Pragmatic’s losses climb as sales creep forward

News | May 28, 2024

By Peter Clarke

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Flexible IC pioneer Pragmatic Semiconductor Ltd. (Cambridge, England) has reported an operating loss of £36.75 million on sales revenue of £1.71 million. The loss increased by 62.2 percent year-on-year, from £22.69 million in 2022, while sales increased by 8.9 percent from £1.57 million in 2022.

The company has made losses for more then a decade on sales revenue that only went above £1 million in 2021. However, such is the promise of the company’s thin-film-transistor process for simple, relatively low performance circuits, that the company was able to raise £182 million (about US$230 million) in Series D equity funding towards the end of 2023 (see Pragmatic Semi raises $231 million in Europe’s largest funding round).

This all indicates that 2024 is likely to be key year for the flexible circuit manufacturer. Although the circuits are based on thin-film transistor technology, capable of being laid down plastic films Pragmatics flexible IC technology uses silicon wafers as the substrate to provide compatibility with conventional semiconductor manufacturing flows.

In the financial statement for the FY ending December 31, 2023, the directors said they were pleased to have made “significant progress” in the commercialisation of the company’s proprietary technology and manufacturing processes during 2023.

The company has two production lines operational. The first, is making near field communications chips for use in smart labels and inlays. The second facility, able to run 300mm diameter substrates, is set ramp such producton and to provide foundry service with rapid turn-around time of four weeks from tape-out to delivery (see Pragmatic opens UK’s first 300mm fab).

The 300mm wafer fab has the capacity to host up to nine fabrication lines, each capable of producing billions of chips per year.

The 2023 financial statement asserts that: “engagements with smart label and inlay manufacturers represent 90 percent of the global market.” The global smart label market size was valued at $10.60 billion in 2022 Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. (Pune, India). The analyst projects that the market will grow from US$12.09 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 16.4 percent until 2030.

The origins of the company go back to the formation of Nano ePrint by Scott White in Manchester, England, in 2006. Pragmatic Semiconductor was founded by White as Pragmatic Printing in 2010. White was replaced as CEO by David Moore in April 2023. White now serves the company as executive director of strategic initiatives.