Hello, welcome to today's press conference, conf call for Smart Eye with the CEO Martin Krantz and CFO Martin Bjuve. This will start off with a company presentation, then we will do a Q&A, where you, the viewer, can send in your questions. I will receive them. I will also be the moderator. With no delay, let's start the presentation. Welcome, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Hello from Gothenburg. We will start the presentation immediately. First, just a few words about the rights issue that has been announced during the night. Of course, the stock is trading down now, as is customary after a rights issue announcement. We have been in a process that started already right after the summer, where we have looked very carefully at different alternatives of funding because it was clear already before the summer that due to the delays in the automotive industry, we had too much costs in relation to the ramp-up of our automotive license revenue. We started the process of getting financing. We explored different tracks. We explored two different alternatives for equity track, the directed and the rights issue.
We also explored the debt track, which looked promising. As things progressed, we landed in the decision that we have to do this rights issue due to the size of the amount of money that we need to be fully funded all the way up until positive cash flow. Furthermore, I should say we also need to decrease the costs with approximately SEK 30 million a year or approximately 10%.
Those two things has now come into place, and we are very, very convinced that this is actually the best solution for the company going forward to be sort of standing on our own legs and be self-sufficient with enough funding to take us up until the ramp-up on the automotive volumes. We will talk more about that. Firstly, I would like to present Martin Bjuve. Martin Bjuve, you came in to the company only three weeks ago in the middle of this process or at the final stretch of this process. It's been very intense for you, of course. A warm welcome to you, Martin Bjuve, coming from Volvo Penta. You have the experience of a larger organization, a larger and global organization, export-oriented.
Yeah, please, maybe you want to introduce yourself as well.
Thank you. Thank you, Martin. I feel very welcome. As you said, it's into this process immediately then. As Martin said, I joined shy of a month ago. This is a very interesting company, very interesting future, very bright future, I should say. As Martin said, I come from the automotive industry, or not fully automotive, but the Volvo Penta, where we do marine and industrial applications. Slightly bigger than Smart Eye, but still not a very big company. I think I have a lot to bring as Smart Eye is maturing and growing here in the coming years. Thank you, Martin, for having me on board.
Sure. Just a short description here of the company. We say that we are the market leaders for in Human Insight AI. That's an umbrella term. In that term, we put eye tracking or DMS, as it's called. We put emotion AI and also other multimodal approaches to gain insights about human test persons or drivers or whatever. We have two business areas. It's automotive and behavioral research. In automotive, we have a business unit selling software to the largest OEMs in the world, already having more than one million cars on the road that are delivered. We have Applied AI Systems where we sell the aftermarket system and fleet product, we just recently received a design win for that.
I saw some speculation on Twitter actually that, yeah, we released it because we had delayed the release of that design win due to the rights issue. Of course not. We received the design win yesterday and published it immediately, I should say. Just a quick comment there. Research Instruments is our oldest business unit. Research Instruments is selling the most advanced eye trackers, remote eye trackers in the world, selling to researchers all over the world. We have Media Analytics, testing advertisement and media and content, and iMotions doing the multimodal software platform, very famous in behavioral research. This amounts to SEK 160 million in revenue for the first three quarters.
80% is right now in behavioral, 20% in automotive. That of course, will shift rapidly going forward when the automotive volumes start ticking in at a faster and faster pace. Talking a little bit more about automotive. We have, the reason is that in the 1950s and 1960s, seatbelts came in the cars and made the cars much safer and decreased the number of accidents on the roads thanks to the seatbelt. In the 1990s, the airbag did the same journey and came into the car in big numbers. In the 2000s, it was time for the, what is called active safety, which is active electronic systems that decreases the risks of accidents.
We are in the final stretch of the active safety epoch, where you turn cameras into the driver and monitor the driver and make sure that accidents are not happening. There's a lot of accidents because of sleepiness, drowsiness, and also inattention in cars. This has led to legislation that's kicking in in Europe in 2026, which mandates that all cars and trucks and buses, all vehicles, manufactured and sold in Europe in 2026 will have this system on board. We're talking about 18 million systems in 2026 in Europe alone. The global market right now in 2032 is approximately one million systems. It's a huge ramp-up that is ahead of us. Smart Eye, we sell algorithms to big car manufacturers through tier one suppliers.
