Okay, let's get started. Welcome to our 2023 first quarter results. I'm Brian Stringer. I'm CFO for 01 Communique. With me is Andrew Cheung, our President & CEO. The agenda today will be a brief overview by myself to start, I'll turn it over to Andrew will give you a presentation on our results and where we're going from here, followed by Q&A. With respect to Q&A, everybody's well used to using Zoom these days, if you look at the bottom, you can click on a Q&A, you can type a question, I'll moderate the questions at the end of Andrew's session. Any questions you have, please send them forth, we'll get to them at the end.
First, I'd like to draw your attention to our disclaimer with respect to forward-looking statements, which form an integral part of this presentation. Just take a brief second to look them through. Now, I'll turn it over to Andrew. Andrew, over to you.
Thank you, Brian. Welcome everyone. Again, my name is Andrew Cheung, President and CEO of 01 Communique, and welcome to our 2023 Q1 financial result and corporate update. It has only been 8 weeks ago since we last met. Before I give you the update on our Q1 results, let me reiterate the IBM Quantum Roadmap, which I believe is the single most important piece of information for the cybersecurity world. This roadmap clearly shows that quantum threats are already here. The question is, can you see them? Only 4 months ago, in November, IBM has fulfilled their promise, delivering 433 qubits quantum computer called Osprey. What does it mean? It means qubit development is predictable. IBM's roadmap is publicly available, and they plan to deliver 1,100 qubit this year.
I mean, this year, not 2024, this year, 2023. 1,400 qubits next year, then followed by 4,000 qubits in 2025 and 100,000+ qubits in 2026. Please don't get me wrong, and don't forget, this is just IBM, and their competitors like Google, Amazon, Honeywell, D-Wave, et cetera, are all striving to beat them. After all, these are just the commercial level, and the national level is usually 5 to 10 years ahead. Logically, they already have what we will get in 2026 at least 2 years ago. Everyone, I bet, remember the famous crack by FBI in 2021, breaking the Bitcoin wallet of the Colonial Pipeline hackers within 2 weeks. What did they use to crack it? Of course, they won't tell you.
Only 3 months ago, in early January, a group of Chinese cryptoscientists have published a paper claiming the possibility of cracking RSA-2048 with just 372 qubits. While it is still waiting to be proven, this is alarming, and this kind of advancement seems accelerating worldwide. Here, let's first disregard the January 4 paper, assuming that it is a hoax, and focus on the general belief. With the exception of those who prefer to bury their heads in the sand, cybersecurity experts around the world are generally believing that a 1,000 qubit quantum computer can crack RSA-2048 in a reasonable time. Reasonable time means, like currently, the brute force cracking using classical computer or classical supercomputer require over 150 years to do that.
Reasonable time means like the cracking doesn't have to be within a second to pose a threat because the damage is catastrophic already if the cracking can happen within a few days, even a few months. It is just unthinkable what would happen when we have 100 qubit by 2026. If IBM's roadmap is correct, 2023 seems to be the year we will cross the line of Q-Day . If it is, like, if it is, if it is not, like, still not clear enough, I keep saying that please take a look at these announcements from government agencies. First of all, NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, originally expected to announce this post-quantum crypto, cryptographic recommendation in 2024.
All of a sudden, in July of last year, they rushed out a few recommendation and said they will continue to add more by 2024. What does this mean? You know, it is a clear indicator that NIST sees an urgency to announce something for the world so that it won't be standing naked against the quantum threat tsunami when it comes. The U.S. National Security Memorandum, NSM-10, announced in May of last year, gave a clear deadline of October 18th for the federal agencies to assess funding requirement to achieve quantum safety. I don't know why October 18th, to be frank, which is a Wednesday.
