Earnings call transcript: Napatec Q4 2024 shows revenue growth, EBITDA loss

Napatec (Market cap: $191.16M) reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2024, highlighting a 11% increase in revenue from the previous quarter, reaching $5.4 million. However, the company faced a full-year revenue decline of 22% compared to 2023, totaling $16.8 million. Despite the revenue growth in the last quarter, the company reported a full-year EBITDA loss of $86.3 million. Napatec's stock currently trades at $1.91, near its 52-week low of $1.52, despite showing a positive 38% return over the past year. According to InvestingPro 's detailed research reports.

Full transcript - Duckhorn Portfolio Inc (NAPA) Q4 2024:

Operator: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Napatec Q4 twenty twenty four IMS. My name is Seb (EPA:SEBF), and I'll be the operator for your call today. I will now hand over to Lars Boolessens, CEO of Napatec, to begin.

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: Good morning. I'm Lars Boolessens, CEO of Napatec. I'm pleased to welcome you all to the Nabatec's presentation for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024. Joining me today is our Chief Financial Officer, Heine Thorskore. Our fourth quarter and financial year 2024 report was released earlier this morning on the Oslo Stock Exchange and is also available on the Investor Relations section of Navitec's website.

For your information, a recording of this webcast will be available later today. Slide two, please. There will be a question and answer session following the presentation. During and after these prepared remarks, you may submit your questions via text on the webcast page or we take your questions on the phone. If you would like to ask a question, please follow the instructions on this slide.

Slide three, please. Please note that this presentation contains forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ from those discussed in forward looking statements. Slide four, please. With today's presentation, I complete my full first year as CEO of Nabatec.

I'm looking forward to today's presentation to share what we accomplished and where we are heading. Today's agenda will cover four main areas. First, we'll provide a business data summary for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024 with focus on the major news items that show progress by Nabatec towards achieving our goals to transform our businesses. Next (LON:NXT), we will provide a business outlook that shares information about the opportunity ahead of us. We will then provide detailed information on the fourth quarter and full year financial results.

Get The News You Want

Read market moving news with a personalized feed of stocks you care about.

Get The App

We will then conclude with a question and answer session open to the attendees of today's call. Slide five, please. We have made considerable strides in meeting important milestones of our strategic plan that strengthen our position as an early leader in the emerging and evolving market for programmable mix. This includes both improving our core business in the February and making measurable progress towards new design wins that underpin our growth aspirations. While some of our operating targets for the year were not met, we are pleased that our core customers are returning to long term historical norms, and we signed four new interesting high volume design wins in 2024 that combined give us confidence in achieving our growth ambitions.

Slide six, please. Our priority for 2024 has been to execute our strategic plan as it underpins our long term growth aspirations. To achieve those goals, we remain focused on three key areas, and I would like to share with you a few details from each pillar. First, in our strategic plan, we had to service our valuable installed base of customers who are the early adopters of programmable mix solutions. They are a proving ground for the technology and the value that our solution brings to the network and businesses.

I'm pleased to report four notable items on our existing and mainly packet capture business. We have met these customers' needs in product fulfillment, technology development, and professional services. We have captured many new design wins in their product upgrades. We are working with many of them in securing new design wins based on our new offering. We have worked closely with all of them, including our largest, to gain visibility and confidence that their consumption has remained high and they are nearing completion of the inventory reductions.

Second, we had to accelerate our engineering in software and hardware technologies that extend our products into new areas that align with the highest projected growth segments for Navitec solutions. We successfully were able to add the necessary resource to our organization. We did it cost effectively and according to plan. Finally, we continue to develop an ecosystem through partnerships that expand our go to market reach via marketing, business development, and sales, enabling us to win new designs that would be challenging to achieve on our own. These partnerships include technology leaders in hardware, software, and other IP, none more important than Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Altera.

