Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fingerprint Cards AB Rights Issue Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the Q&A session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star, one,one on your telephone keypad. If you would hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press star, one,one again. Alternatively, you can submit your questions via the webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Stefan Pettersson. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this webcast following the announcement of the Fingerprints rights issue last Friday. On the call today, we have the company's chairman, Christian Lagerling, our CEO, Adam Philpott, and our CFO, Fredrik Hedlund. Once we've gone through today's presentation, we'll have a Q&A session. If you're following the conference call on the web, you can post questions throughout this call. With that, let me now hand over to Christian Lagerling.
Thank you, Stefan. And, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. I just wanted to take a short moment before handing over to Adam and Fredrik to talk you through the details of the rights issue and balance sheet strengthening activities that we announced on Friday. On behalf of the board, I'm very pleased today that we're able to present this strong and absolutely critical balance sheet strengthening solution to you, our shareholders. After continuing adverse and really worsening environment for China mobile business, we have, by doing this, now taken full control of our financial future for the group by deciding to wind down our unprofitable mobile business and really enabling us to focus all our resources on our profitable growth areas, existing and new ones. And Adam and team will talk more about this, of course.
As mentioned, we've also taken substantial measures to restructure our balance sheet with the early repayment of our convertible bond. Our convertible debt provider, Heights, has been a strong and important partner for the company for a period of time. But we're confident today that the early repayment is in the best interest of the company and all shareholders. And, of course, a rights issue can be challenging for some shareholders. We're, of course, fully aware of that. And I can assure you that, as the board, we really see our primary duty responsibility to look after and act in the best interest of all shareholders at all times. Meaning, when we go through these finance activities, we evaluate very, very carefully all available options. And last time, it was appropriate to bring in external financing through Heights and convertible debt.
Today, as mentioned, we're convinced for long-term prosperity of the company and long-term best shareholder value creation, that the rights issue and the early repayment, is in all our best interest. I'll be happy to answer any questions as well. But for now, I'll hand it over to you, Adam.
Thank you, Christian. Good to be here. Thank you for joining everyone on the call. Just by way of introduction, I thought I'd introduce myself, and I will ask Fredrik to do the same in a second. So for those of you who haven't met me or been on calls with me, my name's Adam Philpott. The, the background that I have relevant to what we're doing today and what we're doing with the company are as follows. I've, I've been in private equity for a reasonable period of time prior to this role, and I think that's an important set of experiences necessary for cost optimization and turnaround driving change. You'll hear a lot about that on the call, today. So a lot of time spent driving change, driving turnaround, driving cost out of business, in order to, to realize, maximize value creation.
That's a little bit on my background. The rest you can read. Fredrik, let me quickly hand to you for a quick intro of yourself.
Yeah, thank you, Adam. Yeah, similar to Adam, I also have, you know, a mixed background of private equity, but also big companies like General Electric and Nielsen. And I spend time in startups as well. So I bring a mix of skill sets to the table. And with that, Adam, let's move on.
Very good. So you can see the table of contents here. We're gonna talk a bit about the transaction and the background. We'll spend a bit of time talking about the market and the business overview, and then we'll spend the back half of the call, taking questions and providing answers for those of you who have questions. Stefan will help us orchestrate that. So let's keep moving forward. Stefan, if we go to the next slide, please. I'll start with a very brief history of the company. The slide will catch up in a second. There's a small delay. But if you think about everything that we've been through and we've been doing as a company, you know, there has been and we've talked publicly about this.
There have been some challenges geopolitically and in terms of the overall market as it relates to mobile. I was very vocal about this when I joined, late last year. I talked about this in October on our interim Q3 earnings report. So these things aren't news to anybody, but they are a significant background to what we're talking about today. We've seen a lot of price pressure in the mobile business and some challenges in that business too. And then we've also had the convertible bond that Christian talked about just a second ago. So that's a bit about the context.
