Fingerprint Cards AB (publ) (FINGB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

April 29, 2024

Nasdaq Stockholm SE Information Technology guidance_update 47 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

operator
#1

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fingerprints Cards AB Rights Issue Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Stefan Pettersson. Please go ahead.

Stefan Pettersson

executive
#2

Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this webcast following the announcement of Fingerprints rights issue last Friday. And on the call today, we have the company's Chairman, Christian Lagerling, our CEO, Adam Philpott; and our CFO, Fredrik Hedlund. And once we've gone through today's presentation, we'll have a Q&A session. And if you're following the conference call on the web, you can post questions throughout this call. And with that, let me now hand over to Christian Lagerling.

Christian Lagerling

executive
#3

Thank you, Stefan, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. I just wanted to take a short moment before handing over to Adam and Fredrik to talk you through the details of the rights issue and balance sheet strengthening activities that we announced on Friday. On behalf of the Board, I'm very pleased today that we're able to present this strong and absolutely critical balance sheet strengthening solution to you, our shareholders. After continuing adverse and really worsening environment for China Mobile business, we have, by doing this now taken full control of our financial future for the group by deciding to wind down our unprofitable Mobile business and really enabling us to focus all our resources on our profitable growth areas, existing and new ones. And Adam and team will talk more about this, of course. As mentioned, we've also taken substantial measures to restructure our balance sheet with the early repayment of our convertible bond. Our convertible debt provider heights has been a strong and important partner for the company for a period of time. But we're confident today that the early repayments is in the best interest of the company and all shareholders. And of course, a rights issue can be challenging for some shareholders. We're, of course, fully aware of that. And I can assure you that as the Board we really see our primary duty responsibility to look after and act in the best interest of all shareholders at all times, meaning when we go through these finance activities, we evaluate very, very carefully all available options. And last time, it was appropriate to bring in external financing through heights and convertible debt. And today, as mentioned, we're convinced for long-term prosperity of the company and long-term shareholder value creation that the rights issue and the early repayment is in all our best interest. I'll be happy to answer any questions as well. But for now, I'll hand over to you, Adam.

Adam Philpott

executive
#4

Thank you, Christian, and good to be here. Thank you for joining everyone on the call. Just by way of introduction, I thought I'd introduce myself and I will ask Fredrik to do the same in a second. So for those of you who haven't met me or been on calls with me, I'm Adam Philpott, the background that I have relevance to what we're doing today and what we're doing with the company are as follows. I've been in private equity for a reasonable period of time prior to this role. And I think that's an important set of experiences necessary for cost optimization and turnaround driving change. You'll hear a lot about that on the call today. So a lot of time spent driving change, driving turnaround, driving cost out of business in order to realize maximize value creation. So that's a little bit on my background, the rest you can read. Fredrik, let me quickly hand to you for a quick intro of yourself.

Fredrik Hedlund

executive
#5

Yes. Thank you, Adam. Yes, similar to Adam, I also have mix background of private equity, but also big companies like General Electric and Nielsen, and I spent time in startups as well. So I have bring a mix of skill sets to the table. And with that, Adam, let's move on.

