Sivers Semiconductors AB (publ)

During the Questions and Answers session, participants are able to ask questions by writing in the chat in the webcast. Now I will hand the conference over to CEO Vikram Vachulya and CFO Lottie Sachs. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Siri. And welcome, everybody. This is Vikram, CEO at Seaver Semiconductors. Welcome to our second quarter 2025 webcast. Last quarter, we had some glitches in our video system. We've moved over to a new provider, and hopefully everybody has a seamless experience this time. So the agenda for today, there will be an executive summary that I'll provide. Then our CFO, Lottie Sachs, will go into the financial results and come back, pick back up on market and business updates and key takeaways. Then we'll have time for Q&A. Let's get into the executive summary for Q2. On the financial side, we came in with a solid quarter, 72.4 million SIEC. That is in line with the new baseline we established, if you remember last time, Q4 2024. That's a 38% increase year on year for Q2. It's also the highest ever Q2 in the history of the company. And as we have now crossed the midpoint of the year, we are Up from last year at this point, 39% year-to-date. Just at EBITDA, we continue to walk on the line to profitability. We have improved by 32% year-on-year compared to Q2 last year. And year-to-date, it's an improvement of 44% from last year. Our wireless business continues to show strong growth, and Q2 was a 71% increase year-on-year as well. For some notable highlights, very exciting to see that we won a new development contract with a new photonics customer, and also won a contract with AI Radar for defense radar applications. The Diffie technology is redefining SATCOM terminals, and we were invited to join the Diffie consortium. or next generation SATCOM terminals that provides validity to the types of technology we are bringing to this focus market. Q1 is our important quarter for critical trade shows that we go to and talk to customers for both our technologies. And since then, we have seen our opportunity pipeline expand with more branded logos. And this is a significant notable news because when we see our technology start getting engagement and traction with branded logos that means we are now moving from lead adopter customers into the realm of mainstream customers we successfully refinanced our debt with significantly better terms and as you've seen in q1 we picked up institutional coverage from notland which is a very top-shelf US analyst and investment bank. And in Q2, coverage has been initiated by Carnegie, which is a top-shelf Swedish investment bank and analyst firm. In May, we shared our strategy and outlook at our Capital Markets Day, where you got a lot of insight into our technology, our markets, and our pipeline. Lastly, in June, I attended the Roth investor conference in London, and it was exciting to see a lot of interest in our company and our technologies from European investors as well as U.S. investors. With that, I will move it over to Lottie Sachs, our CFO, to go over the financials in more detail, and then I'll come back for markets and customers update. Lottie, please go ahead.

Thank you, Vikram. Following up prior two quarters record sales, we're delivering yet a strong quarter. Q2 sales reached 72.4 million, reflecting a 38% increase year over year. And this is the strongest second quarter to date in the company. And this is achieved despite significant headwinds in FX, where US dollar weakened against SEAC during the quarter. So growth in constant FX was 49%. During Q2, wireless business unit grew by 71% year over year, continuing its growth trajectory over multiple quarters. Sales reached 58.2 million, and the increase of 20.8 million came from increase in NRE projects. Although we have multiple projects ongoing in parallel, Like in Q1, delivering on our US ChipX projects was a large focus area for our development team. Wireless NRE products increased 22.8 million year over year to a total of 41.3 million. Product sales decreased slightly by 1.7 million to 8.6 million. Photonics business unit sales was 22.4 million, which was a decrease of 3% or 0.7 million. Photonics decrease in NRE sales was largely offset by increased product sales by 2.3 million. Total NRE sales amounted to 10.1 million and product sales 12.3 million. This was the highest product sales noted for photonics in a quarter. Sequential growth for photonics compared to previous quarter was 10.1%, and the business unit is growing sequentially for the third quarter in a row. Adjusted EBITDA continued to improve year over year. In Q2, improvement was 32%, or 4 million. And we stay committed to drive company profitability while investing in strategic initiatives for long-term success. We are strengthening Sivers' ability to expand and scale up, making selective investments in sales, mark-on and operations. Year-to-date, Sivers grew 39% or 49% in constant FX. An adjusted EBITDA improved 44% year-over-year for the first six months. Product sales in Q2 reached 21 million, which was a growth of 3% year-over-year. So we're maintaining good levels for both business units in the quarter. And although growth is not a straight line, we continue to grow year-over-year, and we're confident with a gradual shift in business model towards our goal of 80% product sale. As communicated during our capital markets day, To further underpin the strategic shift, we're