BIO-key International - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 revenue was $1.61M, up ~10% sequentially vs. Q4 2024, but down 26% year over year as the prior-year quarter included a $1.2M two‑year renewal for a long‑term financial services customer; the same customer contributed $690k in Q1 2025 tied to its upgrade to one‑to‑many fingerprint ID.
• Gross margin remained strong at 82.6–83% and SG&A fell 23% YoY; cash rose to $3.1M on warrant exercises, and note payable was reduced to ~$0.76M, strengthening liquidity and flexibility.
• Management reiterated a goal of sequential revenue growth through 2025 (with typical Q3 EMEA seasonality caveat) and indicated gross margins around ~80% as a target baseline; OpEx expected to be relatively flat with minor event‑driven upticks.
• Strategic progress: expanding EMEA focus to BIO‑key‑branded solutions; wins in defense (rapid four‑day deployment), education (Wyoming DOE; Ed Tech JPA), and financial services (National Bank of Egypt) increase recurring and channel momentum.
• Risk flag: Nasdaq minimum bid deficiency notice (potential reverse split if needed to regain compliance by Nov. 5, 2025) adds a listing risk overlay despite improved cash and margins.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Strong margin and cost discipline: Q1 gross margin 82.6%–83% with SG&A down 23% YoY; CEO emphasized “healthy” margin profile and reduced SG&A, bolstering path to profitability.
• Strategic customer upgrade: Long‑term financial services customer upgraded to one‑to‑many fingerprint‑only ID (trim ~30 seconds per client interaction), contributing $690k in Q1 and expected to renew ~$3M for next two‑year period starting Q1 2026; “very compelling use case” with potential broader adoption.
• New logos and channel traction: rapid defense deployment in 4 days, Wyoming DOE PortalGuard IDaaS for up to 20,000 staff, Ed Tech JPA approval reaching 195 districts, and NBE enterprise deployment via partner Raya; these widen EMEA/SLED/NBE pipelines and recurring base.

What Went Wrong

• Year‑over‑year revenue decline: Q1 2025 revenues fell to $1.61M vs. $2.18M, primarily due to lapping the $1.2M Q1 2024 financial services renewal and the transition away from lower‑margin Swivel Secure services in EMEA.
• Higher net loss: Net loss widened to ($0.74M), or ($0.16)/share, from ($0.51M), or ($0.32)/share, as lower revenue offset cost reductions; loan fee amortization and interest expense also weighed on “other income (expense)”.
• Listing compliance overhang: Nasdaq bid price deficiency notice introduces delisting risk and potential need for additional actions (e.g., reverse split) if not cured, which can affect investor sentiment and capital markets access.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to BIO-key International's first quarter 2025 conference call. During management's preparatory remarks, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterwards, listeners will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Friday, May 16th, 2025. I will now turn the call over to Bill Jones, Investor Relations. You may proceed, sir.

Bill Jones (SVP)

Thank you, Rocco. Hosting today are BIO-key's Chairman and CEO, Mike DiPasquale, and CFO, Ceci Welch. As a reminder, today's conference call and webcast, and answers to investor questions, include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. Words including anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, plan, and project, or similar words, generally identify and express such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made based on beliefs, assumptions, and information currently available to management today, pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For a more complete description of the risks and uncertainties that affect future performance of BIO-key, please see risk factors in the company's annual report as filed on Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or disclose revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events that may occur after today's conference call. Now, I will turn the call over to Mike to begin. Mike.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Thanks, Bill, and thank you all for joining today's call. After my remarks, I'll turn the call over to Ceci for a financial overview, and then we will open the call for investor questions. Our Q1 2025 revenue rose 10% to $1.6 million versus Q4 2024 as we continue our transition to selling high-margin BIO-key branded products in the EMEA region. Our year-over-year revenue comparison, however, was impacted by $1.2 million in revenue in Q1 last year for a two-year follow-on contract with a financial services customer. Importantly, the same customer has upgraded their engagement to include our more advanced one-to-many biometric authentication solution, resulting in Q1 2025 revenue of $690,000, but accounting for much of our year-over-year revenue decrease. This enhanced fingerprint-only biometric ID system requires no card or account number for client identification, just a fingerprint scan.