Adam Philpott

executive
#6

Very good. So you can see the table of content here. We're going to talk a bit about the transaction and the background. We'll spend a bit of time talking about the markets and the business overview and then we'll spend the back half of the call taking questions and providing answers for those of you that have questions. Stefan will help us orchestrate that. So let's keep moving forward. Stefan, if we go to the next slide, please. I'll start with a very brief history of the company, the slide will catch up in a second. There's a small delay. But if you think about everything that we've been through or we've been doing as a company, there has been, and we've talked publicly about this, there have been some challenges geopolitically and in terms of the overall market as it relates to Mobile. I was very vocal about this when I joined late last year. I talked about this in October on our interim Q3 earnings report. So these things aren't news to anybody but they are a significant background to what we're talking about today. We've seen a lot of price pressure in the Mobile business and some challenges in that business, too. And then we've also had the convertible bond that Christian talked about just a second ago. So that's a bit about the context. What this is about is moving us into the future, though. Because if you put that aside, we've got a really good going concern, strong margin, good businesses that were in some existing markets that are already seeing growth. Some new markets, they're best for the future, but those markets are being pulled down by Mobile. So it's really important that we focus on those markets that are very positive and defocus on the Mobile market that is not. And that's exactly what this rights issue is all about us focusing just on those markets, getting out and winding down the Mobile market to the cash burn that, that market is creating and then also strengthening the balance sheet as a result of the changes in the convertible loan moving to equity instead. So that's a bit of background on what we're doing here. But the fundamental important point is we want a very strong going concern when you take a Mobile out of the picture, which is why we're taking Mobile out of the picture and running a profitable business. Next slide, please. So I've talked about transformation. As I said back in October, we started this transformation journey, when the slide comes up, you'll see on the left what that strategic transformation program contains what it looks like and that's what we're focused on driving today. So firstly, a portfolio refresh, what does that talk to. That talks to focusing on those profitable lines of business, Payments, Access and, of course, PC but not focusing, we're moving away the Mobile business, it's been a real challenge for the company and a cost period for the company. That's what portfolio refresh is all about. I'll spend a little more time shortly on the next slide, talking about the portfolio and how we see that moving forward. The second piece is around cost optimization. So we've talked publicly when we did the press release for this rights issue on Friday about driving cost out of the business. When we first started the transformation back in October, we talked about getting our OpEx down to SEK 180 million annualized in the second half of this year. As we've come towards this second phase of cost optimization because we took some cost out back then in October, we've identified a few other savings that we can make as well. So we've actually brought the cost envelope down to SEK 150 million, and we've identified and started as of last Friday to execute our plan to bring the cost down to SEK 150 million, and that's what we're focused on doing towards the end of the year. So that plan is in place. That cost is now coming out, but obviously, it takes time to take that cost out of the business, that cost will be out by the end of this year. And number three, strengthening the balance sheet. We'll also talk about that on the call today. I'll ask Fredrik to spend some time talking about that, particularly as it relates to the convertible and how we're restructuring capital in the organization there. And number 4 is around strategy. The company coming off stuck before I joined, it was really treading water, should we say, in some of the markets it's in. So the strategy that I've bought in, put in place around platform, we'll talk about a little bit later, but that's about how we capitalize on this amazing market that we're in. The biometrics are more broadly the identity market is a fantastic opportunity. It's a large market. It's growing in double digits. So there are good opportunities for us to continue to expand as a company. I won't spend much time on bucket 5 and bucket 6. I put them in there because we've talked about those publicly previously. They are important pillars of the plan. We will touch on organization a little bit later, but that's the full 6-point plan. What you can see on the right of this slide here is that all of those things are about driving stability. That's what this rights issue is about getting stability back in the company by cutting off a piece it's draining capital, focusing on these pieces, it could be run profitably and that's very much what the stability phase is all about. Next slide, please, Stefan. So before we talk about cost optimization and we talk about capital and strategy, I want to talk a little bit about the portfolio refresh. So I've been very clear on saying and as Christian touched on in his opening as well. This is about us stopping the piece of business that's costing us money. It's losing us money that's not profitable, which is the Mobile business. So the first thing that we've done is the discontinued Mobile. We started that when we announced it on Friday is the second phase of the transformation program. That cost is now coming out of the business, and that stops the cash burn. So that's been a real challenge for us. We've been in that market for a long time. It's the market that made us famous as a company but all things must come to an end. That market is commoditized. We can no longer realize anywhere near a selling price is viable to deliver the margins necessary. And therefore, we had to wind that business down. That ASP has been declining for years, and therefore, it's come to a point where that market is simply no longer tenable. So removing that market is a really important part of the portfolio refresh. However, the good news is that there's a number of businesses that remain in the company, they're performing well. PC has been growing well. It's been increasing as a percentage of our overall mix, we see a continued opportunity to continue that growth trajectory in PC as well. Not only that, PC has got great margins. So it's a good margin business, and we continue to innovate and evolve with the PC market. As we move forward, there's even opportunities to go multimodal instead of selling one modality to sell more than one modality with Iris is a good example of something we're looking at there. We can also expand further in PC because we've got great customer relationships with Lenovo, Asus, Acer and Dell. We're not yet selling with HP, we started that process. So there's an opportunity for market expansion, not just in terms of more technology and a greater sell for customer but also in terms of more customers with HP and potentially Microsoft Surface too. So a few other targets that we can go after PC and some more products that we can sell there, too. So some good opportunities there. On the Payments side, that's more of a nascent market. We spent the last few years creating a market, seeding the market. What does that mean? Investing and innovating new technology, building out a really strong ecosystem with the likes of Thales, IFX, Infineon, Visa, Mastercard and others are building out that ecosystem so that there is a product that's viable in the market. That also includes things like enrollment that it's easy for consumers of biometric payment card to use those products easily without failure. And so we've been really focused on that. That's now functioning. So the next piece of work that we're focused on this year is to focus on demand side, working with the life of those partners I've mentioned, working with end customers to drive adoption in that space. So some interesting opportunities ahead as we now go from seeding the market to growing the market. And then on the Access side, we got a lumpy business, Access, largely dependent on construction in the Asia market, somewhat the same in a very fragmented market outside of Asia but already we're seeing nice growth now in what we draw logical access. So not just selling door handles and fingerprint sensors for gun safes and fingerprint sensors for called crypto wallets, for example, all of those things we do today, but actually moving to the FIDO market for logical access to allow people to use a biometric device for access to applications, et cetera, in the digital domain. We're seeing a lot of growth now in that segment, which bodes well for the future. And then the final pillar that was launched back in May last year is new business. That's about expanding the capabilities we already have into new markets, markets like connected vehicles, but also into our existing markets like PC, for example, where we also want to use additional modalities like Iris. But that also includes things like monetizing our patents. So we've already done some great work on that. We'll be seeing the benefits of that very soon, but starting to monetize patterns where others have infringed upon our valuable intellectual property. So that's a bit of an around the ground on the portfolio opportunity. Let me come back to you, Fredrik, on the next slide and perhaps you can talk about cost optimization, followed by the capital structure.

