Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the WISeKey International full year 2022 financial results earnings conference call. As a reminder, this conference call contains forward-looking statements. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of WISeKey International Holdings to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holdings is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad.
As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Carlos Moreira, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WISeKey. Mr. Moreira, you may begin.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon to all of you joining us today from both Europe, United States and in some cases from South America. I am joined today here in our call with our Chief Financial Officer, Peter Ward, that he will be providing a financial briefing after my introduction. Before the opening floor, we will also have a Q&A on which we will discuss growth opportunity for 2023 and beyond. 2023 was a year of major milestone at WISeKey, but it's also a transitional year as we made the strategic decision to operate as a holding company of several distinctive operational company that has been operated by WISeKey since many years, covering the full spectrum of WISeKey related technology. Currently holding company structure, WISeKey has four companies. One is WISeKey SA.
SA means Société Anonyme in French, which is the original startup, which is very much focused on everything which is cybersecurity, public infrastructure, digital identity, with a very famous digital identity project with the name WISeID. We have the WISeKey Semiconductor, which is the name of this company has been renamed to SEALSQ. S for semiconductor, Q for quantum, which is a company that has been a spin-off from the holding company and is now in the process of doing its own listing on the Nasdaq the 26th of May. On which last week the shareholders approved the spin-off and the listing on the Nasdaq. We have two startups, and they have been added during 2020. One is WISeSat.Space, which is a space technology picosatellite company.
This company has launched in cooperation with another startup with the name FOSSA, 13 picosatellite to space using a SpaceX. We have now 13 picosatellite in low orbit that they are being used to collect data from the sensors that we are installing in all sort of equipment. We'll come back later to that. We have another company with name WISe.ART, WISe.ART, A-R-T, which is a trusted blockchain NFT platform. This company acts as a major marketplace for NFT technology. People, organization, art, museums, galleries are using this platform to buy and sell NFTs, which as you know is growing very fast.
The reason why those companies are attached to WISeKey, and we believe enrich WISeKey, is that they act as a platform, means that the products and services of each of them, they are also accelerating the growth and the revenue generation of the others. The decision to operate as a holding company comes from our commitment to provide a very comprehensive and effective cybersecurity platform to our customer. We also believe that diversifying the operations from the holding company position us much better in the evolving needs of cybersecurity market while maintaining a central focus of our core business on securing the internet. You know, the cybersecurity is growing very fast worldwide as the number of attacks are exponentially increasing.
There is absolutely no enough cybersecurity companies in the present ecosystem that are able to protect consumers, institutions, governments against the ever-emerging threats. That position of WISeKey, which is already a 24-year old company, so we have a huge amount of experience and our cryptographic root key has been already expanded and downloaded over 6 billion times, position us in a very strategic position to provide to our clients this cybersecurity service that is badly needed. Each subsidiary has its own revenue stream and profitability targets. This enabling us to focus on its core strength and market opportunity. At the same time, each subsidiary has its own maturity stage.
As an example, SEALSQ, which is the company that is gonna be listed on the Nasdaq the 26th of May. It is a company that is already profitable. This was announced a few weeks ago when we announced the 2022 result for SEALSQ. Other companies like WISeSat, WISe.ART, they are still on a startup mode. That means that they are building their business model and their ecosystem. The way we sell, they are also different. In the case of SEALSQ, we sell microchips, semiconductors and certification for devices. In the case of WISeSat, we sell the launch of the satellite manufacturing launch and operation of the satellite. In WISe.ART, we sell the NFTs inside our platform.
Each of them, they have its own business model and revenue model. Over time, the objective will be to gradually IPO each independent company as we are doing now with SEALSQ, once they reach maturity. This approach will provide each subsidiary with the flexibility to operate independently while benefiting from the resources and support of the parent company, which acts as a holding, as a truly pure holding. For instance, from the holding we provide financial support, strategic support, marketing, communication, and social media coverage. It will also create a diversified business structure that is better positioned to succeed in the rapidly evolving cybersecurity market. That said, our main focus are, and it is, the Internet of Things and the development of SEALSQ semiconductor post-quantum offering through our subsidiary, SEALSQ.
With SEALSQ, our goal has been to maximize its potential on the semiconductor, which as you know, it is a very major issue in our current economy, as many governments, including the U.S. government and the European Union, are announcing very big incentivization incentives to semiconductor companies that they will help both Europe and the United States to reduce the dependency on semiconductor from Asian countries. Everybody is concerned if ever is a war between China and Taiwan, for instance, that we will be in a total disruption situation in order to be able to manufacture those semiconductor. Decentralization and the possibility of using the United States and Europe as a new hubs for semiconductor is not only a economic reality, but also a geopolitical requirement necessity.
