4/1/2026

speaker
Kevin
Conference Operator

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the CLSQ fiscal year 2025 financial results earnings conference call. As a reminder, this conference call contains forward-looking statements. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which could cause actual results, financial condition, performance, or achievements of CLSQ to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. CLSQ is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. These risks are also discussed in our filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please be advised our fiscal year 2025 earnings release was issued on Tuesday, March 31st, 2026. Also, our Form 10-K for the full year ended December 31st, 2025, which was filed with the SEC on Tuesday, March 31st, 2026, can be found by visiting the Investors section of CLSQ website at https://investors.clsq.com/. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce Carlos Morera, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CLSQ. Mr. Morera, please go ahead.

speaker
Carlos Morera
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much, Kevin, and good morning in the United States and good afternoon in Europe to everybody. Welcome to a full year 2025 earnings call. I am joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, John O'Hara. I'll begin with an overview of our key highlights and major developments from the year. John will then walk you through the financial results in more detail. After that, I'll return to share our outlook for 2026 and beyond, and we'll conclude by opening the line for your questions. 2025 was a defining year for CLSQ. It was a year where we stepped decisively into the role we had been building towards science or founding that of the wall leading platform for post-quantum secure semiconductor and trusted digital infrastructure. Every investment product lounge and partnership this year advances one central thesis that the quantum thread to encryption is real. It is accelerating and hardware rooted post-quantum security is the only durable answer. Let me walk you through those accomplishments one by one. In October 2025, CLSQ market valuation surpassed $1 billion, and we achieved an upgrade to the NASDAQ Global Select Market, its highest tier. This reflects our growing scale institutional governance standards and investors' recognition and our positioning at the intersection of semiconductor cybersecurity and quantum resilience. Since November 2024, we have raised more than $530 million in capital, providing us with a substantial financial flexibility to accelerate our growth strategy and deepen our investment in innovation. This funding strengthens our balance sheet and enables us to scale product development, expand our commercial reach, and support the industrialization of our next-generation secure semiconductor platform. It also positions us to advance key strategic initiatives, including post-quantum product development, certification programs, and potential partnerships or acquisitions that we can enhance our technology capabilities and market presence. I will provide more detailed color shortly on our use of capital and how we are allocating these resources to drive long-term value creation. I will start with our QS7001, the world's first post-quantum semiconductor. The most consequential milestone of 2025 was the commercial launch of the quantum shield QS7001 in Q4. This is the most first commercial available secure semiconductor embedding NIST standardized post-quantum cryptography algorithms such as ML, MLA, KEM, and MLADSA directly in hardware delivering up to 10 times higher performance than PQC software implementation. We unveiled the QS7001 at the IQT Quantum and AI Conference in New York in October and formally launched development kits at Las Vegas Grand Prix in November. The pipeline on QS701 and QVolt TPM has already grown to over 60 million for 2026 to 2029, up from approximately 11.4 million at the same point last year. I will now discuss the CLSQ Made in U.S. strategy and recent development. The U.S. government and enterprise market increasingly requires root of trust, PKI infrastructure, and cryptographic provisioning on American soil driven by national security imperative and regulatory mandates. In November 2025, we launched a sovereign U.S. post-quantum root of trust, the first of its kind, marking a foundational milestone in or made in U.S. strategy. This initiative ensures that the entire trust chain from silicon design to cryptographic provisioning can be executed within the United States under the highest level of certification and control. To operationalize this vision, we engage Trusted Semiconductor Solution, TSS, as our U.S. manufacturing and distribution partner, and establishing a U.S.