The solution will shave 30 seconds from each client's interaction, providing increased security and an improved customer experience, while also delivering substantial long-term personnel savings for our customer. This is a very compelling use case that should offer BIO-key significant new revenue opportunities across a whole new plethora of opportunities, again, in the same industries and others as well. Importantly, based on the customer's expanded deployment of our identity-bound biometric technology, we expect revenue from this customer to more than double to approximately $3 million for the next two-year license period starting in Q1-2026, up from the $1.2 million in Q1-2024. That is very, very positive and represents nearly half of what our total revenue number was last year. Our gross profit remained healthy in Q1 at 83% due to our high-margin software-as-a-service model, and we were able to reduce our SG&A expense by 23% year-over-year.

Our cash position increased substantially in Q1-2025 to over $3 million, reflecting proceeds from warrant exercises early in the quarter. We also reduced our note payable by more than half from year-end 2024 to a balance of approximately $762,000 on the original $2.3 million note. These balance sheet improvements provide solid support for the company as we pursue new growth opportunities. We're seeing solid traction for our identity-bound biometric solutions in key verticals such as defense and financial services, both of which require the highest levels of security and privacy. These customers are drawn by our unique ability to authenticate the individuals seeking data or network access, rather than alternate solutions that rely on alternate factors, far more prone to being compromised.

We now support secure biometric authentication from multiple foreign, national, and international defense and police organizations who trust BIO-key solutions, and we are working to build on these powerful endorsements in our business development efforts. During the first quarter, the National Bank of Egypt began integrating BIO-key's industry-leading PortalGuard IAM platform. The project was led by our partner, Raya Information Technology, leveraging PortalGuard's advanced IAM, FIDO, MFA, and SSO capabilities to secure the digital identities of the bank's 30,000 employees. Down the road, we believe there's significant upside potential for this solution to be rolled out to the bank's end users as the bank gains more experience with our solution, and we work to progress that relationship. We're also working to build our base in the government sector, which includes federal agencies as well as state, local, and education or SLED markets.

Domestically, we serve over 100 educational institutions with over 4 million end users. These customers value BIO-key security, ease of use, and flexibility, including our support for 17 different authentication factors, which together provide a compelling solution with an attractive return on investment. Given increasing bans on the use of cell phones in schools, there's a growing interest in our passwordless, phone-less, and token-less authentication solutions to meet pressing security and usability challenges. In Q1 2025, the Wyoming Department of Education deployed PortalGuard IDaaS to support up to 20,000 end users. Additionally, many of our existing college and university customers are migrating from our on-prem solution to PortalGuard IDaaS, further expanding our base of recurring revenue.

Also during Q1, we executed a strategic partnership and joint purchase agreement with California's EdTech Joint Powers Authority, enabling PortalGuard to become an approved solution for 195 K-12 schools and school districts that serve over 2.6 million students in California. Member schools are able to access the JPA website to easily purchase and deploy approved solutions. We believe BIO-key is uniquely positioned to comply with the California Phone-Free Schools Regulations, which limit or prohibit smartphone use in schools by July of 2026. Whereas most competing solutions rely on phone authenticators or hardware security keys, neither of which are practical solutions in school, so this could be a significant opportunity for us.

From a strategic standpoint, we are particularly encouraged about the growth opportunities in the EMEA regions of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where we have been seeing improving traction and a particular interest in our differentiated identity-bound biometrics capabilities. We have refocused our efforts on BIO-key branded solutions in those markets, following our transition away from Swivel Secure licensed solutions and services beginning in the latter half of 2024. While this transition has resulted in some challenging year-over-year revenue comparisons, it has focused our sales and marketing efforts while providing us greater control and much stronger margin profiles. We expect our expanding EMEA group to return to growth with enhanced margins as we progress through 2025.

For many years, we have been highlighting the growing IT security risks and demonstrated vulnerabilities of many widely deployed IAM solutions, and yet we have been amazed by the limited forward movement by enterprises to address these risks. The good news is that we are finally starting to see governments and enterprises taking action to protect their data and networks with more powerful, more strong IAM solutions like our identity-bound biometrics. From our vantage point, C-suites and boards around the world are increasingly recognizing the limitations of legacy authentication methods relying on passwords, PINs, tokens, cards, or mobile devices, as well as the risks, vulnerabilities, and the cost of inaction. We are seeing this in our discussions with customers, prospects, and our channel alliance partners, and more importantly, in customer action, including some of the world's most sophisticated defense agencies that we are serving.

