Fingerprint Cards AB (publ)

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fingerprint Cards Q1 Results 2026 Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Alternatively, you may submit your questions via the webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Stefan Petersen, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Magdalene, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to FTC's earnings call following the release of our Q1 report this morning. So we'll start by a presentation of the report by our CEO, Adam Philpott. And with that, let me now hand over to our CEO, Adam Philpott.

Thank you very much, Stefan, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining Frederick and I for the Q1 2026 earnings presentation. Just in terms of the agenda, I'll go through a quick summary of the financials for Q1, and then we'll spend a bit of time, as always, we'll talk about all key. We'll talk about how that really important high-value premium product is developing. And then third, we'll talk about the merger itself that we announced recently, and it was recently voted through at our EGM. So we're going to spend a bit of time on that before I hand to Frederick Hedlund, who will talk in a bit more detail about some of the key figures from Q1 2026. So let me get into the summary of our performance. Overall, if we look at the top line, continued growth on our top line, 4% year-on-year growth in real terms, 21% up in constant currency. So another strong constant currency quarter in terms of revenue performance. Really pleased with the team and those results. From a margin perspective, also very happy with the margin performance. You can see here 62.3% gross margin. That was just on our core product. There were no licensing deals or other types of deals in there. Really strong core performance on the core portfolio. So really pleased to see that our premium is well recognized by our clients and we thank them for exactly that. So great performance on the gross margin. As I mentioned, Two of the key elements that I want to touch on today relate to AllKey and the merger. In terms of AllKey, we spent a number of calls now talking about how we're migrating from lower-end sensors to high-value, moving up the value chain with systems, and our product family name for that is AllKey. As we continue to monitor our progress and the development of that business, of all the new pipelines, so new deals that we brought into the pipeline in Q1, 75% of new pipeline is for Allkey. So really seeing momentum in that product family. Not only that, but as we look at that Allkey pipeline that we added in Q1, 60% of that pipeline was for a new client as well. So continuing momentum to bring new clients into the company with new pipeline based on being able to reach them in new ways with the Aukey product family. Much, much simpler for them to be able to go and integrate that into their product as a turnkey solution. But we also continue to innovate in Aukey as well. We launched the Aukey software platform. I'll spend a bit more time on that just shortly. And then big news, of course, it was announced after the end of the quarter was the merger with Precise Biometrics. The EGM was held and approved that on the April 30th, a few weeks ago. What that means is that we're building an incredibly powerful European biometrics platform. So, a really important company in that space. And there's great synergies. There's great synergies from a go-to-market perspective. There are great synergies from a portfolio perspective. But there are also great cost synergies as well that allow us to get to an EBITDA-positive position and a much stronger company fundamentals there as well. So overall for the course, a really strong margin profile, good top-line growth as well, and continuing that premium focus where we have great skills that are unique in the markets. So let me spend a bit more time on all key. On the left, you can see the exact charts that we used last quarter. And the reason I've used those again is they remain very consistent with what we're seeing in terms of both our product mix by revenue, but also our new customer mix. I mentioned from data points earlier that we're seeing 60% of new pipeline for new customers. That hasn't changed the overall pipeline, but we expect to continue to see that moving forward. I talked about the product mix, of course, as well. For all new pipes it was added in Q1, all of that product, 75% rather, of that new pipeline by revenue was for Aukey. So, again, you can see how we're continuing to bring more Aukey into the mix in our pipeline. And, of course, over time, that then converts through the sales cycle into revenue. And we're seeing continued strength in the all-key product family business development too. It's not just bringing new pipe in. We're seeing the pipe shift through the sales stages, through evaluation, into