-based secure personalization hub in 2026, reinforcing supply chains' sovereignty and resilience. These strategies further strengthen through key partnerships. Collaboration with Lattice Semiconductor enables the integration of low-power FPGA technologies supporting flexible, secure, and post-quantum ready hardware architectures for defense, IoT, and HAI applications. At the same time, engagement with PyroDrone extends secure route of trust capability into autonomous and defense-grade UAV system, where cyber resilience and trusted communications are mission critical. Trusted Semiconductor Solution, TSS, a Category 1A trusted accredited company meeting the highest standard for handling classified emission-critical macroelectronics, has announced a strategic partnership to co-develop made in U.S., PQC-enabled semiconductor, secure semiconductor solution. These solutions are designed to reach the highest level of hardware certification required by U.S. defense and government agencies. Leveraging TSS established a relationship and trusted position within the U.S. defense ecosystem. This collaboration has strengthened CLSQ footprint and accelerated access to sensitive national security market. TSS serves as a critical interface to U.S. agencies, insurance compliance with the Department of Defense, DOD, and federal requirements, while enabling the development of CLSQ quantum-resistant silicon, question chip design, advanced certification, and secure personalization technologies. Eeroq represents the quantum computer layer of this long-term vision. It is electron-on-elion approach enables quantum processor as small as a thumbnail and compatible with the standard semiconductor manufacturing processes. This breakthrough aligns directly with the objectives of building an end-to-end sovereign quantum security stack, bringing today post-quantum cryptography chips with tomorrow quantum processors. The follow-on investment in February, 2026 reflects a strong conviction in this trajectory and reinforces the strategic position and the intersection of semiconductor cybersecurity and quantum computing. By combining US-based manufacturing and personalization through TSA's programmable secure hardware via Lattice semiconductor trusted autonomous system with PyroDrone and future quantum capabilities enabled by EE Rock, we are establishing a vertical integrated sovereign and quantum resilient security ecosystem tailored to the most demanding requirements of U.S. defense, critical infrastructure, and next generation AI system. Our total activity, sorry, our total active pipeline across all products stands to an estimated 200 million in March 2026. We published a certification roadmap confirming all the products variants, which are QS701V1, QS701V2, QVolt TPN183, and QVolt TPN185. which are on track for CCEA L5 plus FIPS 140 Slot 3 and TCG certification through Q4 2026. While our customers are actively testing development kits and progressing through the design in progress, signaling strong engagement and readiness for adaptation, we see that gating factors for conversion to revenue are twofold. First, is the certification completion or CCEAL 5 and FIPS 143 milestones remain on track through Q4 2026. And customers in regulated sectors typically require these certifications before committing to volume purchases. As already mentioned, the laboratory has confirmed that the common criteria evaluation required to achieve evaluation assurance level EAL5+, namely fault injection on side channel attacks, passed its March certification as anticipated. Second, integration cycles in the semiconductor industry, the path from design into full production usually spans six to 18 months. We are actively accelerating this timeline through co-development, partnerships, and close collaboration with customers, shortening the time from prototyping to deployment. Critically, regulatory pressures such as the CNSA 2.0 in the United States and the European Union Cyber Resilience Act are creating tangible urgency. These deadlines are not theoretical. They are influencing procurement decisions today, and we are seeing This urgency directly reflected in commercial conversations driven faster designing and a strong early adoption. This combination of mature pipeline, accelerating integration and regulatory driven demand position has well for meaningful near-term revenue growth while laying the