BIO-key offers a powerful suite of IAM solutions that meet these challenges, and we expect the move to passwordless, phone-less, and token-less authentication solutions will offer continued opportunity for us to grow and gain traction in 2025 and beyond. Given this backdrop, our improved balance sheet and our expanding base of recurring IDaaS revenue, we feel BIO-key is well-positioned to achieve improved top and bottom-line results. Given our size and variable timing of large customer orders and renewals, we expect our financial performance to fluctuate quarter to quarter as it has been, but supported by this growing base of recurring revenue, which is over $6 million right now, we think we're going to become more stable. Now, I will hand the call over to our CFO, Ceci Welch, to review our financial position, and then we'll open the call to questions. Ceci?

Ceci Welch (CFO)

Thank you, Mike. Our results were released after the market closed yesterday, along with the filing of our 10-Q. Now, let me review some of the operating highlights. As mentioned, we exited the EMEA Swivel Secure services agreement as related to royalty structure and fees, created a fairly low-margin business, and we reallocated resources towards the BIO-key branded business. While the termination has created some revenue headwinds in the later half of 2024 and Q1 2025, it will strengthen our business longer term, focusing our activities on BIO-key solutions with superior capabilities and enhanced margins. As Mike discussed, our Q1 revenue comparison was impacted by roughly $500,000 year-over-year decrease in revenue recorded in a financial services customer. The decrease resulted in the timing of revenue recognition from the customer that is actually expanding their deployment of BIO-key technology.

Given that impact and the transition to BIO-key solutions, in our EMEA territories, our Q1 2025 revenue decreased to $1.6 million in Q1 2025, compared with $2.2 million in Q1 2024. Q1 2025 service revenues increased to approximately $273,000 from $213,000 in Q1 2024. Recurring support service revenue increased to 37% to $265,000 due to the incremental support services for a large customer service agreement. Non-recurring service revenue decreased by $12,000 due to the related wind down of a Swivel Secure customer. Hardware revenue increased to $236,000 in Q1 2025 from $18,000 in Q1 2024, due largely to increased purchases of fingerprint biometric scanners to support expanded deployment of our identity-bound biometric solutions.

Gross margin declined to $1.3 million in Q1 2025 from $1.9 million in Q1 2024, principally due to the decrease in total revenue, as well as the modest decline in gross margin to 82.6% in Q1 2025 versus 86.3% in Q1 2024, reflecting an increase in low-margin hardware as a percentage of revenue in the respective periods. BIO-key reduced operating expenses by approximately 18%, or $422,000, to $2 million in Q1 2025, primarily due to reduction in SG&A expenses of 23%, or $410,000, reflecting lower admin expenses, sales personnel costs, and professional service fees. Reflecting lower revenues partially offset by lower operating costs, BIO-key's Q1 2025 net loss increased to approximately $737,000, or $0.16 per share, versus a loss of $573,000, or $0.32 per share in the prior year period.

The per-share amounts are based on 4.7 million weighted average shares outstanding in Q1 2025, compared to 1.6 million weighted average shares outstanding in Q1 2024, principally reflecting the share increase pursuant to the warrant exercise in Q1 2025. In January 2025, the exercise of warrants priced at $1.85 per share generated gross proceeds of approximately $3.8 million before agent fees and offering expenses. As of March 31, 2025, BIO-key has current assets of $4.6 million, including $3.1 million of cash, up from the current assets of $1.9 million, including $4 million in cash. This concludes my prepared remarks. Operator, please prepare for Q&A session.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. If your question has already been addressed and you'd like to remove yourself from queue, please press star then two. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that's star then one if you have a question. We'll pause for just a moment to assemble our roster. Today's first question comes from Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group. Please go ahead.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Good morning. Great. I appreciate the update, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Mike, that large customer that you referenced contributed $690,000 in the first quarter of this year. Last year, I guess it was $1.2 million in the first quarter of 2024. You mentioned they upgraded, I believe, and you also expect them to renew, I guess, at a larger contract of $3 million over a two-year period. I think you said as of 1Q 2026. A couple of things. Is that correct? 1Q 2026, and do you expect any other revenue this year from that customer? Is this your single largest customer? That's a loaded question.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Great. Great. Thanks, Jack, and good morning. Yes, it is now our single largest customer, so we'll get that out of the way. They've upgraded to our latest technology, which has fundamentally doubled the ARR. On an annual basis, they went from about $600,000-$700,000 to approximately $1.4 million-$1.5 million. We've been working with this customer for many, many years. This upgrade, which is what they paid for in the first quarter, right, on an annual basis, was about $700,000 in Q1, will now represent in Q1 of 2026, right? Fundamentally, nine months from now, give or take, about a $3 million renewal. If they do a two-year, that'll be $3 million. They'll pay upfront.