Fredrik Hedlund

executive
#7

Yes. Thank you, Adam. Let me build then on the 6 points plan, the transformation plan, they talked about. And I'm going to talk first about the second point, which is on the cost side and then we'll switch to the third point, which is the balance sheet strengthening. So this slide tees up what we're doing regarding optimizing our cost structure. But first, you need to know that we are absolutely laser-focused on getting to positive cash flow, like it's all about stabilizing and getting to positive cash flow and cost is a major enabler for this. So we have set a gross OpEx target of SEK 150 million by end of the year. And we feel that this is appropriate given the portfolio refresh Adam just walked you through. And in terms of enablers that we control, one is we are winding down Mobile. So we can rightsize the company for the new, call it, revenue and business footprint. The second thing is purely around operational and financial discipline, and we are disciplined. And we can see in the text on the left-hand side, you can see that our FTEs have already started to trend down and labor cost is by far the biggest cost bucket in our gross OpEx and we control how many people we have. So we feel that we are fully in control in terms of executing the majority of the part of getting to SEK 150 million of run rate cost. And if we switch to the next page, I just want to spend a minute or 2 on the capital structure, which falls under strengthening the balance sheet. And so what we're doing here is we are redeeming the convertible bonds. And we feel that this is going to have several positive effects. Let me talk to you about 3 of them. One, and it's really important, it will significantly lower our cost of capital, okay? Lower cost of capital. Two, we will gain a lot more financial flexibility, which we need to execute on the transformation plan that we are laying out in front of you on this call. And finally, we want to put all the investors on the same playing field. This is important to us. You heard Christian in the beginning, kind of mentioning to that effect. And with that, Adam, let's move back to you.