foundation for continued expansion through 2028. Now moving to acquisitions, In 2025, we completed the acquisition of IC-ALP, SIS, SU, a leading ASIC design specialized company based in Grenoble and Toulouse in France. This added approximately 100 high-skilled engineers, bringing our global workforce to approximately 300 people. IC-ALP brings expertise in custom chip design for healthcare, automobile, and IoT, and position host to develop the Quasic, which is the quantum ASIC, a purpose-built post-quantum cryptographic ASIC. ASIC revenues also grew from 1.4 million in Q3 to 2.2 million in Q4, confirming the value of this acquisition. Additionally, last month, we signed a letter of intent to acquire 100% on MiraX, a Swiss developer, or photonics-based quantum interconnected solution. MiraX represents a key strategic asset in completing our quantum vertical stack. Its technology provides a critical interconnect layer linking quantum computing networking and post-quantum cryptography into a unified architecture. Once completed, the acquisition is expected to accelerate our QSOC initiative and strengthen our ability to deliver resilient end-to-end quantum security infrastructure across both terrestrial and space-based environments. Another key milestone in the establishment of our Quantum Fund and the strategic investment made through it, our Quantum Fund launched in 2025 with a $20 million initial allocation has grown now to 200 million as today. We deploy approximately 30 million across ICI-Alps, Colibri TD, EROC, YSAT, Quantics Edge Security, and the WeCan Group, each reinforcing our quantum vertical from silicon to space. On November 2025, investment in EROC deepened with a follow-on in February 2025. It's particularly strategic. EROC is building a quantum processor based on single electron on superfluid helium. A design approach that yields processor as small as a thumbnail manufactured on a standard semiconductor processes. This underlines our made in U.S. vision and our long-term root to qubit ecosystem. The U.S. government and enterprise market increasingly requires root of trust, PKI infrastructure, and cryptographic provision on American soil In November 2025, we launched a sovereign U.S.-based post-quantum route of trust, the first of its kind. We engaged Trust Semiconductor Solutions as U.S. manufacturing and distribution partner, and we are building a U.S. personalization hub in 2026. EROS is the quantum computer layer of this vision. Their electron-on-alien approach allows processors as small as a thumbnail to be manufactured on standard semiconductor processors directly aligned with a long-term goal of an end-to-end server and quantum security stack from post-quantum chips today to quantum processors in the future. The follow-on investment in February 2026 reflects our conviction in this direction. All these advances tie well with our quantum highway global expansion strategy. We advanced our quantum highway, linking industrial capabilities around several locations like Murcia, Toulouse, Grenoble, Geneva, and Chicago, connecting Spain, France, and the United States, and Switzerland. In September 2025, we signed a 40 million euro joint venture with the Spanish government to establish quantum age security. in a city located in the southern part of Spain, Murcia, Spain's first post-quantum semiconductor personalization center. We are establishing two additional hubs in the U.S. and in Asia in 2026. In November 2025, we launched a sovereign U.S.-based post-quantum route of trust, enabling U.S. government agencies to manage quantum-secure digital identities in U.S. soil. In November 2025, CLSQ invested $10 million in YSAT to develop a quantum secure satellite infrastructure platform. The contemplated model is based on an anticipated revocable right of use over 12 satellites. YSAT will remain ownership of the operation, while CLSQ will secure dedicated capacity for quantum spatial orbit cloud initiative. delivering quantum key distribution, quantum random number generation, and post-quantum identity services as a subscription offering to enterprises and government. The YSAT 3.0 launch in June 2025 already included a proof of concept for sealed coin machine-to-machine transaction secured by your semiconductor stack. While there cannot be no assurance that the contemplated arrangement will be completed on currently anticipated terms, We believe this represents a significant long-term opportunity as the world's first quantum secure orbital cloud. I am turning now the call to John, who will discuss financial results for the year 2025. Go ahead, John.

