NEXT Biometrics CEO Anticipates ‘Hypergrowth’ in Biometric Smart Cards: Q2 Update

Revenues are up in NEXT Biometrics latest quarterly update, with the company highlighting advancements in its Aadhaar market activities and in promoting its new FAP 20 fingerprint sensor.

For the second quarter of the 2019 fiscal year, NEXT Biometrics’ revenues came in at NOK 30.1 million, an improvement of 18 percent compared to Q2 of 2018, and a bump of 10 percent compared to the previous quarter of this year. This reflects, in part, an all-time high for NEXT Biometrics’ revenues from notebook integrations, the company says.

As for its net result, NEXT Biometrics reports a loss of NOK 37.1 million for Q2 of 2019, an improvement over its loss of NOK 47.1 million in Q2 of 2018 and its loss of NOK 44.0 million in Q1 of 2019. This trend is attributable in part to a cost reduction program that saw NEXT Biometrics pay out NOK 4.8 million in severance in Q1 of this year, with only minor severance costs following in Q2.

As for its business activities, things are proceeding apace, according to interim CEO Dan Cronin. “Our customer base in our target markets of smart card, government ID, access control and notebook is expanding,” he said in his commentary on the Q2 results. “We continue to sign new design-in contracts for our existing products and the government grade FAP 20 sensor which will be available later this year, and in India are converting our strong lead pipeline for our Aadhaar-certified products.”

Cronin also emphasized the growth that is anticipated to result from the biometric smart cards market, an area in which numerous players are seeking to position themselves, particularly with respect to biometric payment cards. Cronin said that the aforementioned developments “are expected to impact positively” on NEXT Biometrics’ revenues in the second half of 2019, while the company is progressing “according to plan with the commercialization of our Dual Interface solution which will position us for the emerging hypergrowth payment smart card market.”

–

August 20, 2019 – by Alex Perala