WISeKey International Holding Ltd. Class B

WISeKey International Holding Ltd. Class B

10.50
CHF
+0.70
(+7.14%)
73.89MMarket Cap

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 4, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience, and welcome to WISeKey International Holding full-year 2025 financial results conference call. As a reminder, this conference contains forward-looking statements.

Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results, financial condition, performance, or achievement of WISeKey International Holding Limited to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation.

If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press *0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce Carlos Moreira, founder and chief executive officer of WISeKey. Thank you, sir.

You may begin.

Carlos Moreira

Good morning. Thank you very much and good morning to everybody.

So 2025 was a defining year for WISeKey, and the early weeks of 2026 have already validated the strategic decision we made over the last 24 months. We deliver audited full year revenue of $19.3 million, representing a 62% growth year-over-year, with our subsidiary SEALSQ contributing $18.3 million and growing 66% over the prior year.

Q4 alone produced $8 million of that revenue. More importantly, we ended 2025 with a fundamentally transformed balance sheet.

We have over $429 million in cash and short-term investment at the year-end, growing toward $535 million as of April 30 following our March capital raise for SEALSQ. This strong and well-capitalized balance sheet give us the ability to execute our strategy without compromise.

I want to frame today discussions around three important messages. First, the transition from a sampling to commercial revenue is now underway, and the data points are concrete.

Second, our strategy architecture, what we call the year of convergence, is integrating five technology pillars into a single vertical integrated quantum-secure platform. Third, the regulatory and geopolitical environment is moving decisively in our favor.

Starting with commercial inflation at SEALSQ. The 66% revenue growth SEALSQ delivered in 2025 reflects two distinct things happening simultaneously.

One hand, our legacy semiconductor and PKI product line saw a renewed demand cycle as customers work through their inventory positions. On the other hand, we generated our first revenue from sampling our post-quantum products, which is the leading indicator that matters more for what comes next.

Today, our commercial pipeline at SEALSQ exceeds $200 million, covering potential revenue opportunities on 2026 through 2029. With that, more than $60 million is directly tied to QS7001 and Qvault TPM programs, growing more than five-fold year-over-year from approximately $11 million.

On the certification side, QS7001 has now passed fault injection and side-channel attack resistance evaluation at the EAL5+ level, and we have completed the NIST validation. First production revenues are on track for 2026, late in 2026.

This is a gating event that converts pipeline into recurring hardware revenue, and we are tracking on schedule. Moving the year of convergence for WISeKey.

We are calling 2026 our year of convergence because our five technology pillars—SEALSQ, WISeSat, SEALCOIN, WISeID/INeS, and WISeArt—are now operating as a single integrated stack rather that as adjacent business, as it was the case until now. What this means in practice is that our team in sharing knowledge and resources to create return integrated solutions for our customers.

Our SEALSQ, which develop post-quantum secure chip designed to generate ASIC design services revenue, hardware revenue, and recurring income through outsource semiconductor personalization and test, OSPT center, has now entered in commercial acceleration phase. On WISeSat, we have made significant progress.

We have launched 21 satellites to date, with 14 currently operational in low Earth orbit, and we remain on track towards the 100-satellite constellation. The definitive business combination agreement we signed in November with Columbus Acquisition Corporation is expected to close in the second half of 2026, very likely around the month of September, which will result in WISeSat.Space holding listing on the Nasdaq, with WISeKey and SEALSQ together receiving 25 million shares at $10 per share, representing a $250 million of equity value while retaining majority ownership.

This listing is the structure enabler of our Quantum Space Orbital Cloud, what we call the QSOC initiative. Under the QSOC, WISeSat operates the space infrastructure, and SEALSQ owns and operates the quantum cloud as a managed subscription service.

The full operational capability target is 2033, and WISeSat is expected to operate a constellation provided a dedicated QSOC capability for SEALSQ, and SEALSQ is aiming to deliver and contractual guarantee 99.9% uptime service agreement to its customer. The SEAL Quantum Fund.