design wins and into business wins. So we're seeing real progress as that moves through the funnel as well, having launched that just over a year ago. We also have talked a lot about why this is important for us moving up the value chain, not just for margin, but also as we offer a greater system to our customer. It means they need to buy less pieces or fewer pieces from other players, which means that we can get greater wallet share. And this gives rise to the three times average selling price economics. And we continue to see that in our pipeline. for the value of our all key deals per unit versus the value of our sensor deals per unit. So we keep a very close eye exactly on that. And we have maintained and expanded our sensor partnerships as well. We continue to see new opportunities for our sensor business, particularly in the card form factor like ID. There are lots of interesting things going on. We're not walking away from that business. We're protecting and maintaining that business, continuing to expand and grow it into new segments as well, whilst also building out this premium side of our portfolio. And as I talked earlier about building that premium side out, we launched the all-key software platform in Q1. What that means is that not only do we offer the full technology stack including MCU, sensor, et cetera, but also allow customers to write custom apps to that platform as well. So even more flexibility, particularly on the software side, again, opening up new use cases for our clients. And we'll continue to innovate. We launched the Aukey software platform in Q1, but we also continue to see more opportunity, particularly on the card form factor for Aukey Ultra. Today, we offer sensors and our partnerships there. Tomorrow, we believe we can offer more value, including software, taking the Aukey Ultra platform with a secure element. into the smart card form factor as well. So lots going on in Aukey, lots of demand, but continued innovation to serve that demand as well as we push it through our pipeline. So that's a little bit on Aukey. Let's talk a little bit about the merger as well, because we believe the merger forms a very, very strong combined company. in terms of what it offers is great meaningful cost synergies, so really, really powerful cost synergies, a much stronger financial profile. We achieve this by streamlining some of the overlapping functions and optimize the combined organizations. And we've identified annual operating cost synergies of at least 45 million SEK. And that really comes from consolidating administrative functions, optimizing systems and tools, streamlining commercial operations. So really it's just a leaner cost base to support the greater organization, leading to a potential double-digit EBITDA margins. But not only that, I mean, that's the economic side of it. There's also very complementary offerings, too. We've got a much stronger, more competitive biometrics identity company as a result of the merger, integrated hardware and software solutions. We span physical and digital security in different ways together. We address the full spectrum of authentication, identification, and access controls. And that means that customers can come to us for different things. It means they can buy more from us, we can increase our wallet share, we can also increase our win rate with those clients also. It gives us expanded commercial reach too. So we have very complimentary go-to-market coverage footprints as well with different customers in different segments to allow us to capture a larger wallet share. But then finally, what this also does as a leading biometrics platform is create a platform for industry consolidation. It's a highly fragmented market. Many, many companies with strong technology, but very limited scale, subscale, if you like. So we believe there's a huge opportunity to play an active role in industry consolidation. so there's not lots of small companies that the customer has to own the complexity to go and engage with, but actually we can aggregate that together to give the customer a more simple value and choice for what they're seeking to improve their identity and security posture. So that's a kind of overview, if you like, on the combined company. I will go a little deeper into some of those elements as well. So let's talk about the cost images, creating a platform for strong growth and profitability. On a pro forma basis, Precise and FPC together generated approximately 160 million in revenue in 2025, but with a negative EBITDA of negative 19 million, 19 million SEK. One of the benefits of the merger is the opportunity to create a much more efficient operating cost base. So we've identified annual synergies, as I said, of at least 45 million SEK, which come from those overlapping functions. and optimization that I talked about. And as these synergies get realized, the combined company is expected to