It also included an array of application and services companies. Those products and solutions require next generation server platforms powered by programmable NICs. Turning to our results in Q4 and calendar year 2024. Revenue for the quarter was $5,400,000 and $16,800,000 for the year. Gross margin for the quarter was 65% and finished the year at 68%.

The gross margin in Q4 was impacted by a planned write off loss of old components due to the end of life of a thirteen year old product line. The net gross margin for Q4 was 75% if we exclude these old components. Our full year was impacted primarily by two of our largest customers burning through inventory buildup during COVID. Had those companies been a historical norms, we would be reporting significantly different results. Our fourth quarter revenue was also impacted by low order from our biggest client.

Most of our other clients were back to normal levels like we also saw in Q3. Later in the presentation, Heine will provide next, I would like to highlight some progress towards growth from our new solutions in the emerging programmable NIC markets. In the first half of twenty twenty four, we extended our collaboration agreement with Intellaterra for next generation programmable NICs, including smart NICs and IPUs. This project was done in cooperation with an NAPTECH announced tier one server manufacturer. Throughout 2024 and into 2025, our expanded R and D team has been ahead of schedule in building these new products and solutions for the tier one server manufacturer.

So this lighthouse client could evaluate and ultimately develop their new products later this year, creating new sources of revenue for Navitec in 2026 and beyond. Our R and D team has delivered multiple stages of early access and prototypes units to this lead customer, allowing for their testing and validation in parallel to our ongoing development. As a result, today, we are involved in four plus individual projects with this lighthouse prospect. For the remainder of 2024, we saw continued validation of the emerging market opportunity from industry megatrends that consistently brought forward new application and use cases, all increasing the demand for programmable mix beyond hyperscaler cloud operators. This has had an impact on our business as we have secured a record breaking number of new product design wins within our existing packet capture business.

Outside our existing business, we also secured four high volume design wins in 2024. This included unlocking the opportunities at the already mentioned tier one server manufacturer. Also, an artificial intelligence and machine learning provider, myrdl.ai, a big data analytics firm, SigmaX dot ai. And in Q4, we won a new design win with an European security provider who are targeting 1,000 to 2,000 units annually in peak production. We anticipate others making their design decisions in the near term as well.

In total, we achieved 36 design wins in 2024 across all programmable mix portfolio of hardware and software with the potential to consume 40 to 60,000 units when in production. These notable strides toward our design win goals are the launchpad to new volumes of demand for our programmable mix solutions. In addition to new design wins, we continue to expand our pipeline of opportunities, of course, and increasing base of customer types, application, and use cases. I'm also pleased to report that we expand our company leadership to support Nabatec's next phase of growth, most recently with Shannon Pulin joining our board of directors. Shannon is no stranger to Nabatec.

Our work together began many years ago with Shannon in his role as vice president and general manager at Intel Altera. As today concludes our 2024, we remain confident in our vision, goals, and plans to achieve them. There are undeniable signs that programmable NICs are changing the way modern data centers are designed. The early adopters have already decided, and many of them have standardized on the Intel Altaira architecture. The mass market is emerging in the wake.

While we know that it takes time to secure new design wins and move them from ideas to production, we know also how advantageous our starting position is from our own long history combined with the boost provided by our partnership with IntelliTerra. As each new segment of the mass market unfolds, Nabatec has made the investments in people, products, and partnerships to be in the best position to capitalize on this new demand. Slide seven, please. We welcome many new followers of Nabatec today As we both reflect on 02/2024 results and set our inspiration for 02/2025, it is helpful to make a moment to outlay where Nabatec fits in modern data centers network designs and how it related to the opportunity opening to us. Nabatek's products are critical for server performance.

The image to the right, labeled f, is a standard server. Servers are the primary system in modern data centers and are used to deliver the applications, services, and revenue to business in cloud, enterprise, telecom, and government networks. Historically, the most important part of the server were the central processing units or CPUs. The CPUs from companies like Intel act as the brains of the server and are labeled E in this image. The CPUs are surrounded by memory labeled d.