What this is about is moving us into the future, though, because if you put that aside, we've got a really good-going concern: strong margin, good businesses that we're in, some existing markets that are already seeing growth, some new markets that are bets for the future, but those markets are being pulled down by mobile. So it's really important that we focus on those markets that are very positive and defocus on the mobile market, that it's not. And that's exactly what this rights issue is all about: us focusing just on those markets, getting out and, and winding down the mobile market to stop the cash burn that that market is creating, and then also strengthening the balance sheet as a result of the changes in the convertible loan moving to equity instead. So that's a bit of background on what we're doing here.
But the fundamental important point is we've got a very strong-going concern when you take mobile out of the picture, which is why we're taking mobile out of the picture and running a profitable business. Next slide, please. So I've talked about transformation. As I said, back in October, we started this transformation journey. When the slide comes up, you'll see on the left what that strategic transformation program contains, what it looks like. And that's what we're focused on driving today. So firstly, a portfolio refresh. What does that talk to? That talks to focusing on those profitable lines of business: payment, access, and, of course, PC, but not focusing, removing, moving away from the mobile business. It's been a real challenge for the company and a cost burden for the company. That's what portfolio refresh is all about.
I'll spend a little more time shortly on the next slide talking about the portfolio and how we see that moving forward. The second piece is around cost optimization. So we've talked publicly when we did the press release for this rights issue on Friday about driving cost out of the business. When we first started the transformation back in October, we talked about getting our OPEX down to SEK 180 million annualized in the second half of this year. As we've come towards this second phase of cost optimization because we took some cost out back then in October, we've identified a few other savings that we can make as well. So we've actually brought the cost envelope down to SEK 150 million, and we've identified and started as of last Friday to execute our plan to bring the cost down to SEK 150 million.
That's what we're focused on doing towards the end of the year. That plan is in place. That cost is now coming out. But obviously, it takes time to take that cost out of the business. That cost will be out by the end of this year. Number three, strengthening the balance sheet. We'll also talk about that on the call today. I'll ask Fredrik to spend some time talking about that, particularly as it relates to the convertible and how we're restructuring capital in the organization there. Number four is around strategy. The company kind of got stuck before I joined. It was really treading water, should we say, in some of the markets it's in. So the strategy that I've bought in and put in place around platform we'll talk about a little bit later.
But that's about how we capitalize on this amazing market that we're in. The biometrics and more broadly, the identity market is a fantastic opportunity. It's a large market. It's growing in double digits. So there are good opportunities for us to continue to expand as a company. I won't spend much time on bucket five and bucket six. I've put them in there because we've talked about those publicly previously. They are important pillars of the plan. We will touch on organization a little bit later, but that's the full six-point plan. What you can see on the right of this slide here is that all of those things are about driving stability. That's what this rights issue is about. It's about getting stability back in the company by cutting off the piece that's draining capital, focusing on those pieces that can be run profitably.
That's very much what this stability phase is all about. Next slide, please, Stefan. Before we talk about cost optimization and we talk about capital and strategy, I wanna talk a little bit about the portfolio refresh. As I've been very clear on saying, and as Christian touched on in his opening as well, this is about us stopping the piece of business that's costing us money, that's losing us money, that's not profitable, which is the mobile business. The first thing that we've done is to discontinue mobile. We started that when we announced it on Friday as the second phase of the transformation program. That cost is now coming out of the business, and that stops the cash burn. That's been a real challenge for us. We've been in that market for a long time.
It's the market that made us famous as a company, but all things must come to an end. That market is commoditized. We can no longer realize anywhere near a selling price that's viable to deliver the margins necessary. And therefore, we've had to wind that business down. That ASP has been declining for years, and therefore, it's come to a point where that market is simply no longer tenable. So removing that market is a really important part of the portfolio refresh. However, the good news is that there's a number of businesses that remain in the company that are performing well. PC's been growing well. It's been increasing as a percentage of our overall mix. We see a continued opportunity to continue that growth trajectory, in PC as well. Not only that, PC has got great margins. So it's a good margin business.
