If we commence into the presentation, we have a disclaimer first, and the agenda for today and presenters is me, myself, Robert Puskaric, the CEO, and Hugo Petit, who is our new CFO and head of investor relations. The agenda that we have for you today is pretty straightforward. It's an operational update. It's a financial review. We will lay out the near-term priorities, and then we will open up for a Q&A. So with that said, let's embark into this presentation then. So the key highlights for the period, and you know, since we didn't have an announcement of a new strategic direction for Zwipe in January, you have heard many of these things that we're going to talk about today, but we will still repeat them. During the period, we then announced that we had a partnership with Schneider Electric in Q3, and that, of course, Schneider being a global enterprise company and provider of different types of solutions, we are, of course, piggybacking on what we have done with them in the U.S. in order to have them as a partner in all countries where we want to be present, where they are present. So this is a great partnership that we have been able to establish. But we have also announced other partnerships such as Oloid, AWT, and Sintesi that wants to provide and are working on providing biometric access cards, both for physical, but also for logical access control. And they are present in Europe. They are not working in North America. We see, I mean, everything you can, of course, compare to what we have done before and what we're doing now. And I mean, we started saying that we will focus a lot more on access when 2023 started. And since then, we have been able to demonstrate a lot of traction in the market, in the countries and geographies where we have decided to be present. And that has resulted in more than 35 partnerships that we have signed so far in different forms and versions. And we have also been able to carry out or are about to start more than 65 different proof of concept slash pilots. The reason why we kind of have different terminology on those is, of course, the length of the test and the amount of cards that the customer wants to kind of test. But more than 65 of those, in the geographies where we are present. Tadera is a partner, former Civix in North America, also unveiled their offering, which is then based, of course, on our card in North America, which is then kind of linked to what we have done with Safe Skies, and they are heavy into airports. So, of course, we are supporting them since they are using our technology and our platform. And we will come back a little bit to the Safe Skies report that the test has ended, and the report is out, as we have communicated also to the market. And, of course, now we are with joined forces, Tadera and us, pushing all the 100 members of Safe Skies to take part of the test and the report, but also now to start deploying because it's possible to roll it out. I mean, it's tested, and there is a, I shouldn't use the recommendation, but there is a description of, you know, how security could be improved, with introducing this type of technologies, at airports. During the period, we also went through a rights issue in December where we managed to raise an additional NOK 35 million in gross capital. And there is also a possibility to exercise, possibility of exercising warrants in December 2024. That is another potential of some NOK 39 million in additional funds. After the period, then, that was when we announced, or not, not us, but the Safe Skies Alliance concluded their testing and released their report to all the members. This has been long awaited from our side. And as I just said, I mean, we are really pushing with Tadera now, to kind of point at the result of the report and to make the airports now take the step, which should feel much safer for them, considering that it has been like a very thorough test that has been conducted by Safe Skies. After the period, which was then in January, we then made a public announcement that we are updating our strategic direction, and that we are focusing a lot more on Zwipe Access, and putting Zwipe Pay on ice because we see that we have; it's better to use the funds that we have for access because that gives us a better near-term path for profitability than Zwipe Pay. But I will come back to Zwipe Pay as well. So if we go to the next slide, Hugo, I mean, on January 16th, we then made the announcement of the restructuring and the new strategic direction, which has a greater path for profitability. This was, of course, based upon us reviewing the market and the traction that we have had, but not only us, but also the entire industry, both partners, competitors, different types of suppliers, and what has happened in the market versus all the predictions that has been there, on how this market will take off since I joined the company. The conclusion was that the traction that everybody expected and the inflection point that we saw coming, I would say, given our kind of success in the market, with different pilots, but also with commercial launches that we did in the Middle East, at the end of the first half 2023. But when we kind of concluded the second half 2023, we could unfortunately just make the conclusion that the market has not taken off and that the inflection point, as we believed would