speaker
John O'Hara
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Carlos, and hello to everybody on the call. So, CLSQ delivered total revenue of $18.3 million in fiscal year 2025, representing growth of 66% compared to $11 million in 2024. This was driven by two factors. First, a strong recovery in our core semiconductor segment, which grew to £14.7 million from £11 million in the prior year. And second, the addition of our new ASIC segment, which contributed £3.6 million following our acquisition of IC Alps in August 2025, representing five months of consolidated revenue. Within the semiconductor segment, we saw particular strength in our smart card reader SCR200 product line, which delivered 51% revenue growth year-on-year, driven by expanded deployments at key customers. Our secure element product lines, notably the VIC-405 and VIC-408, also saw significant demand growth in smart metering and secure communications applications. Trust services, which include our PKI and provisioning solutions, grew by almost 600% year on year, though from a small base and currently represent just 2% of total revenue. Geographically, North America remains our largest market at 57% of revenue. We are pleased to report strong momentum in particular in Asia Pacific, where revenue grew 95% year on year, driven by adoption of the MATA protocol in smart home and HVAC applications. We also recognize some small revenues relating to sampling of the QS7001 quantum resistant chip as clients commence their first testing of this product. And we expect first production revenues from the QS7001 in the second half of 2026. Gross profit improved substantially to 8.6 million in 2025, up from 3.7 million in the prior year, with gross margin expanding 13 percentage points to 47%. This was primarily driven by the addition of the ASIC segment, which carried significantly higher margins at 88%, reflecting the design service nature of that business with low directly attributable costs. Semi-conductive segment gross margin partially recovered to 37%, up from 34% in 2024, as shipments of new products to our existing customer base resumed following a period where customers were drawing down their own inventory. Total operating expenses were £48.4 million in 2025 compared to £20.9 million in 2024, an increase of 132%. However, I want to be clear about what is driving this increase as context matters significantly here. The single largest factor is a non-cash stock-based compensation charge of £11.2 million. Following the significant change in CLSQ's market capitalisation since our original listing, Management made the deliberate decision alongside the compensation committee to issue equity awards to our staff and senior staff as recognition of their commitment and to align their interests with our shareholders. This is a one-time accounting charge with no cash in. Beyond that, the increase in operating expenses reflects three structural changes in our business. The consolidation of five months of ICL operating expenses following the August acquisition. the build-out of our own management team with C-suite and central functions that were previously provided by our parent, Wisekey, now directly employed by CLSQ from January 2025, and continued investment in research and development and sales and marketing to support our post-quantum product roadmap. Net of stock-based compensation, in particular R&D expenditure, was $10.1 million, representing 25% of our total operating expenses and reflecting the investment required to bring our Quasar post-quantum product program to commercial launch. The net loss for the year was 34.2 million compared to 21.2 million in 2024, and a meaningful offset to our operating loss came from the non-operating income of 8.9 million, the majority of which, 6.1 million, was interest income earned in our substantial cash balance throughout the year. Turning to the balance sheet and liquidity, we ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of 417.7 million, with short-term investments of 10 million on top of that, which was up from 84.6 million at the end of 2024. Working capital was positive at $421 million. This cash position is a result of highly successful equity capital markets activity throughout 2025. And in aggregate, since November 2024 until the current date, CLSQ has raised over $575 million in cash for a series of registered direct offerings, warrant exercises, and our at-the-market facility. This puts us in a genuinely strong position to execute on our strategy in the years ahead. And Carlos will come back to that later in the course. Operating cash outflow for the year was £31.3 million, reflecting our continued investment phase. Investing activities consumed £35.3 million, primarily comprising our acquisitions and strategic investments, including the acquisition of IC Alps, our investments in Aeroq, YSAT, the WeCan Group, and Quantixx Security in Spain. Total debt at the year was a modest £1.7 million, all of which relates to French government-supported loans acquired with IC Alps. The balance sheet is therefore essentially debt-free at the parent company level. Based on our cash projections through to March 2027, we've confirmed sufficient liquidity to fund operations and the business is not dependent on further capital raises for its immediate operational continuity. Moving on to our balance sheet, total assets grew to over 500 million at the end of 2025, principally reflecting the increase in cash. Non-current assets grew from 4.5 million to 54.5 million which was driven by the IC Alps acquisition, which added 5.7 million of goodwill and $21 million of intangible assets net of amortization, as well as our strategic investment portfolio. On the other hand, total liabilities were 42.7 million at the year end and the cumulative deficits that 76 million up from 41.9 million the prior year, reflecting the net loss for the period. Looking to 2026, there are a number of important milestones we are targeting. On revenue, we expect fiscal 26 to represent a year of acceleration. The ASIC segment will contribute a full 12 months of IC-ALPS revenue for the first time. We anticipate the first production revenues from the QS7001 and the QVolt TPM in the second half of 2026. The estimated combined pipeline for these two products is at 60 million as of December 31st, 2025, and as of today, and that's across approximately 115 potential customers. Just for clarity, This is a management estimate and is subject to convert conversion risk, customer validation, timelines, and the certification process. Our DX venture is expected to continue to increase in 2026 with a particular focus on our post-quantum cryptography roadmap and the build out of our test and personalization infrastructure in Spain and prospectively in the United States and Asia. Finally, we expect to continue executing on our strategic investment program. The quantum fund has a total allocation of 200 million of which we have spent just over 30 million to date. We will continue to evaluate opportunities in quantum computing, quantum as a service, and secure semiconductor technologies aligned with our roadmap. We have 530 million in cash generating meaningful interest income, and we are investing from a position of strength. The path to profitability we believe runs through revenue scaling, with a $200 million pipeline for 2026 to 2029, revenue expected to grow by between 50% and 100% in 2026, Q1 expected to more than double year-on-year, and gross margins firmly trending upward, we are confident in that trajectory. Now I am turning the call back to Carlos, who will provide additional details on our growth strategy. Carlos, please go ahead.

