Sivers Semiconductors AB (publ)

This is Vikram Batulia, the CEO at Sivers. And I'm here with Lottie Sachs, who's our CFO. Thank you for joining us. And I'm happy to host this first earnings call as the new Sivers CEO. So today's agenda, we're going to discuss the Q3 results. There'll be an executive summary. Lottie will go over the financial results. And I want to give some important market and business updates and some key takeaways for the audience today. And then we'll look at your questions and respond to them. Let's get into the executive summary. On the financial side, in the third quarter, revenues were at 58.7 million SEC. That's 1% year on year for Q3, so we're stabilizing our revenues from the strong growth from last year. And sequentially, it's a 12% increase from Q2 to Q3. Our wireless business had very healthy growth, 17% year on year for Q3, and 40% up sequentially from Q2 to Q3. If you look at the year-to-date results, Revenues are at 167 million SEC. That's 4% year-on-year. And we continue to drive towards profitability in the business. So we have an improvement of 24% year-on-year in our adjusted EBITDA. Migrating Sivers into a products business continues, and our product revenue contribution is at 32%. That's 11-point increase from the prior year, year-to-date. Some of the key highlights, as I mentioned, we continue progress on the road to profitability. On the photonics side, we had a very important demonstration with our marquee partner, IRLabs, at the European Conference on Optical Communications, where our 16-element laser array, along with the IRLabs chipsets, showed how the drive from copper to optical interconnects is going to revolutionize AI data centers. Our conversation with our photonics customers is also moving from technology and product market fit to how are we getting ready for the ramps that are going to be coming up in a couple of years. And towards that end, I want to say that we have identified a merchant foundry partner for our high volume laser productions for the AI data center market. We already talked about our focus on SATCOM, satellite communications, and we have early adopter customers that we are already working with. But importantly, now we are getting interest beyond our early adopters. So we have a new blue chip customer win in SATCOM. That's very exciting for us. As you've seen in the press releases, we have received two U.S. CHIPS Act awards. what is called Lab2Fab awards. This opens opportunities to the electronic warfare market, which is also important for our beamformer technology because it solves relevant challenges in that segment. And Lab2Fab indicates that these are technologies that the U.S. Chipset believes can be commercialized with the right partnerships. So that's also important to know. 2024, we were selected as a finalist for the Glottal Telecom Awards for Mission Critical Excellence. And it's always rewarding to see the technologies we're working on getting recognized. And finally, the SPAC option is off the table. And what I want the listeners to understand is our value proposition in the photonics market with our lasers for AI data centers is very strong. The decision has to do more with the SPAC environment. It's not about lack of attention or interest on the technology proposition for the AI data center. That continues to march on very strongly, and we will continue to look for opportunities to maximize our participation and our recognition in that space. With that, let me hand this over to the financial overview for Q3 from Lottie, and then I'll come back on the markets and customer update.

Thank you, Vikram. So revenue amounted to 58.7 million in Q3 and 167 million year-to-date, with 4% growth in constant currencies. We see a stabilized revenue base following a very strong quarter in 2023 in which we had 107% growth and actually 96% growth year to date. So in the quarter, we have a sequential growth from Q2 to Q3 of 12.2%. And we see a pattern of a strong Q3 and the second half. And actually, Q3 this year is the second highest quarter to date in the company's history. And as Vikram already mentioned, our wireless business shows solid growth of 70% in the quarter, mainly coming from SAPCOM, but also in 5G. And importantly, product sales remained on a good level a month into 17 million in Q3 and 54 million year to date. which corresponds to a growth of 58%, demonstrating a focused shift towards a product-driven revenue model. We continue to see improvements in profitability and cost efficiency stemming from improved commercial discipline and maintaining operational cost actions taken in 2023. And we do operate our business with a lean organization, and we will continue to focus on operational efficiency to ensure we leverage on increased sales volumes to improve profitability further. And Cirrus is on a promising path to profitability with a Q3 improvement of 12% and year-to-date improvement of 24% in adjusted BTAs. As mentioned, we continue to drive transformation to product business, which is demonstrated in that product share of sales grew to 32% from 21% prior year. We have a balanced distribution in sales between our two business units, as well as geographically, which is in line with prior year. We are very proud about the awarded contracts under the U.S. CHIP Act and increased activity in the North American region.