We continue to innovate and evolve in the PC market. As we move forward, there's even opportunities to go multi-modal. Instead of selling one modality to sell more than one modality with iris is a good example of something we're looking at there. We can also expand further in PC because we've got great customer relationships with Lenovo, Asus, Acer, and Dell. We're not yet selling with HP. We started that process. So there's an opportunity for market expansion, not just in terms of more technology, and a greater sale for customer, but also in terms of more customers with HP and potentially Microsoft Surface too. So a few other targets that we can go after in PC and some more products that we can sell there too. So some good opportunities there. On the payment side, that's more of a nascent market.
We've spent the last few years creating a market, seeding the market. What does that mean? Investing and innovating new technology, building out a really strong ecosystem with the likes of Thales, IFX, Infineon, Visa, Mastercard, and others, and building out that ecosystem so that there is a product that's viable in the market. That also includes things like enrollment, that it is easy for consumers of biometric payment card to use those products, easily without failure. So we've been really focused on that. That's now functioning. So the next piece of work that we're focused on this year is to focus on demand side, working with the likes of those partners I've mentioned, working with end customers to drive adoption in that space. So some interesting opportunities ahead as we now go from seeding the market to growing the market.
And then on the access side, it's been quite a lumpy business, access largely dependent on construction in the Asia market, somewhat the same in a very fragmented market outside of Asia. But already, we're seeing nice growth now in what we call logical access. So not just selling door handles and fingerprint sensors for gun safes and fingerprint sensors for cold crypto wallets, for example, all of those things we do today, but actually moving to the FIDO market for logical access to allow people to use a biometric device for access to applications, etc., in the digital domain. We're seeing a lot of growth now in that segment, which bodes well for the future. And then the final pillar that was launched back in May last year is new business.
That's about expanding the capabilities we already have into new markets, markets like connected vehicles, but also into our existing markets like PC, for example, where we also wanna use additional modalities like iris. But that also includes things like monetizing our patents. So we've already done some great work on that. We'll be seeing the benefits of that very soon, but starting to monetize patents where others have infringed upon our valuable intellectual property. So that's a bit of a rundown on the portfolio opportunity. Let me come back to you, Fredrik, on the next slide. And perhaps you can talk about cost optimization followed by the capital structure.
Yep. Thank you, Adam. Let me build then on the six-point plan, the transformation plan that you talked about. And I'm gonna talk first about the second point, which is on the cost side. And then we'll switch to the third point, which is the balance sheet strengthening. So this slide tees up what we're doing, regarding optimizing our cost structure. But first, you need to know that we are absolutely laser-focused on getting to positive cash flow. Like, it's all about stabilizing and getting to positive cash flow. And cost is a major enabler for this. So we've set a gross OPEX target of SEK 150 million by end of the year. And we feel that this is appropriate given the portfolio refresh Adam just walked you through.
In terms of enablers that we control, one is, you know, we are winding down mobile. So, you know, we can right-size the company, for the new, call it, revenue and business footprint. The second thing is, you know, purely around operational and financial discipline. And we are disciplined. And we can see, in the text on the left-hand side, you can see that our FTEs have already started to trend down. And labor cost is by far the biggest cost bucket in our gross OPEX. And we control how many people we have. So we feel that we are fully in control in terms of executing the majority of the part of getting to SEK 150 million of runway run rate cost.
If we switch to the next page, I just wanna spend a minute or two on the capital structure, which falls under strengthening the balance sheet. So what we're doing here is we are redeeming the convertible bonds. And we feel that this is gonna have several positive effects. Let me talk to you about three of them. One, and it's really important, it will significantly lower our cost of capital, okay? Lower cost of capital. Two, we will gain a lot more financial flexibility, which we need to execute on the transformation plan that we are laying out in front of you on this call. And finally, we wanna put all the investors on the same playing field. This is important to us. You heard Christian in the beginning, you know, kind of mentioning to that effect.