happen, did not happen. And then we, of course, need to look at, okay, so what is the best path for profitability for our company given where we have traction, which is on access, if we would then refocus all our efforts, all our people, and all the money that we have in the company in trying to get traction where we see more traction and commercial progress. And that was on access. So that is why we took that decision, together with our board, of course, and embarked into becoming more of a access control card type of provider, instead of pay. I do want to state that we have not destroyed any shareholder value. We have not kind of, can I say, destroyed the solution that we so thoroughly built, being the best payment, biometric payment solution in the world, I would say. We have just put it on ice. So if the market will come back, we are, of course, ready to embark back into the path of biometric payment cards. But as of now, we need to focus the scarce resources that we have in the company, where we see the best commercial traction, which is access. Another thing that we see is that, in our discussions with end-user enterprises, people are then pointing out a EU directive, which is called NIS2, which is based around cybersecurity, and that goes into force in October 2024, where different types of government institutions, enterprises, depends on what they do and so on, are all kind of ranked in how critical they are and to what level they need to implement things to protect themselves, to increase their security. As one part, which is then two-step authentication, our product fits extremely well for the enterprises that have the toughest requirement on NIS2 from a cybersecurity point of view, to start using our products. And, of course, we're getting very, very, very good dialogues, when we make aware that these products actually do exist because not everyone knows that. So that will become a catalyst during 2024 to help enterprises around in Europe that are kind of on the critical list to comply with these new directives because else they will be fined. So you can say that in a way, this is like GDPR, but in a different form, where fines could be handed out if you don't comply to the new regulations. Yes, we need to allocate the financial resources where we think that they make best use, and that is what we have done. We have then judged that access creates more of a viable and significantly faster path to profitability due to higher margins and higher average sales price per card. And do remember that in this world of access cards, we sell the finished product, meaning the complete card, because we manufacture the card as well, while on the payment side, we are basically providing components that kind of are part of the platform together with software and all the kind of manufacturing processes and help that you need. But still, we are not selling complete cards, which we then do on access. And for us, we believed, in the discussion with our board, that making a bold and decisive move, early on is for the best interest for our shareholders instead of kind of trying to hang in there on pay and consume more cash than necessary. So, this is what we did, and communicated on the 16th of January, which I believe is the absolute right thing to do. Okay, so next picture. I think that is trying to illustrate a bit of, you know, how the market looks like going forward for Pay. This is, maybe different form and shape, but same numbers as we presented on the 16th of January. This has these numbers basically looking at biometric payment cards shipped annually, which is here judged by ABI. That is, I mean, it's much, much lower than we had like 12, 18 months ago. So the projections are extremely low. I do believe that biometric payment cards will be around. Question how fast that market will grow and how much of a niche product it will be. But I do believe that the value it offers to issuers sooner or later, it will be a take-up in the market, and we will be ready to serve that market as well. But right now, we can't kind of focus too much on that. On the right-hand side here, you see the amount of commercial launches and major pilots communicated. And for the first half of 2023, it looked good. I mean, we had like in total, we had like, you know, seven things that we could kind of count to worldwide that were being launched or communicated. And Zwipe had commercial launches to a greater extent than anyone else in the industry. So it looked promising. But the problem is that in the second half of 2023, which this report is all about, nothing more happened, basically, which is, of course, a great disappointment, but it's still the way the market developed. We, as an isolated company, could not achieve more. And the market for the other big guys out there has been the same. So I wish it was sometimes us doing something wrong in the payment market that we could easily correct, but that's not really the case. So when you look at this, then, of course, also you need to think of where do you focus your resources and cash to make best use for investors and shareholders, and that is on access. So let's take next slide, which is more than about access. So this is reiterating on the more than 65 proof of concepts and pilots that we have in progress across the geographies where we are. And this is both with partners