SEALSQ Corp (LAES) Earnings

Management highlights

2025 was defining year for SEALSQ. Market valuation surpassed $1 billion, upgraded to NASDAQ Global Select market. Raised over $530 million in capital in Nov 2024. Commercial launch of Quantum Shield QS7001 in Q4 2025, world's first post-quantum semiconductor. Launched sovereign U.S.-based post-quantum Root of Trust in Nov 2025. Completed acquisition of IC'ALPS SASU in 2025, added ~100 engineers. Signed letter of intent to acquire Miraex. Quantum Fund launched in 2025 with $20 million initial allocation, now $200 million. Advanced Quantum highway global expansion strategy, signed joint venture with Spanish government in Sep 2025. Launched sovereign U.S.-based post-quantum Root of Trust, invested in WISeSat for Quantum secure satellite infrastructure.

Guidance

2026 expected to be year of acceleration. ASIC segment to contribute full 12 months of IC'ALPS revenue. Anticipate first production revenues from QS7001 and QVault TPM in second half of 2026. Estimated combined pipeline for these 2 products at $60 million as of Dec 31, 2025, across ~115 potential customers. R&D expenditure expected to continue increasing in 2026. Revenue expected to grow by 50%-100% in 2026, Q1 expected to more than double year-on-year. Gross margins trending upward. Plan to commence establishment of 2 additional custom design, tech and personalization hubs in U.S. and Asia in 2026.

Segment performance

SEALSQ delivered total revenue of $18.3 million in fiscal year '25, up 66% from prior year. Semiconductor segment had strength in smart card reader SCR 200 (51% growth), Secure Element product lines (notably VIC 405 and VIC 408) saw growth in smart metering and secure communications. Trust Services grew ~600% but represent 2% of total revenue. North America is largest market at 57% of revenue; Asia Pacific grew 95% year-on-year. Gross profit improved to $8.6 million in 2025, gross margin 47%. ASIC segment added ~$3.6 million, with ASIC revenues growing from $1.4 million in Q3 to $2.2 million in Q4.

Risks & headwinds

Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties etc. that could cause actual results to differ. Risks discussed in filings with SEC. Gating factors for conversion to revenue include certification completion and semiconductor integration cycles. Regulatory pressures like CNSA 2.0 and EU Cyber Resilient Act create urgency but also pose challenges in meeting deadlines and ensuring compliance.

Analyst Q&A

• Q: Congratulations on the year. Maybe just firstly on the pipeline for the new Quantum products. I think you might have mentioned you have 10 customers better in kind of very active stages. I guess with the kind of with regulations starting to have an impact and teeth maybe in late '26, do you expect the number of customers you're engaging with to increase in that over the course of the year? So exiting '26, would we expect to have a significantly greater number of customer engagements on the Quantum products?

  A: Matt, nice to talk to you again. Yes, I mean, I think there are several factors that is going to accelerate or sales in QS7001 post-quantum, not only at the silicon level but also the software level. One of them, as I mentioned, during the presentation is the CNSA 2.0 and their equivalent regulatory framework and basically is saying that companies, especially companies that they are dealing with technology that serves the purpose of critical infrastructure needs to be previously compliant. And this is an important driver because that means that governments around the world are putting that level of urgency. The second one is that we are gradually getting the certifications that they are require. This is a long process. Sometimes people don't understand how long it takes for the laboratories to certify those products. And many companies, they have expressed, as you can see on the $200 million pipeline, they have expressed strong objectives to deploy, but obviously, they want to deploy a certified product, especially the companies and organizations and they are working with government defense and critical infrastructure, which is the second driver. And I would say the third driver is the urgency created by the fact that there is now common consensus that the QD is actually arriving faster than everybody thought. Remember, last year, in January last year, we were still thinking that quantum computers will be only able to break RSA, triple desk in 30 years' time. This was reduced to 10 and now Google announced yesterday that they are actually dividing that by 10. The urgency is actually very large. And sectors like the possibility of breaking Bitcoin, let's say, then you break on wallet, imagine the consequences for the entire Bitcoin community. If one of those wallets will be compromisable because they have a quantum attack. Now Quantum companies are also expanding faster their Qubits generation. The company we have invested and the ones that we are in the process of investing, they are already able to generate between 10 and 100 Qubits. And some of them, they are predicting to be able to reach the 500 Qubits, which is what Google say that will actually be enough to break cryptocurrencies. So these factors are obviously accelerating the demand of the product in the market. We are also -- we have our first player advantage here, which is obviously hard to replicate it, even for very large companies that they don't necessarily have a PQC chip are now approaching us and say, can we come with you because one public information is Lattice Semiconductor, right, then they will be teaming with us to be able to offer to their clients PQC chips. So this is obviously -- this is a very big entry into the market because a Lattice has thousands of customers, and they will accelerate the sales of those Microchip. So I know that sometimes it looks like it's slow, but actually, this is a total different computational architecture. This is not just improving or patching cybersecurity issues. This is actually redesigning the entire infrastructure that requires time and be sure that your product is to the level to solve that problem.