We are excited about the possibility we see in SEALSQ with increasing demand for the connecting devices. As you all know, something like 1 trillion devices are gradually connected to the Internet, and every one of this device, they require its own security. As one device which is not secure can compromise the entire ecosystem. Let's say your smart detector at home or your ring door opener or any device that is used in your house to provide any type of analytics and services, digital services, can be hacked if it's not secure. This strategy will be more explained into my 2023 forecast that will be provided at the end.
As part of this strategy, we're investing in innovation and strong customer demand and execution, excellent, really put us in a position on a strength for the future. We continue to see a solid demand in the, as I mentioned, in the post-quantum chip roadmap. Post-quantum is a new generation of chips that they are being developed by WISeKey with the... in view of being able to protect the microchips against a quantum attack. Quantum is coming. Quantum computers are about two to three years to be available and commercially available, and whoever owns and operate a quantum computer will be able to decrypt existing algorithms inside microchips. Being able to provide post-quantum resistant algorithms is essential.
For that, WISeKey has been very active through the SEALSQ team by establishing R&D partnerships with leading universities, like they call The MINES in France, which is one of the leading quantum universities in the world, and also with international community to find cryptographic algorithms that will resist future quantum computer-based cyberattack. SEALSQ on-chip and cloud solution are also provided services with Matter. Matter is a new standard for certification in the United States that basically forces company to provide a Matter certificate in order to be able to sell their hardware anywhere in the market. Let's say a connected device at home, a manufacturer would like to sell to the market through eBay or whatever. If they don't have a Matter certification, that device will not comply with the legislation.
This is an element that accelerates sales as WISeKey has Matter certification, plus it's a certificate provider of Matter . It's only about 12 companies in the world that has reached the Matter certification. Many of them, they are very large company in the United States. We also, as I mentioned two years ago, we invested substantially in blockchain. Blockchain and AI are elements that basically reinforce our platform. Blockchain because we decentralize identities in the blockchain ledger ecosystem. We have done amazing projects like for instance, the Wolfers, where we from the space, we minted a NFT that was stored into a Casper blockchain. This was announced in New York with Brooke Shields in an amazing event that we organized last year.
It shows basically that in the future, you will be able to NFT any device, any object, and with that NFT stored into the blockchain, anyone, anywhere in the world can verify the identity of that object. Obviously having the space technology in our portfolio allows us to also provide connectivity from the space, as only 10% of the Earth is connected. We still have 90% which is not connected, and we expect a huge amount of demand on projects, and they would like to track and trace objects in the middle of the sea or in the middle of the desert or in the middle of Africa. For that, this combination between identity, satellite and blockchain is very powerful.
Everything relates to logistic processes, will be facilitated by the geolocalization of the product. I am turning now the call to Peter, we'll discuss the highlights of 2022 results. Before I say that, I will just give some clarification because I have just announced in our press release that another vertical that we started to develop with the name WISeAI, which was WISeKey artificial intelligence, for which we made an investment into a startup in Germany with the name Arago, two years ago.
It did not evolve as expected as this the basically after we realized that the AI algorithm Arago provided was mainly focusing on optimization of big data centers and IT department, and less into IoT, we decided to sell back this to the founder. The net proceeds from the sale for 51 ownership in Arago was $25 million, which had not been received yet, which obviously is impacting the company financial performance during 2020. Peter will come back into the details.
The good news is WISeKey is currently assessing enforcement scenarios to turn this, its pledge on Arago, $25 million, against the full ownership of the Arago IP, allowing WISeKey to integrate the AI into the WISeKey platform and eventually spin off into a new company. I just wanna make that clarification because that was announced, maybe it was not clear why this happened. The reason why we are not getting paid is basically market conditions. I don't think the founder of Arago was able to find the right investment than was required to buy our shares. Peter will give you more information into that in a few minutes. I will come back to you guys to discuss the 2023 visibility for 2023. Peter, please go ahead.
Okay. Thanks, Carlos. As Carlos mentioned earlier, 2022 was a year of significant developments which resulted in improved financial performance for WISeKey. Specifically, our revenue grew by 35% to $23.8 million, compared to $17.6 million in 2021. Our gross profit for 2022 grew by 35% to $10.1 million, as compared to $7.5 million in 2021. We also significantly strengthened our sales and marketing team with a new sales director in the USA and the onboarding of seven additional sales reps in the EU region, Israel and South Africa, and two representatives which will cover the eastern states of the United States. We continue to invest in increasing semiconductor production capacity.