Memory stores data, including network traffic for the CPUs to process. A new and well published area inside of servers are the expansion slots shown as c. These expansion slots are the most often used today for acceleration cards based on GPUs or FPGAs for artificial intelligence, machine learning, training, large language models, and more. Nabatec's products are increasingly being evaluated for use in these locations. And finally, the slots labeled A and B show the network interface cars or NICs.

In this image, two of Nabatec's NICs are shown. Nabatek builds a new type of NIC known as programmable NIC. Together with Intel, Nabatek is developing two types programmable NICs, including smart NICs shown in B and infrastructure processing units or IPUs shown in A. A. Navitek's programmable NICS plays a crucial role in modern data center and server design.

They are the sole link between the outside cloud and enterprise networks, providing access to critical CPUs and GPU resources that deliver artificial intelligence, security, and other servers. Slide eight, please. Programmable NICs started to take off when introduced by hyperscalers in order to deal with the explosive data demand hyperscalers experience in the data centers. Their designs changed the performance, capabilities, and economics of network design. This group grew at enormous scale and drove most of the early market demand for programmable NICs.

These benefits, however, were not in any way relegated to these early innovators. The same benefits are now in demand by network operators of other types and scale. Intel Altera is a leading provider of smart NIC and IPU solutions to many of the top hyperscale and network operators, where they have grown significantly and at a fast pace. To expand beyond the small number of large volume hyperscale operators, Intel Altira has partnered with Navitec to provide complete commercial production grade solution to the mass market beyond these early adopters. Several megatrends are igniting a new wave of applications and use cases that are creating demand from the next wave of customer types.

Let's describe some of Intel Atera's and Navatec's potential target segments outside hyperscalers. First group are OEMs who build network appliances and servers. While the hyperscale operators build their own network appliances, switches, routers, NICs, and servers, The OEM built their own branded solution for sale to the mass market who are not going to build their own solution from components like the hyperscalers. The second group has emerged are the tier one or next wave of cloud operators. While the hyperscalers are often defined as a small group of eight, the next wave operators have numbers in the hundreds of thousands and deploy a massive number of servers and appliances with largely the same product and technology requirement as the hyperscale and network operators.

As cloud architectures have shifted from an old cloud to a hybrid multi cloud architecture, server and appliances solutions based on Bramble NICs have emerged within Fortune 500 enterprises. Telecom (BCBA:TECO2m) operators, largely in their five gs mobile packet core networks, require programmable NICs for their user plane functions, or UPFs, and within their telco data centers. Many performance latency and security sensitive applications with government and defense networks have also emerged. And finally, in the long run, Fortune 5,000 enterprises are envisioned to deploy programmable NICs as more of the applications and use cases created by these segments become turnkey and generally available. The use case is fueling the growth of programmable NICs within these customer types were described in a recent industry analyst report from Del Oro that predicted generative AI will drive Ethernet and adapter and smart NIC market to surpass 16,000,000,000 by 2028.

While it is still early in this market, there are clear signs of the industry megatrends unlocking new application across different customer types, increasing a demand for programmable and smart NICs and IPUs. Slide nine, please. Several industry megatrends require new architecture for networks and data centers and the servers and appliances used to build them. And within these new servers, a new type of network interface card is required, a programmable NIC. Artificial intelligence is changing every aspect of network and communication.

AI applications, services, and use cases now projected to make up most new server deployments. These servers require the network connectivity to reach into the processors being used for AI, often called the front end network, which is an ideal home for programmable NICs. These back end networks are also ideally suited for programmable NICs to deliver high performance, low latencies, and adaptable processing required in rapidly evolving standards to support new AI implementations. Cloud and edge computing are the genesis of programmable NICs, Adopted by nearly every high hyperscale cloud operator, programmable NICs are used to provide the highest performance and lowest latency for tenant services, including offload and acceleration for storage, network and security services for virtual machines and containers. Five gs mobile infrastructure is architecturally specific on standard server technologies that require programmable NICs over standard NICs to meet the user scalability requirements, in addition to the staples of high performance and low latencies.