We support this market with really advanced technology. We are part of an ecosystem where processor manufacturers, camera manufacturers and so on, where we all collaborate to make this happen. Smart Eye has, as of today, secured 16 car manufacturers. 14 of them are among the largest car manufacturers in the world. We are the market leaders here. No one else has 16 OEMs. The closest competitor to Smart Eye has 10 OEMs. On these 16 OEMs that we have, total, we have 103 design wins. It means we have 103 car models under contract that will eventually make it out in the market and produce license revenue for us.
We have, the market is to say that there's Smart Eye and one other competitor who is sort of leading the DMS charge. There is a few upcoming players that try to get into the market, but are also maybe more focused on interior sensing, the next generation software that's gonna come after 2026. It's yeah, it's very much a two-horse race right now. There is legislation coming up in Europe, as I talked about before, that mandates that it comes in 2026. Already in 2024, you will see a ramp-up.
These 102 design wins, if you calculate some sort of estimated lifetime value, I mean, this estimation is called an estimation because you know the license price that has been agreed upon with the tier one. You don't know exactly the number of cars that will be produced. Maybe you don't know the take rate in certain markets. You know, if it's Europe after 2024, it's a 100% take rate. For other markets like the U.S., Japan and Korea and China, the take rate is probably going to be lower. It's gonna be an optional system. Anyway, if you do all these calculations, and we have done those as good as we can, the total value of these design wins is SEK 2.6 billion, the 102 design wins.
If you calculate the value of the potential value of getting more design wins on the same platform. As an example, we get BMW in 2015. Between 2018 and 2019, we get 10 more BMW car models. The X5 was the first, and then we get 10 more car models during two years on the same platform because it's so easy for BMW to give us the same cars when they already work on one car on the platform, it works on the other cars on the same platform. If the same thing is happening with the rest of the 15 other OEMs, there's a potential upsell of $4.5 billion.
In total, a little bit more than SEK 7 billion is sort of like a good estimate of what might come in from our current customers in the period between, yeah, really the start of production from BMW, which was a couple of years ago, up until approximately 2030 or slightly thereafter. Each car model typically lives for seven years, and typically you don't change supplier during those seven years. Also, there is a lot of procurements going on. The rest of the market is waking up, so to say, outside of Europe, and there's a lot of big procurements with big core OEMs and big Tier one's going on. We estimate it to be approximately SEK 10 billion worth of, let's call it, like, qualified leads or whatever you wanna call it, in the period during the next 24 months.
Giving some guidance here or some insight about what do we think the future looks like? This is our latest estimation of the total market. We estimate it to be approximately one million cars being produced with driver monitoring software this year, 2022. We have approximately 50% of that market right now. We see it's gonna increase dramatically, because in 2026, there's a hard stop in Europe. All 80 million cars in Europe need to have this in 2026. Already 2024, every car that's gonna be homologized, to get a type approval from 2024 onwards, each of those cars needs to have this, and it needs to be produced and sold at 100% take rate with this in Europe from 2024.
We see that the ramp-up goes quickly from 2024 and onwards. We estimate between six million-11 million cars globally, many of those in Europe, of course, in 2024, and between 25 million-45 million cars globally in 2026. Of those, 25 million-45 million cars, 18 millions of those will be in Europe in 2026. Maybe we will not be able to defend a 50% market share all the way up until 2026. Of course, it's... Maybe that's a stretch to say that we will have such a huge market share in 2026, but we intend to have no one ahead of us. We intend to continue to be market leader up until 2026. Why can I state that?
I'd say that most of those volumes have actually order been sourced directly or indirectly in terms of the OEM deciding which Tier one and Tier two supplier, who is going to supply these cars. We are in a great position having more OEMs than anyone else. After 2026, there's a new development coming in the marketplace, and we have, we are already right now participating in procurements for this new development of the market. It's called interior sensing. Instead of just zooming in on the driver's face and analyzing the driver's face in great detail, you are going to look in the entirety of the car. The whole car will be monitored with different types of cameras, with wide-angle lenses, and there might be one or there might be two cameras, and they will...
can be mounted in the roof or in the rear view mirror position. This is going to increase the market size. We will be able to bring a bigger value to each car, more software, more advanced software. This is advanced artificial intelligence-based software. It's neural networks that we need to train. It's a great development. Right now, since COVID has created delays for the regular DMS implementation, especially in Europe, where it starts to become sort of hectic to source the last few European car models, we see that the interior sensing has most likely also been delayed with approximately one year. The ramp-up of interior sensing is delayed by a year, just like the ramp-up of DMS is delayed one year. We intend to...