With that, Adam, let's move back to you.
Very good. Thank you, Fredrik. So I'll touch on strategy a little bit before I bring us home and we go to some Q&A. In terms of the strategy, as I said earlier, we're in a really hot market. It's a $40 billion market, 14% CAGR. The reason that it's such a strong market is because the current way of doing business isn't working. Passwords are failing. People are looking at better ways of connecting securely in the digital domain. At the same time, the biometrics today is spotty. It's still a bit hard for a lot of people to use biometrics. We're seeing a rise of deepfakes. So some of the modalities that have become more popular recently, like face, are now waning a little bit because deepfakes started to arise.
And therefore, it's challenging, the efficacy of those modalities. And so we believe there's a very strong future for, for what we see in front of us, as a future where it's multi-modal. It's not just being the best at one single modality, but allowing multi-modality for improved security and a very easy user experience. And so we can achieve that through the multi-modalities that we have today, fingerprint and iris. We have some face technology too, but also through partnerships in other modalities. But it's not just about the modalities themselves. It's also about bringing data into this. There is amazing data out there that we can partner on to even further improve the precision we make for identity 'cause biometrics on its own isn't, isn't the answer. It's about identity as the outcome we're looking for. And biometrics is a part of that.
When coupled with data, that becomes very powerful. So when you bring all of those things together, you can make a very, very strong pro prosecution of someone's identity. Not only that, you can make a better prosecution than you can do so with just a single biometric modality. But you can also make that prosecution on an ongoing basis, not just letting someone in and then they can do what they want. They have to just fake it once and they're in, but actually continuous authentication, passive authentication, using these technologies, for a higher security outcome, a better customer experience. And so today, our focus is around those modalities, around how we can leverage iris more effectively 'cause that's something we have in our portfolio, and then how we can expand beyond that for better triangulation, for better choices, and to be deepfake-proof.
Lots of things that we can do there already and some expansion there too. In future, where we wanna go is bringing in data to support that. But most importantly, that piece in blue, having a platform that we can use to integrate all of those things together and inject into a given customer's workflow so that they can easily capitalize on these capabilities as they look to ascertain their users, identify new customers, do IDV, etc., etc. So lots of possibilities, particularly in the software domain, as we expand into that with our core focus today on those modalities that we already own. So let me move forward and talk about Thales just quickly. I did mention Thales was obviously a part of the overall, the overall transformation plan. In order to facilitate this turnaround, it's a big turnaround.
To facilitate it means bringing in World-Class Talent. Christian, who you met earlier on the board, Chairman of the Board, joined in early to mid-2022, World-Class Leader on the board. Brought me in in September 2023. I've brought in Fredrik Hedlund recently to help lead the organization. We've also made some other changes that we'll be announcing shortly this afternoon to the executive team too, to really gear that team up to take us forward and progress us from where we've been stuck in the past. This leadership team is a team who's absolutely seasoned in driving change, a leadership team that is very, very focused on performance and operational excellence, things that the company really, really needs to have in its culture in order to be successful. The team is motivated.
There'll be a long-term incentive program that we seek sign-off from the shareholders from in the forthcoming AGM to ensure that these people have real skin in the game and are focused on the outcomes that we're seeking. So a very, very strong leadership team we've put in place, very experienced leadership team to drive this nature of turnaround. So let me come to the final slide. And then I think we can pause for some Q & A. And I will hand to Christian for some final remarks before we do so. But this is really about cutting the cash burn that mobile's created. So getting out of mobile immediately starts to take the cash burn down to manageable levels and then get us focused on those remaining markets that are in their own right profitable by putting the right cost optimization plan in place.