While the telecom sector has experienced low IT spending over the last few years, the last few months have brought rays of sunshine from telecom buyers and the vendors that serve them. Several suppliers of solutions for mobile packet core have begun to roll out their new offerings. The cybersecurity market offers the widest set of verification and use cases that benefit from programmable NICs. And this segment has been one of the most successful for Navatec in the past, making it a deal target to expand our legacy packet capture solution to meet the new requirement in in this high growth and high volume markets. Financial services has also long been a hotbed of programmable mix, especially those based on FPGA technology.

Navitec has more than 50 leading customers in this segment. Our legacy packet capture solution deliver great value in smaller segments and are being enhanced to extend it into larger and higher growth segments among these users. Big data analytics is relatively new and an emerging area for programmable mix. One recurring theme within IT is that users and their applications are generating record amounts of data, and that data is expensive to create, transport, store, and analyze. Programmable NICs address the technical and financial challenges in each of these areas.

Monitoring and recording of so much data in flight is a critical requirement for regulator and compliance, quality insurance and more. With nearly every aspect of business and personal communication online in some form, monitoring and recording of applications are on the rise. Long a key area for Navatec package capture solutions, this segment is generating new design wins for Navatec legacy and new products. As you consider each of these seven megatrends, two themes emerge: A common requirement for high performance, low latency programmable solution are a necessity for server connectivity in modern data center designs. Navitec's long proven history in packet capture designs is a baseline that is winning new valuable designs in that legacy use case, but is also being expanded upon and enhanced to take into new applications and services for new and old customers alike facing these industry megatrends.

Slide 10, please. We just showed you in the previous slides that there is going to be a big programmable smart NIC market outside hyperscalers. We also showed you that this market expansion is fueled by the many big megatrends. In addition, Navitec already has the needed programmable SmartNIC technology. Navitec has been delivering programmable NICs into niche segments within monitoring and recording, fintech, and cybersecurity during the last fifteen years.

These deliverables has all been programmable mix in application required an error, but important set of features called packet capture. Those same important features are based on requirements in the new segment. Our R and D effort has been to expand and enhance those features with new capabilities to allow our programmable mix to be deployed where they have a history of winning and also in the higher volume and higher growth segment that are emerging. Beyond our Packet Capture legacy business, we are deeply involved in engagement for network based firewalls, microservices, server based firewalls, AI infrastructure, multiple storage opportunities, encryption and decryption, and a big range of five gs mobile designs. We aim to continue a stream of new design wins in 2025.

Based on our work in 2024, we continue to see validation from prospect, customers, partners and industry analysts that increase the market projection for Navitex products and solutions. This provides all the inspiration and motivation we need to press forward with our plans. Slide 11, please. To support our aspiration of becoming the leader supplier of Grenoble NICS to the mass market, our people, capital and partnership investment have been laser focused on this area. Our product strategy has three primary areas of focus.

We are application driven. As just shown, there are no shortage of application or services across a few customer types that require programmable mix. Navatec is investing in the hardware and software development that are required from a combination of the largest number of occasions from the largest and highest growth areas. We are software focused. Make no mistake, we sell programmable NICs.

We are a NIC company, but our most defensible strategic advantage is our software. We have more than twenty years of valuable NICs software IP built exclusively for FPGA based NICs that are used in a number of valuable niche segments for programmable NICs. Those packet capture NIC features are largely or entirely required in many of high growth segments we are targeting. Our software investment has been developing the incremental features and capabilities that are needed to allow them to win in new segments. We are hardware independent.

That simply means we build the best programmable mix based on the leading technology from Intel and Altera, making sure our software IP is available on programmable NICs in the SmartNIC and IPU configurations. All of the product announcement you have seen from Navitec during 2024 were new SmartNIC and IPU hardware platforms and software packages that power them. In the third quarter, we introduced N3070X programmable SmartNIC. The new 400 gigabyte N3070X AI SmartNIC is based on the latest technology from IntelliTerra. The SmartNIC is engineered for the challenging demands in artificial intelligence infrastructure as well as traditional SmartNIC use cases.