Thanks, Lottie. So that was a financial update. And now I do want to take some time. It's my first opportunity with our listeners, our investors. I want to make sure that we're all on the same page on where we want to be taking sewer semiconductors in the future. So when I look at the technologies we have, and now we have both the wireless side and the photonics side, Over the last three months, I've talked to a lot of customers, investors, partners, and what's become very clear is we are critical enablers of a greener data economy. Our focus is on energy efficient photonics and wireless solutions. So I thought I'll take some time to give you my view of what's ahead of us. And I want to make sure I give you a very practical, pragmatic view of what to expect in the coming quarters, years ahead of us. So let's start with this. It's no secret that there are two long-term secular trends that are super interesting for us, okay?

One of them is, all right, I think we are on the right slide now.

So what I want to talk about are two long-term secular trends that are firmly in our space. Number one is AI acceleration. Why? And everybody has heard about this. We've heard about NVIDIAs of the world, et cetera. What's happening is the training models are getting larger and larger. It's going into deep learning and real-time inference. So AI acceleration is here to stay for at least a couple of decades. Similarly, the second one is millimeter wave adoption. As the spectrum gets sparser and sparser in the lower frequencies, there is still a need for higher capacity, lower latencies, lighter payloads, and threat mitigation. All of this is moving into the higher frequency realm, which is where we play. Both these long-term secular trends are here to stay. And the other thing that you can note on the slide is both these trends have applicability in multiple markets. Now, that's a good thing, but also it takes discipline to focus on where the momentum in the markets are, which is why we have chosen two specific end markets to focus our energies on. And those are highlighted here as AI data centers and satellite communications. And for both these markets, what we see is one big challenge, energy efficient solutions. So that's the combination that allows Sivers to bring relevant technologies to solve these pain points in two long-term secular trends in two momentum markets. Let's talk about AI data centers. Everybody's heard about all the NVIDIA GPU compute devices that keep coming out, and the models get trained on these type of compute devices. So the compute challenge to bring more and more computing power is well understood. However, these AI models are extremely energy intensive. OK, on average, these NVIDIA GPUs, these AMD GPUs, they only have a 25 percent utilization rate because they're waiting for data. And at the same time, because they're so energy hungry, data centers can literally take up almost 20 percent of the global electricity production by 2030. In fact, companies are talking about needing nuclear power plants to supply the energy for the AI market. And all this is because of the interconnects innovation not yet coming to fruition. Copper has continued to stay as the method to connect these GPUs, and copper is starting to hit a wall. So what does this mean for us? I mean, it's a fantastic market, but it needs a strong interconnect solution. So as you can see here, the hyperscalers and the GPU vendors are putting together larger and larger GPU clusters because they want the computing power to continue to increase. To make them talk to each other fast enough, we got to move from copper to optical. And that ecosystem momentum is extremely high. which is resulting in photonics vendors having tremendous valuations in the market because they looked upon to solve this critical challenge. And laser vendors like Sivers are critical enablers because when you move from copper to optical, even though you have the photonic fabric, you need an excellent light source, and we provide those laser arrays. Without our laser arrays, you can't make the conversion from copper to optical interconnect. So what are some highlights in Q3? As I mentioned before, we've done the 16 element laser array demo in September with our partner IR Labs. And you can see in the bottom right, where it says SOC, those are like the NVIDIA AMD chips and surrounding them, are IR Labs Terra Phi photonic ICs. And what they're trying to do is convert the electrical signals to optical as close to these GPUs as possible so that most of the communication happens with optical. And that's where they need the external light source that you see here called the supernova, which is where you will find our SIRS laser arrays. So again, a very integral part of the solution to convert electrical signals to optical as soon as possible and do the communications in the optical domain. That's what's very exciting, and this presents a billion-dollar-plus market for lasers, addressable market for sievers by 2028. Another important point I want to make to the audience is, Our conversation with our photonics customers is no longer around, does the technology work? Does the product fit the application? It's more about, are we going to be ready for the ramps, which are no longer a question of if, but a question of when. So I want to make sure that's known in the audience today, okay? And for that, we are in the final stages of selecting our foundry partner for mass production of our lasers. I want to give you an idea of the timeline. And again, I want to make sure that you all understand the pathway to make this revolutionary outcome happen. 2022, 2023 was all about technology development. 2024 product demonstration was the focus. And as you see with our September demo, the product demonstration had attracted a lot of attention because we are showing that this type of solution works for the future. 2526 is all about product qualification and manufacturing readiness. And this is what our customers are asking us to be ready with. And towards the back half of 26 and 27, the expectation is, the corporate optical interconnect paradigm shift starts happening in volume. So I want to make sure that the audience is clear on where are we now, what has led to this current place, and what's ahead of us in getting ready for the production ramps. So that was about the AI data center market, which is one of the two momentum markets we are engaged with. Let me switch gears to satellite communications. There's been a lot of talk about 5G millimeter wave cellular, but the reality is there are other markets where there's already good adoption of millimeter wave technologies happening, and we need to be engaged strongly. And for us, it's satellite communications is first and foremost. They're a strong adopter of millimeter waves, so we don't have to sit around thinking, do they plan to use millimeter waves? and they need beamforming technology, which is what we provide. So if you look at this market, there are satellites up in the sky, and more and more of them are going up in the sky, and more and more of them are going into lower Earth orbits, which means they're getting smaller, and they still need the performance, but lighter solutions, higher energy efficient solutions. And to talk with those satellites, we have Ground terminals. And ground terminals come in three forms. They're either terminals for defense applications, terminals for commercial enterprise, and terminals for consumer. Siver's focus is on defense and