deliver double-digit growth, double-digit EBITDA margins, where the adjusted pro forma shows about 17% EBITDA margins. So a really powerful way of combining resources, optimizing them to deliver a much better outcome. So that's a little bit on the cost base and the financial synergies. Let's talk a bit about the capabilities and how we combine those and what those mean as well. And so together we offer a very, very broad suite of capabilities. And both companies offer high efficacy identity. So that's very complementary from a cultural, from a technology perspective as well. Because as we think about what's happening out there in the world, and I've talked a lot about this, we're now finally starting to see the shift away from passwords. And those alternatives to passwords typically require biometrics, whether it's FIDO tokens, whether it's access, et cetera, it typically requires biometrics. And so it's super important to have a company that's got the right scale to be able to respond to this. And so the initial hypothesis is we can serve these markets very, very well together. The future potential is to unify them. So as you think about physical security today, both companies serve physical security. As you think about digital security, both companies serve that as well. But there's an opportunity over time to bring those two things together in a continuum, in a continuous loop whereby we improve overall security by combining physical access We know I'm in the building with digital security. I'm trying to get access to an application from within that building. And so very, very powerful play for both companies. If you look at how we're complementary today, we also offer a blend of enterprise and consumer markets. Both companies active in different spaces, very complementary to bring that together. We offer a blend of different modalities, for example, as well. Fingerprint, hardware, iris, palm, lots of different capabilities that we can offer there. And so that creates a huge opportunity for upsell, cross-sell, and particularly new logos as we leverage joint expertise and expand what we're offering, but also expand what we're selling to each of our individual clients. So lots of things that are super complementary that we can bring together to offer a greater outcome to our clients. And then the final piece I spoke about was around the sector consolidation. So the biometric industry remains highly fragmented. Many specialized technology companies are typically operating at very small scale. And so the merger between FPC and Precise presents the first step in building a scalable biometrics platform capable of participating and, frankly, enabling that consolidation. And when you talk about consolidation, we see two primary types of acquisition opportunities. There's portfolio consolidation. and there's capability expansion. So let me talk about each of those and forgive all the text on this slide. I wanted to keep some of the detail in there for you. But when it comes to portfolio consolidation, what's that? Well, those are typically well-established niche companies who've got proven products, they've got active customers, market validation, they've got strong technology, and they have a customer base, but they're limited in their ability to scale on their own. And so through those types of acquisitions, we can create value through integrating their products into the combined portfolio, leveraging our combined go-to-market reach and scale, but also realize those cost synergies and operational efficiencies. So really nice opportunity there. Those are some of the slightly larger ones. The dots on this chart are slightly larger. And then on the right side of the chart, we've got capability expansion. Those are typically smaller specialist teams with really good IP, expertise, and complementary solutions that add value to our existing portfolio and customers. And so the value creation from those type of acquisitions comes from strengthening and expanding the platform's technology capabilities, accelerating the development of new solutions, in housing where we may have previously partnered to achieve that and adding expertise in new technology areas. And so in both cases, whether it's, you know, portfolio consolidation or whether it's capability expansion, the objective remains the same. It's to expand what we can do, it's to strengthen our product portfolio, and it's to scale leveraging our commercial capacity and commercial reach. And so we feel this is a really great capability and company that we're putting together with FPC and Precise, but you can also see how this becomes a platform for continuing to build on that with other acquisitions through those other types of consolidation opportunities. So that's a little bit on the merger. Let me come back to you, Fredrik. Let's come back to Q1, and perhaps you can talk us through some of the key figures.