Network operators evaluating early network architecture for AI have been challenged by vendor logins based on proprietary InfiniBand and RDMA over converged Ethernet implementations. Navotech solution conform to a vision for a standardized Ethernet infrastructure utilizing Ultra Ethernet. It has a creative design that allows it to be operational configured with an Intel Xeon CPU, converting it to a high performance IPU. The product was first promoted at the recent Intel Altira Innovator Conference held in October and the headquarters in Silicon Valley. Also in the third quarter, Navitec released our LinkedIn line production grade software solution on an Intel based NT400D13 programmable smart NIC powered by IntelAltera at a Jellx seven FPGA.

This software enables five gs mobile network operators to offload and accelerate their user plane functions. The new offering provides an improvement of more than 60% over previous solutions, helping operators to dramatically reduce the cost, size and power requirements when delivering five gs service to an increasing number of subscribers. Slide 13, please. In addition to our core business, twenty twenty four was heavily focused on R and D projects to build the new hardware and software products that allow us to begin structuring new design wins in 2024 and 2025 that allow our new designs to begin ramping production in 2026. And we have positive news to report on each front.

Our current business continues to provide a solid base for more than 400 buyers in the last two years. Our pipeline continues to expand. Both organic Nabatec and Intel Altaira sourced opportunities are being added on a regular basis. Our pipeline consists at a record level of opportunities and value. It includes both programmable smart NICs and IPUs being developed in partners in our partnership with Intel that are powered by our innovative software packages.

In Q4, we record eight design wins in cybersecurity, monitoring and recording, five gs, and other telecom use cases. These design have the potential to deliver more than 3,500 units per year in peak production beginning as early as 2026. In total, in 2024, we secured over 36 new project and product design wins from new and existing customers and from many of our customer types, education, and use cases shown today. While design wins are long and complex, we measured important mileposts that indicate progress toward the end goal of moving opportunities from programs and projects to production solutions. The improving base business plus constantly expanding pipeline of opportunities and early success in new design wins provide great optimism towards realizing our growth ambitions.

Slide 14, please. In the next two slides, I'd like to briefly highlight examples that stitch together today's information. In both examples, industry megatrends are unlocking a new application and use case that require a programmable NIC that is best served by Nabatek's products powered by Intel Altira. The first is known as AI infrastructure. Artificial intelligence is changing every aspect of networking communication.

AI application services and use case now projected to make up most new server deployments. These servers require the network connectivity to reach into the processors being used for AI, often called the front end network, which is an ideal home for programmable NICs. These same AI server pools now have a backed network mesh that provides the scale out connectivity among the AI processors. These back end networks are also ideally suited for programmable NICs to deliver high performance, low latencies, and adaptable processing required in rapidly evolving standards to support new AI implementations. Navitec is working on several high volume design win use cases with leading suppliers of AI inferencing solution based on standard servers and their own custom AI silicon.

Slide 15, please. Navitec has provided free recent disclosure about our solution for five gs mobile packet cores, often referred to as UPF Offload and Acceleration. The announcement can be found on our website on January 18, February '11 and February 18. The slowdown in telecom spending is well noted and has impacted many IT vendors in 2023 and 2024. Across all the areas of our business, we are seeing signs of a solid turnaround for 2025 and hearing similar news from partners in the same space.