speaker
Carlos Morera
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, John. So let me start with two milestones that we believe will define our 2026 product calendar. So first is the full-scale commercial deployment of the QVolt TPM, or RISC-V based semiconductor controller, which marks CLSQ formal entry into the trusted platform module market and is expected to drive significant new revenue in H2 2026, as indicated by John. Second, we anticipate a custom post-quantum ASIC engagement with contractualization in H2 2026. reflecting IC-ALP's contribution to the QASIC initiative. Furthermore, our 200 million pipeline, which spans from 2026 to 2029, and the near-term portion, particularly the QS7001 and QVolt TPM program, is at the most advanced stage. with customers actively running development kits and moving through design in processes. This is a traditional practice in this industry where the testing kits are used and completed before further acquisition of the product. The key conversion factors are First, certification completion or CCEL 5 plus the FIPS 143 milestones are on track through Q4, 2026. And regulated sector customers require this before committing to volume. Second, integration cycles in semiconductor design to production typically runs six to 18 months. We are actively compressing this through co-development partnerships CNSA 2.0 and EU CRA deadlines are creating a genuine urgency we see directly in our commercial conversation. This to be completed with the announcement yesterday on Google of the acceleration of the quantum day and quantum thread on cryptography and cryptographic tokens, which will also create an urgency aspect in the market and the consumer application of this technology. Let me now discuss regulatory tailwinds, hard deadline set for 2026. The regulatory environment is no longer a distant tailwind. It's creating binding new terms demand that is actively shaping customer purchasing decision. By September 2020, the EU Cyber Resilience Act mandates security lifecycle documentation for all products with digital elements sold in the European Union. Noncompliant risks incurring fines up to $15 million or 2.5% of the global turnover. This has driven urgency among manufacturers and OEMs to reassess the security architecture and ensure long-term compliance. In parallel in the U.S., the NSA's CNSA 2.0 requires additional networking equipment to prefer post-quantum algorithms by 2026. This effectively accelerates the replacement cycle for a wide range of infrastructure embedded systems. Importantly, these are not long-dated policy signals. They are active and forcible deadlines. As a result, we are seeing a clear shift from evaluation to execution in customer engagements. Against this backdrop, CLSQ's unique position CLQ is one of the very few companies in the world with certified hardware native solution ready today. This gives us a meaningful first move advantage as customers move quickly to secure compliance future-proof solutions. So now moving on the global infrastructure expansion. In 2026, we plan to commence the establishment of two additional custom design tech and personalization hubs. one in the United States and one in Asia, complementing the Murcia Spain center and significantly expanding our global footprint. These hubs will not only enhance our operational resilience and proximity to key markets, but also will create a distributed sovereign reading infrastructure aligned with evolving geopolitical and cybersecurity requirements. At the same time, we will accelerate the development of the SEAL Quantum Spatial Orbit Cloud, a strategic initiative that reflects a fundamental shift in how digital infrastructure must evolve in the quantum area. As a complement, only yesterday we launched the new satellite, which is a YSAT-3U already with a post-quantum chip embedded, which is the beginning of this infrastructure. The convergence of quantum technology and space-based infrastructure is no longer optional. It's becoming essential. First, security at the quantum level requires a new infrastructure layer. Terrestrial networks are increasingly vulnerable in a post-quantum world. A space-based system enables quantum key distribution, QQD, and ultra-secure communications beyond the reach of conventional cyber attacks, ensuring that data sovereignty is guaranteed and resilient for government and enterprises. Second, latency, coverage, and independence are critical. A space-based quantum cloud allows computation, secure data exchange, and AI processing to occur close to the edge. anywhere on Earth without reliance on fragmented terrestrial infrastructure. This is particularly important for critical sectors such as defense, finance, energy, and smart infrastructure. Third, data sovereignty and geopolitical fragmentation are reshaping the cloud landscape. Nations and regions increasingly require trusted independent