commercial enterprise terminals at this point. That's where we see our strongest fit and the ability for stronger profitability as well associated with the products that we can sell into that market. In this market, our value proposition is that we can deliver three to five times more energy efficient, compact beam farmers. And that's what our customers find attractive with our solution. And we continue to put out solutions that are that much better than the competition. And this also, when you look at the numbers, is a billion dollar plus serviceable available market by 2028 for us. We have already talked about a couple of customers we have engaged in this space. And these are what I call thought leader customers, early adopters, like Allspace and Thorium. And I wanted to give you a feel for which end application segment within satellite communications they are developing solutions for. For example, Allspace is working on terminals for the defense market. Thorium has exposure to defense terminals, but also on the satellite side. As happens with all these new technologies, we now want to see traction beyond the early adopters. And that's why it's very exciting for us that in Q3, we now have our first win with a multinational satellite infrastructure and services provider. This shows that even the bigger players, are now seeing the attractiveness of our solutions, and our solutions are now garnering interest beyond the early adopters. So that gives us a lot of enthusiasm and motivation as we continue to pursue satellite communications as a key area for us. So those are the two momentum markets where these long-lived secular trends are. And I want to make sure that the audience understands, our investors understand that we have relevant technologies, which is why we have seats at the table. We're working with early adopters and also now moving to mainstream. On the Chips Act Award side, there's a big push in the U.S. for identifying promising technologies, but also then hooking up companies like us, with strong partners with an emphasis on lab to fab, which is to commercialize, with an eye towards commercializing these technologies. And so the two awards we got also offer us entry to what is called defense and dual use applications. Dual use means you can use it in defense as well as commercial. There were 33 nationwide awards given this year, six awards for the Northeast Corridor in the U.S., And two of them were awarded to sewers. When you look at these numbers, that's unheard of for a company of our size to receive two awards in this very important lab-to-fab award space for the chip sacks. And these two awards partner us up with the likes of Raytheon, Ericsson, and BAE Systems. And the point to note is Raytheon and BAE are two of the world's largest solution providers in electronic warfare. They're very interested in seeing technologies like ours go from technology development to maturation to commercialization. And we'll be engaged with partners like these in the future along these towards. So I want to kind of bring this together and give you a feel for what's ahead of us. So there's tremendous amount of strategic focus and execution while driving profitability as soon as possible. But we stay super focused on two markets, AI data center and satellite communications. What I want our investors to take away is the core technology development is done. And that's where a lot of small companies struggle. That is behind us. The next big challenge to get past is product market fit, which is where a lot of small companies, again, struggle to make it. But we have shown product market fit in both our focused momentum markets. And we are entering what I call the scale up and scale out phase. Doesn't happen instantaneously. It will take time. But we are now starting to see traction from mainstream customers. which is super important for us as we build the next stage of growth for sewers. We went from the 2 to 20 over the last seven years, but now we've got to carefully and meaningfully add to our top line in the coming years. And the scale up and scale out phase is all about more and more market awareness, building our customer pipeline, taking advantage of the strong opportunity that we have in the U.S. in terms of satellite communications and electronic warfare, along with the opportunities we see in Europe for SATCOM, and potential growth in the 5G space as well, as was evidenced by our partnership with the global 5G customer, where we are taking a careful approach towards how we spend resources on the 5G side. And last but not least, I've mentioned our customers are asking us to get ready for the photonics ramps. And that's where I mentioned to you that we are in the final stages of setting up our merchant foundry partner. So I want to wrap this up by talking about the Sivers opportunity and what it means for shareholder value creation. What I brought to you today was two secular trends and two momentum markets. A $2 billion plus serviceable available market sized up in 2028. I talked to you about our value proposition and our growing customer pipeline. And our ambition is to have a high single digit share in that serviceable market in the 2028 frame. If you kind of put this all in your mind together, that's $100 million plus business in four years. Doesn't happen instantaneously. I don't want to give bombastic estimates, but in four years, this translates to $100 million plus business. And when you look at that, that's a sizable market valuation at compatible multiples. And what do I mean by that? If you look at the semiconductor industry, anywhere from four to five X sales per 18 to 19 times EBITDA multiples. And you can start formulating in your head what this means for a market valuation for silver semiconductors. This I believe is very doable. As long as we stay strategically focused and our investors also have that long-term perspective of how we are building growth and profitability. Of course, as Slotty mentioned, every quarter, every month, we continue to drive profitability and we expect that happening soon. But in terms of overall market valuation, this is the way I would like our investors to look at this opportunity that you have with Sivers Semiconductors. So let me finish with the key takeaways. Number one, I believe as Lottie mentioned, we have stabilized well. It's a good Q3 financials, tremendous continued progress on profitability. Our focus is on lasers for AI data centers and beam formers for SATCOM. We are steadily expanding our pipeline and adding high-quality design wins. And what I mean by that is we are starting to move beyond our early adopters, which is an important, important transition for a company like us. The other point I want to make is we will see layering of growth from wireless and photonics in the coming years. Our SATCOM product deployments, when I talk to our customers, based on latest discussions, are expected in the second half of 25, first half of 26 transition. And our AI product ramp deployment is second half of 26, first half of 27. And the SPAC option is off the table, and I want to reiterate, now we are super focused on Both are Sivers business, both of which have tremendous traction in the marketplace, and we want to make sure we maximize strategically the opportunity this creates for all stakeholders in Sivers. And the SPAC option is off the table because of the SPAC environment and has nothing to do with the fundamental valuation and the interest in our photonics business. Thank you.

