Sivers Semiconductors AB (publ) (STO:SIVE)
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Earnings Call: Q4 2020

Feb 12, 2021

Speaker 1

Good morning, and welcome to this 4th quarter report from Silver Semiconductors. My name is Anders Storm, and I'm going to lead you through this presentation. And we will, as normal, have Q and As in after the presentation. So to start to summarize the interim report for Q4, Q4 revenue came in close to SEK 30,000,000, which was 17% year on year increase and a really strong EBITDA at SEK3 1,000,000 plus with adjustments, of course, for the social fees down to minus SEK3 1,000,000,000, but that is a clear growth in that sense and I get in 5 gs with 8 devices for the U. S.

Market, which we have estimated to an order value from 8 devices for SEK700 1,000,000 to SEK100 1,000,000 over the coming 3 to 4 years. We are now at 21 5 gs design wins total. We have got 2 new orders, 1 in October and now recently in January for SEK 15,000,000 from our first Fortune 100 customer. And we also strengthened the balance sheets a lot by converting the convertible bond. And We have close to SEK 250,000,000 cash in banked after the quarter end.

Photonics have So being able to have new research project within quantum technology, which I will talk more about. And we also have 2 new orders for beam former ICs for Taiwan in India lately, which is showing that the new beam former product is going forward. So looking at the numbers, growth 17% on net sales, which was really good in that sense, even if the pandemic is raging in the 2nd wave, it's not making it easy for many companies, but we've been able to capitalize on what we're doing so far and we're going forward. EBITDA was plus SEK 3,100,000, but there we have an adjustment, of course, for Social Security fees and you who follow us have seen that it was the opposite last quarter and that's connected to the share price going up or If the share price goes down, we get social fees reservations back and vice versa. Adjusted for that, it was minus SEK3,200,000, but still it's an improvement.

The adjusted EBITDA is an improvement of NOK 15,000,000 from last year year on year, which is a lot due to savings that has been done. And even if we actually are spending quite a lot right now on the work getting into NASDAQ, we're still being able to keep and improve profitability. And Photonics have been able to in house their the production for some parts, which is saving a lot of money. I I think it's a total €12,000,000 over the year and then also being able to increase prices due to really good products through the customer increasing net margins and so forth. Operating income actually was also very close to being sort of breakeven.

In this case, we improved the operating income by SEK22 1,000,000 compared to last year, which is really good. If we look at the full year, we came then we repaired some of the COVID issues for the year. We came in on a flat year, which I think is quite strong in this situation. We also improved the EBITDA if you look behind the curtain on the social expenses and so forth, it's actually plus SEK 20,000,000 in those numbers. And looking at the operating income, like DHT, we said that we did a large loss for the year, but you have to look at the sort of the effects of the embedded derivatives in the convertible bond that is sort of provision and so forth, which is not sort of should not affect the operating income.

So the actual loss was minus NOK56 1,000,000 versus minus NOK72 1,000,000 last year. So that is a very good improvement. And also cash in bank, it is very strong and it's really good to have that in our back now going into the NASDAQ and working hard to get on NASDAQ, more about that a bit later. If we look The segment reporting for the quarter, it's very clear that we have been growing in both areas this quarter, 42% in wireless that shows that our 5 gs stuff is moving forward. Photonics moving up 11%, also good performance.

We have increased a little bit quarter on quarter for North America to 68% and just a little bit on Asia. We're seeing more movements in Asia, but it's haven't sort of come through yet in this in results. So in general, I think we are in a good trajectory and looking to increase growth for the future of course. If we look at the significant events during Q4, Ampeon, the conversion was done, which was really good and at a good level. We also changed the name from Zilver's IMA to Silver Semiconductors, which everybody knows now and that has been even more good, I think, for the company compared to what we thought and the whole rebranding and everything really gets our name through much better everywhere and Everyone understands now what we are doing and working with, which is helping the company both from a sales perspective, but also understanding in the stock market.

We also received a 5 gs order from Siemens. We had this really interesting order I mentioned from 8 devices for 2 d RF modules in the 60 gigahertz bands. We've received our first order in India from our reseller and from the customer for Microwave. We had an order for $4,000,000 from the Fortune 100 in Q4 and plus 2 interesting future research project within Quantum, 1 for atomic magnetometers and 1 for LiDAR systems, which we'll see long term how we can sort of capitalize on that in our Photonics business. So the 8 devices fixed wireless access product is quite an interesting thing and the U.

S. Market is now on the brink of starting using this technology in volumes. And this product will then be used as the small cell and the home CPE unit and deliver gigabit speeds to the home. This is a full contract with everything included when it comes to production and pricing and all of that. The end customer to our customer is in the U.