If they do an annual contract, it may be a little bit more, and it'll be paid annually, but it'll be at least $1.5 million in ARR and revenue in cash to BIO-key. Obviously, it's all margin. It's all software. Very, very positive.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. Maybe just to follow up on the 1Q25 revenue, just trying to get a sense of the rest of the attribution there. Outside of $690,000, that leaves about another $900,000 of revenue generated in the quarter. What was the bulk of this? Was it Wyoming Department of Education? Was it National Bank of Egypt? Was it kind of half and half there? Or was there a bunch of other fragmented or little revenues as well? Just how you understand the rest of the revenue.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Yeah, yeah. It's a mix. We have service and maintenance revenue. We have new customer revenue like Wyoming and National Bank of Egypt. We have upgrades to our installed base. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, right, we're moving customers from on-prem up into our IDaaS, which is an upsell, generates more revenue for us, and again, commits customers to sometimes multi-year contracts. It was really a mix of everything.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. Can you just touch on two? Will the Wyoming Department of Education and the National Bank of Egypt, will these contribute to 2Q revenue, or were these 1Q events?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

They were 1Q events. Obviously, Egypt, there might be some continuing opportunity, right, for upgrades, enhancements, and all that stuff. Wyoming, I believe, signed a multi-year agreement, and the revenue for that opportunity was taken in the first quarter. Obviously, there is some deferred revenue that we carve out of contracts for support, but fundamentally, it is a Q1 event.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. I haven't really heard it explicitly mentioned, and maybe I apologize if I missed this, but can you maybe just touch on Passkey:YOU again, that solution you announced originally back in June of 2024? What's the latest with Passkey:YOU?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Passkeys are getting pretty widely adopted across the board. The unique value that we provide with our Passkey solution is that a biometric can become a Passkey, and it can be a FIDO authenticator, right? It is a very, very unique difference from someone using a Passkey with a phone or their computer. It is something that we can sell to virtually any customer, no matter what current security infrastructure they may be using. They may be using something from SailPoint or ForgeRock or even Okta or Ping or Duo. We can layer on our Passkey solution on top of that in areas in their enterprise or their government agency where they cannot use a phone.

They can't use a hardware token because it's not allowed or it's just not practical, like on the manufacturing floor or in the call center where you don't want anyone using a cell phone, a mobile phone there, right? You literally disable the network inside a call center. We have something here that's very, very unique, and that can be applied across the board throughout, again, enterprise and government opportunities. We are starting to see some really good traction and interest for it. We think that is a really good play for us going forward. I think the biggest opportunity for us is really—and it's almost amazing to me because I've been at this for 20 years—the core technology that we developed over the last 20-plus years is now being widely, widely viewed as the most secure and most convenient option for enterprises and government agencies.

They realize that provisioning keys using mobile phones, not having control over the networks, presents a huge security risk. Herein lies a really big opportunity. The second thing is, think about all of—especially in EMEA—all of the countries now that are being somewhat forced, right, by our actions here in the U.S. to step up their defense and security posture. The money that is being allocated to do that, I believe in Germany, they said they would spend $1 trillion over the next 10 years enhancing their defense. In Spain, just two weeks ago, our managing director was at a conference there with the former Prime Minister of Spain and the new regime there. They are going to double their defense budgets in the coming quarters through this year and into next year and beyond. That is a huge opportunity.