putting more emphasis on own development of broad market products in our targeted strategic verticals in AI data centers and SATCOM. This can also be seen in the investment in capitalized R&D that amounted to 12 million in the quarter, an increase of 6.8 million year over year. The conscious decision to increase pace in product development is a response to market demand following global congresses attended in the beginning of the year. And as mentioned before, business unit Wireless is preparing for sampling of broad market Satcom chips already during the fall. Total share of product sales in the quarter was 29%, which was well in line with prior quarters. Photonics share of product sales was 55% and wireless was 17%. Our sales mix implies continued large share of wireless sales and strong presence in North America. Worth mentioning is that billing and cash flow from these larger projects is very lumpy, which impacts our working capital and timing of cash flows in and out. And this is normal for a project-based business model. However, as it's an important area for us, we continue work to improve our terms where possible. And by that, I hand over back to Vikram.

Thanks, Lottie. So let's get into what's happening with our markets and customers that are noteworthy from our Q2. I always like to center all of us to the focus areas for us and how our strategy remains consistent. We are participating strongly in the two hottest markets with the two strongest long-term secular trends. And those markets for us are AI data centers and satellite communications, SAPCOM. We also have a couple of outposts, as many of you might have heard me say this a few times, in aerospace and defense and fixed wireless access, where we are very, very selective with customer engagements. making sure that if there are opportunities that expand in those areas, we are well positioned to capitalize on those. For our top two markets, AI data centers and SATCOM, our value proposition is energy efficient laser arrays and RF beam former solutions. In the AI data center focus market segment for us, we have added a new photonics customer, This is a well-funded customer with novel technology to build light source modules with our laser arrays. As you know, we already work with IR Labs and we continue to stay focused on delivering the solutions that are needed in the marketplace with that customer. this new customer unlocks more revenue pathways for us both in co-packaged optical interconnect as well as traditional optical pluggables market for sievers so it it opens up our go-to market it also opens up the opportunities that we can go after with this new photonics customer Production target timelines are in line with what I've talked about for our photonics business. Second half 2026, first half 2027 is the window. And we are pursuing multiple opportunities with this customer for applications. As you know, we have a merchant foundry partnership. that we announced earlier with wind semiconductors for at scale high volume production of our lasers and laser arrays. This partnership is progressing well and our projects are on track for on time process and product qualifications for this market segment. We've also established key process module level equivalencies between our Glasgow pilot factory as well as wind semiconductors that again puts us on a fantastic path to stay on track for exciting deployments in the AI data center market in the future. Switching gears to SATCOM, we talked about this a little bit at the Capital Markets Day, but I want to make sure our investors are aware of this very important shift that's happening that is very good news for Seavers. If you look at the satellite terminals, SATCOM terminals on the ground, marine, as well as in the air, the old SATCOM terminals are the prior generations. had both the antenna, the RF content, as well as the modems inside one box. And many customers, many vendors were producing these boxes for the marketplace. What has happened now is a realization that satellite broadband bandwidth is super crucial and it's going to be important to leverage existing network providers and pool enough bandwidth. But the way the old SATCOM terminals were made causes a lot of interoperability issues to deliver seamless bandwidth across the globe. Because each vendor's modem was particularly tied into certain configurations inside this box. And that was the mission of the Diffie Consortium, to make interoperability a non-issue for the satcom networks of the future especially with ground terminals that would provide a modern agnostic solution by moving the modern functionality into the cloud and thereby virtualizing the modem and what that means is the new satcom terminals of the future are going to be mainly rf dominated boxes with an antenna element a beamformer element and a digitizer element And if our investors remember, we announced a very important deal for us with Intelsat, a global mainstream SATCOM provider for doing digitizers for their next generation terminals. But if you look at this box at the bottom, all these three components are now part of the Seavers portfolio. So what this means for Seavers is, in the rf centric satcom terminal of the future our value proposition strengthens it also clarifies what the rf performance that needs to be inside this box which is becoming the basis of our broad market standard product configurations we will be sampling in q4 and Seeing the strength of