Yeah, thank you, Adam. So back to the performance in the first quarter. Our revenue grew by 4%, and on a constant currency basis, it grew 21%. And the gross margins for the quarter continue to be very strong at 62.3%, and it higher than the gross margins that we had in the first quarter of 2025, and it's also higher than the average gross margin for the year 2025. EBITDA was negative $14.1 million, and this included $3 million of what I would call non-recurring OPEX, which is mainly cost related to the merger. Our free cash flow was negative $30.2 million. And we had 18.2 million of cash at the end of the quarter, and our headcount was 50. So back to you, Adam.

Thank you very much, Frederick. So let's summarize then what we've heard, and then we'll move to take some questions. So from a performance perspective, first of all, really pleased to see up 4%, but as you look at constant currency, up 21%. So really pleased with that top-line performance from the team. Our gross margin, 62.3%, continued sustained margin. And as I said, that's really coming from our core products as we shift over and start to realize all key business also. And then from an operating leverage perspective, we continue to do this, having made significant changes in our OPEX line. For those of you who have been following us for the last two years or so, significant changes in our OPEX line. So we're able to achieve this. without reinvesting in capacity either in product or in sales, but actually leverage the organization that we've had underpinned by some of the things we've been doing to optimize our capacity, augmenting it with AI, for example. So really pleased about the top-line performance whilst managing the OPEX line, of course, as well. In terms of Aukey, where we think there's massive opportunity moving forward, we continue to see shifts through the high-value Aukey product family in our pipeline, and we're monitoring that that pipeline is moving through to booking. So very pleased at the progress and how that business is is developing too. And we're seeing new customer logos come in also. So that's something I focus the sales team on on a regular basis is ensuring we're out there, we're capturing leads, we're meeting new people and bringing new logos into the pipeline also. From an Aukey perspective, it's also important to us because of its impact on the ASP, 3x ASP. We still see that in our pipelines. They're very pleased to see that. And finally, we're continuing to expand that. We launched Aukey Over a year ago, we launched Aukey Ultra last year. We're continuing to evolve and move up the value chain with that platform and fill in some of the other gaps like software, for example, that our customers need our help with to make it much, much easier for them to integrate high-quality biometrics at scale into a myriad of products that they have. And, of course, as we move forward, we then take all of this into the merger with Precise. This is something of high value to the future company. The EGM approved the merger for that reason, and they see a great economic benefit from combining these two companies to create not only a European biometrics leader, but also strong synergies for EBITDA-positive NUCO. So very, very strong economic benefits of pulling these two companies together. With that, Stefan, let me come back to you, and perhaps you can help orchestrate some questions.

Yes, let's first take any questions from the phone line.

Thank you. We have one question at the moment. One moment. And this question comes from the line of Marcus Almirud from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, Adam. Hi, Stefan. Hi. Yeah. Hi, guys. Hi, Fredrik. Can you hear me well?

Yes, we can. Good to have you on, Marcus.

Yeah, likewise. Maybe I'll start with Oki. We have talked a lot about Oki in the past quarters and also now. I mean, I think to see that 75% of the new pipeline coming in or the new pipeline is If you look at your previous customers and the adoption rate and the conversion into Aukey, how is that progressing?

Yeah, I think we spoke about this on the last call and I shared some charts in terms of the pipeline today. Those trends are pretty consistent, right? We're seeing a lot of our existing customers move over to Aukey in the pipeline and There are some customers who will always be sensor organizations because either they don't need some of the elements that are within the Orky portfolio or they're very high volume and that's their specialist business model is to do that integration themselves. And that's exactly why I've said that we maintain and expand our sensor partnerships because we're not looking to move everyone over to all key and if you don't like it, tough, go somewhere else. We've got some great customers in sensors. We've built them up over many years. We have a good pipeline with them and we'll continue to grow and evolve those customers. But absolutely, we see a great market for Aukey. We actually see more customers in future by revenue coming from Aukey than we do by sensor. That inflection probably in... in 2027, maybe 2028, we'll have to wait and see. As we look at the pipeline, we can see a greater percentage of revenue from customers in Aukey in 2027 versus Sensor. So 60% of our pipeline in 2027 is for Aukey, 40% is from Sensor. So we continue to see that trend. I think what we are also seeing, though, is now the bulk of our new pipeline for Aukey is for new customers. because we've by and large been through that journey. There are still some customers who are a sense of customers that may become all key customers. Those tend to be a little larger and therefore it takes a bit more time for them to shift over because of course there's an evaluation cycle to ensure that they have a strong, high quality product as well. Not only that, but it also ties in with their product roadmap. When they launch products, they don't just launch a new product because we have one, It has to be their product launch cycle, of course, as well. So hopefully that gives you a bit of color markers as to what we're seeing of the new and existing customers.

If you look at new customers, so 60% of the pipeline is new customers, which is great. Is this in line with what you had expected? That is, is the conversion among old customers and new customers, is the mix in line with what you had kind of thought?