We feel very good about the cost optimization plan. We feel good about our ability to run this as a profitable going concern. And these are the things that we're doing in order for us to get there. The good news is, as we put that cost optimization in place and we get out of mobile, the markets that remain are markets that are much higher margin. So good markets for us to be in. And absolutely, then lends itself to a profitable going concern. As a part of that, it's also about cleaning the balance sheet. So our cost of capital is about is, is the right size for us, but also to make sure that our destiny and our turnaround is aligned with that of our shareholders.
There's nothing depressing the stock price in the balance sheet of much better balance sheet for overall market growth as well. And then finally, having that team incentivized. Of course, we've got a strong strategy in place, but it takes time and effort to drive a strategy, to execute a strategy of that nature. So putting the right team in place and, as I said a moment ago, having them incented to get the best possible outcome for the company in terms of execution, which then manifests in stock price valuation, of course, too. That's the core of the plan. That's what this is all about for us now as we come to this stage in the transformation plan. With that, I'm gonna pause. Christian, let me hand to you for any final remarks.
Stefan, perhaps we can go to Q & A from there.
Thank you, Adam, and Fredrik for that. I think you summarized it well, Adam. Thanks to you and, and the team for all the hard work so we can present this today to shareholders. We've gone through some tough times for an extended period of time. As, as shareholders can imagine, it's a constant evaluation of continuing opportunity and fine-tune. But I'm very pleased that, we're actually here today with very firm and decisive measures so to be able to discontinue a, a large revenue business, but actually one that has been bleeding and costing the company, a lot over a very extended period of time so that we can now focus on what we see and what we have defined and a lot of the strategic moves that, that we already started to share with, with the market. Very, very excited about that.
It's a painful process, of course, with larger rights issues, as we talked about. But again, we have a lot of confidence. And this is really the new and next phase for the company, and those of us who are really strong believers in the company. But let's go to Q&A and see if we can expand on a few topics then.
Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star ,one, one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star ,one, one again. Alternatively, you can submit your questions via the webcast. Please stand by. We'll compile the Q and A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question. The question comes from the line of Markus Almerud from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah. Hi, gentlemen. Markus Almerud here from Carnegie. A couple of questions. Maybe the first one, if you could give us some details on exactly what does winding down the mobile business mean? That is, will you exit it altogether? Will you keep some parts? Do you plan to sell the technology, etc., etc.?
Yeah. Good question, Markus. Good to have you on the call. Thanks for the, thanks for kicking us off. So let me give you some more details as for your questions. What winding down mobile means that we cease operations in mobile. Obviously, that means that we will notify all of the staff involved in that business and make that whole operating team redundant. So we'll remove the cost out of that business. It's not just staff. Of course, there are other associated costs with that mobile business as well. So when you look at the SEK 150 million ongoing annualized OPEX envelope that we'll have moving forward, that obviously a huge chunk of where we are to get into that point comes from that mobile business. So that's a first part of it.
The second part of it is, of course, graceful wind down with our customers. The team will continue the work for another couple of months in that business to graciously wind down with those customers. That, you know, key part of that is, of course, making sure that we liquidate our inventory in that space and release the working capital associated with that. You know, some of that inventory's still coming in, some of it we already have. So just managing that whole process is an important part of the wind down plan as well. So those are a couple of the key, big rocks, shall we say, associated with winding that business down. By the end of the year, we don't expect to be deriving any revenue whatsoever from the mobile business and therefore don't expect to be making any losses from it either.
Mm-hmm. And that includes, I guess, the new business, the optical sensors that you are doing as well, the entire mobile business?
Yeah. I mean, optical sensors hasn't been something that's been significantly proactively developed by our company. You know, as we saw the ASP and the margins decline over the last few years, choices have been made along that time not to invest particularly in that because of the limited shelf life and the inability to monetize. So there's very limited capability, I would say, in there. But yes, that would also be a part of it.
Mm-hmm. And the remaining technology, do you think it's sellable? Or will you just close it down?