In 2022, we initiated a five year capital expenditure CapEx plan aiming to increase our semiconductors volume by up to 80% over the next five years. The plan is supported by a $2 million loan from a third party client for the purpose of increasing production capacity. At the same time, we took significant steps to improve our cost structure and streamline our operations. As a result, our operating expenses for 2022 decreased by $8.1 million and by $5 million when excluding non-cash stock-based compensation in comparison to 2021, while we were still being able to grow our revenue. We ended the year with a strong cash position of $20.7 million. This strong cash position allowed us to continue to make investments in research and development.
During the year, we invested $3.9 million, mainly in the QUASARS project, a radical innovative solution paving the way for post-quantum cryptography. Launch of 13 security IoT on hard and low orbit particular satellites. WISeSat, as Carlos mentioned, for our new satellite-based, secure IoT connectivity as a service, and our WISeAI platform, all of which Carlos discussed earlier. Despite strong revenue growth, we ended the year with a $9.8 million in loss due to the aforementioned investments in next generation semiconductors and the launch of SEALSQ's listing process on the Nasdaq.
The investments in SEALSQ's next generation semiconductors and AI infrastructure are part of our long-term strategy to stay at the forefront of technological innovation, develop new products and services that will meet the needs of our customers in the years to come, and ultimately result in substantially, sorry, higher revenues and improved financial performance that comes with operating leverage. With that, I will turn the line back to Carlos, who will discuss the 2023 key growth areas. Carlos, please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, Peter. As I mentioned in my introduction, the demand for WISeKey products and services are substantially increasing. 35% increase in revenue over 2022. The group is back on a growth path, which was already characterized pre-COVID. Supported by investment in R&D, aiming to remain at the edge of technology, which as you know, we have very active environment where companies with a lot of resources are competing for the same type of clients for the same type of product. Our investment focus on strengthening our sales force, we, the group has continued reinforcing sales and marketing team with a new sales director in the U.S. and the onboarding of 7 additional sales representatives in the European Union, Israel and South Africa.
Just recently, a few days ago, an announcement of reinforcing the team also in Taiwan, as is a critical country in semiconductors. We the strong semiconductor backlog of order and pipeline of opportunity are valued over $100 million has given us a great building block that allows our sales team to focus on new opportunities. Now, just to explain the $100 million, many of our clients are increasingly asking us to increase the number of connected devices, because the way it works in this market is that a one of our clients, let's say Medtronic or Cisco or a medical device manufacturer will be slowly connecting devices to the Internet. Not all the devices are connected to the Internet.
Some of them, they are connected to the Internet, and many or all of them will be connected to the Internet as the years progress. At the moment you take the decision to connect to the device to the Internet, you have to put a microchip on the device. Otherwise, this device will compromise the rest of the device. As I mentioned before, with the Matter certification, that is becoming basically a legal obligation to do so. We will see a growth in the semiconductor business. That growth will be accentuated by, as I mentioned before, the European Union is putting $42 billion into the Chips Act, which is mainly designed to invest in semiconductor companies in Europe.
The United States has a similar Chips Act on where places like Phoenix is booming as the entire semiconductor industry is getting ready for what is coming, which is basically 1 trillion devices connected to the Internet, and they need to supply semiconductor to those devices. The semiconductors of WISeKey has a unique characteristic, is that they also include cybersecurity as we are a cybersecurity company. As I mentioned before, they are getting post-quantum ready. On that, by the way, we are part of the NIST group of companies, and they are working with the U.S. government on post-quantum technology. Our main focus for 2023 will be keeping our SEALSQ growing.
The fact that we are doing a listing on SEALSQ issue and the Nasdaq issue, correct evaluation issue we have because, basically what we did with SEALSQ was to compare the semiconductor business we have with any other semiconductor company and with external evaluators, and they came with a total different figure in what concerns the value of that company, which is, as you can read on the F1 that is published on SEALSQ, they are valuing the entire company at $270 million, which is about 9 times the current value of WISeKey.