And now we are open for questions.

We have a question about how are you going to finance Sivers? We have enough runway to figure out solutions. So that's something we actively work on. And that's something that I'm actively involved in.

Thank you.

As I mentioned, you know, we have enough runway to figure out solutions that are in the best interest of everybody. And so please stay posted on that. I do want our investors to understand, you know, my methodology is to try to bring to you the reality as it is, along with the firm conviction on these two end markets and focused on them for the long run.

There's a question about considering the U.S.

election results and potential for acceleration in AI and technology, could the SPAC option come back or could you raise awareness of the photonics business in other ways? So, again, let me make sure that you understand, you know, The two secular trends are extremely strong. Any conference, any event in the semiconductor market that I go to, this is the talk of the town. So when we talk about our lasers business, there is good awareness that is being created. Doesn't need a specific vehicle like a SPAC or so. But as I said, as we look to the future, we look for all ways to maximize awareness of our photonics business through our customers, through the market forum, through the technology events and through the engagement with our customers. Right. So that is our main way to promote awareness of our photonics business. There's a question about the F100 customer. We continue to stay engaged with them. And, you know, there is always development going on. But, you know, that's as much as I can say at this point. So they continue to stay interested in our technology. But they're solving some really difficult problems. So they will continue to work with us as they seek out how well they can address that problem in the marketplace. There's a question about how many which companies are competitors with Sivers Photonics laser segment. Thank you for asking that question. So traditional laser suppliers are Macom and Lumentum. And we believe, you know, no market that is garnering this amount of interest stays without competition. So we believe both of them could be competitors for us. But we have tremendous advantages with our laser arrays. And these laser arrays are important to be able to produce the light or optical solutions in the future. So we have a very good technology advantage, but those are our traditional laser suppliers in the marketplace, Macom and Lumentum. There's a question about NVIDIA. Let me answer it this way. Absolutely, people like NVIDIA are tremendously focused on making sure this copper to optical interconnect transformation happens. The customers we work with, if you look at it, these are also customers that are getting strategic investments from the likes of chipset providers like NVIDIA, AMD, others, right? So absolutely tremendous interest from the entire ecosystem to see this optical interconnect happen. Stay with me. I'll definitely update you guys as we go along and how we solve and work on our financing, et cetera. But I will give you an update once I have figured out the solutions, et cetera. Any update on the large 5G customer we announced a few months back? The engagement continues to stay strong and we are progressing well. So once again, when there are material data points, we'll bring it to the market. How do you assess the risks of losing cooperation with iLabs and other partners where you have made good progress? They are extremely focused on working with us and, you know, As I told you, we got to get ready for the ramps that are coming up in the next 18 to 24 months. Everybody has to stay focused. We have worked this far. We continue to stay firmly engaged to make that happen. Right. So right now it's all about commercialization, qualification and getting ready for production. And our customers continue to be very strongly linked with us.

Let me take a look at a couple more questions here. We are starting to run out of time.

How are you going to create shareholder value? I believe I addressed that in that last slide in the presentation.