Great, great question. We are in conversations with a number of parties. We have been for some time. Obviously, none of those are conclusive at this time, hence why we're not announcing anything. Sometimes those conversations manifest in a positive liquidity event. Often, they don't. So there's always been conversations for years with different organizations who have been interested in our intellectual property in that domain. This is no different to any other time in the past. Of course, we're motivated to see if there's a monetization opportunity, but it would have to be the right one.
Mm-hmm. And then if we talk about the use of the proceeds because I think you have a bridge loan of SEK 60 million that you're paying back. And then you have the convertible, which you are also paying back. And then there's some 100-120 or something like that, if I do my math right, if it's completely successful, the rights issue, that you're filling up the balance sheet with. And I would assume that you will use those proceeds to accelerate the growth in the remaining business. Can you talk a little bit about those plans if they're ready? So how do you plan to accelerate?
Yeah. No, that's exactly right. I mean, this essentially is around accelerating the existing company. And we have some really strong assets in iris, as you know. I see a high potential for iris, particularly as we see the hardware bar come down, that we can deliver iris software over. So you think about it, iris is a very, very high-efficacy modality, right? You know, it's up to one in a million. In IT, we talk about five nines. In iris, we talk about six or seven nines. It's that high efficacy. So that when you convert that to software, that can be extremely powerful when you deliver over commoditized laptops, etc., so we see high potential in iris.
We see multiple use cases, both with existing customers, as you think about PC and multi-modal there, or as you think about new customers. And we've been publicly open about talking about the automotive sector with connected vehicles. And there are other segments, of course, too, as we see a PC revolution over the next few years where people start to use wearables instead of their addiction to their phones. We see opportunity there, of course, for iris too. So lots of potential for the iris modality. Lots of potential remains for our existing fingerprint modality, of course, also. And as I mentioned earlier, we're yet to see payment takeoff. There's still a lot of optimism in that market. We're seeing a lot of banks starting to gear up. And so important for us to see that momentum start to play out this year also.
That's where the proceeds go when you take out some of the other repayments on the convertible, etc.
Mm-hmm. And is it fair to say that where you have the most opportunity to drive acceleration is in maybe access rather than PC? That PC is already—I mean, you're penetrating it well already, and it's difficult to accelerate.
No, I don't agree with that, actually. I think we're seeing really strong growth in PC. I expect that to continue. It's far from saturated as a market. There are still more models that we can connect to. It's becoming the de facto means of connection. People prefer fingerprint over face because of deepfake concerns and privacy concerns, particularly privacy concerns with face. We're actually seeing continued expansion of the market share that fingerprints represent as a percentage of overall PC shipments. So I think there's plenty of opportunity in PC still to run. It's a bigger market. So we still see a lot of opportunity there. I would also say what I talked about earlier was when there's a couple of customers we're not in yet. So HP is a customer acquisition opportunity for us.
It takes time in PC, which is good and bad. It's bad because, obviously, we wanna go and acquire new customers now. But also, it's good because once you're in, it's very, very sticky. They value premium providers. That's something that hasn't been valued in the mobile market for some time, is a premium provider. We can we can monetize that with high margins profitably for some time to come. So I feel really good about that. I do also, though, you talked about access. I do still feel very good about the access market. It's, honestly, it's the logical FIDO access market that excites me most. I think there's real opportunity there. And we're only just starting to see the beginning of that. So plenty, plenty of scope within our existing portfolio, for, for incremental growth, Markus.
Mm-hmm. And then finally, maybe before I hand over to someone else, regarding M&A, is this something that you have been on your mind, or should we expect going forward that once you get out in mobile business, that you will be start looking at M&A talks as well? Or will this be mainly in?
Yeah. Great, great question. And, and, Christian, feel free to jump in on this one if you wish also. Here's what I would take you back to on this one, Markus. The second chart I showed where it shows the three-phase plan going from stability to accelerated growth to operational excellence, we're in the stability phase now. As we go through that phase, then I think we start to gear up for the accelerated growth phase. That's where M&A, I think, comes in as a really important factor.