I mean, our ambition is to also be market leaders both in DMS and interior sensing, of course. Last but not least, the research side of Smart Eye. We have three vibrant and very dynamic business units inside of behavioral research. You have Research Instruments, the most advanced remote e-eye trackers since two decades. Quite a famous player when it comes to research eye tracking. Research customers, universities, institutes, corporates and others, all over the world with a lot of focus on simulation training, aviation, automotive, and also with supplying products to usability players in the market. You have Media Analytics, market leader in testing of advertisement, media, and UX testing.
We have iMotions with a really amazing hardware-agnostic software platform for multimodal research. These technologies that Affectiva and iMotions has brought into the Smart Eye group, it's the market-leading emotion AI platform, which is very, very important for interior sensing. You have the multimodal software platform from iMotions, which we believe will be the next evolution of automotive interior sensing, where you can sort of move into the health and wellness applications and being able to detect stress and whatnot inside of a car. These are really amazing technologies. What we saw with. We started as an eye tracking company selling to research.
The automotive industry came to us. Together with automotive customers, we developed the technology so that it became stable enough and mature that it can go into the car because our customers told us it was very desirable. It would make the car safer. That created a positive feedback loop, where these innovations that we made along the way could be fed back into our research product, we could sort of accelerate the whole process of putting it into the car. We see, we wanna do the same thing now with Affectiva and with iMotions. Those are technologies that deserve to go into the car and make the car safer and make the experience of riding your car better, both for passengers and drivers.
Okay. Good. Thank you, Martin. Some finances, and to sum up a bit what Martin has talked about up until now. SEK 164 million in turnover year to date through the third quarter this year. 80% of that is behavior research business, so what we've been in for a long while, where we have strengthened the position by the acquisitions that we have made recently. Very profitable, as you can see, and also growing, which is important for the ongoing discussion here when it comes to questions as well. A good base business that is also basically cashflow generation. Generating, sorry.
The big upside, however, for Smart Eye, as Martin has elaborated in a very good way on, and that you all know, is within the automotive industry with the design wins that we have won and secured that Martin described. We have this secured design wins of approximately 2.6 billion SEK that we estimate the value to be. The upside on platforms where we have already won at least one design win, the value of that over a life cycle is 4.5 billion SEK. That is really what makes the business case for Smart Eye very strong. As Martin shared, legislation in Europe defines when the ramp-up of these volumes will happen.
We start to see an acceleration in 2024 in our business plan due to the fact that any car that has to be type approved from 2024 has to have a DMS. Legislation comes into effect in 2018 in Europe. There we are very well-positioned then. The ramp-up in our business plan that we will talk a bit about is back-end heavy, but it's clearly defined by legislation there. In the short term, you know, in the last couple of years, Smart Eye has been challenged by, as Martin said, COVID-driven activities among the OEMs, where they have replanned their production schedules.
They have rescheduled their product launches in the last couple of years, which has pushed the ramp-up of revenue generation for us in terms of license fees. We still see the 2024 and 2026 years as really milestones for us. In that period, however, Smart Eye has strengthened our position, as Martin talked about. We announced one design win this week with a new OEM that we haven't had any designs with before. In the whole period since the COVID outbreak, we have contracts with eight new OEMs that has, you know, generated with these OEMs and the previous ones, 50 new design wins in the same period. Of course, we're in negotiations about more, as Martin indicated.
The total then value of these design wins and the upside on the same platform is really what makes the business case very strong for me. If you look on behavioral research, which is the base part of our business today, the acquisitions of Affectiva and iMotions has really strengthened our position in behavioral research. We see in our business plan that the growth will continue there. It's also positions us well for what's to come in the automotive industry beyond DMS when it comes to interior sensing then. That's really where these two acquisitions make sense in the longer term strategy. Okay. A couple of words about use of proceeds, Martin. We will. It's in the press release, so you have seen it.
It comes in order of priority and also how we approximately we will spend the proceeds, where the focus will be on R&D for DMS systems to continue the work and ensure the contracts and the product plan that we have in within DMS. Also to keep developing interior sensing that we see, you know, is the guarantee for continuation of the success of the company beyond DMS. That's where we will spend some money. Martin mentioned also the AIS, which is our standalone off-the-market product where we sell a hardware and a software for the automotive industry. It's also to continue with that business development and commercialize that product where we see actually a ramp up in our plan already from 2023.