I want to spend a moment on capital deployment to date. The SEALSQ Quantum Fund grew from $20 million at launch in 2025 to $200 million of available capital resources as of April 30, 2026.

Through the end of April, we have deployed approximately $23.2 million across five portfolio positions, which are: We invested $14 million in IC'Alps. The acquisition added more than 100 ASIC engineers in Grenoble in France, and we are now developing our quantum-resistant secure element optimized for CRYSTALS-Kyber, which are the standards for post-quantum technology.

We deployed $4.2 million in Quantix Edge Security project in Murcia, Spain, which is building one of the European first sovereign post-quantum semiconductor personalization center and test center, co-funded by the Spanish SETT.es, which is the government agency in charge of investment in critical infrastructure in Spain, program with $20 million that has been contributed by the Spanish government. We invest another $4 million in WISeKey, which integrates our PQC-secure digital identity into financial KYC.

We made two rounds of investment, Eeroq, our anchor US quantum hardware investment in a company in Chicago, which brings electrons on helium quantum architecture, which is CMOS compatible with our chip processes. CMOS is the technology that we are investing on because if totally is aligned and fits with our semiconductor capabilities.

We plan to demonstrate a joint quantum security stack at our center, Geneva Quantum Center of Excellence, currently in preparation to be inaugurated in October this year. Additionally, we made an initial small investment in ColibriTD, our French quantum solver partner, which is working on improving sub-7nm wafer yields from 50% to 80%, which directly reduces our chip manufacturing cost.

Each of these investments reinforced the underlying business. They are not adjacent bets.

They are vertical integration required to move the company technology to the next level. Finally, on the regulatory environment, the US NSA CNSA 2.0 mandate by the US government requires CNSA 2.0 compliant for all new national security systems acquisitions by 1 January 2027 in the United States.

This is now 8 months away. Federal agencies in the US are required to identify and remediate quantum-vulnerable systems, and the NIST PQC standards were finalized in 2024.

Our products are designed to comply with all these standards, and we are seeing this translate directly into pipeline activity in areas such as defense, smart meters ecosystem through the WISeSun, and US federal procurements through our trusted semiconductor solution alliance partner. With that strategic context, let me hand the call over to John to walk you through the financials in details.

John, the floor is yours.

John O'Hara

Thank you, Carlos, and good morning, everyone. Full-year revenue for 2025, as Carlos has said, was $19.3 million, an increase of 62% versus $11.9 million in 2024.

Fourth quarter revenue was $8 million, which doubled from $4 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Approximately $3.5 million of the full-year increase relates to 5 months of revenue contribution from IC'Alps, which we acquired through SEALSQ on August 4, 2025, and consolidated from that date forward.

Organic growth was driven by a recovery in our core secure microcontroller and PKI product families, plus initial sampling revenue from our post-quantum platforms. I want to be transparent about how to think about 2025.

As Carlos has already said, it is the year that paved the way for our convergence strategy. The 2025 numbers continue to reflect the transitional period between the traditional product offerings and next-generation post-quantum semiconductor platforms, and included the first revenues from sampling, and with the transitions expected to enter its commercialization phase with the first production revenues anticipated in the latter part of 2026.

The full-year 2025 net loss was $38.2 million, which was due in large part to $8.3 million of non-cash share-based compensations, consolidation following the acquisition of IC'Alps, the materially increased R&D investment we made to accelerate the post-quantum semiconductor product range, and the expanded sales and marketing-related expenses made to support the expected commercial ramp, which then were partially offset by a one-off credit on the settlement of the ExWorks loan and by interest income on our cash deposits. On the balance sheet side, as of December 31st, 2025, WISeKey had $429 million in cash and short-term investments, up from $91 million at the end of 2024, an increase of 370%.