Maybe they know something that they are not revealing to the world. Last but not least, around nine months ago, the Bank for International Settlements, BIS, has announced their intention to assess the use case in quantum safety. IronCAP's goal is to capitalize on this massive post-quantum cryptographic market. The strategy of IronCAP has been reiterated year over years. Instead of waiting for NIST recommendation, we jump-started the gun using our deep knowledge in post-quantum cryptographic to predict the final winner out of 82 NIST candidate at the beginning. This means if we were correct, our global partners such as CGI, Thales, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Hitachi, et cetera, will have something in lockstep with the NIST process without having to wait years for the development of an API around the NIST-approved algorithm. Live example is our integration with Thales Luna HSM.
This project started about a year ago and was, like, about 4 months before the NIST announcement in July. We have already jumped the gun, as we said, incorporated the algorithm later approved by NIST in their July announcement. Similarly, the blockchain project that we have completed in September, has also incorporated the NIST-approved algorithm, which we have correctly predicted prior to the July NIST announcement. I know a lot of people ask me, "Who is Thales?" Let me give you a bit more information about them. First of all, they are a French conglomerate in the cybersecurity world. They are called Thales, like in Athens. They're not a household name, I'm pretty sure.
Everything that you, that you use today in your everyday life, basically depend on their military-grade product for cybersecurity, such as your banking, your credit card, your national defense or everything, because their customers are the major enterprises, the bank, the central banks, the government, national defense, et cetera. They have more than 80,000 staff with over EUR 20 billion in sales. For a company of that size, they won't even return our call if we don't have what they need. This partnership was signed about a year ago in March 2022 and require us to integrate IronCAP post-quantum cryptography as a functional module for their Luna HSM. This way, their clients can easily purchase the IronCAP FM to upgrade, kind of like an app running on their HSM, to upgrade their infrastructure to become quantum-safe.
Since Thales Luna HSM has already been approved by virtually all security-sensitive organizations around the world, this is actually a shortcut for us to reach the highly secure, the highly security sensitive end user customers. The development has been completed and the co-marketing phase has started. We will elaborate a little bit more in a few minutes. In fact, the major reason for Thales to sign with IronCAP, you know, is because unlike our competitors, we are a product company. Our competitor, most of them, as we know, are basically just created a encryption engine. We, as a product company, can create end user product to help the integration with their customer. A typical example is our pre-proof concept development for Thales, for Thales Summit.
We have spent about seven months to successfully complete a practical demonstration of a quantum-safe wallet, having our quantum native token floating on a Solana blockchain. Our method was so flexible that we can operate on top of just about any blockchain, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. This means a shortcut to provide quantum-safe version of Bitcoin, Ethereum, et cetera, et cetera. You know, plus using the Thales Luna HSM as the security backbone. This put us in a global leading position to help converting any blockchain, private or public, to become quantum-safe. A new patent application, as I mentioned before, related to this new technology has been filed in November, and we expect office action happening any time from now.
With the unexpected NIST announcement in July, eight months ago, we have decided also to incorporate the NIST-approved algorithm into our IronCAP X product, which gives a significant marketing value. This will be released, like, in the current quarter as in the first business email security product that is quantum-safe using NIST-approved algorithms. It is a SaaS model, Software-as-a-Service model, charging $100 a year per user with a free personal usage version available. Beside end-to-end encryption that no one in the middle, man-in-the-middle attack can intercept, and its e-digital signature ensures also the authenticity of the sender, and therefore it can effectively kill phishing email because 91% source of ransomware attacks are coming from a phishing email. Okay.
Also subsequent to our last corporate update in January, we have already, you know, made quite a bit of a great progress. First of all, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, the integration with Thales Luna HSM has been completed, and we are now entering into the co-marketing phase. The first co-marketing activity is a major global event called RSA Conference, held in San Francisco on April 24th to 27th. IronCAP will be featured at the Thales PQC Post Quantum Cryptography Palooza event during the conference. This RSA Conference, if you don't know them, is the largest cybersecurity conference in the world, held every year in San Francisco. Secondly, we have also completed the incorporation of the NIST-approved algorithm in our IronCAP X product.