I've talked about the financing.

There are many questions around that. As I said, once we have developed our solutions, we'll come back to our investors and give you an update.

I've already talked about the F100 customer. Let me see here.

Yes, I think the question on other fabs for consumer photonics, as I mentioned, we are working with a merchant foundry because if we look at the types of production needs we have, we want a merchant foundry for our high volume production. And we have a very engaged merchant foundry partner now that we are finalizing. And I hope to come back with more details to our investors soon. A question on how will you work to bring in stable investors in the future? Absolutely. I mean, we are looking for investors that are like-minded with us to stay with us on our journey, which will take some time. I mean, these technologies to deploy in satellite communications as well as photonics, it takes a lot of field trials. It takes a lot of work from us, from our customers to put this out in the marketplace. So absolutely, we will be looking for our existing investors sharing that vision with us, as well as new investors that are willing to invest in the potential that I outlined for stakeholder value creation. Absolutely. I mean, we are looking to grow our business, as I said, The opportunity in 2028, I kind of sized up for our investors. The exact path between now to then, we continue to evolve. But absolutely, we are spending a lot of energy in expanding our pipeline, which ultimately then converts to revenues. So that is a strong focus in our coming quarters. And that's where I'm encouraged because now beyond our early years, adopters, we start getting a lot more inquiries about our technologies, a lot more of questions on, hey, could you support our application? How does your technology enable our solution? So we are starting to see a lot more inquiries come in from customers beyond our early adopters. So that I take as a very optimistic, positive sign that that will mean good things for our pipeline in the coming quarters, which then takes some time to convert into revenues. But absolutely, as I painted you a picture on where we would like the company to be in 2028, we are putting actions in place to help us deliver on that for our investors. I believe I've given, I tried to collect all these questions in groups, and I believe I've given responses to pretty much most of questions that have been asked. And once again, you know, my questions on specific shared events, we don't speculate. So I will leave it at that. But what I want to, again, make sure as my last comment for this quarter's meeting is, I hope I've given you a view of how I look at the future. I've taken it upon myself to give our team tremendous focus. If you do too many things, you don't end up getting great results because you dilute your efforts. We are really focused on two secular trends, two momentum markets, and a sustained focus on enabling that stakeholder value creation, right? So that's where all our effort and intensity are going to be going forward. And that's the type of investment mentality I would like for our shareholders to have and for our existing investors and our new investors. Will you make interviews or presentations about Silver soon? Yeah, we wanted to make sure that I absorbed information about the company, went and visited our customers, our investors, et cetera. Definitely early in the new year, we will be participating in the Capital Markets Day where I'll give a lot more elaboration about our business. And so stay posted for that. That'll come out of our marketing communications group on when and where the Capital Markets Day will happen early in Q1. There's a question from Struan. Does the laser focus of the two secular trends mean that the other areas are being deprioritized? Yes. In the sense that strategy is all about resource allocation behind the best opportunities. So I want to make sure that we are able to capitalize on momentum markets like the two I mentioned. We will keep a couple of outposts. Just to make sure, you know, we are watching for if some of the market becomes a momentum market. But the bulk of our resourcing has to be single minded on our focused areas. That's how you're going to get the best results with our customers, with our technologies, with our products. Right. So absolutely. It's all about resource allocation behind the best opportunities that I see for servers. I think the question on the SPAC was already dealt with. As I said, any forum you go to, there is no dearth of interest and momentum in the two markets I've talked about. So the announcement on the SPAC has a lot more to do with the SPAC environment. around small caps rather than anything fundamental about our photonics business. Even as we speak, we're getting more inquiries about our photonics lasers from more mainstream customers that are interested in seeing the progress that we have already made and want to see, okay, what does this mean for them? So I would say, again, the laser focus on our two markets is going to be very important. We are not taking our eyes off of profitability. I mean, I come from a long tenure of managing highly profitable businesses. And of course, sometimes when you take on the businesses, they still have some work ahead of them. And at Sivers, we have some work ahead of us. But stay assured that that is among my top priorities to make sure from a cash flow perspective, from a profitability perspective, we make positive progress every quarter ahead of us. At the same time, making sure we are building a sustainable products business for the future in the chosen markets that we have, thereby building pipeline revenues to keep marching towards that 2028 ambition that I talked about. So it's a long and patient road, but I support all the investors who are on the call and not as well who have stayed with us for a long time. But absolutely, I see tremendous traction and potential here, and that's why I'm here to work with the team. So I appreciate all the support, and please stay engaged with us. I'll try to bring you as much information as possible whenever I have it with me and I can share. Thank you, everybody.