• Q: And then I guess my follow-up would be on the personalization center. It sounds like you're moving forward in the U.S. It sounds like in 2026, but is it reasonable to expect that you'd be making those investments in '26 and maybe generating revenue? And sort of opening the centers in '27? Or what's a reasonable timeframe to think about for the U.S. center and then the second one that you discussed?

  A: Yes. So you remember, originally, we had the idea to build a personalization center furnace crash from the beginning. And this is obviously a 4 to 5 year investment of time and resources. That obviously is a real estate problem, right? You have to get the authorization, the land, the building the contractors. It is a tedious process, especially now with the huge demand on data center infrastructure. So it's hard to find the right people to build those infrastructures. So this was the original old thinking, and we will build our own thing. Then we move into a more, I would say, pragmatic and fast thinking, which is let's only team with somebody that has already a legacy infrastructure, operational that they are in the same sector than we are, and they will like to upgrade their existing infrastructure to become a PQC personalization semiconductor center, which is -- it's a bit the model we have actually also in Spain. So that reduces the time to market by nearly 3 years. So that takes only around 6 months to 1 year by the time you are operational. That obviously requires buying machines because it's a big investment. You still need -- and this is the reason we raised money is because this was not in our budget, right, to develop a full personalization center, with some existing infrastructure. We have several states and they have approached us with incentives to do it in their states. We are now combining this intention to bring us to one of those states with semiconductor company, then they will be operational already in the state, and they would like to team with us to do that. So we shall be able to announce very soon. I guess, before the end of June, we should be able to announce where it's going to be located. And this obviously will have a huge potential for our deployment. That means on the chips will be personalized in the United States. That means that we will be fully CNSA 2.0 compliant because they will be chips that will be verifiable in a localized place. People can see them, can test them, can be assured and all the cryptographic keys has been located at the center itself. That will also -- we are still a Swiss French company. So many of our clients, they are saying, guys, coming to the U.S. if you want to be bigger and grow your revenue. And obviously, that satisfied that requirement. So we are -- we believe that by the end of this year, we shall be able to have something very concrete in this area.

• Q: Carlos, you mentioned some of the intense demand for land and power resources coming from the AI industry. I'm curious with some of the influence that's had on the semiconductor industry, I'm curious if that's having any impact on demand cycles from your customers or pricing or anything around margins that we might expect to hit you in 2026?

  A: You mean from the energy sector, in particular?

• Q: Just broadly, we've seen some things about memory prices being incredibly high, storage prices being high, from high demand from AI data center builds. I'm just wondering if that ends up influencing kind of the end customer that you're selling into for your products, if that changes anything about their timelines or sourcing, pricing or anything that ends up impacting you?

  A: We don't have that information. Obviously, there are different type of semiconductors, right? I think the -- I mean, there is an interesting debate now that quantum computers will actually redesign a bit the current infrastructure because you need less data center space, you need less computer, traditional compute capabilities. And at the end of the day, you need less chips from the memory companies, right, as quantum computers have a much powerful processing capability. What we believe is going to happen is that those chips that we are selling, it sells basically first to companies that like smart meters companies, then they want to secure smart meters because they are connecting smart meters to grids, and they are now in the process of learning how to tokenize the energy, they process through their smart meters. And also the energy that is reverted back again to the grid. So there is -- this is where we launched SEALCOIN, which is a crypto tuck-in that basically allows this market to be exchangeable and transactional between devices. So this is something that will have the first client we announced partnerships with Landis & Gyr, which is already 40 million of Landis & Gyr meters are already equipped with the software component of it and the future meters will increasingly be PQC compliant. So this is an area we see a big expansion for our capabilities.