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market. The company maintains its revenue ambition in the range of USD 100
million by 2025/2026, assuming the market sentiment in its markets return to
normal during 2024, and the Board of Directors has proposed a dividend of NOK
0.50 per share.
“Our revenue declined by 10 percent in the first quarter, which reflects the
soft sentiment of the general telecom equipment market, caused by weak macro,
curbing the investment spendings in the industry. While we compare ourselves
with a strong first half of 2023 with certain larger projects, the first quarter
was, like the previous two quarters, dominated by steady development of smaller
projects in Smartoptics’ core markets Enterprise and Smaller service providers.
Clearly, these market areas are growing, which proves our attractiveness,” says
Magnus Grenfeldt, Chief Executive Officer of Smartoptics.
Smartoptics reported revenues in the first quarter of 2024 of USD 12.6 million,
compared to USD 14.1 million in the first quarter of 2023. The gross margin for
the quarter was 48.6% (50.7%). The EBITDA was USD 1.1 million (2.6), equal to an
EBITDA margin of 8.4% (18.5%) and the EBIT ended at USD 0.5 million (2.2).
The operating cash flow for the quarter was USD 2.5 million (5.8) and the cash
balance was USD 11.5 million at the end of the period. The Board of Directors
has proposed a dividend of NOK 0.50 per share to be distributed following the
Annual General Meeting.
“Our EBITDA margin remained acceptable, though lower than normal, resulting from
the relatively low revenue number. At the same time, it is satisfactory to
conclude that we continue to deliver high gross margins and a strong cash flow.
During the quarter, we continued to develop Smartoptics along our strategic
path. We strengthened our product portfolio and improved our marketing and sales
capabilities, broadening our addressable market,” Grenfeldt continues.
The market for fiber optical network equipment is worth USD 16 billion
worldwide, of which Smartoptics addresses approximately 30%. The key driver is
data growth, following cloud migration, new data centers, migration to
400Gbit/s, fiber access roll-out with associated government funding and emerging
AI related demands.
In 2024, several factors can contribute to a reinstallation of growth with a
high activity level in Americas, and with early signs of an improvement in
Europe. In addition, new product launches and the emergence of new markets will
add momentum. The company announced in April 2024 that a larger regional US
operator had placed a first order for delivery of 400G services to an end user.
“We are thrilled to have reached this milestone and our ambition is to grow our
business by adding larger accounts. This milestone paves the way for further
development and larger purchase volumes in the future. Despite a soft first
quarter of 2024, and assuming the market sentiment in our main markets return to
normal during 2024, we maintain our long-term ambitions of growing our revenue
up to USD 100 million by 2025/2026 and continue to produce strong profitability
with an EBITDA margin of 17-20 percent and EBIT margin of 13-16 percent,”
Grenfeldt concludes.
QUARTERLY PRESENTATION:
Smartoptics will host a presentation of the results by CEO Magnus Grenfeldt
and CFO Stefan Karlson at 09:00 CET 8 March 2024 at Hotel Continental in Oslo.
The presentation will also be streamed live.
Date: Wednesday 8 March 2024
Time: 09:00 CET
Venue: Hotel Continental, Oslo
Language: English
Link: https://channel.royalcast.com/hegnarmedia/#!/hegnarmedia/20240508_17
A recorded version of the presentation will be available after the live stream
is concluded.
Please find the full financial report and presentation enclosed.
*) EBITDA and other alternative performance measures (APMs) are defined and
reconciled to the IFRS financial statements as a part of the APM section of the
first quarter 2024 financial report on page 13.
For further information, please contact:
Magnus Grenfeldt
CEO Smartoptics
+46 73-366 88 77
E-mail: magnus.grenfeldt@smartoptics.com
About Smartoptics:
Smartoptics provides innovative optical networking solutions and devices for the
new era of open networking. Our customer base includes thousands of enterprises,
governments, cloud providers, Internet exchanges as well as cable and telecom
operators. We have an open networking approach in everything we do which allows
our customers to break unwanted vendor lock-in, remain flexible and minimize
costs. Our solutions are used in metro and regional network applications that
increasingly rely on data center services and specifications. Smartoptics is a
Scandinavian company founded in 2006. We partner with leading technology and
network solution providers such as Brocade, Cisco and Dell and have a global
reach through more than 100 business partners.
For additional information about Smartoptics, please visit
https://smartoptics.com
This information is considered to be inside information pursuant to the EU
Market Abuse Regulation and is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant
to Section 5-12 the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. This stock exchange
announcement was published by Per Burman, Chief Marketing Officer of
Smartoptics, at the time and date set out above.
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