We built a really nice base of defense-related, security-related agencies, and now we can really take advantage of that and leverage that. We have a very strong team and a very strong partner network in Europe to be able to do that.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. That's really interesting, Mike. I could probably ask a bunch more questions on that front, but maybe I'll ask you, how do you see those opportunities in different regions, different governments stepping up their budgets for defense? How do you see those opportunities, the magnitude of those potential opportunities, compared to, say, the largest customer that we talked about that's going to renew on a three-year contract or a $3 million contract coming up in 1Q 2026 or the Bank of Egypt? How do you see those opportunities? I mean, are these real game changers in your view from a revenue scale? And any idea of how attainable they are, how quickly you could maybe penetrate some of those opportunities?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Yeah. First of all, pretty quickly. You'll hear more about that from us as we're able to obviously discuss them. One of the biggest challenges in that space is secrecy, right? It's very, very difficult to talk about those things. Those agencies are typically not desirous of disclosing that. We have a defense ministry that's done millions with us over the last probably three or so years, and we think they can do millions with us over the next year or two. The size of these deals, some of them in small countries could be $500,000 to start or larger. They're typically recurring revenue. They are mostly including our biometric technology, which means there's potential for not only recurring software but also hardware sales. If you look at our gross margins, blended gross margins, we're 82% this quarter. That's with hardware.

These are sizable opportunities, game changers, and I think they could dramatically change the profile of the company. If you look at what we've been able to do in the context of scaling our expenses now, given we've invested very, very heavily in developing our technology, a little bit of scale here gets us to our end game of profitability very, very quickly. I think these are the kinds—those are the kinds of opportunities that can get us there this year.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. No, I appreciate that. Fantastic. I know you do not provide guidance, but we are halfway through the second quarter. Wondering if—couple of questions here on the outlook. Are there any large renewals, kind of like you had, or repeat purchase orders, renewals, kind of like we just talked about, that large defense ministry customer? Are there any of those in the second quarter or for the rest of this year that are coming up that are worth noting? The second part of my question is, do you have any just general comments on the second quarter, seasonality-wise, or how it looks compared to last year, or what your expectations are? Thanks.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Good. Okay. On the guidance thing, you're right. We haven't provided guidance, but here's what I will say. This applies to the second quarter and beyond. We're going to grow. Our goal and objective is to sequentially grow our business. We have a model now. We have a really good base of customers, and we have a very strong pipeline of opportunities, albeit it's got to close, right? There are some very, very large deals. There are a whole bunch of smaller ones. I think we're in a better position than we probably have ever been to be able to continue to grow this business on a sequential basis. Seasonality-wise, typically, our third quarter, because of the August session in EMEA, right, in Europe in particular, August is a very, very slow month in Europe.

Typically, from a seasonality perspective, you might see some challenge in the third quarter. Other than that, I think our goal and objective is to sequentially grow this business this year and to get ourselves to profitability. That's our goal and objective.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. So you expect—it sounds like you expect—I know it's not formal guidance, but just as a reasonable barometer here for investors, you're expecting sequential growth throughout the rest of this year. Q2, Q3, Q4 should kind of kick up as we go forward each quarter. Or it could be lumpy maybe, but that's kind of a good framework to think about.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Absolutely. That's our goal and objective. Again, I put the caveat in for the seasonality in Europe, right, just in the third quarter. Short of that, I think that's a fair statement, and it's a fair perspective on our objectives and our plan for this year.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. If I can just sneak one more in there, Michael, this has been very helpful. You guys did a great job controlling the OpEx. Operating expenses definitely dipped down quite a bit, and yet you still achieved that sequential growth. The gross margins held up very strong, especially on the hardware line even too. That is good to see. What is your confidence with your margins and your kind of operating expense control outlook? Is Q1 a good baseline of what to expect going forward as well with that sequential growth?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

On the gross margin side, I can say that this is where we like to be, right? We certainly want to be in that 80% range or higher, right? That may depend on some very large, right? We get a very, very large software ARR contract that could go up a little bit higher, but we'd like to be in that range. In the context of expenses, maybe I'll ask Ceci to answer that. I mean, do you believe that Q1 is a good measure of where we'll be? I mean, we are very, very diligent in the context of controlling all of our expenses all the way around. We're spending money where we believe we're going to get a return, and not a long-term return or short-term return or a medium-term return. Anyway, Ceci?