To that end, we're also seeing leading hardware and software vendors lining up their solutions to place their own bets on standard servers with programmable smart NICs as the platform of choice for the telco and private network operators of five gs networks. In the picture shown above, the blue NIC represents the many locations within a five gs public or private networks where hundred to thousand of programmable NICs may be required to meet the performance, latencies, and user scalability requirement for UPF applications. The first announcement was for a complete solution from A5G Networks, a leading provider of distributed and four gsfive gs core network software running on a Dell (NYSE:DELL) XR 8,000 standard high volume server powered by an Evitec programmable NIC based on Intel FPGA technology. The second announcement featured a complete solution based on Druid Software (ETR:SOWGn), a leading provider of private Celera network core software solution for enterprises optimized for Red Hat device Edge and Nabatec's programmable NICs. The third news released last week disclosed another complete solution based on Contran's popular ME thirteen ten Multi Access Edge accelerated by Navitec's programmable NIC to optimize the five gs core application from TRUMINE's software system.

The combination of these disclosed solutions shows some of our top suppliers of solution in these markets, lining up to place their bets on the demand for these solutions and to be ready when the market unfolds. Nabatec's effort in this space go beyond these three recent news items with more than 20 hardware and software customers and partners in place. Slide 16, please. To conclude today's presentation, I invite you to visit Nabatec in one week at Mobile World Congress. If you plan to attend the event, we do have guest passes available for you.

We would love to host you at our booth to speak with our experts on hand. We will be showcasing our complete line of Grenville NICs and the top use cases for them in mobile and telecom networks, including five gs packet core UPF offload and acceleration, network and application performance monitoring, cybersecurity, signaling, gateways, lawful interception. In addition to two of the compelling and powerful complete solution that we discussed, we will be shown in the booth featuring leading global leaders, Dell and Red Hat. Slide 17, please. And now I'll hand over the presentation to Heine, and he will go through the financial data.

Heine Thorskore, CFO, Napatec: Thank you, Lars. Slide 18, please. Revenue in Q4 was up 11% compared to Q3 and amounted to DKK37.7 million and in USD to 5,400,000.0. After the slow start of the year, our revenue has been growing each quarter throughout the year. And with the Q4 performance, we are now close to a yearly run rate of USD 22,000,000.

Compared to 2023, our product revenue for the full year of 2024 was down 22%, but we see clear signs of improvement in the market, especially within The U. S. Finance and telcos market segments. Adjusted for the end of life product costs, our gross margin in Q4 ended at 75% and the adjusted gross margins for the full year of 2024 ended at 71%. In 2024, we retired versions of our NT20 and NT40 SmartNICs that were introduced from 2014 to 2016.

Altogether, we've shipped more than 40,000 units of these products over the last twenty years. Our staff cost and other external cost in Q4 amounted to $44,800,000 compared to $43,200,000 in Q3. Compared to 2023, staff costs and other external costs for the full year were up 20% in 2024. This growth in costs follows our plan to accelerate our development activities significantly and bring new products to the market quickly to serve the increased design win pipeline. EBITDA in Q4 amounted to negative $17,000,000 which was an improvement compared to Q3.

For the full year of 2024, EBITDA amounted to negative $86,300,000 Slide 19, please. Net cash flows from operating activities in Q4 amounted to negative 30 2 point 9 million dollars and to negative 102,800,000.0 for the full year of 2024. Adjusted for the working capital development, net cash flows from operating activities in Q4 were negative at SEK 8,900,000.0. Net cash used in investing activities in Q4 amounted to SEK 3,900,000.0 compared to SEK 3,500,000.0 in Q3 and SEK 2,500,000.0 in Q4 of twenty twenty three. Net working capital at the end of Q4 was SEK $98,600,000 The net working capital reflects our inventory of new products ready for immediate delivery.

Cash and cash equivalents at the end of Q4 twenty twenty four amounted to CHF 64,300,000.0 compared to CHF 42,400,000.0 at the end of Q4 twenty twenty three. Back to you, Lars.

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: Thank you, Heine. We are guiding revenue of DKK 150,000,000 to DKK 190,000,000. Our existing business is expected to grow with around 30%. This growth is coming from our biggest client, who is expected to finish their inventory and safety stock in Q1 twenty twenty five. We are also assuming a full year impact performance from our other big existing clients, which had a slow first half year in 2024.