like the Schneiders of the world that needs to be confident in that this technology works so they want to test it themselves before they start pushing it to their customers. But it's also in some cases the end-user enterprises themselves that are testing this in everything between 50-100 cards that then before they start doing mass deployments into their you know all their employees around the world, of course, they want to kind of first have pilots to understand how it works and how convenient it is and so on. If we look at Western Europe and Central Europe, here we have engaged with a number of value-added distributors and system integrators and installer companies that are then targeting infrastructure operators such as airports and another type of critical infrastructure operators, but also classical industry, automotive, telecom operators, and other type of normal classic industries that you have in Western Europe. In North America, it has been through the engagements with our partners. We have been able to pinpoint global cloud service providers. A few of them are testing our products, and their providers, being the SI companies or the global cloud service providers, have also tested our products and are now pushing it into the global cloud service providers to convince them to start using this for their data centers and other office buildings that they have. There is a number of Fortune 100 companies in North America that our partners are engaging with because this is really about building a network of value-added distributors and system integrators to reach further because we are so few people that if we will kind of go and hunt every individual end-user enterprise, it will take forever, and we will not be able to pinpoint that many. So we are both talking to some end-user enterprises, but we are spending quite some time building our partnership networks in the different geographies. In Northern Europe, which is then predominantly, I would say, Scandinavia, we have multiple government agencies that we are engaging with through our partners in Sweden in particular, I would say. It's also critical infrastructure operators that have a need to update their security, also according to the NIS2 directives, but in general as well. So there is a lot of many promising opportunities in Scandinavia and in Sweden. And in Sweden, we also then have a commercial order with a very well-known consumer tech company that unfortunately we can't disclose yet. I hope we will be able to do that. But they have our cards that they are using in their daily operations now. As I mentioned, I mean, we are continuously expanding our partnership network of distributors and system integrators because that's how we will get the multiplying effect, when their sales force is trained. They're in many cases, their sales force now have our cards in their hands when they are out meeting their end-user customers. We also have the Safe Skies report. The testing is completed and it's out, and we also sent out a press release on it. And together with Tadera, we are, of course, then now pushing airports to kind of, "Have you read the report? Do you see the conclusions? What about, you know, start implementing?" because they don't really need to test if it works because the report will tell them everything about that. It's more about, you know, "Okay, so pinpoint a certain quantity of employees that you want to start using this." That is basically how we are expressing it to them, in order to get these positive effects of possibility of increasing security in a very easy way. And then you have the European Union NIS2 directive on cybersecurity, which is also, you know, giving us a push in the right direction. So all this combined works in our favor, but it's a lot of hard work. And again, oh, now my screen locked. That's not so good. One second. I'm back in. Okay. No, so one year ago when we kind of communicated an updated strategy in general for Zwipe, that is when we really, really started focusing on access alongside pay. I think that we have achieved a lot, basically, in first half and second half. And now it's all about converting all these partnerships that we have built and all the engagements we have done, into, you know, getting the orders out there with the end-user enterprises. And I'm very, very confident that you will see that happening, during the first half of 2024. So with that, next slide, Hugo, please. This is a slide you have seen many times before, that our product on access is very much GDPR compliant because you don't have to store anything in any server. The biometric data is stored on the card, which is with the user all the time. And of course, you don't need a PIN code. You don't need to touch any terminals out there. It is NIS2 compliant, and it's very simple to roll out because you don't need to change the readers. You just change the cards, and you do that gradually with your, with your employees. And by that, you have increased the security and safety on your sites. If we take the next one, this is to describe the value chain. Yes, we are selling through distributors and system integrators. That's how we go to market. And we have partners also in terms of dormakaba, ASSA ABLOY, and others in order to kind of piggyback on what they are doing as well. Then you have the installers, and then