NEXT Biometrics secures NOK 41M in fully subscribed rights issue

What's the deal? Norway-based fingerprint sensor company NEXT BiometricsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has completed a post-IPO equity raise of approximately NOK 41M ($41M) through a fully subscribed rights issue of 41 million new shares.

Of those shares, 19.2 million were subscribed through exercised subscription rights, 6.4 million went to oversubscribing investors, and the remaining ~15 million were taken up by underwriters honouring their guarantee commitments.

Why now? The capital raise comes as biometric technology sees growing demand across identity verification, access control, and financial services. For a publicly listed hardware maker like NEXT Biometrics, a rights issue offers a way to fund growth while giving existing shareholders first dibs on new equity.

Notably, the deal includes a sweetener: subscribers receive one free warrant for every two shares allocated — totalling 20.5 million warrants. Each warrant lets holders buy one new share at a strike price of NOK 1, exercisable during two windows in 2027. If fully exercised, that could unlock additional capital down the line.

What could go wrong? The heavy reliance on underwriters — who absorbed roughly 37% of all new shares — suggests that organic investor demand, while present, wasn't overwhelming. If the company's share price stays near or below the NOK 1 warrant strike price, those 20.5 million warrants could expire worthless, leaving potential follow-on capital on the table.

The signal: Despite being publicly listed, NEXT Biometrics is still classified as an early-stage company on Dealroom, underscoring the capital-intensive reality of hardware-focused biometrics. The fact that underwriters had to absorb over a third of the offering suggests the market is cautious about fingerprint sensor makers competing in an authentication landscape increasingly dominated by software-based solutions.

Read more: MarketScreener