How we will use the proceeds.
What about behavioral research? It's not on the list.
Yep. You want to comment, Martin?
Yeah. You can comment or whatever.
No, you go ahead.
Yeah. Basically, we see behavioral research is gonna grow at a brisk pace, supported by its own cash flow. We don't intend to inject money into behavioral research business area.
Good. I will come to that when we elaborate some on, I guess one of the questions that are hanging out there, will the proceeds take us until we generate our own cash?
Yes.
I think that is one of the main questions that Mark has probably seen in the chat coming in here. I will give you my view here, and then we will certainly take some questions on it. My view or our view, I should say, Martin, that we have built a business case that gives us comfort that we will have enough money until we generate our own cash. There is four building blocks basically in that. That is, first of all, as Martin said, behavioral research, which is a good business today. We're well-positioned, it is growing, and it's generating its own cash already today. That will continue to grow. You see growth this year, and we will continue to grow that business. That is one of the building blocks here.
Of course, the automotive is the big upside, as we talked about. It is about DMS systems then, we have a good visibility there, I wanna say. We know which OEMs we have contracts with. We know their production volumes, we know their ramp-up plans, we know the pricing. We can model fair with, you know, a good visibility on how that will ramp up, which is an important cornerstone in our assessment of the business case from an internal perspective. We have benchmarked this. We've gotten some help from a third party to help us estimate, you know, or benchmark our estimations on the ramp-up.
We feel comfortable with that as well, someone that is known in automotive industry and that we know well. We can predict that ramp-up fairly well. We feel comfortable with that. I should say we see an acceleration from 2024 in license revenue due to the legislation. You know, we will have the big effect between that and 2026.
Yeah. 2026 is basically a hard stop.
Yeah.
For Europe.
It is a hard stop for Europe.
18 million cars will have it.
Yeah. The fourth building block then is, and you saw that in the press release that we have announced, and we have actually already launched it, a cost saving initiative here where we are reducing personnel expenses with approximately SEK 30 million on a running basis, on a yearly basis, to give us, first of all, you know, control over the cost development, of course, but also to create some safety margin in that period from now until the end of 2024 when we say that we will be cash generating.
We are building in already now, some safety margin and we are also ensuring that we can control the cash going into that, the cash flow going into that period by taking control of the cost in that way. Okay?
Yep. All right.
Good. That was our last slide, Mark.
All right. Thank you very much, Martin and Martin. Let's start then. Why are you not showing the full disclosure, including price in the press release?
Yeah, it's because we are launching it now in the beginning of December, we will not be able to finalize it until the end of the year. Together with our advisors, we had to really, yeah, we had to make a decision since we're not gonna do it on this side of the year, we are going to need to give an early guidance of the Q4 result. It was needed for our current owners who have come in and guaranteed for the guarantors, and also we believe for everyone participating in the rights issue.
It means that we need to have a bit of time to get that guidance, Q4 guidance in place. The goal here right now, the time plan is to have it on January 20th, right?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Then we execute the right issue as soon as possible thereafter. Then it's, it'll be late January, early February before you can sign for your rights. Then it is a bit tricky with the volatility to put a fixed price. We examined different companies who have done rights issues in the Swedish market during the last year, so to say. We say it's was approximately half and half or so, or I don't know exactly the ratio, but we looked at the different companies and basically you can see that.
It's not obvious. I mean, there's pros and cons whatever you choose, but together with our advisors, we choose to do it this way. Do you wanna add something, Martin Bjuve?
No, I think you're right, Martin. Given that time period and the fact that we as management want to participate and then that there are owners in management, we need to create that time period. To set the terms close to the subscription period, sorry, is what we came up with as the best way forward.
All right. Could you comment a bit on how this fully covered rights issue situation happened?
Yeah. It happened that we thoroughly explored the different alternatives or basically, three main alternatives. I mean, you have the rights issue, you have the directed share issue, and you have debt track that we explored. We were sort of, we had, we felt that the current owners were always supportive, which made it possible for us to explore these three alternatives. Given that the, it became more and more clear how much delays are we actually seeing due to COVID in the automotive industry and its launch plans and so on.