Ceci Welch (CFO)

Yes, Mike. I agree that is relatively a good rate. We have a couple of shows planned, and that bumps it up a little bit. We also have a good commission plan in place, so that will rise with the tide. We have our annual meeting, which also bumps up some of our costs. We have been really trying to range things in, new services versus hiring. I think we have been really focused on that, and it has paid off.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Just real quick, a follow-up to that. Do you think the second quarter has some of those one-off or seasonal kind of events or shows that might—will that incremental tick up happen in the second quarter, or would it happen in the third quarter?

Ceci Welch (CFO)

The second quarter, we have one shelf, so it won't be a big tick. The meeting is usually in the third quarter. That's what we have planned right now. I'm not expecting a big $200,000 increase or anything like that. We're relatively—we get a boost. We get some travel, so it's not a huge bump, but it will be a bump.

Jack Vander Aarde (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Okay. Very helpful, guys. Thank you, Ceci. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate the time.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Great. Thanks, Jack.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Dan Cremons, a private investor. Please go ahead.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Hey, guys. The improvement in the balance sheet is actually quite impressive. Just to ask another question on the SG&A, which dropped to $1.37 million. I mean, I looked at the stats, and it was at $3.05 million in December 2022. It has not been this low since June 2021. Was there a drop in headcount? How did you manage that kind of—what is that?—a 55% drop in a couple of years?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Ceci?

Ceci Welch (CFO)

Yes. There was a change in headcount. Like I said, we did some services versus that. We definitely reduced our marketing expenses. I'm trying to think of—oh, we changed our audit firm, which made a big difference too for what we're getting versus what we're paying. Some rent. We lowered our rent expenses for our Eagan and our New Jersey, which again made huge differences. Cut one out and one in half.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Got it. Got it. Thank you. Also, deferred revenue looks to be at least a five-year high, from what I can tell, and increasing. Do you expect that increase to continue? Is that an indicator of increasing business, or is there some stalled delivery, or how do I read that?

Ceci Welch (CFO)

You read that. We are converting a lot of one-year contracts for a lot of our schools into three- and five-year contracts. We recognize some of the revenue upfront, and then the rest is deferred over that for support maintenance according to GAAP, basically. It is not because of we're not performing something. It's definitely because of increasing the longevity and the size of some of the contracts.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Good. Talking about cash burn, it was, I think, $835,000 in this quarter and $1.8 million over the last two quarters. Meanwhile, your accounts payable and accrued liabilities, I think, came down from, I do not know, between $2 million and $3 million to about $1.6 million. So it looks like about $1.3 million of the $1.8 million cash burn in operations came from paying these down. Do you expect to continue paying down your payables that way? I am trying to get a feel for your expected cash burn over the next couple of quarters.

Ceci Welch (CFO)

No. We were not in a good cash position at the end of the year to pay them, and when we were, we did pay them. We are basically 45-day payment terms with most of our suppliers. I do not expect that high of a burn in either one of the accrued liabilities or payables.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Okay. So we might see then decreased cash burn then in the next couple of quarters?

Ceci Welch (CFO)

Yeah. Depending on collections on AR, I would hope so.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

I think you've got—I think that $900,000 in current debt is due by the end of the year. Do you have any feeling when that will get paid off?

Ceci Welch (CFO)

We're working on several different things that we will definitely pay it off by the term. As you've seen, we've been paying some down as we raise money or as money comes in. They're very happy with us. They've actually even done some conversion of stock for payment of the loan. We have several opportunities, and they're a great company to work with. I have expectations of paying it back in time, if not before.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Last question along this line is, the accounts receivable are in a low range relative to the last four years. Is that a harbinger that cash burn will increase in the second quarter by any chance?