Obviously, and this was the main reason in the general assembly, extraordinary general assembly of WISeKey last week when we asked shareholders to vote for the transaction, we got an overwhelming vote because there is obviously an opportunity for WISeKey shareholders now to benefit for the incremental valuation that will be eventually achieved through the Nasdaq listing. On the semiconductor, as I mentioned, 13 satellite. This is very unique. There are not many companies with satellite in orbit. We are one of them. And in cooperation with FOSSA, by June, we will send in more satellite, June this year. Those new satellites include cameras, so you will be able to provide new services like supply chain supervision, logistics and including other services where there will be need for that level of visibility.
On the satellite business, we signed an MoU with the Swiss Armed Forces, which is a very interesting one because the Swiss Armed Forces will be using picosatellites in the future to assess where the equipment is. Switzerland is full of mountains. It's very hard to track and trace equipment because the mountains are in the middle. Having a view from the space optimizes the way they are managing to access that equipment. Many new strategic partnerships, as I mentioned. Post-quantum is something that we will be putting a huge focus on artificial intelligence. Everybody's talking about artificial intelligence. It's a big fuss in the market. At the end of the day, artificial intelligence, in order to be something real and practical, needs to be applied to specific cases.
In our case, we need artificial intelligence, and we are using already artificial intelligence to be able to data mine the data that we collect at the object level. WISeKey, because we track and trace the object that has our microchips, that data, which includes your localization, in some cases temperature, in some cases activity behavior, if the object has failed or not, all that data is analyzed by our clouds. Then with artificial intelligence, we can provide to our clients a very specific monitoring system for their devices. That's being used already in agricultural devices to monitor trees in the middle of a land or monitoring cattle or monitoring cargo in the middle of the sea or monitoring integrity of pipeline and so on.
We expect a very large number of applications to be developed as we move forward. As a result, we believe we are well positioned to continue to grow with our business in 2023. We have very strong visibility to the end of the year. This was announced between $25 million-$30 million revenue already at this point of the year. We believe that with that positioning, we will be able to provide high returns to our shareholders together with what is our objective this year as well, to recover the valuation and the stock price in WISeKey, which mainly was has been affected by several factors.
Obviously, the traditional geopolitical, the fact that we are in a war, the fact that the supply chain is stopped during two years during COVID, also the fact that we acquired companies and we acquired them with shares. Obviously when those shares were sold to the market, created an overhang. We think that this will be corrected very soon. As I mentioned, Peter mentioned, we are in a very strong cash position. We have already SEALSQ as a profitable company that is gonna grow with profits. This is a very, very interesting and beneficial activity at the moment. All that together with the fact that cybersecurity, IoT, picosatellites and NFTs are not gonna get anytime soon, displaced from the market.
To the contrary, those are exponential technologies that are keeping growing, puts WISeKey in a very strategic position. With this, we conclude our remarks. I would like to open the line to question and answers.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please, while we pull for questions. Our first question is from Matthew Galinko with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, congratulations on the strong 2022, and thanks for taking my questions. Can you maybe, you know, provide an opinion or predict how quickly you expect post-quantum chips to displace, you know, sort of pre-quantum chips in the, you know, overall mix for you and for competitors? Is it something that happens quickly, and is it something that you're in active discussion with existing customers about?
Yeah. Thank you, Matt. Very good question. Yeah. We are with post-quantum technology as we were with the, you know, with the bug of the year 2000, as you remember, for the people on their older, if I remember, that the entire market started to develop technology that will eventually resist an attack or a failure of what at that time was a very serious threat, right? We are on that same philosophy here and vision, is that quantum is arrive, it's inevitable, it's gonna happen. I mean, quantum computers are already in place with Google, for instance. There has been a spinoff of Google, of SandboxAQ, which is a spinoff on quantum from Google. They just raised $500 million, $3.1 billion evaluation.
The quantum industry is getting form and early players in that industry will win the battle, you know, because there are not many actually. This is a complex technology that you cannot just, you know, invent in a garage. The, what we are doing is that our vision was always to have the most secure chip than the market will be able to produce, okay? Secure in two levels. Secure because the technology of the chip design and what we put inside the chip with a cryptographic capability, PKI, cryptographic root key. All that was a very strong innovation from WISeKey that many other competitors didn't even have.
You know, because so many semiconductor companies were more concerned just to provide low cost and non-secure semiconductor just to do electronic functionalities, but not cybersecurity functionality. WISeKey from day one say, "No, we want our chips to be secure." That's the reason our chips are used by Medtronic, for instance, to secure medical devices or by Cisco to secure routers, which are obviously a critical infrastructure when you are installing in banks or Defense Department and so on. So that's been always our vision. Now, because quantum is coming, what we are doing is saying, okay. Let's develop technology at the quantum chip level that will resist a quantum attack. That's what we have done. The chips are now quantum ready, the current generation of chips.