you have like end-user enterprises, which could be any type of industry, including airports, nuclear power plants, or whatever have you. I have to say that our card scanning the market yes, there are, of course, other offerings because that's questions I get from time to time. "Are, are you like alone? Are you unique?" I would say the big guys are not really out there that we can see. The smaller guys like us, they don't have a card that I would say is up to the same quality standards as ours. And our kind of quality standards are basically coming from that Mastercard and Visa have been pushing card makers that are providing payment cards so hard, when it comes to quality aspects, that these cards becomes, you know, a different league, I would say, and that we benefit from because if you're approved by Mastercard and Visa, of course, you're good to go on access as well from a quality standpoint. I will point that out because I, I very often get that question. Okay. So if we take the next one, this is status on restructuring that we communicated then on the 16th of January, cost reductions in order to reduce operating expenses with more than SEK 40 million. Here it says Swedish crowns. I think it should be Norwegian crowns, compared to 2023. 2023 is progressing according to plan, and will have full effect that you will see in the second half of 2024. Realignment of organization and resources have been finalized, but it will kind of be fully implemented and noticed from the outside during the second half of 2024, because that is when you see the financial effects of it. All sales resources have been refocused on access. I would say that compared to a year ago when we had much of kind of sales, pay salespeople doing access sales, today we have shifted competences and actually hired people that have been working in the access industry for much of their entire career. So, of course, they have a totally different kind of traction into getting in contact with people and understanding the market and how these partnership networks work out there so that we can run faster and be more precise. So restructuring is going according to plan, as earlier communicated, no deviations at all so far. By that, I will then hand over to Hugo to guide you through the financials. So, Hugo, please. Thank you. Thank you, Robert. Yes, some information on the numbers. If we start with the revenues, they were approximately NOK 1.2 million compared to NOK 3.1 million in the comparison period. And I think Robert has already elaborated what the explanation is. Instead of a market that was supposed to emerge, we at least is our sense actually saw a market that had lower activity, and definitely much lower activity than we than we had expected. If we look at the operating expenses, of course, we had very low revenues. And and I think it has been a good decision then, of course, to during mid-2023 communicate a a restructuring that actually is yeah has led to a significant decrease, I would say, of the operating expenses. So if you compare with the second half of 2022, operating expenses actually decreased with approximately 25%. And on top of that, of course, the restructuring that was communicated early 2024 will, of course, imply that we expect to see a further decrease of operating expenses during 2024. That said, these restructurings, of course, require some time until the financial effect is seen, so to say. So we expect the full effect of the restructuring at the end or the second half of 2024. And of course, if you decrease the operating expenses, your EBITDA also improves. And that's the reason behind the improvement of the EBITDA from minus 50.55 NOK in H2 2022 to minus 41 or 41.8 during the last second half. If we look a little bit at the monthly burn rate, of course, you might have expected a better improvement or a larger improvement given that the operating expenses have decreased. But again, there are some delays from a financial perspective. So if you look at the average monthly burn rate, it just decreased with NOK 200,000, compared to the second half of 2022. But of course, we expect the burn rate to decrease more or less continuously during 2024. And if we then finally look at the cash position, we had a cash position of approximately NOK 42 million at the end of 2023. And of course, that, yeah, it's not strange that it's a lower amount than the comparison period. But if you then add the remaining proceeds from the share issue that was communicated and conducted by the end of 2023, we can add an additional NOK 24+ million. So we start the year with approximately NOK 67 million in 2024. That was it about the financial review. So I hand over to you again, Robert, to finalize sum up. Yeah, thank you, Hugo. I mean, the near-term priority is of course access, access, and access. That is about closing deals, pushing and working with our partners that we have in different parts and in the value chain and different parts of the world where we have selected to be active. We are very confident that we will be able to communicate and announce several commercial deals throughout the first half of 2024, given all the engagements and traction that we have at the moment, which is on a totally different level than pay has ever been when I have been with Zwipe. We, of course, need to finalize and align everything in the