NEXT Anticipates Gross Margin Spike as Smart Card Activities Ramp Up

NEXT Biometrics has attained its goal of reaching a positive gross margin for January, the company has announced.

The news comes by way of NEXT’s Q4 and year-end report for 2017. The company’s revenues for the quarter came in at NOK 24.7 million, down compared to NOK 31.8 million in Q4 of 2016; and its net loss for the quarter came in at NOK 53 million, compared to a net loss of NOK 47.2 million in Q4 of 2016. But NEXT’s net loss for the year was down, from a loss of NOK 192.6 million in 2016 to a loss of NOK 180.8 million for 2017. And, as aforementioned, the company says its gross margin, while in the red at negative four percent in Q4 of 2017, went positive in January. And remarkably, NEXT says it expects its gross margin for February to come in at 20 percent.

Commenting on the Q4 results in a statement, NEXT Biometrics CEO Ritu Favre highlighted the company’s efforts in providing biometric fingerprint sensors for government ID, access control, notebook, and smart card applications. But it seems clear that it’s the latter that are driving the company’s business forward: In its outlook for the rest of 2018, NEXT says it expects to sample a smart card module in the second quarter, and that it expects ‘customer progress’ in this area and government ID more generally. The company asserts that it “will continue to place its highest level of focus on Smart Card related plans and activities,” and that while the necessary “investments and expense levels are expected to peak in the next quarters of 2018,” the company is ultimately expecting to establish the “financial runway to break even” this year.

NEXT Biometrics presented its corporate update on the same day that it hosted a ‘Capital Markets Day‘ event in Oslo, where company executives made presentations to potential investors.

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March 2, 2018 – by Alex Perala