When we are selling our chips to our clients, those chips that we are selling, they're already post-quantum ready. Means that if anyone comes tomorrow with a quantum computer, they will not be able to break the chip. This is what is being sold now, and this is why we are growing, because our clients are getting more sensitized to the cybersecurity aspect of the chip than they had before. The next thing we are doing is actually developing a new chip. That new chip, the name of the project is QUASAR, is a totally quantum chip.
That chip is about three years, and maybe we can accelerate the that if we raise money on the IPO, and this is one of the reasons why we are listing SEALSQ, because that chip will be the ultimate defense system mechanism for an object. That quantum chip, there's where I mentioned before, we team with NIST and IST, but also with the French university MINES, which are very, very knowledgeable institutions on quantum. We are also teaming with the startups, and they are working on quantum. What is gonna happen is that quantum will feed AI, you know, because AI is all about data and capability of the algorithms to perform, but they need a huge computational capability.
An AI, ChatGPT, needs huge amount of computational capability to operate. Imagine when that will be backed by quantum technology, right? You will be able to go to ChatGPT and ask how can I break Visa.com, and they will give you that solution. The chips will need to be ready to resist that type of complexity that we are facing in the years to come.
Got it. That's helpful. I guess as a follow-up, just again, broadly, we're in a different macro environment, I think, than we were last time we spoke. Obviously things have changed very quickly over the last two years. Is the macro impact having any impact, particularly on the semiconductor business? Are you seeing changes in your customers' patterns? You know, how is macro affecting your outlook?
Yeah. The main macro complexity we had was the supply chain, which was totally disrupted during the COVID, right? It was very difficult to provision microchips because the fabs were shut down. That obviously created a situation where we were not able to provide as many chips as our client wanted. Actually, and I would say, our team was very efficient in maintaining the clients satisfied, because many other very big companies that they used to sell hundreds of million of chips, they say, "Well, hey, if you don't buy me 100 million chips, we don't need to talk." We recover all those clients, and they came to us.
Those clients actually, they stay with us because they're very happy to have somebody that is willing to sell to them less than 100 million chips, which is obviously a great business. We managed to convert a problem into an asset, a solution. The other thing we did is that obviously, now that the supply chain concerns are being eased, the clients are less stressed and they don't necessarily buy as many chip at once or do not maintain the same level of stock than they used to maintain before. That's why moving to more clients and diversifying the number of clients is our main concern. That's why we increment the sales organization to reach out.
We put people in Taiwan, we put people in Japan, we put people in the United States and many obviously leading markets in Europe, like Germany, just to cope with that necessity to diversify our offer. Another thing is that, as you know, electricity is very expensive worldwide, due to the Ukraine situation. Obviously, fabs require a huge amount of electricity to manufacture material. Materials that they are required on the chips are more expensive. All those are complexities that they are obviously putting the margins under stress. The way to react to that is by increasing cybersecurity at the chip level because, you know, a cybersecurity algorithm injected or a root key injected at the chip level does not require raw materials.
Is a digital device. That has been our strategy. I mean, maintaining the same price of the chip, but providing to the client more services, more technology, more cybersecurity at the chip level than we were doing if it were only be, you know, a fight for price. I think what is happening, and we are at the infancy of this industry. I mean, our observation when you go around is that very small number of hardware manufacturers are considering cybersecurity as top one priority. That was my observation in the last years. Now it's changing. Now it's totally changed, and Matter is actually helping to that because Matter is for the moment, only applies to IoT at home, everything which is connected devices at home, but this is many already.
This is gonna evolve in many other industries like health industry, like e-commerce. You know, we are still trading $2 trillion of fake products on the internet, right? That could be solved by just putting a microchip on, at the product level, so you can certify that the product is not a counterfeited product or not. For the moment, the e-commerce platform has not paid a lot of attention to it. They could do it very easily by putting regulations and say only, you know, products and they are authenticated and you can prove the authentication of the product will be sold. Obviously, that would maybe reduce their revenue, but they will provide a better service to their customers. This is happening.
It will take time, but, as I mentioned before, this is a 1 trillion devices to be connected and will be connected, and we expect that to gradually and exponentially growth now with the arrival of new technology.
Perfect. Thank you. I'll jump back on the queue.
Thank you very much, Matt.