Adam Philpott

executive
#8

Very good. Thank you, Fredrik. So I'll touch on the strategy a little bit before I bring us home and we go to some Q&A. And so in terms of the strategy, as I said earlier, we're in a really hot market. It's a $40 billion market, 14% compound annual growth rate. And the reason that it's such a strong market is because the current way of doing business isn't working. Passwords are failing and people are looking at better ways of connecting security in the digital domain. At the same time, the biometrics today is spotty. It's still a bit hard for a lot of people to use biometrics and we're seeing a rise of deep fakes. So some of the modalities that have been -- become more popular, reasonably like Face are now waning a little bit because deep fakes starting to arise and that what it's challenging the efficacy of those modalities. And so we believe there's a very strong future for what we see in front of us, a future where it's multimodal. It's not just being the best at one single modality but allowing multi-modality for improved security and a very easy user experience. And so we can achieve that through the multi modalities that we have today, Fingerprints and Iris. We have some Face technology too, but also through partnerships and other modalities. But it's not just about the modalities and stuff. It's also about bringing data into this. There is amazing data out there that we can partner on to even further improve the prosecution we make for identity because biometrics on its own isn't the answer. It's about identity is the outcome we're looking for and biometrics is a part of that. When coupled with data, that becomes very powerful. So when you bring all of those things together, you could make a very, very strong prosecution of someone's identity, not only that, you can make a better prosecution then you can do so with just a single biometric modality but you can also make that prosecution on an ongoing basis, not just letting someone in and then they can do what they want. They have to just fake it once and they're in, but actually continuous authentication, passive authentication using these technologies for a higher security outcome, a better customer experience. And so today, our focus is around those modalities, around how we can leverage Iris more effectively because that's something we have in our portfolio and then how we can expand beyond that for better triangulation, for better choices and to be DeepfakeProof. Lots of things that we can do there already as of expansion there to in future where we want to go is bringing in data to support that. But most importantly, that piece in blue having a platform that we can use to integrate all of those things together and inject into a given customer's workflow so that they can easily capitalize on these capabilities as they look to ascertain their users, identify new customers, do IDV, et cetera, et cetera. So lots of possibilities, particularly in the software domain as we expand into that with our core focus today on those modalities that we already. So let me move forward and talk about talent just quickly. I did mention talent was obviously a part of the overall transformation plan. In order to facilitate this turnaround, it's a big turnaround and to facilitate it means bringing in world-class talent. Christian, who you met earlier on the Board, Chairman of the Board, joined in early to mid-2022, world-class leader on the Board, bought me in September 2023, I've bought in Fredrik and Hila recently to help lead the organization, we've also made some other changes that we'll be announcing shortly this afternoon to the executive team to really gear that team up to take us forward and progress us from where we've been stuck in the past. And this leadership team is a team who is absolutely seasoned in driving change, a leadership team that is very, very focused on performance and operational excellence things at the company really, really needs to have in its culture in order to be successful. The team is motivated. There will be a long-term incentive program that we seek sign-off from the shareholders from in the forthcoming AGM to ensure that these people have real skin in the game that are focused on the outcomes that we're seeking. So a very, very strong leadership team we've put in place, very experienced leadership team to drive this nature of turnaround. So let me come to the final slide, and then I think we can pause for some Q&A, and I will hand to Christian for some final remarks before we do so. But this is really about cutting the cash through that Mobile has created. So getting out of Mobile immediately start to take the cash burn down to manageable levels and then get us focused on those remaining markets that are in their own right profitable by putting the right cost optimization plan in place. We feel very good about the cost optimization plan. We feel good about our ability to run this as a profitable going concern. And these are the things that we're doing in order for us to get there. The good news is, is we put that cost optimization in place and we get out of Mobile, the markets that remain are markets they are much higher margins. So good markets for us to be in and absolutely then lends itself to a profitable going concern. As a part of that is also actually in the balance sheet that our cost of capital is about is the right size for us, but also to make sure that our destiny and our turnaround is aligned with that of our shareholders that nothing depressing the stock price in the balance sheet, a much better balance sheet for overall market growth as well. And then finally, having that team incentivized, of course, we've got a strong strategy in place. But it takes time and effort to drive a strategy, to execute a strategy of that nature. So putting the right team in place and, as I said a moment ago, having them incentive to get the best possible outcome for the company in terms of execution, which then manifests in stock price valuation, of course, too. That's the core of the plan. And that's what this is all about for us now as we come to this stage in the transformation plan. With that, I'm going to pause. Christian, let me hand to you for any final remarks and then Stefan, perhaps we can go to Q&A from there.