This was achieved while deploying $23 million during the year towards strategic investments in WISeKey, IC'Alps, Quantix Edge Security, and others, as Carlos has already touched on. In March 2026, SEALSQ raised a further $125 million in additional capital.

As of April 30th, the WISeKey Group had over $535 million in cash and short-term investments. This strong cash position allows us to fund post-quantum R&D, scale our manufacturing capacity, pursue selective M&A, and continue to deploy through the SEALSQ Quantum Fund.

Moving on to guidance, we are reaffirming our full-year 2026 revenue guidance, which calls for growth of 50% to 100% year-over-year, driven primarily by SEALSQ. We have some significant projects in relatively advanced phases of negotiation, and we therefore hope to be able to positively reinforce and upgrade our guidance in the coming months.

The drivers of this are full-year consolidation of IC'Alps, broader entry into the Trusted Platform Module market via Qvault TPM, the launch of QAISC [custom?] post-quantum ASIC engagements, initial QS7001 production revenues following the EAL5+ certification in late 2026, initial revenues expected from the Quantix Edge Security personalization center development in Spain, and continued expansion of recurring PKI subscription and

Carlos Moreira

Thank you, John. Before we move into our Q&A, let me close with a brief view on what we expect to see through the remaining of 2026 that has not been yet disclosed during the first part of this meeting.

As we say, the QS7001, the EAL5+ certification is on track, and we expect to generate the first production revenue in the latest part of this year. It is important to know that this is the first type of chip that they are certified with that level of security, and although this is not a requirement to sell, because we can sell them without that certification, that certification will help to increase the revenue, especially in government contracts and critical infrastructure projects.

Second, we expect the WISeSat business combination of Columbus Acquisition Corporation to close in the second half of 2026, creating an independent listed company in WISeSat.Space Holding Corporation. As you all know, with the IPO of SpaceX, space is becoming a very important infrastructure, as many of the current Earth-based infrastructure, such as data centers, nodes, are moving to the space, and it's critical for a company like WISeKey, via its subsidiary WISeSat, to have an early present in that ecosystem, which will be a very important growth ecosystem in the future, as everything is moving to what we call quantum internet, and where having assets related to satellites, launching capabilities in cooperation with the SpaceX, cryptographic capabilities stored at the satellite, and the future possibility to do quantum key distribution for the space are strategic components for companies like WISeKey and WISeSat.

Third, we expect continued capital deployment from the SEALSQ Quantum Fund into vertical integrated R&D partnership. As the company is sitting in a very important cash position, it is essential that we use this unique opportunity to build up infrastructure both in the United States and Europe, and that will include investments, important investments in areas such as personalization center, which are capital-intensive, and this is one of the main reason why the company has raised important funding during 2020 2000 last year and this year with a total incremental cash position of $500 million, over $500 million, which $200 million are allocated fund that will accelerate our revenue, particularly in the United States, in announcements that they will be made during the second half of the year.

Fifth, the reallocation of WISeKey and SEALSQ to Pont-Rouge, Lancy facility in Geneva should be completed in the second half of 2026, which is a much larger facility than the one we have now, and will allow us to establish the Geneva Quantum Center of Excellence in cooperation with leading organizations in Geneva such as CERN, the United Nations, the Geneva government, and others, that they are all working in accelerating the adaptation of quantum technologies into sectors such as financial sectors and others. The quantum threat to today encrypting infrastructure is mathematically certain and approaching rapidly, as the latest announcements made by Google and NVIDIA and others that they are confirming that Q-Day could be as near as 2028-2030.

The companies that will lead the post-quantum era will be those that combine sovereign silicon trusted identity, secure satellite key distribution, and quantum-resistant transaction infrastructure into a single integrated platform. That is what WISeKey is building, and it's all about.

That is what we are now monetizing. I leave now the operator to open the Q&A part of this call.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad.

A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press *2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue.

For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from Matthew Galinko with Maxim Group.

Please proceed.