I think so, yes. I mean, I didn't expect us to be at 100% all key, as I said, because we've got lots of customers and typically higher volume customers. Therefore, it's a lower ASP, but it's higher volume, so you make up for it that way. So I think that feels about right to me. And I was thinking around 50-50. That was my gut. 60-40 is better. So pretty happy with that. And of course, you know, I think in terms of the new customer mix, we're never going to get higher than, you know, we're never going to get to 100% new customers because, of course, that would mean that we're losing all of our old customers. So just that balance, I think, is really important for us to continue to monitor. I want to see us bringing in new customers, but absolutely, I want to make sure that with our existing customers, we continue to build new opportunities with them as well. So again, I think that feels pretty good, and it's something we'll continue to monitor.

And 20 plus percent organic growth. Two questions there. Is this also in line with what you were expecting, and second, you have been in merger talks also during this period going on in parallel. Has that impacted operations in any way? You're still quite a small organization.

Yeah, so on the first question, you know, is the growth where I expected? Yes, the growth is where I expected. I think, you know, it's deep into the double digit, which I'm really pleased about. I know the sales team worked super hard to get to that. And I monitor this on a weekly, well, actually it's on a daily basis, but I monitor it with the team on a weekly basis. So, excuse me, very pleased about that. I think that's a very strong growth number for any company to post. So, Super happy about that. In terms of whether the merger had a destabilizing effect on ongoing operations, again, I would refer back to our team. I'm really proud of the team. Of course, you know, the merger was not known to most of them during that time, of course. But I'm really pleased at how the team just is agile, flexible, continues to operate super well. So very pleased. Whilst it's a small team, I feel like our productivity is pretty strong. I mentioned earlier that we've augmented our operations somewhat with AI, and we're continuing to improve how we operate using AI, not just in our products, but in our functional day-to-day operations as well. So pleased about how the team are performing. I saw no destabilizing effect in Q1 from the proposed merger. Okay, okay.

And talking about the merger and the licensing deals that we have seen, several of them last year. What are your thoughts about continuing these as you go into another unit?

Yes, I think on that we'll review the asset deals that we're writing. I think there's still plenty of opportunities out there for them. But as we become a new company, it makes sense to stand back and take a look at each company's strategy, what makes sense from a combined company perspective, and therefore which opportunities remain priorities and which ones don't. We're going through the integration work at the moment. And so ultimately that's work that we're doing. So it would be premature for me to talk about whether or not we'll continue to pursue asset deals. I think asset deals have been very helpful for us in funding the ongoing business because you think about it, right? We're moving from being a lower-end sensor company to being that plus a systems company. there is a gap in the middle there as you migrate some companies from one to the other. And so I think that those asset deals have been very helpful in funding that transition. as we move to be a merged company, we have a much stronger financial position. So that funding becomes less necessary. Therefore, it becomes more of an opportunity than anything else. And we can decide whether or not that's the right opportunity to pursue. So I don't want to make it too much of a politician's answer, but I think it's fair to say that we'll review that and decide whether or not that still makes sense.

And on that, you mentioned that you started the integration. What is – I mean, both GMs have approved the merger. So where are you in kind of integrating the businesses? What are the timelines that you are expecting, et cetera?

Yeah. So, you know, there's some things that we won't or can't do. before the merger. And so, anything that involves sensitive customer information, for example, remains off the table. But what we are doing is looking at a number of different work streams around integration, you know, around talent and people, around financial operations, around commercial operations, et cetera, and getting into detailed planning. And think about it, you know, the tools that we use, the systems we use, how we integrate them, how we report people's contracts, et cetera. All of those things are being thoroughly managed. We have an integration leader from the FPC side of the house, a very strong a leader in our team who's got great credibility and track record in project management. We review that on a weekly basis. There's work streams already lit up that are active on a daily basis. So Phil's super good about the integration work. I've done many integrations myself and so really pleased to see nice early work happening to make sure that we get everything done Well, it doesn't mean there won't be any slip-ups, you know, it's a complex integration, but we feel very good about how in control of it we are and the governance we have wrapped around it.

And when do you, can you remind me?

Yeah, so we think it's around the middle of July, you know, there's a number of regulatory steps that we need to take in the process, so we're just going through all of those at the moment, but we think around the middle of July.