Thank you. Our next question is from Kevin Dede with H.C. Wainwright & Co. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, Carlos. Hi, Peter. Thanks for taking my questions. I think the first thing, Carlos, just sort of from a top-down, given four business segments now, which one are you the most excited about? I understand, you know, SEALSQ is certainly the most mature, but which one do you think offers you the most growth this year?
For the moment, for sure is the semiconductor post-quantum chips. This is the one that is growing faster and is the most mature one, right? Because we have already 1.6 billion devices already sold in the market. You have a huge customer base that needs to be educated to upgrade the chips to the next generation chips. That's the most exciting part. This is creating new industry. This is like the, you know, the telegraph evolved in the United States when you installed the rails on the train, you know, because it was easy to put the poles during the rail. This industry is creating the space industry.
if somebody would have told me five years ago that I will be sending picosatellite, I will say, "You're dreaming. Why I need to do that?" Now I do need to do that because those chips are everywhere, including in containers in the middle of the city, and we have to validate the identity of those containers real time from space because there's no other way to do it from the sea, right? Or in the middle of the desert or in any agricultural region, or even in the, in a, in a smart city because 4G and 5G is too expensive to be used to track and trace objects.
This technology of picosatellites is amazing because a picosatellite is $150,000, between $150,000-$250,000 end-to-end, including the launch and operational. This same satellite 10- years ago was a $25 million investment. Now that means that companies are willing to send their own satellite and attach that to the WISeKey satellite constellation, and in some cases, or selling the satellites we have as a service. This is gonna grow, and this is gonna accelerate the usage of the chips, because if I can track and trace from the space, then I'm gonna put it in the container in the middle of the sea. Otherwise, why I will do that, right? That is another growth area. We are adding more technology in the satellites.
For instance, the communication between satellite and earth station is now being secure with the same technology that we use at the chip level. In the future, you could do quantum communication from the space. I mean, this very, very, very amazing thing. The third one, which is a bit different, but at the same time it is actually part of the ecosystem, is the NFT play, right? The non-fungible token play that for the moment has been used in the industry mainly for art and intellectual property. The industry, the semiconductor IoT industry, has concluded that the most efficient way to digital identify an object is to issue an NFT of that object and put that NFT in a blockchain ledger, so anyone in the world, in a decentralized way, can verify the NFT.
We have now inside WISe.ART, which is the, I mean, the art, applied for art, but also for the ecosystem that we are building on NFT, it's already growing with something like 2 million NFT being already recorded there and on something like $40 million value, credible value of the NFT into the platform. This is gonna go exponential. I mean, the model this is following is something like OpenSea. I'm sure you know them. They are one of the largest NFT platforms trading at $6 billion. That is potential spin-off again in the future for us. We are looking into that possibility maybe next year as well.
That will increment again the valuation of WISeKey and will increment the value of the platform because more microchips we manufacture, more identities we generate, more NFT we create, bigger is gonna be the platform, bigger is gonna be the ecosystem, right? There are things that they fit each other, and they are at their infancy, obviously different maturity levels, but they are all exponential. sooner or later, they will collide together into a very powerful business model.
Speaking of business models, could you kind of peel back the onion a little bit on the satellite business? I know you're working with partners there, but do you own those 13 satellites and I guess, is it a service that you're providing? Just sort of run through how.
Yeah.
The satellite business.
Sure.
Model works.
We don't want to manufacture the satellite because this is specific areas. It's like manufacturing mobile phones, right? This is a very specialized area. We are doing that with a start-up company in Spain with the name FOSSA. Actually, WISeKey is one of the largest investors in FOSSA. We also made an investment two years ago, and with that investment, we started to develop the WISeSat.Space satellite, which is a upgraded version of traditional satellites that you would use for, I don't know, the, you know, sending social media data down to earth. Those satellites are specialized for IoT activities.
Inside the satellite WISeKey technology, they have some, obviously some components from FOSSA. For the communication part, but everything which is the cybersecurity, encryption, the microchips are powered by WISeKey and secured by WISeKey. We do not want to own the satellites. What we are doing is, because now we have 13 satellites, and we are launching more in June, the current constellation covers the earth every five hours. Every five hours, anywhere in the world, the satellite will detect the chip anywhere in the world. If the chip is in the middle of the sea, every five hours, the satellite detects the chip. Which is enough for, you know, track and trace, making sure that your chip didn't deviate from the path that was designed to be, this kind of thing.