Matthew Galinko

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Maybe to start with, of the pipeline you're seeing for quantum chips, I think you said it's about $60 million from '26 to '29.

How much of that would you say is driven by regulation and how much is just independent of regulatory-driven requirements?

Carlos Moreira

Maybe I let John to further explain, but thank you, Matt, by the way, and nice to talk to you again. The regulation, obviously, the CNSA 2.0 is of concern to anyone that is conducting critical infrastructure.

Imagine hyperscaler, imagine data centers, imagine space, satellite. Everything will be compromisable in terms of security because quantum computer will be breaking RSA keys.

Obviously, we are not yet there. Quantum computers will need something like 10 million qubits to do that, but the new is a lot of R&D and a lot of innovation in the quantum arena, and where companies are already in the process of being able to generate 10 qubits, and the new thing is that you can put those qubits also in a serial process, you can combine qubits from different companies and bring them into a data center and use them in a scaling process to generate enough qubits to make a substantial usage of those decentralized quantum computers.

It is something like we call quantum as a service. That growth of compute capability and possibility of using quantum computers to break RSA, obviously, that's not the main focus of quantum computer.

Quantum computer can do many good things, but this is a bad thing that they could do, right? This is making a lot of companies conscious about the risk.

This is also increasing their potential insurance policies. They know that they need to be ready to that day.

We are working with integrators, for instance, that they are now adding PQC security as part of the contracts that they have with thousands of companies, and they want to expand the current security services that they get from those professional service companies to add both PQC defense capability and also, in some cases, also a space security, as many of these companies are now launching satellites and they want to use satellite constellations to access their data. There is a trend that is moved both by innovation in the market, it also moves by government regulatory, and this is not only in America.

We have the similar regulations now in Europe, and also going to be the same thing in Asia, in Singapore, and India. I think by the year 2030, anyone that runs a critical infrastructure will be PQC-compliant, they will have to buy the chips that allow them at the object level to defend a quantum attack.

There is also PQC software, which is at the back-end level, we are working also with partners to provide that technology that will allow, for instance, to assess the vulnerabilities of a financial institution if a quantum computer arrives. Those are also partnership with professional services company that they will work with us to teach potential risks to those companies if they don't apply post-quantum capabilities as soon as possible.

It is a trend. It's like putting the airbag in the car, right?

You needed at the time. Now it's compulsory.

Nobody thinks about it. That's happening the same.

From the year 2030, you will not conceive the possibility of developing anything which is potentially breakable through a quantum attack.

Matthew Galinko

Thanks. That's great color.

I think you sort of started on this, but maybe beyond kind of the regulation you referenced, where else regionally are you seeing movement towards those sorts of requirements for PQC-capable chips and security?

Carlos Moreira

Sorry, if you don't mind asking the question again. I didn't got the first part.

Matthew Galinko

Sure. I'm curious where else in the world that you're seeing regulation emerge to mandate quantum-secure technology on critical infrastructure.

Carlos Moreira

As I mentioned, the CNSA 2.0 is the reference. This is a US government, right, that says that 2028, you need to be protected against quantum attack through a post-quantum capability.

Otherwise, your technology might be considered legacy. Imagine anyone selling anything to the US government, they will need to be PQC-compliant.

Otherwise, they will not just buy your product. That will also affect import products.

Imagine video cameras, imagine cars, imagine drones, imagine satellite equipment, imagine Cisco routers. All that without PQC capabilities will not be able to be deployed on critical infrastructure.

Critical infrastructure, obviously, airports, smart cities, government entities are the first one that needs to be secured. This is a must-to-have type of first line of defense.

Then you have, obviously, the commercial opportunities of this. We just announced a deal with Parrot.

Parrot is one of the leading drone companies in the world, one of the first one, by the way. Parrot is being used now in many battlefield type of activities.