In addition, we are counting on F5 orders in 2025, which was delayed in 2024. These factors are expected to get our existing business into the lower part of the revenue range. Initial trial orders and NRE fees from our new business will help to bring us well within the guiding range. For our new and high volume business, 2025 will primarily be another year for winning high volume design wins. Gross margin are expected to stay at approximately 70%.

We have proven to deliver all our critical deliverables on time in 2024. Therefore, we do not plan to significantly expand our workforce in 2025. Staff expenses and other external costs are planned at DKK 170,000,000 to DKK 180,000,000. This assumption and a performance in the middle of the range will give an EBITDA of minus DKK 46,000,000 and secure funding throughout 2025. This ends our presentation, and we will now open up for Q and A session.

Over to the operator.

Operator: Thank First question is from Oystein Lodgaard at ABG. Please go ahead.

Oystein Lodgaard, Analyst, ABG: Thank you very much and good morning Lars and Heinek. I would like to start with a few questions on the guidance for 2025. You like you just mentioned, you anticipate a recovery in kind of your legacy business and you also have ramping up the F5 orders and that should get you to the guided revenue. Does that mean that you expect no contribution from starting to ramp up these new IPU volumes in 2025? And how does that impact 2026?

Because if production doesn't start to ramp up during 2025, then I guess you won't be able to reach a full run rate in 2026.

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: Thank you, Iceland. Let me take that question. So last year so let me take you through the guidance. So in 2024, we ended up just below SEK 17,000,000. So what we're saying is on the existing business that our biggest client have been burning off a safety stock that we expect to end here in Q1.

So we will expect a few more millions from them in 2025. Then also, the F5 production was delayed to 2025. We expect orders there this year. So that will bring us so and then so that will also help. And then the first thing is that we had a very weak first half year in 2024.

We expect that our clients, which was in the second half of twenty twenty four back to normal volumes, that they will continue that throughout 2025, meaning we have full impact from all our clients in 2025. So all that will bring us into the low range of the guiding range. What then NIE fees, trial orders, will bring us in the middle and the, hopefully, the upper part of the range. So we do expect trial orders, and we do expect NIE fees from new design wins and from design wins we did last year. And then production will be from 2026 and forward.

So clearly, the design wins we will sign, at least here in the first half of the year, can be in production next year.

Oystein Lodgaard, Analyst, ABG: Okay. Thank you. And just to clarify that I when you're ramping up these large volume design wins, I guess that takes some time to reach full production. So does that mean that if you're only going to have trial orders this year and not starting to ramp up production that you won't be able to reach full production at least not at the beginning of 2026, maybe you'll reach it sometime during 2026. But I guess that means that you can't have full production for 2026 as a whole.

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: I mean, then you're referring to what we call production. Right, then you're referring to what we call production. But if you have if you're delivering a product, let's say, before summer and they are running trial orders, etcetera, and they if this is a client who sells these products and they get big volume orders, then we will be we will, of course, manufacture and invoice that in 'twenty six. So will they have peak production in 'twenty six? But it could be very high production for us if they need to deliver to their clients in 'twenty six.

Oystein Lodgaard, Analyst, ABG: Okay. To ask the question in another way, how long time does it take to ramp up production on these very big accounts where you're talking about like 10,000 cards or more for this first big design win that you announced a year ago with a large service manufacturer? Would it take you to ramp up production there?

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: I mean, we are delivering the final product. For example, for that specific client, they're already we're already delivering a fully operating prototype. End of last year, we're delivering the final product in May. So that means it's ready for production, right. So that doesn't take it's ready.

If they replace orders, we can manufacture in high volumes in months.

Oystein Lodgaard, Analyst, ABG: Yeah. And then you can get then you could already be at the start of like full scale production at the beginning of twenty twenty six if the flight is ready or Yes.

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: But let's take that because I see there's another question, on a webcast. So let me try to combine some of the questions, right? There is one from Pierola of Gimness, who is saying, have you started to get orders from the tier one you won in that design win you won in 'twenty four? So the status of that is that we delivered a full operating prototype, which declined. They, in their lab, are now doing testing and what you call bring up.

