Sweden, is okay for that program. Why? Well, because there are no made-in-America products similar to our products. We're seeing some people talk about U.S. production. We are looking at U.S. production too. And we know how to do that if required.
As an example, the well-known fact that we're using Kitron as our contract manufacturer for printed circuit boards. They have a facility in Pennsylvania. They could produce our products there with very short lead times. So yes, there are opportunities, but not really a need for us to make that change now.
That's clear. So final question from me is on the AI opportunity that you're talking about. You mentioned a customer. Obviously, hyperscalers is where we're seeing the largest growth within those kinds of applications. Can you elaborate a bit on your position towards those hyperscalers? Will that become a target market? Or are you more looking at Tier 2 and 3 type of rollouts of AI applications?
I mean, we are, of course, talking to hyperscalers too, right? But I would say to date, the focus has been on the Tier 2 side of that. And we're seeing movement in that. I talked to one of our customers, one of the big internet exchanges, the CEO there, who was talking about hypergrowth over the coming 10 years as a result of all companies moving towards the hyperscale model, all companies building their own AI clusters and offering digital services over new infrastructure. So that would mean the hyperscalers are not going to be alone. It would mean that companies like, I don't know, Statoil or BMW, whoever, could offer those types of services and moving in towards that. So to date, focus on that. Do we have conversations? Yeah, we're talking to everyone, of course. Is that a future opportunity? Yes, maybe.
But I can't elaborate on any specific opportunity at this point.
That's understandable. Thank you.
Thank you. We also have a couple of questions on the portal. First question is related. So thank you for the exciting news about the breakthrough with larger regional operator in the U.S. Could you provide some more details on the business potential for Smartoptics?
Well, the customer is very comparable to our other existing large customer, Crown Castle. It's on the East Coast of the U.S. So it's a very densely populated area. So good potential with that customer, absolutely. Same level as Crown Castle Fiber, I would say.
And also regarding the new agreement with the global cloud operator, can you provide a timeline for when we should expect to see revenue generation additionally? Could you elaborate on the scope and duration of this agreement to help us out a little on the financial impact more accurately?
Well, when we sign agreements, it is generally master purchasing agreements that we sign. We do not, in our industry, have any framework agreements or anything similar to that. So generally, the contracts live for three to five years. And they are extended year by year.
When do I expect to see revenue coming out of that?
Well, fairly shortly. I mean, the discussions have been going on for a very long time. Lab trials have been conducted. We are through procurement and legal with the contracts. Everything is set up to do business. So that should not take too long. Next question. If we assume a significant recovery during the second half of this year and early next year and further assume that this sorry for this, but when I change view, I lose which one I'm reading.
And further assume that this will happen in concrete with other players in the industry, how are you planning to maneuver such an environment, i.e., avoid bottlenecks, component shortages, COGS, inflation, et cetera?
Yeah, well, OK. So yes, I mean, we have gone through a horrible period in 2021 through 2022 with component shortage, with a very, very difficult market. From that standpoint, the whole logistics chain was in really bad shape globally for everyone. I think we managed to navigate that very well. I think we proved that we know how to do this. And I think we have learned a lot from that period, how to deal with long lead time components, et cetera. So I think I'm not really worried at all about this becoming a big issue for us going forward. So that's my answer. Next question is related to Q2.
Yeah, still being soft compared to last year. However, on a sequential basis, the second quarter is always significantly better than the first. Any reason to expect any difference in seasonality this year or perhaps even stronger seasonality given the bottoming out of Q4 2023 versus Q1 2024?
No, I don't expect any major difference in seasonality at all is the answer.
Another question. Thanks for a good presentation. Two questions. Will the new ROADM need to go through a longer customer certification process before we see larger revenue contribution? Any pickup in 5G demand is an additional question.
So the new products will go through the exact same qualification requirements as our existing products. These are processes that we know very well. With some customers, they can be a year long. With some customers, they can be 1.5 weeks. So there is no change. These products do not result in any change from that standpoint. So you will see the same effect as always, I would say.
5G demand pickup?
No, not really, actually. I have not personally seen any major positive discussions around 5G yet. And there we go. We are through the list of questions. So yeah, one more question from the room.
Yeah, I was wondering, have you ever, when you're now talking to bigger customers, [which] makes up a much larger part of your revenue than historically. Have you ever met some challenges that they don't want to buy from you because they become such a large part of your revenue? Or as long as you can deliver, you can get as big orders as possible. Is there any?
We have not yet met those types of arguments yet. I mean, are there such customers out there? Well, you know we have said that the key markets for us isn't AT&T and Verizon, the Tier 1s. It's for those types of reasons, success probability. I think we need to grow a little bit further to become relevant for those types of accounts. However, looking below those, the Tier 2 operators, I mean, the people like the operator we announced here in Q1, those are also fairly big companies. Those are spending an awful lot of money on developing their networks. In that space, no, we have not seen any such problems.
In theory, now that you're coming out with new products that can be part of larger networks than previously, you could also land much bigger deals. We shouldn't think of that as a challenge.
No, I don't think so. And the bigger deals doesn't necessarily have to be with the bigger operators, right? If you look at, so for instance, the U.S. rural telco market with 1,000 operators or 2,000 operators or whatever it is, some of those are building networks that are spanning over one, two, or three states. Those are huge networks with hundreds of points of presence servicing other smaller service providers. So there are big projects and big deals to be had without necessarily addressing the bigger players. Similar with enterprises, as we move into that space, we have conversations with enterprise customers building networks requiring 600 POPs and things like that. So it is not always I mean, there is no direct connection between bigger deals and bigger customers from that standpoint. Of course, bigger customers generally have bigger deals. But that's another issue.
Do you see what I mean? Thank you.
Thank you. And last question. You're, of course, a small player in the large DWDM market. But you have taken a very leading position in the modern open line systems. Is it possible to guess what is your market share in kind of open DWDM open line systems?
Well, I think that data will be available in a month or so from Cignal AI. Difficult to guess. All of the reports are not published. There is, yeah, of course, not the same reporting periods among all companies. Yeah, so we will see.
Thank you.
Thank you. No further questions in the room and no more questions on the portal. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to us. See you again soon. Thanks. Bye.