It's not enough for real-time, track and trace capability. For that, you will need faster latency. For that, we need to launch 88 satellite, which is our target by the end of 2025. With 88 satellite, we'll be able to detect a WISeKey chip anywhere in the world every minute. This is the kind of service that we believe customer needs from the customer we are talking about. The way we sell that, yes, it's as a service.
A customer with containers in the middle of the sea will say, "I wanna, I wanna track and trace 100,000 containers because this is my capacity, and I will pay," like you pay your mobile phone operator, a fee for having those containers connected to the satellite. We also have a model on where we can also team with other constellations. There are other constellations that they are approaching us, and they are saying, "Oh, I only need five satellites, but I would like to benefit from your other satellite because I want to get that level of latency." What they are doing is teaming with us to launch those satellite and aggregate those satellites into the constellation.
Do you I guess your plan for 2025 and 88 more launches, is that something that WISeKey will need to raise money to accomplish, or is that something that you hope to partner with in accomplishing?
Yeah. I mean, we could mention. You know, the satellite companies are trading around $100 million-$200 million market, right? We could eventually spin off WISeSat and raise money on WISeSat as a private company. That's one scenario. Another one is teaming for which is the model. As I mentioned, if you say, "I wanna send a satellite today," we can do it in four weeks. You could be in space, and that will cost you $250,000, and you will have your own satellite. We are doing that as a partnership with organizations, governments. You know, we WISeKey is securing drones.
Pilot drones are secured by WISeKey, and now, the drones are gonna be connected through satellite because it's a much efficient way to connect the drones than from Earth. That's the new business model emerging that will increment the net. We don't need to raise money per se because the technology is already there. The every time you launch with the SpaceX, you can launch 20 satellites, 30 satellites at the same time, right? It doesn't happen one by one. The what we are competing here is with OpenWeb and those huge massive investments that requires $100s of millions just to have a person in the space. In our model with less than $300,000, you are in space, right?
You are with the WISeKey chips, you are able to track and trace your product. Imagine FedEx wants to track parcels real time from the space or, you know, or you want to track and trace cars because they've got Or bicycles. You know, we got the other day, somebody wants to track bicycles from the space because everybody is stealing bicycles now. It's so easy to steal a bicycle and very difficult to recover. Those are the new usage. Space is gonna become like the normal way to verify objects on Earth. This is where we want to be the first one to position ourself.
Okay. Just to make sure, I apologize for not having this resonate too clearly for me, Carlos, just to make sure I understand it, you'll partner with a customer to launch a satellite, and the customer will own part of that satellite, and WISeKey will own part of it, and that way you can leverage it to sell a service to other customers?
That's one scenario, yes. If the customer says, "We want our exclusive use of our satellite for our own operation," they will own the satellite. We will provide to them the technology, the satellite, the launch, they will be the owner of the satellite. If the client says, "I don't need to have my own satellite just for me, I don't mind to share that satellite with the other satellite you have in your constellation because I want to have a larger coverage, and I want to be able to track and trace my object anywhere in the world," you are just adding yourself. You just pay a fee, and you get involved into the constellation.
Quick question on the Arago sale.
It's like car sharing.
I'm sorry. Go ahead, Carlos. I cut you off.
Yeah, go ahead. No, no. I was just giving you the example of car sharing, like a satellite sharing, right? You don't need to own your car. You just share with somebody else and own it. Similar model, on the space.
Right. WISeKey is gonna be the Uber of satellites.
It's not necessary. Why not? Maybe. I don't think Uber is a very good business model anymore. We would like to be a bit different than that.
All right. Just quickly on Arago, $25 million owed, what are your recourses, and what is your expectation?
I mean, this is now in the hands of lawyers, so we cannot comment very much on the process. What we waited, the right legal time to get paid. We understand that the market is not been the best market for this guy. This purchasers agreement was backed by a guarantor, which is an energy company in Germany. We're just telling them, "Guys, when you're gonna pay, then if you don't pay in due time, then we would like to take measures." One of the things WISeKey has, as I mentioned in my introduction, and it's also on the press release, is that we have a first call on the IP.
Worst case scenario, they don't pay, we get the IP and we integrate the IP into our platform. Remember Arago got $55 million investment from KKR many years ago, and HIRO is one of the leading artificial intelligence algorithms. I mean, this is a very, you know, AI is booming. I mean, there are startups with a fraction of that, and they are raising money now in the market, right? Worst case scenario, we will integrate the IP into our operations and then we'll obviously enrich the entire technology assets that WISeKey has. I mean, the important thing to say around that is, and what Peter said, is that we have been reducing substantially the losses.
