BIO-Key International Inc (BKYI) 2022 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to BIO-key International's second-quarter conference call. During management's prepared remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Friday, August 12, 2022. I would now like to turn the call over to Bill Jones, BIO-key Investor Relations. Please proceed, sir.

Thank you. Thank you for joining our call. Presenting today are BIO-key's Chairman and CEO, Mike DePasquale; as well as Alex Rocha, who is Managing Director of BIO-key EMEA; and BIO-key's CFO, Ceci Welch. I will remind everyone that today's conference call and webcast and answers to questions include forward-looking statements, which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.

Words such as anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, and plan, or similar words, typically identify and express forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs and assumptions using information that's currently available pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

For a complete description of these and other risk factors that may affect the future performance of BIO-key, please see risk factors in the company's annual report 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's date. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or disclose revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances after today.

And with that, I would like to turn the call over to Mike. Mike?

Thank you, Bill, and thank you for reading our Safe Harbor this morning. B ill is from our IR firm, Catalyst Global. Kim Biddings, who's normally on the call is on vacation. So again, thanks, Bill.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our call today. After my remarks, this morning. I will turn the call over to Alex Rocha to review our efforts in Europe and the Middle East. Then Ceci will provide financial highlights for the quarter and then we'll open the call for investor questions.

The second quarter was the first full quarter of operating results. From our Swivel Secure acquisition, which closed in March, and its integration into BIO-key is proceeding well and according to plan. Alex will discuss the business in more detail, but we expect it to make an important contribution to our 2022 performance as it significantly expands our international team, our operations, our customer base, and our growth potential. Our revenue for the second quarter nearly doubled from 2021, driven by a 75% increase in software license revenue, reflecting growth in our installed base of customers, including the benefit of Swivel Secure.

We continue to advance our core identity and access management business, both through inside sales efforts and our growing channel alliance partner program or CAP program. Leveraging the CAP model, we expect 50% or more of new sales domestically going forward to be sourced through partners.

One of our key partners is Intelisys, where we have a master agent referral relationship with a very broad reach. We've had particular success with certain Intelisys agents. So we're focused on developing those key relationships as well as working to finding more successful agents within the Intelisys universe. We spoke on a panel at their channel partner event in Boston in Q2, and we continue to meet with their team to solidify joint-marketing events and programs for the second half to continue to build on this relationship.

In the second quarter, we partnered with 3Eye Technologies, a value-added distributor of mobile security and identity solutions with a network of value-added resellers and MSPs that expands the scope of our channel sales and marketing opportunities. This affiliation will enable BIO-key to introduce our complete IAM solution packages to customers in their network, particularly within the financial services and local government markets. Joint-marketing programs developed in collaboration with 3Eye were launched in Q2.

Just last month, we announced that Darksteel Technologies, a managed security services provider or MSSP, in Orlando had selected our PortalGuard Identity as a service platform to provide its customers with enterprise-grade identity authentication security for access to desktops, critical business applications, and data. Darksteel delivers enterprise-class security, cybersecurity solutions to small- and medium-sized customers, expanding the reach of our solutions.

Also in Q2, BIO-key joined the Amazon Web Services partner network, a global community of partners who leverage AWS to build solutions and services for customers. BIO-key now also has access to the AWS ISV Accelerate program, a co-sell program for companies that provide software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS. Co-selling not only provides BIO-key with more opportunities, but also can result in better customer outcomes, given the mutual commitment from partners like AWS and BIO-key.

We continue to increase the penetration of our flagship PortalGuard solution within county and municipal government agencies, higher-education institutions, and businesses and enterprises. PortalGuard resonates as a high value, easy-to-deploy IAM solution that addresses increasing security threats of a hybrid workforce and users that require access to critical data, applications, and information from anywhere. Its feature set includes workforce and customer multifactor authentication; identity-bound biometrics, which is a big differentiator that BIO-key provides; single sign-on and self-service password reset options that support complete enterprise-grade IAM strategies.