organization, which is important so that everybody is working, you know, alongside the same arrow. And it's very well understood where our future now is, given how the market looks like. But still, you need to work with the organization. We also see that for the second half, we also see that I mean, it's picking up in speed and given that you have all these partnerships that you are working with in different parts of the world that, of course, is according to our projection, is going to give us a triple-digit growth of volumes in access in the second half of this year, if everything goes according to plan. We are also in discussions on, you know, how do we launch new products, to address technologies beyond HID Seos and LEGIC Advant in the second half of 2024 because we see a need of having a more complete portfolio, which is not necessarily so that we have to develop things from scratch, but we need to be able to offer additional technologies to our partners that are selling directly to the end-user enterprises because else we're kind of limiting our reach ourselves due to that we are addressing HID and LEGIC, but not other access technologies. Of course, we are working thoroughly with extending Zwipe's runway so that we can get to cash flow break-even in 2025, which we, which we really believe we will be able to do if we follow our plan and perform according to the targets that we have set for ourselves as an organization. With that, I would like to end the formal part of this second half 2023 and Q4 2023 presentation and go into the Q&A itself. So, Hugo, if you would be so kind to moderate the Q&A, please. Yes, Robert, let me see. One question here. What's to say that Zwipe Access and all these hooks will lead to commercial orders? What is different compared to the Zwipe Pay market? I mean, I think that we have to differ between proof of concept and pilots to start with because proof of concept is basically validating that the technology works, right? While a pilot is more like, okay, so if I had 100 users in company X using it in their daily life, they are more evaluating, like, you know, what benefits does it give to security and then to our organization? Not that the product works and doesn't work. We know it works. So, of course, I mean, just kind of looking at the interactions that we have and the interest that we have from these huge enterprises that are multinationals and global companies wanting to work with increasing their security, they have either very expensive alternatives, which is changing readers to implement some kind of biometric scanners at each door, or you leave what you have out there and you start changing your cards. So, I mean, there is, of course, no 100% certainty that the POC or a pilot will immediately lead to a commercial deal. No, it does not. But it's, of course, the quality in the interactions that we see, the engagements, the discussions, the tests that they are doing, that we then convert into a belief that this will be converted to orders in the future because people want to implement this. People need to comply with the NIS2 directive on cybersecurity, among other things, right? Yes. Let me see another question, to you, Robert. What is the main problem? Where are the customers? Why does it take time to get a customer? I mean, it's a nice way of phrasing that it's a problem. I don't think it's a problem. It's that people are, of course, evaluating things. I mean, one have to recall that a year ago, basically, we didn't talk about access hardly at all. When I joined Zwipe, the company was like 95%-98% geared on pay. Access was something that we did on the backside of everything, right? I mean, now we are focusing on access. So, of course, having had basically no people working 100% on access, and now we have kind of gradually turned the company throughout 2023. And now in 2024, it's 100% access. Of course, things take time. Is that a problem? No, it's not a problem, but it takes time to build like a Western, Central European, Northern European, North American distribution network of partners and installer companies to reach all airports in the U.S. and so on. It takes time. We don't have a lot of time. Time is scarce. I know that. And people are impatient out there being investors. But trust me, we are doing a lot of engagements with very few people in many countries. So, I think that we are doing everything we can with the resources we have. And I believe that you will see that this will bear fruit in the first half of this year. But there is nothing from a technology point of view that is not done that is a problem. No, there isn't a problem. It's a time issue, I would say. Okay. Let me receive the question on; it's maybe more my area. What revenue levels do we need and what the average selling price and gross margins are? In general, we don't communicate any forecast or any numbers. What we aim for, and I think that's something that Robert also already mentioned, is that with the cash position that we have at the moment and the financing options that we have already in our plan, meaning the warrant, we believe that, given that the market emerges as we expect, that we should be able to reach a break-even situation in 2025. Another question on the restructuring. Yes, I think I mentioned that already, that we expect the full financial effect during the