As the drone industry has evolved enormously, and the founder of Parrot recognized that he wanted to be the first drone company to have our QS7001 installed physically into the drone. We did it, and obviously, we announced it, and this is now being used as a case study on any other drone company that they want to have their drone PQC-compliant.

Imagine the consequences of having a drone that is not secure to that level, right? That will be in industries like the health industry, where we have, for instance, PQC deployments with connected devices that they are using hospital, you can ensure that your pump insulin that connects to the internet cannot be breakable through an external attack.

Quantum computers are so powerful that they could make a massive attack into billions of devices in one shot, and they will detect the vulnerability of those devices, as it is the case now with AI, right? There's a lot of discussions about what is happening with some AI companies, without mentioning them, that they have now capabilities to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities very easily.

Imagine if that is used in the wrong hands, right? We are in a very similar situation with quantum computer.

PQC is the line of defense of quantum, but also the company, because we are investing in quantum companies, like we invested in Eeroq, which is a Chicago-based company where we are working very closely with them to develop semiconductors that they will be able to basically create a quantum computer. We are also learning from innovation in quantum in order to create basically what we call a sovereign quantum computer, a quantum computer that will be able not to be used to destroy the security of critical infrastructure, but could be used to solve major problems like the discovering a new medical product, for instance, with less than 10 qubits, we can now work with pharmaceutical companies to develop a new drug and put that into the market much faster that without having that compute capability.

It is a very emerging market where you will see a combination between quantum security, quantum computer deployment, hybrid combinations where you are using quantum computers and supercomputers at the same time, as supercomputers are not going to disappear, right? It will take a time between now and maybe 10 years where quantum computers will totally displace supercomputers, but we have still a few years to go and where you might have a hybrid platform solutions.

The big opportunity of WISeKey is that WISeKey has all those critical assets through SEALSQ in what concerns chips, in WISeSat in what concerns space constellation with operational satellite, in WISeID what concerns identity management and the possibility of injecting digital identity into the silicon directly with the cryptographic root of trust. All this ecosystem of companies that have been created under the WISeKey is making WISeKey a very unique company, very hard to replicate it, and extraordinarily important for the next generation of quantum computing that is going to emerge, as you will need to have an end-to-end.

Then at the same time, you need to provide a sovereign structure. Another important aspect here is that many companies will prefer to buy a solution of SEALSQ in the USA because they don't want to buy a Chinese quantum computer, for instance, because they will be concerned about what is the process of that quantum computer and who has done it and what is the cryptographic capabilities, what is the trust model, and so on.

Quantum computing industry is becoming sovereign, and this is a big opportunity for us.

Matthew Galinko

Thanks, Carlos. Just one final question for me, particularly on the satellite business.

I'm wondering if you could share anything about where you're hearing or seeing demand for services delivered through the constellation that you're building. Is there a pull on the services that you're demonstrating now, Is it a push, or kind of talk about how that is developing commercially?

Carlos Moreira

The constellation, WISeSat, which is a company owned by WISeKey, initially invested in sending with SpaceX 20 21 satellites. Those are picosatellites, the 3U satellite.

That's the measure. That basically were tested to IoT projects, let the satellite track and trace anything on Earth that has a chip, not necessary a PQC chip, can be a traditional VaultIC secure element, you can track and trace from the space object.

This is a big market, right, because 90% on Earth is not connectable, you cannot track an object in the middle of the sea, or in the middle of the desert, or in rural areas where connectivity is not available. There is a very big demand on companies that they are running logistics, cargo, companies that they are trucks, company that they are containers in the middle of the sea, military applications.

They need to have that connectivity, and that's what we proved during the first 21 launches. This was obviously an important investment because of the company.

Those launches are expensive. One satellite is a $300,000 to $500,000 to launch and produce.

We were one of the first-ever PQC-compliant constellation in the space with our satellite that they are in orbit. Now we are moving into the next level of that with the last launch of the satellite we did in June included already the latest version of the QS7001.