Christian Lagerling

executive
#9

Thank you, Adam, and Fredrik for that. I think you summarized it well, Adam. Thanks to you and the team for all the hard work so we can present this today to shareholders. We've gone through some tough times for an extended period of time. And as shareholders can imagine, it's a constant evaluation of continuing [Technical Difficulty] property to Unikeys and fine-tune, but I'm very pleased that we're actually here today with very firm and decisive measures. So to be able to discontinue a large revenue business but actually one that has been leading and costing the company a lot over a very extended period of time. So that we can now focus on what we see and what we have defined and a lot of the strategic moves that we already started to share with the market very, very excited about that. And it's a painful process, of course, with larger rights issues, as we talked about. But again, we have a lot of confidence and this is really the new and next phase for the company and those of us who are really strong believers in the company. But let's go to Q&A and see if we can expand on a few topics there.

Operator

operator
#10

[Operator Instructions] And now we'll take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Markus Almerud from Carnegie.

Markus Almerud

analyst
#11

Yes. Markus Almerud here from Carnegie. A couple of questions. Maybe the first one, if you could give us some details on exactly what does winding down the Mobile business means. That is we exited all together? Will you keep some parts? Do you plan to sell the technology, et cetera, et cetera.

Adam Philpott

executive
#12

Yes. Good question, Markus, and good to have you on the call. Thanks for kicking us off. So let me give you some more detail as per your questions. Winding down Mobile means that we cease operations in Mobile, obviously, that means that we will notify all of the staff involved in that business and make that whole operating team redundant. So we'll remove the cost out of that business. It's not just staff. Of course, there are other associated costs with that Mobile business as well. So when you look at the SEK 150 million ongoing annualized OpEx envelope that will have moving forward, that obviously is a huge chunk of where we are to get into that point comes from that Mobile business. So that's the first part of it. The second part of it is, of course, great to wind down with our customers. The team will continue to work for another couple of months in that business to graciously wind down with those customers, a key part of that is, of course, making sure that we liquidate our inventory in that space and release the working capital associated with that. Some of that inventory is still coming in some that we already have, that is managing that whole process is an important part of the wind down plan as well. So those are a couple of the key big rocks should we say associated with winding that business down. But by the end of the year, we don't expect to be driving any revenue whatsoever from the Mobile business, and therefore, don't expect to be making any losses from us either.

Markus Almerud

analyst
#13

And that includes, I guess, both the -- also the new business, the option -- optical sensors that you're doing as well, the entire Mobile business.

Adam Philpott

executive
#14

Yes. I mean optical sensor hasn't been something that's been significantly proactively developed by our company as we saw the ASP and the margin decline over the last few years, choices have been made along that time not to invest, particularly in that because of the limited shelf life and the inability to monetize. So there's very limited capability, I would say, in there. But yes, that would also be a part of it.

Markus Almerud

analyst
#15

And the remaining technology, do you think it's salable or will you just close it down?

Adam Philpott

executive
#16

Good. Great question. So we are in conversations with a number of parties we have been for some time. Obviously, none of those are conclusive at this time, hence, why we're not announcing anything. Sometimes these conversations manifest in a positive liquidity event often they don't. So there's always ongoing. There's been conversations being used with different organizations who have been interested in our intellectual property in that domain. This is no different to any other time in the past. Of course, we're motivated to see if there's a monetization opportunity, but it would have to be the right one.

