NEXT Biometrics Announces Interim 1st Quarter Results; CEO Ritu Favre Discusses 2017 Outlook

OSLO, NORWAY--(Marketwired - May 24, 2017) - NEXT Biometrics Group ASA (Oslo Bors: NEXT) today announced interim results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017 and outlined its strategic focus for the 2017 over the next 3 to 9 months of 2017. NEXT, the leader in high-quality low-cost rigid and flexible fingerprint sensors, summarized first quarter 2017 highlights:

• Revenue of NOK 24.1 million vs NOK 5.2 million Q1-16 and in Q1-17 vs NOK 31.8 million in Q4-16. (At present, 1 US Dollar equals 8.38 Norwegian Krone).
• Accumulated shipments pass 2.0 million fingerprint sensors (April)
• Won two new notebook contracts (May)
• Significant key supplier agreement improvements (effect from March)
• Orders placed for second generation ASIC
• Staffed up key positions for ramping execution of development projects
• Low power reference design supplied for flexible sensors customer pilots
• NOK 156 million (USD 18.7 million) in gross proceeds from February private placement

NEXT CEO Ritu Favre said, "NEXT continues to make solid progress on its vision to become a leading supplier of fingerprint sensors into quality critical segments. The company surpassed the milestone of shipping two million cumulative units in April, demonstrating the scaling of manufacturing operations."

CEO Favre also noted, "NEXT is diversifying its customer base into markets that require high quality fingerprint sensors: smart card, notebook, access control and government ID. Low power reference designs with flexible sensors have been sampled to the smart card customer ecosystem with positive feedback. NEXT's flexible sensor development and capacity installation is on track for third quarter volume ramp. ASIC roadmap execution is progressing according to plan and will result in optimized costs for existing customers and new solutions for the smart card market. NEXT is encouraged that the market feedback for our large secure flexible sensors has been so positive."

In a NEXT Biometrics webcast online, the CEO outlined NEXT's results and the company's outlook during the three to nine months ahead.

ABOUT NEXT Biometrics: Enabled by its patented NEXT Active Thermal principle, NEXT Biometrics (www.NextBiometrics.com) offers high quality area fingerprint sensors at a fraction of the prices of comparable competitors. A wide range of product formats including smartcards, smartphones, tablets, PC's, access control, time registration systems, wearables, payment terminals, flash drives, USB tokens, key fobs and many more are targeted.

NEXT Biometric Group ASA is a publicly listed company headquartered in Oslo, Norway and with sales, support and development subsidiaries in Seattle, Silicon Valley, Taipei, Prague and Shanghai. Media and Investor contacts for NEXT Biometrics: Ritu Favre (CEO), Ritu.Favre@NEXTbiometrics.com and Knut Stålen (CFO), Knut.Stalen@NEXTbiometrics.com.