Urban Forssell
Analyst · Redeye
Thank you, Fredrik. And at this point, I would like to go into our strategy and business update. Our vision is to transform the way humans interact with machines. And we strive for this by offering innovative touch, contactless touch, gesture sensing and scene analysis solutions. Our business model rests on 2 pillars: technology licensing and product sales. We combine this based on nonrecurring engineering services. Our licensing offers are for our technology platforms, zForce and MultiSensing. And our product offers currently are our touch center modules, or TSMs, as we also call them short. The new strategy we launched in 2020 is 100% focused on business to business and on revitalizing and growing our licensing business in parallel to growing our products business. In our product business, we mainly target customers in the elevator and interactive kiosk segments. We also see potential and are working with some customers in the industrial and automation, digital signage and medical equipment segments. Our licensing business has historically been focused around e-reader, printer and automotive customers. And currently, the main license revenues from legacy customers comes from printer manufacturers and automotive Tier 1s. Going forward, we see the largest potential to grow in the Automotive segment, but we also believe we can grow significantly in the Military & Avionics and the industrial automation segments. And potential, in retail segments, is also apparent with our MultiSensing software, as I will describe in more detail later. zForce is a technology platform that comprises IP-related optics, electronics, software and algorithms for advanced IR-based touch, gesture sensing and object detection features. The zForce platform is well proven. We have sold over 85 million zForce licenses to customers worldwide in the last 10 years. And we continue to sell every month a number of licenses to existing customers. And the current customer base includes some of the world's largest printer manufacturers and automotive Tier 1 suppliers. zForce also underpins our products, the TSMs, which are ideal for contactless touch applications, as I'll describe later. MultiSensing is a scalable AI platform that can be used to create advanced scene analysis applications, driver and in-cabin monitoring features in vehicles and retail analytics features. We offer bespoke customer applications tailored for each customer's specific needs. And thanks to the flexibility of the MultiSensing software platform and the efficiency of the underlying machine learning algorithms, the applications require a very different footprint and work well even with low-res cameras and, hence, offering a lot of customer value. To give some insights into our ongoing business development work to secure new development projects that can help us grow our licensing business in the future, I'm sharing the snapshot of our business development portfolio directed towards licensing customers. As you can see, we have several ongoing engagements with automotive OEMs and Tier 1s as well as with several avionics companies and actually one major printer manufacturer as well. Automotive DMS. DMS stands for driver monitoring system. This opportunity is obviously related to our MultiSensing platform. The others that we show here and that we are working on are related on to the zForce platform. First group is concerning applications of zForce to detect foreign objects obstructing the projector in head-up display units, which is an area that is drawing a lot of attention in automotive these days. We are working with several Tier 1s, and we have come quite far with a couple of them in development of prototypes and proving the concept. This is super interesting new application area for our zForce technology. With avionics companies, we talk about rugged touch and touching demanding aircraft applications with typically professional pilots or professional -- other people in the cockpit or in the passenger state of the aircraft. And of course, printer touch is more or less for us straightforward touch application similar to what we have done for HP and other printer companies for more than 10 years. It should be noted here that the sales and development cycles are fairly long when we indicate here what we can expect. If we are nominated to any of these automotive projects that we indicate here, we can expect an application development for 2, 3 years to come. And only after this, new royalty revenues will start to come from these customers. And this has, of course, to deal with a long development cycle in automotive for new models or new platforms. Here, we are no different than any other Tier 1 or Tier 2 suppliers working in the automotive space. And the lead times for new applications and new systems in avionics and also military, as many of you realize and know, they can be even longer than in automotive. The breadth and the width of this portfolio anyway make us very optimistic about the future of our licensing business and what it can grow. And I want to underline that during the development phase, even in the prototyping phase, we can earn actually significant NRE revenues, nonrecurring engineering. We also have opportunities to sell prototypes during that period that can bring additional revenues to us. Moving on to our product business. Currently, we offer commercial off-the-shelf top sensor modules, TSMs. Based on the reflective variance of our zForce technology, we