our offering, we also got invited to join the Diffie Consortium, which is where this change is actively taking place and we are leading contributors into this new ecosystem. Seeing this and realizing with the value proposition we have, if you remember, I told you Q1 is our most important quarter for trade shows and showcasing our technology and talking to customers. Our opportunity pipeline is starting to add a lot more branded customer interest beyond Intelsat. So we are having more and more meaningful conversations with branded customers about what our technology can bring to the table. And as we progress those technical engagements, at some point we'll be converting them into customers for us as well to expand our engagements beyond Allspace, Thorium, and Intelsat. One other point is our engagement with Allspace is going very well as they continue to see tremendous interest for their technology with US Defense as well as NATO Defense. And as all of you are aware, defense budgets are also going up. We talked about a couple of outposts. One of them was fixed wireless access and the other one was defense. So with our top tier infrastructure vendor partnership, the market interest in those FWA or fixed wireless access markets continues to stay strong. We are executing to track, and our customer plans for first-generation product release are the second half of 2026, and we are gearing up towards that. We also are executing on the follow-on generations of products as well for this vendor. On the defense side, We are executing to our plans with our U.S. CHIPS Act projects and our partners continue to work with us to actively identify opportunities for commercialization of this technology we are developing under the U.S. CHIPS Act projects. We're starting to build. This is our third quarter of strong performance starting from Q4 of last year. And there are many aspects of our operations that we are bringing in discipline and execution track record, whether it's operations, whether it is go-to-market, whether it is project execution. So if you look at this, we are also building opportunity pipeline discipline and momentum. And to simplify, there are many stages that our customer engagements go through before they become buying customers. But three main categories to keep in mind are prospects, which is when we identify customers who are interested in our technology and start approaching them with conversations. The next meaningful intercept point is technical engagements where these customers see the value in what we offer and are getting into deeper dialogue to understand our value proposition and potential intersection points with their projects. And then, of course, at some point, they have put us into their designs and they become current customers. The three shows we go to, OFC, Satellite Show, and the Mobile World Congress, are all tremendous opportunities for us to prospect our customers. And what we see now, especially since Q1 of 2025, is not only do we have a growing number of targets in both our businesses, But also, the percentage of those targets or engagements that are strong brands or branded logos is also increasing. As an example, just in the first half of this year, we have added 16 new engagements in wireless for a total of 30, and 30% of them are strong brands, and these are in the technical engagement stage. So the key point is more brands are engaging with Seavers now, which tells us that they're no longer in consideration only by early adopter customers, but the mainstream is also starting to take notice and getting into technical engagements with us on how best to use our technology in their product roadmaps. Now, it is natural to see lesser numbers for photonics than wireless because our photonics market in AI data centers is more consolidated versus the wireless market. So that's something for our investors to keep in mind. Lottie mentioned this, but product proliferation is a key theme. It's a metric that I monitor along with the rest of my executive team. We want to build product revenues to become bigger percentage of our overall revenues so that in a few years from now, my goal is to get 80% of our revenues from products. This also means we are putting a lot more discipline in the return on investment from product shipments as, again, a key metric to evaluate all our potential engagements with customers and pick the best ones. And also, it signifies a move away from pure custom work, which is one product or one engagement at a time for one customer, which has been our prior history as we came along to this point, and rather focus on standard product configurations that we can sell one to many customers. And this is happening in both our businesses. We will be sampling broad market SATCOM products in Q4 2025 towards the end of it. And this will be a combination of beamformers, antenna arrays, and digitizers, which, as you remember, are becoming the most important and dominating content within SATCOM ground terminals. Working with these customers and staying focused in this market has also allowed us to clarify what are the specs and performance levels needed, which again clarifies what products we need to be putting out. And this is stoking strong interest from branded customers. And they're eagerly waiting as well for our product samples so they can go and work with them in their labs and in their systems and identify product opportunities for shipments. The same thing is also