Customers recognize PortalGuard's flexibility and unique capabilities, including support for 16 different multifactor authentication methods, including, as I just mentioned, our industry-leading identity-bound biometric capability.

New customers include a city in Texas, that selected PortalGuard in Q2 to strengthen its overall security posture and effectively respond to evolving cyber threats. As you may be aware, cyberattacks against municipalities have increased in the last year, not only in terms of ransomware for profit, but also to disrupt critical infrastructure, with school districts, city halls, and police departments among the most vulnerable.

Counties and other local government entities are choosing PortalGuard to provide strong multifactor authentication, access management, and compliance with insurance requirements. This new customer relationship in Texas was secured by Dallas IT consulting firm, Mejeticks through Intelisys.

In Africa, we have forged a new partnership with a company called [etranzact Nigeria plc] for equipping its mobile money agents. That along with our Sterling Bank Specta relationship will accelerate the deployment of our solutions in the second half of the year. Separately, we are awaiting commencement of a broader registration project that is expected to require 2000 of our Pocket10 devices. We also recently secured application programming interfaces or APIs for key access from the National Identity Management Commission or NIMC in Nigeria for verification of all National Identity Numbers.

In summary, we anticipate a rise in deployment of our hardware, transactional software, and partner relationships in Africa. There is an incredible demand for mobile security solutions across the continent. And we are front and center with the right technology and relationships to monetize this opportunity. It certainly has taken longer than we believed, but we remain very bullish on our prospects in Africa.

Switching to product development. BIO-key remains committed to continued innovation and new product development, such as our Q2 launch of important updates and enhancements to our MobileAuth solution. MobileAuth is currently the only multifactor authentication mobile app that integrates the power of identity-bound biometrics with other authentication modalities, allowing customers to build a more complete and secure multifactor strategy.

MobileAuth supports palm scanning with our palm-positive solution and facial recognition now with our face-positive solution, empowering mobile devices to integrate with our PortalGuard offering. MobileAuth also supports Apple face ID, Touch ID, and Android biometrics as well as push-token authentication. These enhancements make MobileAuth much more powerful and even easier for customers to meet their increasing authentication and security requirements.

I'm proud to say that BIO-key received further recognition in Q2 with a number of industry awards, including those for our PortalGuard solution mentioned in today's press release. But there were a couple of individual Leadership Awards that I want to acknowledge. One is for our very own Mira LaCous, who received the Gold Globee CTO of the Year Award for Security Software in this year's IT World Awards. And Kim Biddings was named as Channel Reseller Network or CRN's Women of the Channel list for the second year in a row. Congratulations to both Mira and Kim and to the entire BIO-key team, our employees, and staff that play an integral role in our success and industry recognition.

BIO-key has built a strong base of product and service offerings and an expanding base of partnerships to address the growing global demand for organizations to protect their data information systems with strong cyber-security solutions. We continue to see expanding opportunities to grow our business globally, driven by compelling security solutions that are scalable, easy to use, and deploy and cost effective.

Protection begins with securing an organization's digital borders with strong but user-friendly IAM solutions. Our PortalGuard platform meets this need, providing a strong customer-value proposition with an expanding array of cutting-edge authentication solutions. We will continue to build on our solution set, both internally and via value-enhancing M&A opportunities, that could also expand our customer base or our sales and marketing reach as we have done successfully over the past two years.

Given the building momentum we are seeing in our business, including with the integration of Swivel Secure Europe and further progress advancing opportunities in Africa, we are reiterating our full-year 2022 revenue guidance of $10 million to $13 million, 70% of which we expect to come from recurring software license revenue.

Our guidance represents growth of approximately 100% or more over 2021 sales. This outlook is supported by our solid capital position, talented global management, and product development teams, as well as our expanding global sales, marketing, and channel partner footprint.

We're focused on building on our positive Q2 momentum for the balance of 2022 and the company is positioned to breakeven operations or operating cash flow within this revenue guidance range, subject obviously to our mix of software and hardware revenues.