Mm-hmm. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Good.
Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah, Stefan, Nadia, anything else?
At this moment, there are no further questions over the phone. I would like now to hand over to Stefan for any written questions.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you very much. So the first question, how does the company plan to address the continued competitive pressure in the biometrics market to prevent new areas from being negatively impacted in the same way as the mobile sensor business?
Very good. That's probably a good one for me. So, here's what I'll say. I welcome competition. And I think that, you know, in technology, you need competition to stay ahead of the game. You know, and I think there's opportunity for us to continue to innovate in our existing markets. And in doing so, maintain a premium that we were unable to maintain in the commoditized space that is mobile. So for me, that the company plans to address continued competitive pressure by staying ahead in innovation. But I would say that in several ways. Let me come back to the strategy view that I shared earlier. We can be the best in each of the modalities that we compete in. So we can be the best fingerprint sensor just as we are today.
We are the best sensor provider. We're also the best sensor provider regardless of form factor, whether it's, you know, on the payment card. We're undisputed the best there. We're the best in a number of other spaces in access that we play in. You guys may have read about some of the challenges, for example, that the U.S. had with some of their gun safes where there was a number of fingerprint sensors that were faulty. Gun safes weren't working. Anyone could get access. Very dangerous situation. We've come in and helped a number of providers solve that with our premium product. So, you know, a truly tried and tested, trusted product there. But we can compete there. But we cannot just do that. The game is not about that, about having the best widget.
The game is actually about looking at the outcome, which is around identity. So it's about having a set of modalities that you can start to use to triangulate an identification, an authentication process. So having a number of modalities we already do, we've got a head start there. I see partnership opportunities for us to do more in the multi-modality space. That's also how we stay ahead. And then longer term, how we stay ahead is continuing to move up the value chain, moving into software, moving into core platforms, as we look to not only, integrate those modalities together, but we integrate them with data input as well.
Finally, we ingest that into a platform to allow our customers to easily orchestrate that within their workflows for them to authenticate their customers, whether that's for an access management or an IDV use case, doesn't matter, same, same platform-based approach. So that's how I think about it in the short, medium, and long term in terms of competitive differentiation.
Thank you, Adam. You are taking down your cost level significantly. Will it not be hard for you to continue to innovate and compete with significantly fewer people?
Yeah. Fredrik, I'll ask you to jump in in a second. But just an opening remark from me on that would be, well, if you look at where most of the cost or a lot of the cost is coming out, it's from winding down mobile, right? So, you know, mobile isn't profitable. We cut the cost there, take that out. That's a huge amount of the cost reduction. Yes, there is more that we're doing, by the way, beyond that because we've found some other cost optimization opportunities within the business to right-size the organization, and to focus it on the markets we're pursuing. But I think about it like the laws of nature, gravity, right?
As you think about it, mobile has been this huge planet, and all objects are drawn towards it 'cause it was such a big part of our business in the past. It was 90% in the past. Most recently, it was around 65%-70%. So that takes up a lot of everybody's time. You take that out. Not only do you take the cost out associated with it, but you allow people then to not be distracted by that and to focus on where that premium is valued. So I see real potential there too. Fredrik, I'm not sure if there's anything else you wanted to add there too.
Yeah, thanks, Adam. Yeah, I mean, we all know big transformation plans are challenging. But, you know, being relatively new to the company, I think what Christian and Adam have done really well. I think they have exceptional clarity around the plan. I think they've resourced it well. And we're strengthening the balance sheet. So I think we are actually, you know, really well positioned to deliver on this. And I also feel there's a hunger in the company to become more agile, to become faster, react to client demand faster. So yeah, it's challenging. But, you know, I really believe I've looked at the plan at great detail. We've begun executing the plan. And, yeah, I feel good about it.