Ceci Welch (CFO)

No. We've had a reserve on AR, which we've kept at the level that it was, basically. We've also had some payments of some larger monies that came in, which contributed to the cash at the end of the quarter. We expect them—it just depends when the orders come in. You'll see it go up and down. Also, remember, there's a reserve on it as well.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Okay. Thanks. Mike, you said you mentioned supporting a number of national and international defense and police organizations in your release, I think. You say international defense agency. Do you mean like a defense contractor, or do you mean like government defense ministry, like, I don't know, the British Ministry of Defense or French Armed Forces Ministry or something like that?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

The latter. Absolutely. It's government defense ministries. Some of those opportunities come through partners in the EMEA region. Typically, they do, right, because these defense agencies and enterprises always buy through some reseller, distributor, partner, value-added reseller, whatever. The answer is no. It is directly related to government defense ministries, not contractors.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

I see. What is the—I know there was an international one that you mentioned, and you've had one ongoing that I think you mentioned has been worth millions of dollars or a million dollars a year. How does this new one sort of relate relative to the older one in terms of expected income? Do you expect it to kind of grow to meet the other one, or is it a smaller contract, or?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Sometimes they start off small, and then they grow and develop. We have not announced the—it is very, very difficult. I mentioned this before, so I'm not going to repeat myself. It is very difficult to get these agencies to allow us to discuss anything that we're doing for them directly, right? It is always kind of a blind announcement. Even that is a challenge, depending upon the type of agency and what we're actually engaged or involved in with them. We have a number of these in motion right now, some closed and more in the works.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

I see. The release said that the install happened in four days. Does that mean that the scope is smaller in size? Less growth?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

No. It just means that the partner that we work with on that opportunity and BIO-key were able to very quickly deploy our PortalGuard technology, including the biometrics, in days. I mean, some of these IAM deployments take months, and we were able to deploy in days. That was the point we were trying to make in the release.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Yeah. I see. Any update on your investment in Boomerang?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

No. Nothing to speak of at this point. I know that they are heavily involved in acquiring other technologies and also, I guess, getting their prototypes moved to production. Beyond that, I really do not have any update.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Okay. Any update on the sale of some of your written-off inventory?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Yes. Aggressively pursuing. We hope to move a substantial chunk of that inventory pretty soon. That is our goal and objective.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

I see. I think most of the hardware in the first quarter was not that inventory, right, because there was.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

There was some of that, but the bulk of it was our traditional fingerprint scanner technology that we sell to our enterprise and government-type customers.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Oh, yeah. Talking about that, I think at some point you had a lot of inventory in China. Is that inventory still in China, or are the tariffs affecting the price of your readers?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

The answer on the tariffs affecting the price of our readers, no. We do have some inventory in China, although I do not think it is significant. We do have inventory parts and pieces, components that we use to build our EcoID and our SideSwipe and SideTouch readers.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

Okay. I think I got one last question maybe on valuation. It looks like your stockholders' equity is about $7.5 million. On 4.7 million shares, that's about $1.60 a share. Your stock is trading for half that. Cash is at $3.1 million, which is incredible, and that's about $0.66 a share. So the market seems to be assigning a value of about $1 million to your company, excluding cash. I think the assumption being made there, if I could assume for the market, is that your equity and cash will trend towards zero by the end of the year, and you'll have to raise additional capital. What would you say to an investor who had that view?

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

The facts do not portray that. It's the only thing I can say. I can't control the market nor understand the dynamics, right, up and down. I mean, you've seen our stock trade hundreds of millions of shares on an announcement and then rise exponentially and then come back down. I don't know what to say. I don't control that. The facts don't bear that thesis. That's it. That's all I have to say.

Dan Cremons (Private Investor)

I appreciate it. I appreciate the time. Thanks, Ceci. Thanks, Mike.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Thank you, Dan.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star then one. With no further questions, the Q&A session is ended. Now I'll ask Mike DePasquale to provide closing remarks.

Mike DePasquale (CEO)

Thank you, everyone, for your time today and for joining the call. You may reach out to our IR team, whose contact information is in today's press release, with any follow-up—actually, yesterday's press release—with any follow-up questions. Also, look for us at two upcoming conferences: first at the Aegis Capital Virtual Conference on Thursday, May 22nd, and then at Maxim Group's 2025 Virtual Tech Conference on Wednesday, June 4th, both at 11:00 A.M., by the way. We expect to participate virtually and be available for investor meetings for both. We look forward to updating you on our Q2 call this summer and will provide interim news and updates via press release. Thank you again, and have a great weekend.

Operator (participant)

Thanks, everybody. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.