With that, I'll now turn the conference call to Alex Rocha to discuss our European and Middle East business. Alex?

Thank you, Mike. I'm very excited by the progress we have made so far in integrating into BIO-key organization and maintain solid sales momentum. We are proud to announce that our sales team is already full operational with many years of knowledge and experience in identity solution and projects.

Erik Notermans is covering Europe, Nadeem Mohammed focus in Middle East and APAC, and José Francês will use his expertise on Africa. In September, a new member will join this team with the responsibility of selling our product in Spain and Latin America. To support this sales strategy, w e both -- and high recognized sales engineer (inaudible) with more than 10 years of experience only in identity.

Regarding support, are (inaudible) offer 24 for 7 with two hours SLA, and us became the leader in the sector. BIO-key University will be available in Q3 to train our channel. We will offer an innovative online-training solution that help the channel knowing our products, even approve an exam, and receive a PortalGuard certification.

Our international office are in Madrid and Dubai, and we're going to expand soon to London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and South Africa. All these combine with our strategy will make us a reference in the international markets. Results are there, and we had several new customers in the second quarter -- five in Spain, one of which also operate in Germany; and several new Middle East clients, including two in Saudi Arabia, one in Dubai, and international organizations in the country that we cannot disclose.

Our priority is to build the channel engagement program with partner levels from reseller to platin, where our strategy is 100% channel. Technologic partnership is another subject that is part of our strategy, and we are working close with ACP, SailPoint, Okta, and Microsoft on this matter. Our identity-bound biometrics add value to their product.

PortalGuard family will receive PortalGuard MSP and PortalGuard CIM to fill the demand of our customers and the market. And we are already counting on opportunities PortalGuard MSP, which will present innovative unique features requested by the market is expecting to be released first, then PortalGuard CIM will focus on e-shopping and on-online banking authentication needs.

The products are being development with Gartner expertise and guidance, who are been working closely with us in other subjects to improve our product and the company. All our products had been modified to be ready for the international market with high relevance for EU where we have the concern of GDPR compliance.

Last note, we overachieved our revenue projected for Q2 by more than 50%. All good signs are that we are following the right strategy. Allow me now to turn the conference call to Ceci.

Thank you, Alex. I will briefly review the financials, which were released this morning and will be filed with the 10-Q on Monday. BIO-key's Q2 '22 revenue nearly doubled to $1.9 million from $1 million in Q2 '21. The period included $725,000 of revenue related to the civil secure business that we acquired in Q1 2022. Our annually recurring revenue from software licenses increased 75% to $1.2 million in Q2 '22 versus Q2 '21 due to new customers and migrating PortalGuard customers from on-premises to cloud-based SaaS solutions, particularly in the higher-education segment.

Service revenue increased 52% to $435,000 in Q2 '22 with 74% representing recurring maintenance and support. Non-recurring services increased 82% to $111,000 in Q2 '22 versus Q2 '21 due to new customer customizations and upgrades from on-prem to cloud deployments.

Hardware sales increased to $350,000 in Q2 '22 from $43,000 in Q2 '21, largely due to two add-on orders from existing customers in Asia and one order from our Pocket10 product from a new customer. For the first half of the year, revenue increased 35%, primarily related to the addition of Swivel Secure, partially offset by lower hardware revenue.

Profit grew to -- Gross profit grew to $1.2 million in Q2 '22 from $750,000 in Q2 '21 due to increased revenues. Gross profit margin declined from 76% in Q2 '21 to 63% in Q2 '22 due to growth in lower-margin hardware sales growth and a decline in overall gross margin on license fees due to third-party software required for the Swivel Secure licenses.

Operating expenses increased to $2.8 million in Q2 '22 from $1.9 million in Q2 '21, reflecting the consolidation of the Swivel Secure expenses as well as new employees and related benefits. We also incurred higher research and development and engineering expenses attributable to the costs associated with the development of the significant enhancements and upgrades in our [mills] loss escalation.