happening in our photonics business with standard laser and laser array configurations. As we engage deeper with the market, we are understanding what are those configurations. These product developments and qualifications are underway, and it also opens up our opportunity space beyond just our lead customer engagements on the photonics side. To support the one to many, We have to make essential investments in expanding our sales and customer application resources. So we're making sure that we are ready to support that expanding list of customers through the technical engagements and into product engagements in the future. So to wrap up Q2, key takeaways from my side. It's yet another solid quarter that makes it now three quarters since Q4 of last year. We've already shown that by midway this year, we are strongly up from last year and we expect continued strength in the second half of 2025 and on track for a year on year growth in 2025. The new photonics customer added opens more revenue pathways for our lasers. And as I mentioned, the awareness and technical engagements are expanding with branded customers, which is a fantastic update for us and our investors. Product revenues continue to build and standard configurations are becoming focused to leverage our R&D for maximum return on investment. Carnegie coming along as an analyst is an important news as well because now we have two institutional analysts that have picked us up and they have access to a lot of institutions that have also shown very good interest in our company and technology as i have continued to have more and more conversations with institutional investors as well that are starting to follow us as we speak and as we continue to execute so with that i would like to close the presentation section of the Q2 earnings webinar, and we will go and see if there are questions that we can help respond.

Okay.

There's a question on our IR Labs partnership and it's about, you know, are they currently in testing phase and, you know, what's happening? And I believe I've mentioned this last time as well, then that continues to be the case. They absolutely are showcasing their performance and testing their systems. And they're also getting ready for the same ramps that have been indicated to us as well from the ecosystem, which is getting ready for a qualified product that's ready to ship by end of 26, early 27. So there is that amount of runway that is needed for robust testing, field trials, et cetera. But the market wants the solution to be ready by end of 2026, early 2027. There's a question on the wind semiconductors partnership, and absolutely it's a crucial step. And as I mentioned today, it's going well. And as there are meaningful milestones that we cross, I'll continue to make sure that the investors are updated in terms of how that progress is going. There's a question for clarity on the partnership with own it versus the partnership with been semiconductors so when semiconductors is a foundry relationship, so they will manufacture the lasers for us tested lasers own it is a light module maker, so what they do is. they will take our lasers and build them into the light source modules they make, which would be the modules that will be purchased for deployment into the AI data centers. So hopefully that answers the clarification around what the partnership with O-Net is for and what the partnership with wind semiconductors is for. Yeah, there's a question about insight on how the company is developing and the company's sales are increasing, but there's fewer press releases, less information coming out of the company. We are being very strategic about this. We wanna build a company that continues to grow and provide shareholder returns for everybody. And we wanna make sure that our execution is strong Our customer traction continues to build, and we are going to be more strategic about how we bring information to the marketplace, including forums like our Capital Markets Day and other strategic updates we want to bring. We are moving away from PR overload. We are going to focus on strategic updates and use the right types of forums to keep our investors updated as we continue to build this company into a product company for the future. There's a question on give us a bit more color on customer interest for broad market chipsets. And why do you think the demand for these solutions has surged? Hopefully, I have answered this through the shift in the architecture of the SATCOM terminals. And therefore, SATCOM terminal vendors are looking for which vendor can help solve the toughest challenges for them. And when you look at what's now inside a SATCOM terminal box, as I mentioned, there is the antenna array, there is the beam former, and there is the digitizer. Now, if they procure each of those from different vendors, then there is a systems integration challenge that the terminal vendor has to now go through to put all this together. If they can find somebody who can make sure that the antenna array is already working well with the RF beam formers and the digitizer is also an offering. It makes it so much simpler and much less of a headache for them to put all this together, so we are actually improving. the time to market for our customers. And that's why the demand for these solutions has surged. And because that demand is coming from multiple branded customers, I want to make sure our technology is accessible to many, which is why we