manufacture these TSMs at our subsidiary, Pronode Technologies in Kungsbacka on the West Coast of Sweden and offer them in 11 different lengths from 101 millimeters to 374 millimeters and 2 main variants distinguished by the direction that the light is emitted and received from the sensor unit at 0 or 90 degrees. The TSMs are ideal for contactless touch applications and can be used in 2 main configurations to create such features. Either in what we call the parallel plane configuration where our TSMs are used to project an invisible interaction area or curtain above or in front of the display, keypads or other surface. The other main variant is to use our TSMs together with our holographic display technology where our, in a sense then, should be positioned and aligned with interacting area from our sensor overlapping the projected image in free air. And we tried to illustrate that here. If you have very good sight, you can see in the right picture, below that tinted glass, is an illustration of our sensor module sitting below and pointing up. So that when the user extend their finger into that projected image, you can actually interact with it. And it's very futuristic, and it creates a lot of attention whenever we or our partners show that type of solution. As we have described in earlier earnings calls, there are numerous examples of applications where contactless touch is the way to go and has a big potential to offer new and extended customer value. For instance, different types of vending machines, coffee machines, self-service kiosks, quick service restaurants or at airports, self-checkout, point-of-sales terminals in supermarkets, for elevators or other user terminals and the medical kiosks and medical equipment where, for different reasons, the users do not want to touch the display or the buttons and want to experience a new way of interacting with the machines. Contactless touch is possible with our TSMs for all these types of applications. And why then even consider a contactless touch? And why is it important? The first argument we give is that it's contactless or touchless as some also call it. You don't have to touch the display or the keypad or buttons that you are interacting with. And for a machine and elevator or kiosk sitting in a public space where there are many users using the same machine, it can be a significant risk for transmission of different pathogens or can just give an unpleasant user experience. Here is where contactless touch add value to the customers. We can interact with the machine without touching and avoid getting whatever bacteria or viruses on your hands. Still, we preserve a familiar touch interface or in elevators. And you extend your fingers normally today to press the button, you will use our technology in the same way. But before the finger reaches the button, we will highlight the button. So it's very automatic. It's very convenient. In other applications, say, in medical or in rugged industrial environments, users may have gloves on their hands, and then some other touch technology like capacitive touch will not work. And here, we have a solution that works also with glove or if you usually want to interact with a pen or a key or the corner of your cell phone, for instance. And with our TSMs, that are commercial off-the-shelf products, you can buy them online or directly from us or from some of our partners. We offer free use and smart SDK that allows you to develop your own software applications, and they fit very well for both new installs and retrofit solutions. As described in earlier earnings calls, we used a hybrid go-to-market strategy where we combine direct sales and indirect sales via partners. We also have significant sales through our online distributors, mainly Digi-Key, which is an American company, but they cover more or less the whole world. We work with another distributor in China called Serial and, in Japan, we work with a company called NEXTY Electronics, all sizable and well-known online distributors. We work with partners to penetrate markets that are otherwise difficult for us to reach, for instance, in Asia. It does become a success story for us with our value-added resellers and other partners in Japan, Korea and also China and other parts of Asia. The same in Europe. And we are also working to create similar partnerships with companies in North America. And this way of describing the markets like a pyramid, we feel that we have more and more substance for this argumentation that both elevate the market and the kiosk market can be described this way. So for instance, as we have discussed in our earnings calls during 2020 and 2021, the innovative market is dominated on the top by some 10 major OEMs that often also are multinational companies, and they totally dominate the new equipment market. Below them, there is a segment of midsized companies that can work regionally or nationally. And below them, there are -- there could be many, many smaller firms in the hundreds or thousands. And the company goes also for interactive kiosks. But there, the segmentation is much more apparent and visible. And first of all, interactive kiosks spans a number of subsegments such as vending machines, self-service kiosks, ATMs and so on. And in each of these, and actually in each market, there is plentiful of manufacturers offering this type of products. But overall, also the kiosk market can be described in this pyramid. And of course, we are striving to move upwards here