It became clear we needed approximately SEK 300 million to secure the funding all the way to cash flow positive stance in late 2024. Given the size, and also, I mean, pros and cons here, I mean, it would have been with a directed share issue, it's going to give all the current owners the possibility to sign up for shares at a discount here. Sort of discount. Directed issue, we would have been necessary to give a discount to those who bought the shares in a directed share issue. Weighing all these things together, we landed in that this is best for the company.
All right. could you in short explain the, or talk a bit about the bridge loan as well?
Should I do that?
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a SEK 60 million bridge loan that we will take up now, and we will pay that off when the rights issue is finalized. It's, you know, competitive market conditions around that, so it's not going to be very costly to us and, you know, far from where any, you know, debt track would mean in terms of cost for us as well.
Yeah.
Y eah, it's a fairly standard setup.
Yeah. We saw interest rates increased while we explored the debt track.
All right.
Right. It's not a big cost to us. I think that's the.
Yeah. The main thing.
Main thing. Mm-hmm.
how did you decide on the SEK 325 million before deductions on transaction costs?
Yeah, exactly. I think it's about little bit north of SEK 275.
Yeah.
A ll the transaction costs and so on. That's basically what we need with a little bit of headroom just as a safety margin.
All right. We have received a lot of questions, on the same subject. Do you feel confident that this cash position will be enough before you turn cash flow positive?
I mean, as I said before, Mark, I assume that there would be a lot of questions around that. We have really worked through this business plan that, you know, obviously started before I joined the company, but we've been went through it quite a lot since I joined as well. With the building blocks that I explained before, with the good behavioral research business that is, you know, cash-generating and growing, that is one piece of the puzzle. We know You know, we can predict well when the ramp-up will come. And the fact that we are, you know, controlling the cost going into that period as well, we feel comfortable with that. Yeah.
If we are in a ramp-up situation, did you look at, like, making a smaller issue today and then make a larger issue like in the summer? Or how did you come to this solution?
Absolutely. I mean, that was basically when we looked at the different, the three different main alternatives, of course, there were also you could mix those alternatives together and so on. We felt, honestly speaking, we felt that making sure that we have enough funding, we have enough cash to stand on our own legs until the automotive industry really ramps up, until these 16 OEMs have their systems in full production. It's gonna be extremely positive for us when that happens. We see it really. It's 2024 is a key year for us in that respect. We wanted to be able to build the company now during this 1 and a half years it takes to ramp up fully.
All right.
Yeah.
Let's see here. Did the financial situation become like a problem if OEMs were, like, looking at you and you wanted to resolve that issue?
No, no, we've been around for 23 years.
The automotive customers, they know they will not get rid of us so easily, so. Yeah, a quick comment. How are management and larger owners acting on this rights issue? You mentioned it briefly.
Yeah. What I will do is that I will use selling those rights that I cannot use and use all the proceeds to buy shares. That's my strategy.
Yeah, I'm very new to the company, but I'm also, you know, making an investment in the company this year as well, so I'm, I'm putting money on this, on this business case. I think in general, our big institutional owners, they are taking their share and some indicate a bit more. On from a board and management side, everybody steps in there and contribute.
I, yeah. I think everyone would agree that I have skin in the game.
Yeah. We have also received a lot of questions regarding the cost base, and you are taking measures now to reduce personnel expenses by about 10%. Could you comment in a bit more detail on this cut, and whether it impacts your business and path ahead, and if not, why?
It's obviously a good question and what we really do is focusing, as we said before, to deliver on the projects that we've committed to and to make sure that we are well-positioned for taking additional DMS contracts. It's a bit more about time-phasing some future initiatives. As you see, you know, number two on the use of process list is to keep developing interior sensing. We keep investing in that as that you know, guarantees the success of the company in the longer term. We are time-phasing certain projects, you know, on more future-oriented technology, but we're not putting anything on hold. It's just time-phasing.
Right. It's almost the same question, but from another direction. If you're in the middle of a huge growth to 2026, surely, why are you reducing headcount, then?
You wanna take it, Martin, or should-?
Yeah. I mean, securing the current business comes first. We've seen it's approximately a one-year delay of the ramp-up of interior sensing, just as we see approximately a one-year delay in DMS. It means that we can, without risking too much, delay that part a little bit. Yeah, it's not ideal, of course, but it's good enough. I'll put it that way.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, another question here. How likely is it that all of your 103 design wins will go into production? The questionnaire here asks if you could give a percentage figure.