Markus Almerud

analyst
#17

Okay. And then if we talk about the used the proceeds because I think you have a bridge loan of SEK 60 million that you're paying back and then you have the convertible, which you are also paying back. And then there is some SEK 100 million, SEK 120 million or something like that, if I do my math right, if it's completely successful rights issue that you're filling up the balance sheet with. And I would assume that you will use that proceeds to accelerate the growth in the remaining business. Can you talk a little bit about those plans if they are ready. So how do you plan to accelerate?

Adam Philpott

executive
#18

Yes. No, that's exactly right. I mean this essentially is around accelerating the existing company. And we have some really strong assets in Iris, as you know. I see a high potential for Iris, particularly as we see the hardware bar come down that we can deliver on our software over. So you think about it, Iris is a very, very high efficacy modality, right? It's up to one in a million. And in IT, it got 5 nines. In Iris, we talked about 6 or 7 nines. It's that high efficacy. So that -- when you convert that to software, that could be extremely powerful when you deliver over commoditized laptops, et cetera. So we see high potential in Iris. We see multiple use cases, both to the existing customers as you think about PC and multimodal there or as you think about new customers and we've been publicly open about talking about the automotive sector with connected vehicles. And there are other segments, of course, too, is we see a PC revolution over the next few years where people start to use wearables instead of their addiction to their phones we see opportunity there, of course, for Iris, too. So lots of potential for the Iris modality, lots of potential events for our existing Fingerprint modality, of course, also. And as I mentioned earlier, we're yet to see Payment take off. There's still a lot of optimism in that market. We're seeing a lot of banks starting to gear up and so important for us to see that momentum start to play out this year also. So that's where the proceeds go when you take out some of the other repayments on the convertible, et cetera.

Markus Almerud

analyst
#19

And is it fair to say that where you have the most opportunity to drive acceleration is in maybe Access rather than PC, that PC is already I mean, you're penetrating it well already and is difficult to accelerate?

Adam Philpott

executive
#20

No, I don't agree with that, actually. I think we're seeing really strong growth in PC, and I expect that to continue. It's far from saturated market. They are after role models that we can connect to. It's becoming factor means of connection people prefer Fingerprint over Face because of Deepfake concerns and privacy concerns, particularly privacy concerns with Face. So we're actually seeing continued expansion of the market share that Fingerprints represented a percentage of overall PC shipments. So I think there's plenty of opportunity in PC still to run and it's a bigger market. So we still see a lot of opportunity there. I would also say what I talked about earlier was there's a couple of customers were not in yet. So HP is a customer acquisition opportunity for us. It takes time in PC, which is good and bad. It's bad because obviously, we want to go and acquire new customers now. But also it's good because once you read, it's very, very sticky, they value premium provider, that's something that hasn't been valued in the Mobile market for sometime is a premium provider, we can monetize that with high margin profitably for some time to come. So I feel really good about that. I do also though, you talked about Access. I do still feel very good about the Access market. Honestly, it's the logical FIDO Access market that excites me most. I think there's real opportunity there were over just starting to see the beginning of that. So plenty of scope within our existing portfolio for incremental growth, Markus.

Markus Almerud

analyst
#21

And then finally, maybe before I hand over to someone else. Regarding M&A, is this something that you have been on your mind? Or should we expect going forward that once you get out in mobile business that you will start looking at M&A targets as well? Or will this be mainly in...

Adam Philpott

executive
#22

Yes. Great question. And Christian, hopefully to jump in on this and if you wish also. Here's what I would take you back to on this one, Markus. The second chart I showed, where I showed the 3-phase plan going from stability to accelerated growth on operational excellence. We're in the stability phase now. As we go through that phase, then I think we start to gear up for the accelerated growth phase, that's where M&A, I think, comes in as a really important factor. Yes, Stefan. Anything else?

Operator

operator
#23

At this moment, there are no further questions over the phone. And I would like now to hand over to Stefan for any written questions.