to reach the big OEM players, which has the potential to bring high order volumes for us per order and per year. And this has to do also with the sales cycle that is actually a fact in our business and in our markets. The typical sales cycle starts with a retrofit opportunity. If you look at one segment and one market, this is how we and our partners introduced the concept of contactless touch and our TSM solutions. We work, then, a lot with partners, and they develop different solutions and offer them to the market. And our target customers are, hence, integrators and tech companies, but also, to some extent, OEMs targeting to do their own retrofit solutions. And in many cases, the OEMs are interested in this for different reasons. It's about brand application, quality, but also cash flow and profits that they want to have that business for themselves and not allow third parties to make money on their products. In the second phase, what we are seeing and that we are encouraged by this more and more, once they have us achieved a certain awareness in the market, a certain demand, the kiosk and elevator OEMs get more and more interested. They may want to do retrofits or they may only want to look at new equipment solutions. But for us, then there is a shift. And of course, we want to work directly with OEMs, and they typically want to work directly with us. Sales cycles are a little bit longer. But on the other hand, the potential is bigger per customer per order. And the final step in this sales cycle here is that we are designing in from the beginning. And here, I want to make the reference to HP, Lexmark and other of our printer customers where we are featured with our touch technology in, more or less, every model that they released and have been so for several, several years now. And this is also a development that we are working to achieve and striving for in the TSM business. That may include -- that is on the way to that third stage also, change business model from product sales to licensing. But we see that's one of our strengths that we have, the 2 business model that are complementing each other, and we can serve customers that want to buy low and medium high volumes. And the second point, the customers may likely want to shift to licensing when the volumes grow and then we can continue to work with them and support them in an effective way. So basically, in the sales cycle, we want to penetrate this upside-down pyramid top down, and this happens to be the same as we penetrate the market bottom up. So retrofit, typically, is what we are looking for small- and medium-sized companies and also with our partners who are very much hard work in doing. And our own direct sales is directed towards medium and large companies looking for new installs and retrofit solutions. So these 2 pictures describe the dynamics and the way we are working and the way the elevator and the kiosk markets work. Last 2 years, we have been expanding and developing our partner network. Here, we mention our distributors. We also have a number of value-added resellers, HY-LINE in Germany, MZ Technologie in France, Holo Industries in U.S., for instance. But more prominent is several partners that we have in Japan, Korea, China and other parts of Asia that are very professional, very strong and very active in helping us penetrate these different markets and the different segments. In North America, we have built up last year our own network of manufacturers' reps, and they help us reach customers in North America, U.S. and Canada. And they represent Neonode in front of these customers. And as you know, North America and U.S., especially is a big ICT market. And we see actually very large volume potential in the future from American and Canadian customers. Looking at the progress we have been making in the elevator segment. We have actually secured businesses with a number of elevated control panel companies Finetek in Korea, [indiscernible], YesAR, HKPC China, NZ Technologies Canada, Dewhurst UK and so on. Some of these companies are fairly large and well known, and they work both in the aftermarket and -- versus OEM elevator companies such as Otis, TKE, Schindler and so on. One company that has that multiple flavor is MAD and the other one is the Dewhurst and the third one is Finetek. They all work directly to real estate owners and elevator maintenance firms and upgrade firms, but they also offer and sell the solutions and products to the major elevator company. We are working today with 3 elevator OEMs. And as the next picture shows, we also, today, are quite deeply involved with a number of other elevator OEMs in the world. We cannot disclose the names of these. We have very strict NDAs. And also, they are sort of secretive towards us and our partners in their plans and their rollout strategies. But we are very much encouraged by this. And I want to refer back here to the sales cycle description, and this is proof that we are entering now in a series wave, the second phase where we discuss directly with OEMs and develop new equipment solutions for elevators. With kiosks, the story is similar. We have actually secured businesses with a number of kiosks manufacturers, and they offer, typically, both retrofit solutions and new equipment solutions. Many of these cases, we can, today, not disclose the names of these companies, but they range from some of the very largest interactive kiosk companies in the world to medium size, and in one case, also a small