infrastructure. So orbital quantum cloud platforms provide a neutral, sovereign, and tamper resistant layer, enabling countries and organizations to operate securely across border without compromising control over the data. Fourth, scalability on quantum services depend on cloud delivery. Just as a classical cloud computing democratize access to computing power, quantum clouds will be the gateway to quantum capabilities. Integrating these services with satellite infrastructure ensures global accessibility, including in regions where terrestrial connectivity is limited or insecure. Finally, space enables true resilience. Orbital infrastructure is inherently more robust against physical disruption, geopolitical conflicts, and centralized points of failure. For quantum companies, this resilience is not just a technical advantage, it is a strategic necessity. Let me now discuss a step we have taken in building the quantum cloud economy. Well, the YSAT Quantum Special Orbit Cloud, we are positioning ourselves as the intersection of quantum computers, cybersecurity, satellite infrastructure, and AI. This platform will support secure quantum communications, QQD and post-quantum cryptography, distributed quantum computer access via cloud services and infrastructures, trusted AI processing in a space-based environment, and global IoT edge services authentication secured by quantum resistant technology. In parallel, we will continue discipline investment through the Quantum Fund, supporting innovation and accelerating the commercialization on quantum and post-quantum solutions across our ecosystem. With that context, I will now turn to our recent capital raises, including March 2026 financing, and outline how we are deploying this capital, particularly in support of the US Semiconductor Personalization Center. During March 2026, CLSQ raised an additional $125 million, bringing our total cash position to approximately $530 million. This capital raise was undertaken with a clear and specific strategic rationale to fund the development of serial SQ semiconductor personalization center in the United States, which is a high capital intensive activity. These centers provide localized high secure environment certified to common criteria such as EL5+, and is specifically designed to customize, program, and inject cryptographic identities into semiconductor, transforming them into trusted post-quantum resilient devices, compliance with the NSA's CNSA 2.0 framework. These are significant capital investments. Each U.S. center requires Approximately $100 million in company investment reflecting the specialized infrastructure, security accreditation, and operational capabilities required to deliver this level of certification, EL5 plus grade cryptographic personalization at the scale. CLSQ is already developing a comparable center in Murcia, Spain, designed to serve the European market and align with the European Union legislation requirement. In addition, we are establishing a center in India in partnership with Kane Semiconductor that just yesterday inaugurated their OSAT, extending our personalization capability into one of the world's fastest-growing semiconductor markets. Once operational, these centers will serve as a dual strategic purpose. First, will generate direct revenue from semiconductor personalization center and cryptographic provision services, representing a meaningful and recruiting contribution to CLSQ top line from countries that today we are not able to reach. Second, and equally important, they will provide essential physical infrastructure to support the quantum vertical stack the company is developing. Our ultimate vision goes beyond security as a cost. We aim to transform security into a strategic value driver by enabling new services on business model, such as secure in-vehicle transaction, electricity exchange between vehicles and grid, authenticated drone delivery, autonomous robotic access control, etc. CLSQ is strongly convinced of the conversions between post-quantum cryptography and quantum technologies. We will continue to build a broader quantum strategy, particularly around our collaboration with EROC for their partnership in quantum-based underlying semiconductor technologies are also under active discussion. This includes ASIC design, in particular the development of a unique cryo-CMOs capability, as well as the integration of advanced security to support a fully secure quantum computer system. Through this approach, CLSQ has positioned itself at the intersection of secure semiconductor, post-quantum cryptography, and quantum technology with the ambition to become a clear player in building the next generation of trusted digital infrastructure in the United States. This position, nobody currently in the market has it. I will now turn back to the operator for QA section, and I thank you very much for your attention for the moment.