Yeah. So I will just answer that, even though I answered it first. I'll make a bit of a sandwich answer. So I talked about taking mobile cost out. But to Fredrik's point there, there's also efficiencies that we found, that actually right-size and make the company more simplistic. I've done a lot of cost takeout in my career. And what you find is that when you take that cost out, you actually simplify the organization. You make the roles more empowered. You make the organization more agile 'cause there's less layers and less, you know, clips being taken in the process. So certainly see that. And of course, there's non-FTE cost, mon headcount costs, that we can make savings on as a part of that too.
Mm-hmm. All right. Thank you. And, will you also be exiting completely from under-display sensors in mobile as you wind down mobile? And when do you actually?
Yeah, we're out of mobile. We're out of mobile. We're out of mobile hardware sensors. So we won't be doing under-display, over-display, in-display, you know, we're not doing it. We're getting out of capacitive. We are not selling hardware to mobile phone manufacturers.
Thank you. When do you expect mobile to be completely phased out?
The wind -down will be fully concluded by the end of this calendar year.
All right. Thank you. And is there anything else you can say, about the cost savings program, which is really big, if you could walk us through maybe, the program more in detail? And have you also disclosed the number of people that will leave the company?
I don't believe we've disclosed the number of people. But I kinda just did walk you guys through the cost takeout. So as I said, there are kind of three major buckets, right? There is the mobile bucket. So taking cost out of there is the biggest one. The second bucket is additional efficiencies that we've been able to find in an organization. So we've taken cost out of that. And the third one is around non-headcount-based costs, so really squeezing that out of the company too. We were really focused on non-headcount costs. And the reason for that is we wanna maximize the number of headcount we retain in the business to innovate and engage with clients. So that was a bucket we were very, very focused on as a company.
Of course, cost takeout, as I've said, I've done this a lot of times. Fredrik has done this a lot of times. It's very easy to say, "Here's the cost we're taking out." Executing that is really where the trick is, where the experience matters. And so that's something we're very focused on, is the execution. And we have a weekly war room to check in on that to compare where we're going with where we said we were gonna be, and to make sure that we're solving problems. And there will be problems that arise along the way to maximize the effective execution of the program. So very focused on the execution side to see that cost come out.
All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for all the questions. Let me now hand back to Adam, Christian, and Fredrik for any closing remarks.
Very good. Thank you, Stefan. So before I hand to Christian, just a couple of remarks from me. We announced the transformation program back in October. We took some cost out then. We talked about by the second half of this calendar year, seeing the remainder of that cost come out. We said we would do that. That's what we are doing. The good news is that the business that remains is high margin, much higher margin than the mobile business. There's growth in that business. There's additional incremental growth opportunities in those businesses beyond where we are today. And we can run that going concern profitably. So we feel good about this transformation. It's an important transformation. I think, frankly, it's been a long time coming. And this is exactly what the company needs to do.
With that, Christian, let me hand to you for any closing remarks you may have.
Thank you. And thank you for all the questions. No, maybe just adding a comment as it was raised, about really our investments into our organic plan. So again, fundamentally, the good news today is that we are now taking control of our financial future and destiny. Given the fact as we see today, by starting to wind down mobile, we see a profitable future for the business that we have today. And, Fredrik alluded to it. It's about execution at this point. And I would agree that we are very high confident in the plan that the team has developed. And, it was also mentioned, of course, accelerated growth and potential non-organic growth and M&A. And as we see our strategic roadmap, which is very ambitious and very exciting, I think definitely there's gonna be opportunities for M&A.
Some of these areas that we would like to be a leading player are quite fragmented. There's a lot of small companies with interesting technology, interesting resources, and assets that are actually either trading or being valued at quite attractive levels. So of course, we're going through this major exercise. But it's certainly on our roadmap to continue to evaluate those very carefully. So I can see that being part of our future growth as well. Yeah, I again thank you for all the questions. And we look forward. I know there's plans for an investor day. We talk a lot about our future strategy. And I look forward to meeting investors and spending some more time and digging into that exciting future. But thank you from me.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day. Dear speakers, please stand by.