It looks like we didn't because we are aggravating with this, $25 million loss. actually it's not $25 million because this is something that we, in one way or another, we will recover, as soon as we can. Idira has been, you know, it is the same in the United States. A lot of startups are struggling to raise capital due to the banking situation that has been created and continues to be created now with the FRC, and this is maybe not the end. for some companies like Arago, raising money has been complicated, and that's the consequence of not being able to pay.
Okay. as it is now, you're not using Arago AI IP in WISeKey systems?
No, no. We.
Okay.
As I mentioned, we have the right to. We are waiting until the legal situation is clarified. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. You kind of glanced over the expectations for the year. I think you said $25 million-$30 million so far this year. Just to make sure I understand that correctly, given that we're one third of the year through, is it fair to assume that you could be in the $75 million-$90 million range, or I'm just a little confused?
You mean that's revenue, right? What you're asking?
Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Yeah. I know you said, I think $100 million in backlog on the, on the SEALSQ side.
Yeah. No, no. In terms of the revenue, maybe Peter, you wanna come on this?
We have to be careful actually with the forecasting numbers, but we're talking about a $30 million total revenue for the year potential.
Okay.
The $100 million backlog is for several years because obviously it's a longer-term sales process. We have that already in the bag now.
Okay. That's helpful.
Yeah. When I say 20, when I say 25, 30, yeah, it was revenue. Yeah.
Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. I gotcha. All right. Thank you. I think I apologize for this, Carlos, but could you help me understand, and maybe Peter can chime in on this too. Can you help me understand the rights that each share class holds? 'Cause you'll have A and B and then the ADSs and now the new F share class with the SEALSQ spin. I just wanna make sure I understand what each share class represents.
Yeah. No.
-owners.
You're talking about two different companies, right? I mean, the WISeKey and SEALSQ, they are different companies, different structures. WISeKey has whatever it always had, which is two class of shares, A and B shares. A and B, A is not listed. This is outside the market. B are listed on the Swiss stock market. The B shares on the Swiss stock market, they have an ADS in the Nasdaq, which is for every one ADS you have 10 B shares. That's the structure in WISeKey, right?
Okay.
Yeah. That's correct.
The structure in SEALSQ, which is a different company, which is the one that's gonna be listed, and the question about the F shares. Those F shares belong to WISeKey. It's very similar to the Palantir type of governance structure. They are designed, at least at the beginning, to avoid a hostile takeover of WISeKey by somebody that will, because the SEALSQ shares will be more valuable than the WISeKey shares. They will just eventually buy WISeKey in order to gain into SEALSQ, right? It's a protection mechanism that has been put in place so WISeKey basically prevents any potential hostile takeover. This is very well described on the F-1, by the way.
Kevin, I invite you to have a look into the F-1 and review that.
Okay. well, I appreciate your handholding, Carlos, cause it wasn't so clear for me.
Yeah, two different companies. I think what you maybe misunderstood that the F are also in WISeKey and they are not. F is only on SEALSQ.
Exactly. Oh, they're not listed either.
Okay. Okay.
They're not.
Okay. I see. I see. Okay. Peter, since I have your attention, could you tell me what the share count was, the average share count that you used to calculate loss per share for the year? Because I didn't see that.
No. Sorry, Kevin, you have to ask me that question so I can prepare. I don't have that number in my head. Sorry.
Okay.
I can give it to you.
We'll come back to you, Kevin, on that. Yeah.
Yeah.
We'll come back to you. We'll just .
Okay. Well, thank you, gentlemen, for entertaining my questions. I really appreciate the candor.
Thank you very much, Kevin, for your questions.
No problem.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Moreira for closing comments.
Okay, thank you very much to everyone. As I mentioned, we will be in contact with all of you soon. WISeKey will be celebrating the Nasdaq bell of SEALSQ. All WISeKey shareholders are now also SEALSQ shareholders, as we have been providing 20% of the SEALSQ shares to WISeKey shareholders. That was approved by the last week extraordinary general meeting. Just use this opportunity to invite you to join us, the 26th, at the opening bell in New York at the Nasdaq to celebrate the SEALSQ entrance in the Nasdaq stock exchange.
If you have any question or any concern, you can contact us or contact Lina, or investor relations in New York. We will be happy to answer any question or concern. Thank you very much for participating today call. We look forward to see you soon. Thank you for the organizers of the call as well.
Yes. Thank you.
This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.