Okay, okay. And then on cash flow, can you talk me through a little bit on the cash flow front? I mean, you had no licensing deal coming in during the quarter, and then you had negative operating cash flow. Can you talk me through a little bit your thoughts about the cash flow development?

Yeah. Yeah, I can jump in here. Oh, yeah, Marcus. I mean, if you look, I mean, if you look at the first quarter and you compare it to the first quarter of 25, right? In the first quarter of 25, we had, you know, an EBITDA basis first. You need to strip out this $29.5 million in a small time. But if you look at free cash flows, we're better in free cash flow in the first quarter of 26 compared to last year. And... Gross profit, let's round this to 12 million. And you look at the EBITDA of 14. The delta between the two is what I would call kind of cash office. You know, that's a simple explanation. And then what I said is that we had 3 million of, call it non-recurring costs. And you strip out the 3 million. Then you get to a pretty, you know, fairish, quarterly off-backs run rate. And then you take that times four, then you get to an annual, call it 90 million plus minus. So when we talk about cash flow, the way I look at it is our business, even though we have a wonderful gross margin, we have great clients, it is just subscale. Because Operating a global company that is public, it's kind of a minimum of effects that you need. And we can argue what that minimum of effects is. We look at, you can look at precisely what we're merging with, you can look at other companies, and it kind of ends up being there pretty close to that, you know, call it 90 million. If you're less global, you might get down to, you know, 80 million or so. So in terms of having negative cash flow, I would just, the answer would be it's a scale challenge. Now, if we doubled our revenue, or we say we doubled our gross margin, you know, our fixed wouldn't have to scale much. Like Adam said, we, you know, with the flat headcount, we're growing 20%. Last year, we grew 30%, and excluding FX, we grew 40%, right? The growth is there, it's just the scale of numbers. And from EBITDA to free cash flow, you don't have a lot of changes. It's not like we're tying up a lot of working capital, or we're adding a ton of inventory, or we're paying a ton of cash taxes. And we don't have any debts, so we don't pay any cash interest, right? So the way I look at the business is like it's a scale challenge. And organically, eventually we're going to solve this as a business, because if we grow at 20 or 30% on an annual basis, we don't add much effects. Eventually, you know, the business is going to be profitable, generate cash flow. But you can do the math. It's going to take some time. And that's why the merging with precise is so beautiful because, you know, Adam showed the numbers. They're very similar revenue. Actually, it just happened to be exactly the same revenue. I think it was 78 million both companies for the financial year 2025. You look at their effect structure, relatively similar to us. So the fact that we can double the revenue, excluding any revenue synergies, and then make sure that we don't duplicate the cost structures, That's how you get to a business that's really, really healthy. And the $45 million of synergies, what I would call hard synergies that we announced, because it all affects the $45 million, is something we feel really good about because the way we made the case is it's at the vendor level. And, you know, we are able to be very, very, very precise on the amount, and we're able to be very precise on the timing. So that's how I would answer the cash question. And then, you know, to build a little bit more, the biggest risk usually in a merger or any M&A work is the integration. And as Adam said, we feel really good about the integration. And why is that? Well, it's two biometric companies, one located in Göteborg, one in Lund. It's a short train ride away. The majority of our employees are Swedish-based. It's a wonderful cultural fit. So I would view the integration risk relatively low compared to what I've seen in the past, just from a cultural perspective, but also from a client perspective, product perspective, and go-to-market perspective.

And I would assume that with the $45 million, I could say it's hard to increase. so they should really be tangible and doable. And then, as Adam said, you would expect a double-digit EBITDA margin on a performer basis, and then I would assume that looking at the performer basis synergies would also be cash flow positive as well.

I think that's a good conclusion, right? Because between, again, between the EBITDA and free cash flow, I mean, new code is unlikely to have a lot of debt, right? It's unlikely to be cash-paying interest. It's unlikely to have cash-paying taxes, at least in the beginning. And then working capital is fairly straightforward for the two companies, and we're not building inventories. I think that's a good assumption.