S. And the R and D in this case is going very quickly and they go very quickly forward and they already have prototypes and hardware now. And it's going to be less than 12 months from start of project to getting finished products here. So that is quite unusual and really, really good that the company can show that they can move so quickly. Volume rollouts is expecting starting from Q3, Q4 and we already have an order as well for deliveries in Q2 with some smaller volumes and it's using our newly launched 2 d module that is 57 to 7 to 1 gigahertz spectrum, which is still, I would say, one of the most advanced modules compared to some of the legacy companies out there.

If we look at photonics then and the quantum projects, I mean, all of these things are research and we do it together with different organizations. We will probably not for many years see products here, but we're building for the future and it's important to build and look at new technologies and how we can affect that in this space. And quantum is becoming a quite a hot area and we have a really good R and D organization to handle these kind of things. And it's also something all our PhDs. As you know, we have 20 PhDs in the company, really look forward to be part of a very high-tech future project as well as the other things we're doing.

Another ongoing quantum project is the Quantum Key Distribution Solutions, which is a way of connecting data communication in a very secure way using quantum stages. And here I've put the picture in from Insight Quantum Technology, their estimates in different areas for how QKD can be used and so forth. And we are looking to see how that type of things we have could the sort of used in the market and we don't have a sort of a guesstimate just when we can see anything on that into the market, but We are working on partners and so forth as we have only the ships today and so forth. We need to sort of create the whole system level thing to be able to be used in the networks, of course. Then if we look at the events after Q4, we had the second order I talked about for the Fortune 100 here of SEK 11,000,000 and that totals now SEK 85,000,000 from that customer.

We booked also new 5 gs ordering from Taiwan and we have also recruited a new MD for our business, it should say MD then, for our business wireless business in Sweden to give me more time to focus on the listing process and the stock market and other things around the overall group business. If we look at the Fortune 100 customer again, As I mentioned, 2 orders now recently. We are still negotiating pilot lines. Unfortunately, I don't have any sort of new information on that. This will take time.

And as I said before, this is a long process. In total, it can take up to 4 years before we get into volume and we've done a bit over 2 years now. Photonics is, however, right now doing making CapEx investments to make sure that we are upgrading everything and working on securing that these pilot lines later on can be in place as well. And if we look at this picture I've shown before, now we added 2 more orders here and we started the first project in October 2018 and we are adding more and more things in there and it's going really well. The customer is quite happy with what we're doing.

They have invested the SEK 85,000,000 so far, which which is a lot of money just for R and D. We also received this other Fortune 100 order in April last year and The delivery has gone really well. They now are looking at Duke taking the next steps here. So we're looking forward to see if we can make the next step here in from the research phase to the product development phase or not with them. But We feel hopeful that we have done really good product for them.

So we'll see where that goes off in the next step. If we look at the design wins, we are at 21 design wins now and I can't go through every one of them, but I can give you a short update in certain areas. So ADTRAN and CCS, as you know, they are out there and they have a working product. They are installing it. I think it's like 6 or 7 places right now that I know of that they are rolling out.

So it is moving ahead, but They have, of course, been affected by and specifically in the trials. I know that they've moved many trials forward due to the corona in itself. So there are insecurities in that. Blue Wireless

Speaker 2

is also moving forward with

Speaker 1

the track to train applications. But the same thing there, there's not many people on the trains now in U. K. And so forth. So I think that they move forward a lot of the investments in that piece into 2021.

We hope to see that materialize in 2021 instead. Cambium is have actually put in an order now for volume and we're expecting them to be out in the market here quite soon with their products. And we also have the East European company, a very similar technology there at 28 gigahertz and we also see that they are on the brink of getting products out which we will hopefully be able to tell more about Zunem. I'm also going to show you a picture of the new Fujikura product. We expect that want to be sort of in the market in Q3, Q4.

And then we have some other products here. I can mention Amprion. They are still working on getting inside sort of any Tier 1s. And as you've seen the product we built with them, we are now winning and testing it out and we are in a place where the product is actually now in the market. You've seen the 2 latest press releases on that product for Q2, Q3 company.

So that is, of course, interesting. If you look at Airline, we go down a bit here. They have now won, I think, 20 proof of concept with customers that they're rolling out right now and they're on track to volumes in the second half this year. So that's really positive. So we can see many of these are moving ahead.

And And as you see further down ink devices is also there. And as I mentioned before, that's going to be rolled out in end of the year in full volumes preferably. So we have a very exciting year coming in here. We have a lot of other products going on and working really with them plus a really interesting pipeline with a lot of customers where we can see potential new design wins coming in for the year. Here you can see some of the European rollouts that ADTRAN is and CCS is working on.

We have the one in Sweden here and a couple of them in the U. All of them in the U. K. I mean, this was from 1st January. So it's a year ago that was actually allowed to start using this network due to licensing in Europe was allowed from them.

