Fingerprint Cards issues annual report for 2016 with $743M in revenues

Fingerprint Cards (FPC) released its annual report (PDF) for 2016, which saw its best year ever with SEK 6638.3 (US$743 million) in revenues, amounting to a 129 percent increase over its revenues of SEK 2.901 billion (US$356.6 million) in 2015.

In addition, the company’s operating margin for 2016 increased to 39 percent, compared to 31 percent in 2015.

The report comes a week after FPC revealed that it expects an even weaker Q1 as well as its short-term challenges to prevail in Q2, which means the company cannot confirm its communicated guidance for revenues and profitability for 2017.

The company expanded its product portfolio to more than 20 different products. In addition to providing biometric systems for smartphones, FPC now offers fingerprint sensors for several new product segments including smartcards, PCs, online devices and turnkey modules.

The company states that the year was marked with strong growth and profitability, which should continue throughout 2017 as the smartphone market is expected to grow in pace with the increase of the penetration rate for fingerprint sensors.

According to the company’s projections, the penetration rate for fingerprint sensors is expected to grow from slightly more than 600 million devices in 2016 to 1.5 billion devices in 2020.

“Few companies have the privilege of experiencing such development,” Christian Fredrikson, president and CEO of Fingerprint Cards, said. “The growth has obviously a price, and it is a result of the hard work of dedicated employees. The growth has been both challenging and educational. We have progressed from offering the market only a couple of sensors to slightly more than 20 versions.”

FPC states in the report that 2016 was not without its share of challenges, such as finding time to manufacture and deliver all the customized versions of fingerprint sensors.

Fredrikson explains that this requires creating flexibility in the production capacity of FPC’s partners suppliers based on the product combination and its varying volumes.

“2017 will be a year for investment in research and development,” Fredrikson said. “The aim is to develop more solutions that can be applied to more products in more industries and with a broader geographic spread. We also believe that 2017 will mark the start of the smart card business.

“We will also focus on increasing the efficiency of our processes and our organization. For that reason, we are enabling our organization to focus on a number of parallel market. Executive management is reinforced with three new vice presidents for the business lines. We will continue to invest in employees and improve our efficiency, to succeed in driving innovation in all areas.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  financial report  |  Fingerprint Cards  |  fingerprint technology