are putting out broad market chipset samples towards the end of Q4 this year. And we'll continue to carefully modulate between custom work and standard work because both are important. But we also want to make sure that we are able to reach more customers than in the past. And that's why there's a conscious decision to invest in getting broad market chipsets up. As I mentioned before, there's a question on, okay, you know, how is revenue developing for the remainder of the year, et cetera. What I can tell you is you can see we established a new baseline in Q4 last year. And year to date, we have shown very strong progress on growing in 2025. And with respect to the backlog that we have and the order intake, we will continue to execute strongly for the second half of the year. And we absolutely are planning to grow in 2025 and beyond. And you've seen early indications of that with the mid-year results. I'm just going through questions here, so bear with me. There's a question on, okay, how much have you consumed of the U.S. CHIPS Act funding, et cetera? I just want to remind the audience, this is a one-year-at-a-time program that has possibility for three years. So with respect to the one-year plans, we are on track with how we are consuming funding towards developing and achieving the milestones we have. So that is in line with how much time has elapsed so far and what is remaining in the first year. Capitalized development, is that a relevant number going forward? We will provide better commentary on that as we develop the first batch of broad market samples. And that gives us a good baseline for the combination of customer projects and standard product development. And that will give us basis. It's too early to call a basis number at this point. So I think there continues to be questions on the Fortune 100 company, et cetera. As I said, we have to make sure that our R&D is focused on the areas that we see the most traction in the market. And those are our momentum markets. If there is any meaningful update that will come up from a engagement with the Fortune 100 customer, I will bring it to the market. But right now we're staying focused on where we are seeing most meaningful traction and taking advantage of that opportunity so that we can consistently grow the company. With respect to Allspace, as I mentioned, Their order pipeline, their opportunity pipeline continues to grow with US defense. And yes, we are anticipating that they're going to be ramping more on their shipment levels going into 2026. So we are also working with them to make sure we are prepared to support them going into 2026. There's a question on when can your new SATCOM chip go into volume production? So two things. In semiconductors, so if you see this chipset, we will be sampling it late in Q4. And normally, once you have sampled your first silicon, it takes about another six to eight months to get it ready with production readiness. But ultimately, high volume production depends on which customer's product, when they plan to deploy, et cetera. And so we're gathering information on who has needs, when, et cetera. But from just a development perspective, so everybody understands this is very normal in the semiconductor industry. You bring out your first samples and then, you know, customers go work with it. They identify all the things that are working. Maybe there are certain things they want us to adjust. And then there's probably another quick pass we need to do on the silicon to get it finally production ready. And that takes anywhere from six to nine months after first samples. Payment on the chipset, that continues as we deliver on milestones. So as we are on track, and so are the payments that come in from the CHIPS Act. Those are the most important questions here that I see that are relevant to progressing the company, and I really appreciate everybody that dialed in, and I want to make sure that you realize we are being very consistent with our strategy. We are focused on improving execution in all areas of our business. And we are being strategic with keeping our investors updated with meaningful updates and in the right forums. And that is a change that the investor base has to accept from us because we believe It's important for us to show through on results as we've been doing for the last three quarters in a row and continue to execute to where this company will get to in the future years. So it is a strategic decision on how we bring updates to you. There's a question on the new customer. Again, as I said, you know, as part of a strategic update, When we are ready we love course you know bring bring this information to you guys so so continue to stay posted on that front, but it's extremely exciting for us to have this new photonics customer as well, because it opens up pathways for us for the photonics business in the coming years. So with that hopefully. The tool that we use this time is much more seamless and we plan to use this as well. And just as a heads up, this is the same tool we use at the capital markets day as well. So what I will say to our investors is keep in mind that we will bring strategic updates in the relevant forums and in the right cadence to the marketplace, but it will be a departure from the past where it was a lot of PRs coming out all the time. So this is a strategic decision by myself and my executive team. Thank you, everybody, and I look forward to talking to you at the next forum.