All right. Excellent. Thank you. And then finally, maybe on the acquisition slide that you had and the pipeline, if you look at, you've built a shortlist. When was this shortlist built? Was it built during this merger process or was it built before? And a follow-up on that would be that I assume it's way too early to talk about any further conversations. Did you have any conversations beforehand? A little bit of colour around that.

Yeah, I'm happy to take that one. So, good question. I mean, it's always a tricky one to talk about M&A because obviously we can't mention anything too specific. And not only that, having done a lot of M&A in the past, deals are going to happen and then they don't, and here's a very binary result. But... To answer your question specifically, we started doing this work, actually since I joined, but we ramped it up really last year. We started ramping up the specificity of the sorts of acquisition targets that we had. We've always had M&A kind of bubbling underneath since I joined. But like I said, accelerated it last year. But I would say that it's more of an ongoing activity. We did it before the merger was defined and announced. We've been doing it during that time as well and we'll continue to do it after because the economics and the dynamics are changing in the marketplace at the moment, otherwise. and therefore we keep a close eye on. There are conversations that are happening at a high level around some of those potential targets as well. So we tend to keep a simmer on the M&A activity, both in terms of identifying and engaging with potential targets, and then we dial it up to a boil when we're ready to start to make a move. I don't know if that answers your question, Marcus, but that's how I would see it.

Yeah, and I can just jump in on that one. I mean, so Marcus, I think both Adam and I and the Logitech team are quite fond of doing, you know, acquisitions, both consolidating acquisitions and take specific technology in on acquisitions. And, you know, I think the companies are on the right to do acquisitions, meaning they've been in the space for a very long time. The client's excellence in the product is very good. Now, we've been very capital constrained. And we've tried to unlock capital for acquisitions. But in reality, we had to fund all key. That's been the priority. So, you know, improving the product portfolio. I mean, that consumed most of the capital. And, you know, we just never found the ammunition to get it going. And that's what's so exciting now with, with the merger than Precise is that the balance sheet will be stronger. You know, like we talked about, EBITDA and cash flow is going to look better. And I think Precise and FTC, I mean, it's a wonderful platform to start this consolidation. It's going to be super exciting.

Okay. Well, that's great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Frederik. Thanks, Adam. And I'll speak to you guys soon again.

Awesome. Look forward to it. Thank you so much, Marcus. Thanks for joining. See you soon. Thanks.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press R1 and 1 on your telephone. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click Submit. There are no further questions on the phone line. I will hand back to Stefan for web questions.

Thank you, Madeleine. Let's start with two questions from the chat. So what does FPC have that Precise does not? So what's the value of the combination for shareholders? And also, can you comment on, well, the general sentiment of shareholders on this merger?

Yes, super. Let's take those two questions. So the first one is around, sorry, say that again, Stefan, is what does FPC have that Precise does not? Is that correct?

Yes, that's

So I think there's a couple of things. There's capabilities. but then there's also cost synergies. Maybe I'll talk about the capabilities and then I'll hand to Fred to talk about the other synergies, the economic synergies, let's call them that. And rather than saying what do FPC have that Precise don't, I think it's worth understanding what each company has that the other does not, right? And so if you think about it, fundamentally Precise is a software company and FPC are an integrated hardware company. So we have software but it's tightly integrated into the hardware. So very different. I think hardware is very important in biometrics because it's important to be able to capture a really strong signal and have integrity around the storage of that on device. And so I think that's a really powerful synergy between the two companies, super complementary hardware and software. I think the second thing I would say is that there are different modalities that the companies have, right? So on the FPC side, it's hardware fingerprint and software iris. On the precise side, it's software fingerprint and palm as well. So really nice to see multi-modalities come into the fore. I think architecturally, there are different synergies that we can bring together On-device, because we're hardware from an FPC perspective, very powerful from a cybersecurity perspective. And then on the precise side, cloud capability in terms of their access control systems, too. So there's these really nice different things that we can bring together in a common architecture, end-to-end architecture also. I think there are complementary things outside of the technology capabilities as it relates to the go-to-market footprint. So we have quite a complementary geographical coverage model, which is highly valuable. We bring that together also. And so I think there's plenty of different things that each company has on its own, but the phrase I would use, is better together. When we bring all of those things together rather than lock them up in isolation in a smaller niche company, I think it starts to really unlock more customer value as well. So that's a little bit about capabilities. There's probably more, but those are the ones I typically like to talk about. Frederick, maybe you can touch a little bit on some of the economic synergies.

