FPC Q4 Update Touches on Biometric Payment Card Potential, Coronavirus Disruption

Fingerprint Cards has issued its results for the fourth quarter of the 2019 fiscal year, with the company’s CEO emphasizing emerging opportunities in new business areas.

Revenues for the quarter came in at SEK 381.4 million, compared to revenues of SEK 424.3 million for Q4 in 2018. That’s a 10 percent drop, but in his commentary on the results, FPC CEO Christian Fredrikson noted that in comparison to Q3 of 2019, revenues had actually increased by eight percent.

The company’s net result for Q4 2019, meanwhile, was a loss of SEK 18.6 million, compared to a loss of SEK 17.5 million in Q4 of 2018.

Full year revenues for 2019 were about SEK 1.46 billion, compared to revenues of about SEK 1.54 billion in 2018; and its net result for the 2019 fiscal year was a loss of SEK 13.6 million – a huge improvement in comparison to FPC’s loss of SEK 630.7 million in 2018.

Delving into the business operations of his firm, Fredrikson emphasized that Fingerprint Cards “remains the leading provider in the world for capacitive sensors for smartphones”, and highlighted the company’s launch of Touchless 2.0, an authentication solution combining fingerprint and iris recognition.

But expanding into new business areas is “a very important priority”, Fredrikson went on. And he focused primarily on the opportunities emerging in the nascent biometric payment card market, with FPC’s T-Shape fingerprint sensor having been used in a number of pilot programs and in a Mastercard-certified card solution from Thales. “The long-term market potential is extensive,” Fredrikson asserted, adding later that Fingerprint Cards “has a fantastic starting point in this market” thanks to its strategic relationships across the value chain.

That all points to a bright future, but it couldn’t be helped at this point that the coronavirus would cast a shadow over those prospects; Fredrikson concluded his comments with the note that FPC is watching the virus outbreak closely, and that its leadership “expect a dampening effect on the operations of the company, but the extent is still unclear.” The sentiment comes soon after the GSMA’s cancellation of this year’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona over concerns about coronavirus.

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February 17, 2020 – by Alex Perala