Ensilica Regulatory News (ENSI)

The information contained within this announcement was deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the UK Market Abuse Regulation.

7 April 2025

 EnSilica plc 

("EnSilica", the "Company" or the "Group") 

Trading Update

EnSilica plc (AIM:ENSI), a leading chip maker of mixed signal ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), announces the following trading update for the year ending 31 May 2025 ("FY 2025" or the "Period").

Driven by strong customer demand, the Company successfully secured six new design and supply contract wins in the first 10 months of this financial year with Non-Recurring Engineering ("NRE") revenues of more than $40 million to be generated across the next 2 financial years, as well as other multi-million-pound design and manufacturing services contracts. As a result of these wins, the total lifetime revenue from supply contracts is now expected to generate over $250 million in chip supply revenues.

Furthermore, the revenues generated from the supply of chips, that underpins the fabless semiconductor business model, is expected to double to approximately £6 million in FY 2025 compared to the prior year.

Despite these successes and as highlighted as a potential issue in the Company's announcement on 10 February 2025, the Company has experienced two customer delays that will materially reduce NRE revenues in the current financial year. The NRE revenues are the fees charged to customers for the design of their chips, including high-value costs such as tape-out fees and other significant third-party costs. The two contracts are:

· The ASIC design and supply agreement with SIAE MICROELETTRONICA, announced in September 2024, which was anticipated to deliver significant NRE revenues and EBITDA in FY 2025, is now expected to be delivered over FY 2026 and FY 2027 due to customer delays beyond EnSilica's control. SIAE MICROELETTRONICA is a global leader in wireless communication technology with a complete range of microwave and millimeter wave radio solutions. SIAE MICROELETTRONICA have been selected to receive €149 million in grant funding under the European Union's IPCEI funds (Important Project of Common European Interest). The ASIC being developed by EnSilica is a key element of a product being developed using their grant funding.

· The high-value tape-out of an Edge AI chip, announced in July 2024, is now expected to commence in the first half of FY 2026. The large part of the associated NRE revenue for these services are only recognised at the tape-out of the chip, reducing the expected revenue for FY 2025 by approximately £4 million and EBITDA by approximately £3 million. While the delay to the development schedule is on the customer side, the tape-out is a key project milestone and completion is a priority for them.

Importantly, the anticipated revenue from these contracts is unchanged, however, the impact from the delays means the Company now anticipates revenues of between £19 million and £20 million and EBITDA between £0.1 million and £0.5 million for FY 2025.

Outlook

The Board is focused on scaling the business and is confident of doing so given the strength of the forward orderbook. However, predicting the timing of contract completions that include customer dependencies has proved difficult as evidenced by the delays in the current financial year. In response, the Company has adopted a more conservative view on future guidance to allow greater flexibility for project completions. To that end, the Board now expects to deliver revenues of between £33 million and £35 million in FY 2026, with approximately 80% of FY 2026 revenue already covered by existing customer contracts.

With a strong NRE order book coupled with increasing profits from chip supply, the Board is confident of having sufficient capital to reach positive cash generation at the end of financial year 2026. Leading to this point, the Company expects to see month-on-month increases in revenues, as customer activities increase in line with recent contract wins, supporting the Group's ongoing working capital requirements and improving the Group's overall positive cash position.

Ian Lankshear, CEO of EnSilica, commented:

"Over the first ten months of the current financial year we've secured six major new contracts, driving our total lifetime contracted supply revenues to over $250 million. This strong booking performance underscores EnSilica's position as a leading ASIC supplier in Europe.

That said, the delays to the two contracts are obviously disappointing, particularly as these are both material projects reducing our reported results for this year but importantly not the performance of the business over the medium term.

We have revised our future guidance to reflect a more conservative outlook of the timing of our growth trajectory and I would emphasise that we remain fully confident that EnSilica is still strongly positioned to deliver significant returns to our shareholders."

For further information please contact:

The person responsible for arranging release of this announcement on behalf of the Company is Ian Lankshear, Chief Executive Officer.

About EnSilica plc

EnSilica is a leading fabless design house focused on custom ASIC design and supply for OEMs and system houses, as well as IC design services for companies with their own design teams. The company has world-class expertise in supplying custom RF, mmWave, mixed signal and digital ICs to its international customers in the automotive, industrial, healthcare and communications markets. EnSilica has a track record in delivering high quality solutions to demanding industry standards. The company is headquartered near Oxford, UK and has design centres across the UK and in Bangalore, India and Porto Alegre and Campinas, Brazil.