Stefan Pettersson

executive
#24

All right. Thank you very much. So the first question, how does the company plan to address the continued competitive pressure in the biometrics market to prevent new areas from being negatively impacted in the same way as the Mobile sensor business.

Adam Philpott

executive
#25

Very good. That's probably a good one for me. So here's what I'll say, I welcome competition. And I think in technology, you need competition to stay ahead of the game. And I think there's opportunity for us to continue to innovate in our existing markets and in doing so, maintain a premium that we were unable to maintain in the commoditized space that is Mobile. So for me, the company plans to address continued competitive pressure by staying ahead in innovation. But I would say that in several ways. Let me come back to the strategy view that I shared earlier. We can be the best in each of the modalities that we compete in. So we can be the best fingerprint sensor just as we are today. We are the best sensor provider. We're also the best sensor provider regardless of form factor, whether it's on the payment card, we are undisputed the best there. We're the best in a number of other spaces in Access that we play in and you guys may have read about some of the challenges, for example, that the U.S. had with some of their gun safes where there was a number of fingerprint sensors that faulty, gun safes weren't working, anyone can get access, very dangerous situation. We've come in and helped a number of providers solve that with our premium product. So a truly tried and tested trusted products there. But -- so we can complete that. But we cannot just do that. The game is not about having the best widgets. The game is actually about looking at the outcome, which is around identity. So it's about having a set of modalities that you can start to use to triangulate an identification and authentication process. So having a number of modalities we already do, we've got a head start there. I see partnership opportunities for us to do more in the multi-modality space, that's also how we stay ahead. And then longer term, how we stay ahead is continue to move up the value chain, moving into software, moving into core platforms as we look to not only integrate those modalities together, but we integrate them with data inputs as well. And finally, we ingest that into a platform to allow our customers to easily orchestrate that within that workplace for them to authenticate their customers, whether that's for an Access management or an IDV use case, doesn't matter same platform makes approach. So that's how I think about it in the short, medium and long term in terms of competitive differentiation.

Stefan Pettersson

executive
#26

Thank you, Adam. And you are taking down your cost level significantly. So would it not be hard for you to continue to innovate and compete with significantly fewer people.

Adam Philpott

executive
#27

Yes. Fredrik, I'll ask you to jump in a second, but just an opening remark from me on that would be, well, if you look at where most of the cost or a lot of the cost is coming out, it's from one in the Mobile, right? So Mobile isn't profitable. We cut the costs there, take that out. That's a huge amount of the cost reduction. Yes, there is more that we're doing, by the way, beyond that because that we find some other cost optimization opportunities within the business to rightsize the organization to focus here on the markets we're pursuing. But I think about it like the laws of nature, gravity, right. As you think about Mobile in this huge planet and all objects of join towards it was such a big part of our business in the past. It was 90% in the past, most recently, it was around 65%, 70%. So that takes them a lot of everybody's time. We take that out, not only do you take the cost out associated with it, but you allow people then to not be distracted by that and to focus on where that premium is valued. So I see real potential there too. Fredrik, I'm not sure if there's anything else you wanted to add there too.

Fredrik Hedlund

executive
#28

Yes. Thanks, Adam. Yes, I mean we all know big transformation plans are -- they are challenging, but being relatively new to the company, I think what Christian and Adam have done really well. I think they have exceptional clarity around the plan. I think they've resourced it well. And we're strengthening the balance sheet. So I think we are actually really well-positioned to deliver on this. And I also feel, I feel there's a hunger in the company to become more agile, to become faster, react to client demand faster. So yes, it's challenging, but I really believe I've looked at the plan at great detail. We've begun executing the plan. And yes, I feel good about it.

Adam Philpott

executive
#29

Yes. I want to just add to that, even though I've answered it first. I'll make a bit of a sandwich answer. So I talk about taking Mobile cost out. But to Fredrik's point there, there's also efficiencies that we found, they actually rightsized and make the company more simplistic. I've done a lot of cost takeout in my career. And what you find is that when you take that cost out, you actually simplify the organization, you make the roles more empowered, you make the organization more agile because the less layers, the less clips being taken in the process. So certainly see that. And of course, there's non-FTE cost, non-headcount costs that we can make savings that is a part of that, too.