It is currently in its final QA process and will be ready publicly released imminently. Last but not least, as publicly announced in February, just about a month ago, our remote access product is also upgraded to quantum safe now. Looking forward to 2023. First of all, IronCAP, you know, will be, as I said, will be publicly, IronCAP X will be publicly released once we have completed the QA process. Most importantly, we expect 2023 to cross the line of the critical line of Q-Day. More enterprises should begin to adopt quantum safety, therefore will engage more proof of concept in implementation project with IronCAP. With the completion of the R&D, after spending millions of dollars, we have entered a new phase of operation.
This new phase of operation will see a significant reduction in OpEx as R&D has reached an important milestone whereby we are set to embrace the PQC market expecting corporation to begin spending on quantum safety in 2023. In terms of number, you know, we actually accounting point of view, we recognize a one-time engineering fee we charge our customer as they were booked. This means one-time fee can be up one quarter, down one quarter, and up another one, et cetera, et cetera, on top of the more important recurring revenues. Without a one-time engineering fee this quarter as compared to the same quarter last year, the Q1 revenue was down from the same quarter in 2023.
Adjusted loss, which we call R&D investment, was slightly larger as a result of the R&D development with our global partners, which I have iterated before. Most importantly, I'm very happy with the cash usage, despite all the R&D investment in the last 12 months, has been reduced to about $374,000 in the last 4 quarters. As mentioned just a few minutes ago, with the completion of IronCAP R&D, we expect a significant reduction in OpEx moving forward, while embracing the massive PQC market. This will immediately put us in a more or less break-even position effective the next quarter, Q3. Practically, this means we can be immediately profitable once PQC revenue begin to kick in. Let me give a quick summary before we enter the Q&A section.
I think I mentioned before, I am very happy with the achievement in the Q1 of 2023 and the plan of moving forward from here. Q-Day has arrived and gather serious attentions too. We expect to continue our technological leadership, which allow us to embrace the Q-Day multi-million dollar, multi-billion dollar opportunity. The strategy we made five years ago has begun to bear fruit, has also proven correct. The bottom line is that our recurring revenue gives us the luxurious option to extend the runway to embrace the imminent massive PQC market potential. I must say that there is no chance of achieving this without your support. Please allow me to say thank you for your support all the way from being a quantum story several years ago to this critical inflection point.
At this point, I would like to take a pause from here to allow more time for question and answer. As mentioned by Brian, before, there's a Q&A button that if you have any question, please type your question there, and Brian will moderate the question, in a first-come, first-served basis, and I would answer them as Brian reads to me. Thank you. Back to you, Brian.
Okay. Thank you, Andrew. I've got several questions here, and they're grouped in various areas, so I'll try to group them here. Andrew, the first has to do with what's going on in the general malaise of the financial industry, the banking industry now with, Silicon Valley Bank. The question is, are we impacted? The simple answer is no. Do you see anything other than our impact? With respect to competitors or whatever.
Yeah, that's actually a pretty good question I have been expecting someone to ask. I just didn't know that would be the first question. Yeah, short answer, we have no exposure to SVB. To be frank, you know, we believe we might have indirectly benefited by that because, first of all, we are not VC backed. Our R&D expenses, R&D investment are backed by our own cash flow, basically. A lot of our competitors are VC backed, so maybe some of them will be affected by this situation. I would say that to some extent, I believe it would be indirectly benefiting us because of that reason. Yeah.
We definitely have no exposure to SVB.
Okay. The next one has to do with Bitcoin and with what's happening with cryptocurrencies, where they seem to be making a bit of a comeback. Is this good or bad for our blockchain solution?
I think this is good to some extent because as I mentioned before, that our patent pending method of adding quantum safety to a blockchain is applicable to any blockchain, existing blockchain, public blockchain, private blockchain or anything. At some point in time, if they haven't chosen to do that, Bitcoin or Ethereum or just about every cryptocurrency must be upgraded to become quantum safe. Our technology, the patent pending technology, can do that. Can just convert them and help them converting, becoming quantum safe. The coming of coming back of Bitcoin or someone call the ending, looks like the ending of the crypto winter is definitely a huge benefit to that.