And there will be final deliverables in May, and everything looks fine for that. Right now, we are that prototype is being tested out in four BUs in this with this tier one server manufacturer. So they need to make decision around that, and hopefully, they will do that. And then there will be trial orders and hopefully then production in 'twenty six, 'twenty

Oystein Lodgaard, Analyst, ABG: seven. Can I also have one more question? How much revenue do you expect from the F5 contract in 2025 and onwards, if you would like to comment on that?

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: It's very hard for us to have insight on. That was a very complex project because they had end of life of a CPU they used, so that delayed the project a lot. So they have made a last buy of that CPU and that these components are now in our factory, right? So we're just waiting for them to give us a green light on that. We also are working with them on their next design.

So this is more like business as usual, but the important part is now to get to get an to get the order for this last buy, and that that is in the in that is, that is all depending on them how many units they need, so we just need to wait for that.

Oystein Lodgaard, Analyst, ABG: Okay. That was the last question from me. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Currently have no other questions on the phone line, so I'll hand over for any further webcast questions.

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: Yes. I can try to handle that. We have seven questions. Some of them, there are some overlap. So one question about this Tier one servo manufacturer is when will the name be made public?

And this is entirely up to the client, but most likely when we basically get the first order from them, then they'll do testing, etcetera. So when they actually will launch it is most likely when they actually launch product with our NIC included in the server. So that's all we can say about that. Then there's a question from Lars Knudsen. You have 70,000,000 worth of inventory that is quite up in a bit in the quarter.

Why is that? And how much revenue is 70,000,000 inventory equal to? Would you like to take that, Heine?

Heine Thorskore, CFO, Napatec: Yes. Thank you, sure. Our inventory was actually up 1,700,000 in Q4, but it is true that it has been growing notably throughout 2024. However, this is almost exclusively related to our new products, the IPUs that we have ready on the inventory, ready for immediate shipments. So so basically, the growth, if you compare end of twenty twenty four to end of twenty twenty three, that is related to the new products and and IPUs.

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: Okay. The next question from Lars Hansen is, do you expect to get additional engineering fees from partner? And if is that included in guidance? So that was what I referred to before that the existing business will bring us into the low range of the guiding range. And then NIE fees, trial orders will take us further up in the guiding range.

I will also say that probably lessons learned from last year is that when we go into design win discussions now, we will definitely work very hard on getting trial orders while we sign step one of work where we have to do work. We want to get preorders on units when we enter this agreement going forward. And that should be possible. Yes, so another question in the same race from Nicholas Salbu. Given that your 2025 revenue guidance in line with what one could expect from your legacy business, is it fair to assume that you expect no revenue from your business line in 2025?

So we do expect we do expect EFEs trial orders from new design wins and from the new business in 2025. But it's fair to say that production in volume is expected from 'twenty six and forward. Another question from Nicholas Salvo. Is your working capital guidance in regards to inventory reduction based on actual orders? Heine, would you like to take that?

Heine Thorskore, CFO, Napatec: Yes. So the expectations to the development in the working capital is based on basically our revenue expectations and our production planning. Our production planning is done two, three quarters in advance, so we have a clear picture of the productions being planned for 2023 combined with the expectations to revenue. That is what we are communicating in the working capital expectations there.

Lars Boolessens, CEO, Napatec: Okay. Question from Anders Knudsen. How do you see Q1 progressing? Will Q1 grow versus Q4? Or should we expect a usual start to the year with Q1 lower than Q4?

So Q1 is still impacted by our biggest clients, safety stock. We expect them to end that in Q1. So that so what I think there's still one month to go. So we do think good things to happen in March. So I think for now, we can say at least it's going to be better than Q1 last year.

Question number eight. Do you will you have a capital increase in 2025? Is that expected? So if you look at our guiding, we do expect in the middle if we manage to be in the middle of range, we have funding throughout 2025.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.