Stefan Pettersson

executive
#30

All right. Thank you. And will you also be exiting completely from under-display sensors as you wind down Mobile. And when you actually...

Adam Philpott

executive
#31

Yes, we're out of Mobile. We're out of Mobile. We're out of Mobile hardware sensors. So we won't be doing under display, over display by -- we're not doing -- we're getting out of capacity. We are not selling hardware to Mobile phone manufacturers.

Stefan Pettersson

executive
#32

Thank you. And when do you expect Mobile to be completely phased out?

Adam Philpott

executive
#33

Wind down will be fully concluded by the end of this calendar year.

Stefan Pettersson

executive
#34

All right. Thank you. And is there anything else you can say about the cost savings program, which is really big. If you could walk us through maybe the program more in detail. And have you also disclosed the number of people that will leave the company.

Adam Philpott

executive
#35

I don't believe we've disclosed the number of people, but I kind of just did walk you guys through the cost takeouts. So as I said, there are kind of are 3 major buckets, right? There is the Mobile bucket. So taking cost out of there is the biggest one. The second bucket is additional efficiencies that we've been able to find with an organization. So we've taken costs out of that. And the third one is around non-headcount based costs. So really squeezing that out the company. So we were really focused on non-headcount costs. And the reason for that is we want to maximize the number of head count we retained in the business to innovate and engage with clients. So that was a bucket we were very, very focused as a company. Of course, cost takeout, as I've said, I've done this a lot of times. Fredrik has done this a lot of times. It's very easy to say here's the cost we're taking out, executing that is really where the trick is, where the experience matters. And so that's something we're very focused on is the execution, and we have a weekly war room to check it on that to compare where we're going with where we said we were going to be to make sure that we're solving problems and there will be problems that arise along the way maximize the effective execution of the program. So we're very focused on the execution side to see that cost come out.

Stefan Pettersson

executive
#36

All right. Thank you very much, and thank you for all the questions. And let me now hand back to Adam, Christian and Fredrik, for any closing remarks.

Adam Philpott

executive
#37

Very good. Thank you, Stefan. So before I hand to Christian, just a couple of remarks from me. We announced the transformation program back in October. We took some costs back then, we talked about by the second half of this calendar year, seeing the remainder of that cost come out. We said we would do that. That's what we are doing. The good news is that the business that remains is high margin, much higher margin than the Mobile business there's growth in that business, there's additional incremental growth opportunities in those business beyond where we are today, and we can run that going concern profitably. So we feel good about this transformation. It's an important transformation. I think, frankly, it's been a long time coming, and this is exactly what the company needs to do. So with that, Christian, let me hand it to you for any closing remarks you may have.

Christian Lagerling

executive
#38

Thank you, and thank you for all the questions. No, maybe just adding a comment as it was raised about really our investments into our organic plan. So again, fundamentally, the good news today is that we are now taking control of our financial future and destiny, given the factors we see today by starting to wind down Mobile we see a profitable future for the business that we have today. And Fredrik alluded to it, it's about execution at this point. And I would agree that we have very high confidence in the plan that the team has developed. And it was also mentioned, of course, accelerated growth and potential nonorganic growth and M&A. And as we see our strategic road map, which is very ambitious and very exciting. I think definitely, there's going to be opportunities for M&A. Some of these areas that we would like to be a leading player are quite fragmented. There's a lot of small companies with interesting technology, interesting resources and assets that are actually either trading or being valued at quite attractive levels. So of course, we're going through this major exercise, but it's certainly on our road map to continue to evaluate those very carefully. So I can see that being part of our future growth as well. Yes, I -- again, thank you for all the questions. And we look forward -- I know there's plans for an Investor Day. We talk a lot about our future strategy and I look forward to meeting investors and spending some more time and digging into that exciting future. But thank you from me.

Operator

operator
#39

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day. Dear speakers please stand by.

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