We started to test. We also added new things like a crypto wallet for SEALCOIN, which is another company of the group.

WISeKey owns 80% of SEALCOIN in cooperation with Hedera. Hedera Hashgraph is one of the largest blockchain companies in the world.

With them, what we did is to embed a wallet into the satellite itself so the satellite can exchange crypto tokens with another satellite, or with an earth station, or with an object that will require a payment. Imagine one satellite collecting pictures from another satellite and paying for that service with tokens, and those tokens are automatically exchanged between the wallets that they are located in each of the satellite.

This is a breakthrough technology. We are now working, and I cannot say names now because we are still on the process of finalization, but you will see agreements with a strategic professional service company and others, and they will resell that capability that we have already had to their clients because their client are, as I mentioned before, they want to add space into the cybersecurity contracts that they have with those professional integrators.

We are launching. The space with the SpaceX IPO is going to boom because SpaceX has already announced that they cannot even cope with the demand of sending on sending rockets.

We will need to send rockets all over the world with different company. We have established relations with ISRO in India, with PLD Space in Spain.

Those are new companies and they are sending rockets. Our preference, obviously, is to do it as much as we can with SpaceX, and we have a very good relation with them, and I'm sure that something there will be very soon possible in a more integrated way because as we need to send more satellite, the objective is to send 100 satellites in the next months, we will need, obviously, to be able to scale up the launching capability.

The final objective of those satellite is to act as a nodes in the space. Let's say that SpaceX creates a data center, and the data center needs to be connected to Earth station.

Those Earth station, by the way, we have already two operational Earth station, one in the southern part of Spain and another in Switzerland, in Lausanne. Those Earth station, they are now triangulated with the nodes in the space, encrypting the data using PQC chips on it on both ends, and that data then is made it available to data centers, both in space, in the future data centers that SpaceX is very focused to build, but also data centers on Earth.

End users can get a combination, a hybrid combination of access to data centers in space using those nodes. Without the node, the communication is not secure.

Starlink is not a secure satellite. They need a layer of security to talking to a non-Starlink or SpaceX assets, and this is where WISeSat position.

It's an interconnector of existing constellations using those very sophisticated, high-secure satellites that we are manufacturing and launching to the space. The clients are there.

We are working, as has been announced, with the Swiss Army is one important client. We are working with several financial institutions, and they are saying, 'We will actually prefer to connect to the space to even to connect to the internet as what they call the quantum internet, space internet.'

SEALSQ has launched an initiative we call QS-SOC, which is I mentioned that on my brief, is a Quantum Space Orbital Cloud. In the future, you will be accessing the space like you access Amazon Cloud or any of those cloud, and this is the positioning of the company.

The fact that we own the critical infrastructure is a very strategic asset for WISeKey. Not only on terms of the valuation, because, obviously, the listing of the company on the Nasdaq is going to increase substantially the value, because we're aiming at $250 million initial listing, and this company WISeKey is the majority shareholder, all that, hopefully, will be reflected on the increased valuation of WISeKey, plus the fact that WISeKey, and that has been also announced, is planning, hopefully by the end of this year, to move directly to the Nasdaq as a way to simplify the process, as currently, we are listed in Switzerland, which is very small market, not at all specialized in this type of technology, and this is, obviously, detrimental to the valuation of the company.

Matthew Galinko

Great. Thanks, Carlos, and good luck with the convergence.

Carlos Moreira

Thank you very much, Matt.

Operator

As a reminder, it is *1 on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. We will pause for a brief moment to see if there's any final questions.

With no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the conference back over to Carlos for closing remarks.

Carlos Moreira

Thank you very much for your attention to this call. The company, obviously, is available.

This information will be provided to the investor side. The company, myself and John, we are fully available for any further question.

Like to thank the moderator for the organizing, to Lena, the IR company, and also for the questions and the analysts present on this call. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. This will conclude today's conference.

You may disconnect at this time, and thank you for your patience.