A good question. Should I give, like, X percent? I would say there are so many, the 103 design wins, surely not all of them will go in production. The vast majority of them will go into production. There's will be some shift here and there, in the wake of COVID, I should say.
I think also looking at the diversity among the OEMs and also the different car models, it's a good diversity here for, you know, for a portfolio thinking almost from that perspective.
Yeah.
Could you give an update on the delays and supply chain issues? Do you see how it's progressing?
Yeah. I would say that the peak impact was I should say second half of 2020 because many factories, both semiconductor factories and car factories were closed in Q2 2020. The peak impact was in 2020. Then the lack of electronic components is maybe the main cause of delaying the ramp-up of the production programs, the development projects. The whole supply chain issue is what has kept car production and vehicle production at lower rates than pre-COVID. We're seeing a ramp-up.
IHS, which is the main forecaster for these kind of things, their estimate is that actually that car production will be at all-time high in 2026 at 96 million cars, which is past the previous record from 2019, which was 94 million cars. It's coming back.
All right. Could you discuss your ambition for the aftermarket product?
Yeah. We had a launch, like I said before, we had a launch, our first, like, significant customer. We have been delivering the aftermarket product to fleet customers during the entirety of Q4, really. We had a breakthrough customer, a European luxury sports car manufacturer, very nice one, who will use our hardware and software system. Of course, not all the fleet product features with the LTE and GPS and so on, but they will use, like, the camera plus the processor box. In serious production from 2020-2024 and onwards on one of their luxury sports cars. It's a really nice one actually.
We have had some supply issues there as well, which we are coming out of and we see a ramp up of that business in 2023 already.
Yeah. Yeah. Basically our, we just before COVID started, we sourced the supply chain for the AIS product. We sourced that in China. Of course it has been problems with, both with components and lockdowns and the communication between the development teams and yeah. All sorts of problems actually. We're getting out of that now.
All right. Are you seeing any cancellations or is it still just delayed start of production? If you would receive a cancellation, how would you disclose that? Or would you?
Yeah. What we would do, we have had a few cases where the OEM has moved the system from one platform to the other platform. In one instance, they moved it to an entirely new car platform. In another instance they decided to go from having like a one box one feature solution into having a Multi-Domain Controller, which like a big central computer. They moved not car platform, but processor platform. This is some of the cases. We make sure if that is moved, we will not present it as a new design win. We will keep the number of design wins constant. That's how we address it.
We haven't had any cancellations, Martin.
No. Not at all.
Okay. From a viewer here, so, quoting, "Each new design win needs maybe 20 engineers to get to production. How can you get to production whilst reducing head count?
No, no, that's not correct. We don't need 20 engineers for new platform. It all depends. If we, for example, have delivered to a car OEM with a tier one on an Nvidia platform, for example, or on a Qualcomm platform, or Texas Instruments platform. If we already had delivered a similar project to someone else, then we can do the like the adaptations of the system.
With less resources.
With much less resource. I mean, we're talking much less. It's if we have a completely new car OEM with a new tier one, with a new hardware platform that we have never worked on before, that's when we consume the most resources. Right now we are delivering to so many OEMs on so many different platforms. Usually we can have some sort of reuse of knowledge and know-how and even. Yeah. We also have a code base that we use for all our OEMs. It's a common code base, actually, the core software.
All right. Can you detail the roadmap for the emotion AI products?
Ooh, we, our plan is to get it into production with the car OEMs no later than 2026. That's our clear ambition as a part of the interior sensing transformation, I should call it, of the automotive industry. It'll go from DMS, which is driver focused and safety focused into interior sensing, which is just gonna increase the whole experience of riding a car.
Let's see. We have received a lot of questions. I'm trying to summarize. Some of them are overlapping here. Just one arrived here now. Regarding the cut in the personnel costs, is this executed fully already or is this an ongoing progress? Yeah.
It's largely already you know, executed. You know, a big portion of it is consultants. Then, you know, depending on which legislation you adhere to, you know, you can make this faster or slower. The lion's share is already executed. The cost for that, which is nominal in the grand scheme of things here, we're gonna take that in this quarter. It's.
Is the Swedish union negotiations finalized?
Yes. No, it's not finalized.
Not finalized.
It's not finalized.