speaker
Kevin
Conference Operator

Thank you, and I'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. Once again, that's star 1 to be placed into question queue. Our first question today is coming from Matthew Galenko from Maxim. Your line is now live.

speaker
Matthew Galenko
Analyst at Maxim

Great. Well, thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on the year. Maybe just firstly on the pipeline for the new quantum products, I think you might have mentioned you have 10 customers that are in kind of very active stages. I guess with the kind of with regulations starting to have an impact in teeth maybe in late 26, do you expect the number of customers you're engaging with to increase in that over the course of the year? So exiting 26, would we expect to have a significantly greater number of customer engagements on the quantum products?

speaker
Carlos Morera
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Matt. Nice to talk to you again. Yeah, I mean, I think there are several factors that is going to accelerate or sales in QS 7001 was quantum, not only at the silicon level, but also the software level. One of them, as I mentioned during the presentation, is the CNSA 2.0 and their equivalent regulatory framework that basically is saying that companies, especially companies that they are dealing with technology that serves the purpose of critical infrastructure needs to be PQC compliant. And this is an important driver because that means that governments around the world are putting that level of urgency. The second one is that we are gradually getting the certifications that they are required. This is a long process. Sometimes people don't understand how long it takes for the laboratories to certify those products. And many companies, they have expressed, as you can see on the $200 million pipeline, they have expressed strong objectives to deploy, but obviously they want to deploy a certified product, especially the companies and organizations, and they're working with government defense and critical infrastructure, which is the second driver. And I would say the third driver is the urgency created by the fact that there's now common consensus that the Q-day is actually arriving faster than everybody thought. Remember last year, in January last year, we were still thinking that quantum computers will be only able to break RSA, triple-desk. In 30 years' time, this was reduced to 10, and now Google announced yesterday that they are actually dividing that by 10. The urgency is actually very large. And sectors like the possibility of breaking Bitcoin, let's say that you break one wallet, imagine the consequences for the entire Bitcoin community if one of those wallets will be compromisable because they have a quantum attack. Now, quantum companies... are also expanding faster, their Q bits generation, the company we have invested and the ones that we are in the process of invest, They are already able to generate between 10 and 100 qubits, and some of them they are predicting to be able to reach the 500 qubits, which is what Google say that will actually be enough to break cryptocurrencies. So these factors are obviously accelerating the demand on the product in the market. We have a first player. advantage here which is obviously uh hard to replicate it even for very large companies then they don't they don't necessarily have a pqc chip are now approaching hosts and say can we team with you because uh one one public information is lattice semiconductor right then they they they will be teaming with us to be able to offer to their clients uh pqc uh chips uh so so this obviously this is a very big entry into the market because lattice has thousands of customers and they will accelerate the sales of those microchips. So I know that sometimes it looks like it's slow, but actually this is a total different computational architecture. This is not just improving or patching cybersecurity issues. This is actually redesigning the entire infrastructure that requires time and be sure that your product is to the level to solve that problem.

speaker
Matthew Galenko
Analyst at Maxim

Thanks, Carlos. And then I guess my follow-up would be on the personalization centers. It sounds like you're moving forward in the U.S. You know, it sounds like in 2026, but is it reasonable to expect that you'd be making those investments in 2026 and maybe generating revenue and, you know, sort of opening the centers in 2027? Or what's a reasonable timeframe to think about for the U.S. center and then the second one that you discussed?

speaker
Carlos Morera
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so you remember originally we had the idea to build a personalization center furnace crash. from the beginning. And this is obviously a four to five years investment of time and resources. That obviously is a real estate problem, right? You have to get the authorizations, the land, the building, the contractors. It is a tedious process, especially now with the huge demand on data center infrastructure. So it's hard to find the right people to build those infrastructures. So this was the original old thinking that we will build our own thing. Then we move into a more, I would say, pragmatic and fast thinking, which is let's only team with somebody that has already a legacy infrastructure operational, that they are in the same sector than we are, and they will like to upgrade their existing infrastructure to become a PQC personalization semiconductor center, which is a bit the model we have actually also in Spain. So that reduces the time to market by nearly three years, so that that that takes only around six months to one year by the time you're operational. That obviously requires buying machines because it's a big investment. You know, you still need, and this is the reason we raised money, is because this was not in our budget, right, to develop a full personalization center within some existing infrastructure. We have several states, and they have approaches with incentives to do it in their states. We are now combining this intention to bring HUS to one of those estates with a semiconductor company. Then they will be operational already in the state, and they would like to team with HUS to do that. So we should be able to announce very soon. I guess before the end of June, we should be able to announce where it's going to be located. And this obviously will have a huge impact. you know, potential for our deployment. That means that the chips will be personalized in the United States. That means that we will be fully CNSA 2.0 compliant because there will be chips that will be verifiable in a localized place. People can see them, can test them, can be assured. And all the cryptographic keys has been located at the center itself. That will also, you know, we are still a Swiss-French company, so many of our clients, they are saying, guys, come into the U.S. if you want to be bigger and grow your revenue, and obviously that satisfies that requirement. So we believe that by the end of this year, we should be able to have something very concrete in this area.