player, a small national player. But still, very, very interesting. And together, it shows that the interactive kiosk market is there and that we have started to secure a beachhead that we are now trying to expand from and grow our business. And this snapshot of our business development pipeline for interactive kiosks solutions show actually just the tip of the iceberg. We have actually many, many more opportunities that we are working on here are some of the most significant ones. Most of these opportunities and customers, they can be found in Japan, Korea, China and other parts of Asia, so APAC. But we also have some very interesting engagements in Europe and North America. And in Europe, if I go top down in this picture, we work with one company doing kiosks for transportation use, say, ticketing machines for train stations and similar, and another customer doing vending machines. They happen to do drink vending machines. And both of these opportunities are significant and quite sizable. So we are super excited about this. And this, again, just shows a fraction of all the opportunities that we and our partners are working on in APAC and EMEA in North America. It also shows a little bit about the expected duration of a typical sales and development project and one we can expect that the customers will launch products. Well, this is not immediate. And typically, what we are experiencing is that the bigger the company gets, the slower they are. So they are, in some of these cases, very, very large corporations that we are working with, and they take time to make decisions, to develop products and then to device a marketing strategy to launch a product and industrialize and actually then launching it. Many of these projects, and in the last earnings call, I was showing an example of a project with 7-Eleven Japan that was digital. We have the sort of a consortium of 7 different companies working together to create that solution with 7-Eleven Japan bought and installed in some of their stores in Tokyo and other parts of Japan. So also, that type of complexity on the supply chain plays a role here and actually slowing us down a little bit. But overall, we are encouraged by the increased interest and the growing maturity of several of these development projects and engagements. And we believe that this is proof that we are on the right track and that we can grow our business in the kiosk segment significantly in the years to come. And that, basically, brings me to an end of our formal presentation. I'll just next going to share some concluding remarks. So let's do that briefly before going to Q&A with our analysts. First point, we see an increasing interest in our TSMs and our solutions for contactless touch. We have shown a snapshot of our business development pipelines for both elevators and kiosks, and we are also showing a little bit of our existing customer base. We have multiple customers and multiple new customer engagements in several countries around the world. Japan is leading the way with Korea, and Greater China, following suit, but also we have several opportunities and new customers in North America and Europe that also show great potential. We're also happy to see a growing interest in our zForce and MultiSensing technologies from automotive customers and also avionics customers. And I want to highlight here that we have started the development project with the European OEM for driver monitoring and also that we are engaged with several automotive Tier 1s regarding head-up display object detection, which we are addressing with our zForce platform. We have mentioned in our report that COVID-19 continues to bring challenges to our sales and business development. And first of all, we have lockdowns and travel restrictions in, for instance, China. Many of you have followed this and know that in China, they are experiencing now a very tough situation with outbreaks of the Omicron variant of the COVID virus. And everything is basically shut down in cities like in Shanghai and neighboring cities. But also in Taiwan, they have very, very strict lockdowns, whereas, Japan and Korea now are starting to open up, thankfully. So it's changing, but COVID-19 is still here and around and affecting us all. We are not directly affected by semiconductor shortages, but our customers are often affected by this and had problems sourcing enough components to scale up their production or launch new products. Also, we feel that our customers, in some cases, are a little bit cautious due to the geopolitical situation and general economic uncertainties regarding the effects of the war in Ukraine and similar, increasing interest rates, oil and gas prices going up and so on. So that's indirectly affecting us and our customers. Overall, we believe we are well positioned and well financed to expand our products business and also to revitalize and grow our NRE and licensing business. And we are hard at work at this every day in the company. And we are very much encouraged by the traction we have in our business development work in Japan, in Korea and other portion of Asia, plus several opportunities with automotive OEMs and Tier 1 manufacturers, plus some additional opportunities that I mentioned in this call. So we strongly believe that we are on the right track and that we will grow our top line significantly in the years to come. Thank you. This brings us to the end of our formal presentation today. And now we would like to open up the call for Q&A.