How much impact does the Chinese zero COVID policy play in this situation? Do you see any improvement? Do you have people in China watching the events?
Yeah, we have a small, let's say, sales and technology oriented team in Chongqing in China. It's there at various time during these two years there have been lockdowns. Right. I believe actually very recently there have been a lockdown in Chongqing. It's region dependent. I think Shanghai is the place which has been most severely hit by these effects. One of our hardware suppliers is in the Shanghai area. Yes, we have been affected, but at the same time we feel that we will be able to ramp up our production now here in the end of Q4 and in Q1 in spite of the lockdowns. It's far from ideal. It's a difficult situation.
Yeah. Understood. We have received a few questions also on like, the difference between EVs and petrol and diesel cars. If the EVs are more digital or how this could impact your business.
Yeah, I, they are more digital. I see the electric vehicles, I see them as computers, big computers with four wheels and a steering wheel on them. Yes, the, it's called a Software-Defined Vehicle. It's that you leave the whole concept of having one box, one feature, like one electronic box, one feature. Instead you collect all the sensors and actuators and whatnot onto a few very powerful computers. I would say almost all electric vehicles go this route. Also some legacy internal combustion engine and cars go this route as well. I see this is something which is definitely the road forward in the future.
Actually, we believe it could be beneficial for us because it could open up possibilities. We have seen it already. We have not one... Every one of the 102 design wins, 103 actually since yesterday, every one of those are, of course, on the more traditional, like Tier two, tier one, way. Going forward, we believe that we will be able to become a software tier one to certain OEMs who have this Software-Defined Vehicle architecture.
All right. We have also received a few questions about potential divestments. Have you looked at that?
Divestments? Oh, you mean.
Of the sub.
Are you mean, like selling Aptiv and iMotions? Oh, that would be so extremely shortsighted to do. I mean, these are technologies that belong inside of cars. Having sort of owning the research platform, it means that we are working with all the most famous, best researchers in the world, and it's a great source of information and knowledge and know-how for us that we can take and bring into the automotive industry. Of course you could do it, but it would be shortsighted. If you didn't believe in interior sensing, you could do it.
It sounds like a no.
It's a no. It's a big no.
Yes. Are you still attending CES or saving the cost of that in, for the circumstances?
This is really good question. I also been asked it here internally at Smart Eye. Now that we are, like, laying off consultants and employees, are we gonna go to CES? Yes, we are. It is important for us to show the latest and greatest interior sensing and driver monitoring technology to our customers. We have already paid it in advance because we paid it for attending CES in 2022, then it was canceled due to COVID. We are actually doing it on last year's booking. Yes.
All right.
It's a good question.
Yeah. We have also received, so, yeah, a lot of questions here in the feed, about a certain competitor and the deal with another tier one...
[how]
A nd how that impacts you.
Yeah, yeah. One of our competitors, they made a deal with a tier one. With that perspective and that in mind, I still think that this rights issue is the right thing for this company. What is right for another company I cannot really comment on.
Understood. We have also received a lot of questions, yeah, I'm paraphrasing. Are there any regulatory initiatives in the US or other parts of the world for DMS?
Yes. There are things going on both on the regulatory side and also on the equivalent to Euro NCAP, but in other regions. It's called NHTSA in the U.S., it's called JNCAP in Japan, and C-NCAP in China and so on. Both these, the actual law and the sort of the voluntary in organizations or, yeah, both of them, it's happening. It's not as clear as it is in Europe. In Europe you have this hard stop in 2026, which is a little bit unique. We, there is, we, the industry and ourselves and our colleagues or partners in the industry, we are, we're guessing that it will start legislation.
It was part of the big infrastructure build in the U.S., and that it will be part of legislation going from 2027 going forward. The timeline is not as clear as in Europe.
All right. Yeah, I think, that's all. Would you like to make, like, a final comment before we end?
You go ahead, Martin.
Yeah. It's a tough time for everyone. You see the stock price goes down, and if you're not able to subscribe to all the shares in this rights issue, it's a tough time, and that includes me, of course. I still believe this is the best for the company. We get the funding we need. The ramp-up is happening. We have more car OEMs, car OEM customers than anyone else, and that will pay off shortly. With this rights issue, we stand on our own legs and make our own destiny going forward, and that's actually quite good.
All right. Thank you very much and, thank you everyone for watching this and for the questions. Have a nice day.
Thank you, Mark.
Thank you.