speaker
Matthew Galenko
Analyst at Maxim

Thanks, Carlos. I'll jump back in the queue.

speaker
Kevin
Conference Operator

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. One moment, please, while we poll for further questions. Once again, that's star one to be placed in the question queue. We do have a follow-up from Matthew Kalinko from Maxim. Your line is now live.

speaker
Matthew Galenko
Analyst at Maxim

Well, thanks for having me back. Carlos, you mentioned some of the intense demand for land and power resources coming from the AI industry. I'm curious, with some of the influence that's had on the semiconductor industry, I'm curious if that's having any impact on demand cycles from your customers or pricing or anything around margins that we might expect to hit you in 2026.

speaker
Carlos Morera
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

You mean from the energy sector in particular?

speaker
Matthew Galenko
Analyst at Maxim

Just broadly, we've seen some things about memory prices being incredibly high, storage prices being high from high demand from AI data center builds. I'm just wondering if that ends up influencing kind of the end customer that you're selling into for your products, if that changes anything about their Are there timelines or sourcing, pricing, or anything that ends up impacting you?

speaker
Carlos Morera
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

We don't have that information. Obviously, there are different types of semiconductors, right? I mean, there is an interesting debate now that quantum computers will actually redesign a bit the current infrastructure because you need less data center space, you need less computer, traditional computer capabilities, and at the end of the day, you need less chips from the memory companies, right? As quantum computers have a much powerful processing capability. What we believe is going to happen is that those chips that we are we are selling. It sells basically first to companies that like smart meters companies, then they want to secure smart meters because they are connecting smart meters to grids and they are now in the process of learning how to tokenize the energy they process through their smart meters. and also the energy that is reverted back again to the grid. So this is where we launched Sealcoin, which is a crypto token that basically allows this market to be exchangeable and transactional between devices. So this is something that we'll have. The first client we announced partnerships with the Landis and Gear, which is already $40 million. of london gear meters are already equipped with the the software component of it and the future meters will increasingly be pqc compliant so so this is the uh this is the industries which are booming now and because the current situation with oil and everything related to that is forcing companies to diversify the energy sources. And at least in Europe, this is becoming very, very big now. And our technology solves that problem because not only you secure the transaction, you authenticate the meter, you tokenize the energy collected by that meter, let's say from a solar panel, and you sell that energy to another meter in a peer-to-peer transactional process. So this is an area we see a big expansion for our capabilities.

speaker
Matthew Galenko
Analyst at Maxim

All right, thanks for that caller. That's it for me. So congrats again and thanks.

speaker
Carlos Morera
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much, Matthew.

speaker
Kevin
Conference Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, everyone, if you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. One moment, please, while we poll for further questions. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.

speaker
Carlos Morera
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much, everyone. CLSQ sees as an extraordinary inflation point. As I mentioned during our presentation, quantum computer is no longer a distant theoretical risk. Major technology companies, government, and institutions are converging on timelines that make the quantum threat to encryption near-term reality. Regulators have responded. NISA's standardized post-quantum algorithm, the NSA has issued CNSA 2.0 mandates, and the European Union Cyber Resilience Act is creating binding legal obligation. CLSQ has the product, the certification in process, the pipeline, the partnership, the capital, and the strategic vision to lead this transformation. To our employees, I would like to thank for their extraordinary commitment this year. To our partners and investors, thank you for your trust and continued support. We look forward to updating you throughout the year, and we wish you all a secure and prosperous year ahead. This concludes today's call. Thank you very much for your attention.

speaker
Kevin
Conference Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference webcast, and we disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

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