second half of 2024. But of course, we will already during the first and the first quarter and the first half of the year see effects of that. Robert, when do you believe the first orders are to be expected? Commercial orders. Yeah, as I have said, I mean, you can say that the first commercial order we have, which is this Swedish consumer tech company, but, but we kind of disregard that for the moment. It's definitely in the first half. I mean, we need to prove ourselves in the first half of this year. And we will so. Okay. And then there was a question on to elaborate more on the NIS2, but I think you covered that, pretty much. Another question on the POCs, but I think that was also covered. I mean, NIS2 is giving us a push in the or giving, you know, our end-user enterprises that, that are on the critical list. There are different classifications of all enterprises in the country, right? Made by, different government bodies that are reporting into this NIS2 EU directive. And of course, those with the highest and high requirements on protecting their assets, if we put it that way. Of course, it becomes like a push and pull effect, right? We have something that they need in order to comply, and we are with our partners telling them that that is a way of complying. So, of course, it works in our favor. But can you put commercial money on how much NIS2 is worth for us and the impact commercially on us? No, you can't. No, you can't. But it works in our favor, definitely. Like, GDPR works in our favor as well because, I mean, if you say to someone, like, if you install, like, biometric readers on every door, you need to store biometric data in a database, that becomes a GDPR issue because employees can actually refuse to surrender biometric data to their employee. So how do you then solve, like, an entry system? Then you need to have a fallback solution, which is still cards, right? Normal cards. While on with our cards, I mean, the biometric data is stored on the card. So, of course, GDPR is also giving us a push in the right direction. Okay. And then maybe trying to combine two questions. What could you say something about, let's say, a typical order size or a typical deal size and how much time can you say something about how much time it takes to get there? I mean, deal size, of course, depends on how many cards you're going to buy, which is, of course, strictly connected to how fast you want to roll it out. And secondly, how big is the enterprises that is going to start deploying this? Is it a 100,000 people company? Is it a 100 people company? A 100 people company will probably say, "Okay, let's buy 100 cards." And all our employees are, like, enrolled into biometric access cards. A 100,000 people company will never buy 100,000 cards and change everything out in a few months. They will probably do it gradually as the old cards need to be changed. So it's probably, I don't know, 3- to 5-year kind of turnaround of, you know, having changed out all the cards. And then you just multiply it with the price of the card. And then you have the deal size. But again, we are not selling to the end-user enterprises. Our customers are the value-added distributors and system integrators of the world, right? That are then buying cards for us and then reselling them to the end-user enterprises that they are supplying readers to and cards to and other types of security solutions, typically. It will depend on size of the enterprise. Okay. Thank you. And a last question. Can you say anything about the sector where you expect to get the first deal done during the first half? I think we will see it more kind of in the critical infrastructure. And I mean, if that's nuclear power plants or if it's airports or, you know, energy companies or whatever have you. But I think it will be people that have a greater need. And then I think others will follow. Not to say that other enterprises don't have a need to kind of protect their assets. It's just that people maybe have more critical things to control who is going in and out, for certainty and not being dependent on dependent on, you know, PIN codes. Okay. I think that was, that was it for now. Good. So, I would like to thank you, all the employees of Zwipe, for doing a, a great job. I would like to thank you, all the investors and owners, for, for being patient. I know that you expected more during 2023 when it came to financial performance. Unfortunately, the pay market didn't turn out to be what we in the beginning of the year thought it would be. We had good traction in the first half. In the second half, I would say that the market was not there, not for us and not for anyone else, when it comes to communication that we have been able to kind of tap into and intercept. And that's why we have now turned the company into Access in order to use the scarce resources, both in terms of people and in terms of money, in the best way to come to a break-even situation from the cash flow point of view as fast as ever possible. So bear with us. We definitely have the intention to deliver deals that we can announce in the first half to show you the positive commercial traction that we experience on the Access side. So with that, thank you very much for listening to us presenting our Q4 and second half report for 2023.
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