Yeah, I can. I mean, the way we look at it is that one plus one equals three. Yeah, in this case. And so why is one plus one equal three? Well, Adam, you listed a number of items. If we come back to the hard synergies of 45 million, like I said, it's done at the vendor level. So we've really gone through the synergies at the greatest level of detail to make sure that we can execute on it within a reasonable timeframe. And the cost, we've estimated that the cost of generating the 45 million of synergies is, the cash flow is roughly 25 million. So there's a payback of seven months. So the financial case is, you know, it's just very, very strong. And if you think about the cost synergies, one example, we have two NASDAQ Stockholm listings and the infrastructure that goes around the two listings. And when you think about it, It's two companies that have two of everything, you know, and the question is, so how can we combine them, you know, at cost base and make it as efficient as possible while combining our revenue base, which is that 78 million each, and maintaining strong gross margins, because precise has very strong gross margins, and we have very strong gross margins. So, yeah, Adam, that's how I would summarize it. It's a relatively lot of value creation to smallish kind of companies with fairly limited execution risk around the integrations.

I totally agree. I think it's a really good way of putting it. And then I think it comes to the second question, Stephanie, you asked, which is, from my conversations anyway, what's the investor sentiment? And again, this is from the conversations I've had. I've had quite a few. And clearly I'm supporting this, hence why I put it forward. But I would say, in talking to shareholders, I would say there's a lot of history that people have been through with FPCs. And so what I found is we talked to, okay, you guys know the transformation journey that we've been on for the last three years since I joined. And, you know, here is why this is a really important aspect of that continued transformation to get us to a stable platform that we can use as a springboard for additional growth because we're not having to, you know, spend money on administrative functions. We can inject this more efficient capital utilization into growth priorities. And so as we talk through that with shareholders, I think there's not only acceptance, yeah, this makes sense, but actually I'm seeing a general view that, okay, this makes sense as an investor, not just to hold serve on the investments I've already made, but actually to double down, to exercise my warrants, etc., to actually get behind this as well, because I see that this has got greater economic potential. Again, I'm not offering advice on investing. This is some of the things that I'm hearing from my shareholders, and they see it's got a really strong potential for a shareholder return. And so I think, you know, the economic model alone that Frederick just articulated is a really powerful one. But then you put on top all of the capability synergies that I spoke about. I think it's a really, really nice merger. And that's kind of what I'm hearing from the shareholders, too, as we talk them through the logic and what this is.

Okay, great. Thank you, Adam. So let me hand back to you for any closing remarks that you may have.

Wonderful. Thanks very much. So just to come back to Q1, you know, I think very consistent, strong performance, 21% year-on-year growth in constant currency with gross margin of 62.3. Very pleased. with those results, particularly as you think about the context of how we've managed OPEX aggressively over the last three years. And so we haven't grown OPEX to do that. We've maintained low relative OPEX to be able to achieve that. So we're very pleased with the whole team's performance on doing exactly that. But at the same time, we're not standing still. We are investing and innovating in all key. And we've got some new product families. We continue to see pipeline ads. So we're very pleased about moving up the value chain with that 3x ASP on all key. And then, of course, in the near term future, the merger. We've spoken about why it makes sense from an economic perspective with positive EBITDA and growth, but also what type of company this creates, not a small niche one, but actually a broader biometrics identity leader right here in Europe. So really looking forward to seeing the benefits of that new company. Also as a consolidation platform for other smaller niche players to build out more capability in this space, which is exactly what the clients need. So looking forward to that. Appreciate everyone joining the call today and coming along on the journey with us. And I look forward to speaking to you all again soon.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.