And so it's started quite well, but I think it will be more and more adopted as we go on and we can show really good usage of these technologies. So it's still in early phase, but Avtron and CCS is pushing on and I will say they are doing that all over the world as well. So we'll see more of their rollouts during the year. This is the new Fujikura product that was launched recently. We're seeing volumes from them, I would say in Q3, Q4 and it's good to see now that they have taken this product out to the market.

Being Japanese company, they are very, very rigid and want everything to be 100% correct. So they take everything very easily or slowly in that sense and but it's very positive now that they come to this phase. And Airline, as I mentioned, I mean, they won the best the price solution with the design win we have. It's sort of a multi gigabit data transfer via through walls. We can use that indoor to replace sort of traditional cabling.

We expect volumes from Q3 and they are in 20 early as partners who are trying this out. We've even bought companies from Sweden asking to get in contact with them. So it's a really interesting product and I think that will be a surprisingly in market that they are opening up even if they are a small company in that sense. So NASDAQ, this is what Me and our CFO, Robert works a lot

Speaker 2

on right now and also

Speaker 1

the rest of the company have done a lot of things. We've sort of finalized the pre audit with the auditors. And we have done a lot of changes based on that over the last 3 months. You've seen changes in the board, for example, and different things, adding new things into that, taking new policies and so forth. We had a kickoff meeting with Nasdaq this week with the auditors and Nasdaq themselves.

So that is really good. We started sort of the last part of the process. And of course, it always takes some time and it's not us how decides everything. It's the auditor who will say if we are ready or not, but we're doing whatever we can to be able to enter the list, of course. And the order to support that the legal due diligence started tax due diligence have started and the target is, of course, to be approved by the listing committee then.

And right Now the our time plan is pointing at June, but of course, it's not really up to us. But We do whatever we can to secure that. We're now when we're in this tight process and spending this much time on it, it's important that it's done in a correct way. Here's also an update of the shareholders. And I'm really happy to say that we have added more and more sort of retail as well as institutional investors.

I think just looking at Avanza now, I think we have almost 16,000 retail investors on Avanza and probably 20,000 in total. We have 19% is now institutional investors and we get more and more in and was very happy to see that the 3rd Swedish National Pension Fund joined us with a small stake here recently. And we are moving ahead in that direction to for the listing of course and adding more shareholders as we go forward. So I've been talking about this, why do I see that 2021 is going to be one of the most exciting years in the company history. I assume when you listen to what we're talking about here, we are doing a lot of things.

I mean, the NASDAQ Mail is saying that that's going to be something that never happened in the company's history before and getting ready for that is a big thing and it really helps the company also to shape up in all processes and so forth. We are also at the same time hiring a lot of people. I think we have 17 open positions now on our web page. 4 of those are another I think they opened our 1st office in the U. S.

Since we have like 68% of the sales there. Now we're moving in and we need to do. So we are currently interviewing for positions there and it looks really good and there's a big interest. And the customer sales funnel in all aspects looks better than ever. And we're really getting the message out and the market is becoming more and more mature for everything we're doing and it feels like we are at the right time at the right place, which is very important here.

And we're moving the design wins into volume orders now, and that's going to be really exciting to see. I mean, we are not the one who steerset, of course, our customer and the customer customer have to be successful for us to be successful. But I think it looks really promising. And with some clouds on the horizon with COVID and stuff still, but I think that should move us in the right direction for the year. And also the talks and the negotiations with the Fortune 100 for pilot lines are ongoing.

And if we can settle that during this year, which we hope of course, we can never promise anything. But if we can do that, that's going to be, of course, an extremely important step and a transformation of the company for the future as well when we get to that. So if we're looking then to summarized the year. This Q4 really strong EBITDA improvements, which I'm really happy with. And specifically, the Photonics team have done the job with getting to a sort of a profitable EBITDA over year on over the full year actually, which is really strong.

Also 2020, I think the revenue coming in on flat is really good. Even and if you look at the dollar who have fallen a lot over the year in percentage wise and we're still also that effect that we haven't talked about here. So it's really good to get in that place during this year, which has been very strange in that sense. We're still totaling 21 design wins. I should actually say 9 plus it was 12 plus last year and 9 plus net for the year.

150 sold 5 gs EVKs during 2020. That's a huge number. I think it's more than 3 times than last year, which is then showing that like the EVKs we're selling goes into the pipeline, whereas all of these are not sold to sort of customers that could go into volume, it's universities and all of those things. But at the same time, It is a really good thing to get into universities because that is our recruitment ground and an understanding of what we're doing and those people get out into the market in the future and building long term, it's really important. The 1400 customer is progressing really well.

We have 250,000,000 cash in the bank and we are leaning really, really forward now to use the situation we're in and I feel very confident that we are moving into this really exciting year in 2021. And thank you for listening in. And I'm now on my way to the next things and we will see interviews online later on. So have a great day.

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