Especially the timing couldn't be better that our patent process has been there for a few months. Office action as I mentioned, will be starting soon. I believe the timing for the ending of the crypto winter cannot be better for us.
The next one, Andrew, has to do with conferences that are going on, and there's a couple of them, so I'm gonna combine them together here. You can elaborate on our participation in these conferences and what we expect to get out of them or what we've learned. I think you covered the first one. There's a RSA Conference in San Francisco next month, and I think you confidently tell us, but if you could reiterate it because I think this guy missed it. The second has to do with The Economist, which has sponsored the Quantum Commercialization Conference in San Francisco. Now that's just recently concluded, and the question really is, when will this show up in user acceptance and hopefully an order book for us?
Yeah. This seems like a pretty loaded question. Let me answer in parts. First of all, the Commercialising Quantum event by Economist Impact. Yes, you're absolutely right that there are lots of attention to quantum safety in the last, I would say, shouldn't say the last 12 months, but actually started a few years ago and gradually increasing. Up till this point, you know, there are a lot of attention from banks, national defense and central banks and things like that. It has been receiving a lot of attention in that.
That's also dovetailing into why Thales signed with IronCAP and also why it is the first time that Thales is hosting a side event within the RSA Conference next month right at RSA Conference. That event is featuring PQC, Post-quantum cryptography, and it's going to be featuring the IronCAP FM with the Luna HSM product. All these things are culminating together, and we expect in 2023 and beyond, there will be more and more conferences that is focusing on the PQC situation because it is a real serious issue coming to the world of cybersecurity, and it is being unfolding now.
Thank you. For those of you who are interested, because it's quite an interesting. They've got quite a bit on the internet. If you just google the second annual Commercializing Quantum Global 2023, that'll take you to Economist Impact website, where you can take a look at what's going on. It's quite interesting. It's the second annual Commercializing Quantum Global 2023. Andrew, we've got one last question, and this is the financial one. They're asking if you can elaborate on how we plan to extend our runway as we mentioned in the press release, and you covered in summary form, at least in your presentation.
Yeah. Yes, I have covered a little bit in the presentation, but I can elaborate a little bit more here. As I said, over the last few years, we have invested millions of dollar in IronCAP technology. Again, as I keep saying that we are not VC-backed, you know, so our investment are basically our own cash flow. We are funding it by our own cash flow. Unfortunately, in the accounting principle, these investment are called operating loss on the book, so we cannot capitalize on them. They are all being expensed. Our R&D projects have completed now. Moving forward, the investment has tapered.
Unlike our competitors who, again, says like as far as we know, who do not have sustainable recurring revenue. Our recurring revenue or our own cash flow, I keep saying, allow us to extend the runway to embrace or capitalize on this pivotal point of post-quantum cryptographic market. Yeah. A short answer to that is we are relying on our recurring revenue, okay? With the completion of the R&D, and that, you know, the runway will be, you know, extended to embrace this market. That's basically a long-winded answer to how we do it.
Okay. Well, thank you. That's it for questions, and I'll just turn it over to Andrew for conclusion.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Brian. Thank you again for all those very good questions. Again, as I keep saying, thanks for joining the 2023 Q1 business update. We are completely prepared to capitalize on this Q-Day market potential. Again, we have entered a very interesting pivotal point in this PQC market. 2023 is going to be a very interesting inflection point moving forward. Stay tuned, and see you again soon. Oh, by the way, just to take this opportunity to mention that after COVID, we are hosting our first face-to-face AGM in April, which is just 1 day before the RSA Conference. I will have a very hectic few days.
After the AGM, I will have to go to San Francisco for that Thales event within RSA Conference. Hopefully I will see you at our AGM, and there will be information actually mentioned in our press release. Yeah, please, read that, and hopefully to see you there next month. Thank you again.