The company reported a Q2 '22 operating loss of $1.6 million versus an operating loss of $1.1 million in Q2 '21 due to operating costs increasing within gross profit. BIO-key recorded a Q2 '22 net loss of $1.7 million or $0.21 a share as compared to a net loss of $1.2 million or $0.15 per share in Q2 '21.

For the first six months of 2022, BIO-key reported a net loss of $2.7 million or $0.34 per share versus a net loss of $2 million or $0.26 per share for the first six months of 2021. BIO-key ended the quarter with $12.3 million of current assets, including $4.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, $2 million of accounts receivable, and $4.9 million in inventory.

Net working capital, excluding deferred revenue, was $9.4 million and book value to stockholders' equity was $13.6 million or $1.61 per share. So for the first six months of 2022, we used $2.2 million of cash in operating activities as compared to $5.2 million in the year-ago period when we invested in inventory to support our opportunities in Africa.

And with that, we can turn the call back over to the operator for investor questions.

(Operator Instructions) Jack Vander Aarde, Maxim Group.

Okay, great. Good morning, guys. Appreciate the update. I'll start with a few questions. But Ceci, I will finish with couple of questions -- j ust I didn't catch the Swivel Secure revenue and also what stock comp was in the quarter. And I'll come back to that. Michael, thanks for the added color. J ust a question on the 2Q license result. Looks like it was a big year over year, but it was down, I think, Q-over-Q. J ust trying to understand why that was a bit more?

License -- w e had a very large renewal from a customer in Africa in the first quarter that was valued over $600,000. And so you know, that was just kind of a timing scenario. That's the reason that -- that was one big single order that really drove the Q1 license revenue. So we are still -- e xcluding that, we're growing significantly. But overall, the overall growth year over year is really significant.

Part of that is growth in our base, as I mentioned in my prepared comments and also adding the Swivel Secure business now is also significant for us, and that will continue to grow as we go through the year. As you know, in Europe and Alex will probably comment on this later, seasonality is significant, obviously in the third quarter and the summer, things are slower, but they have a very big Q4. So overall, we expect our license revenue to grow significantly year over year. And as I mentioned, approximately 70% of our business is contracted, meaning it's ARR right now. We have moved now exclusively to a subscription model and are not selling any perpetual license anymore to new customers, only fulfilling against our existing relationships with older customers.

Okay. That makes sense. I appreciate the color there. And then on that point, it's good to hear the guidance is maintained. This clearly implies a strong back half of the year. I think your comments just now regarding Europe and the strength in the fourth quarter as a whole, would you expect revenue to be much stronger in the fourth quarter relative to the third quarter then, as for all of the revenue segments?

Well, I think that's always the case, right? So we would expect the fourth quarter, just because it's the close of the year -- because of, again, the scenario in Europe that I just described, w e'd expect Q4 to be certainly stronger than Q3. But we do also expect Q3 to be a good strong quarter for us.

So if you look at -- saying that the year will be back-end loaded, we've done approximately, let's say, $4 million in revenue in the first half and to hit the minimum of our guidance range of 10, we'd have to do $6 million. Again, 70% of that contracted. I think we're in a pretty good position to be able to achieve or overachieve those numbers.

Okay. Great. And then just maybe one more. Sounds like you have some more activity going on and positive developments with Africa. Can you just remind me of maybe higher guidance incorporates your two existing African contracts and I think it was pretty minimal, but just an update there? And maybe looking into 2023, what are your thoughts on these Africa contracts that are ramping up?

I think first of all, you're correct. We have -- as you consider my comments around 70% of our revenue being contracted, especially on the license and services side, we have very little in our guidance for Africa in 2022. I did that intentionally because it's taken us quite some time, right to get productive. That's really happening right now, and it's ramping significantly because of the relationships that we're building, in particular with the financial institutions that are backing the procurement of all of this hardware that we ultimately will sell in the beginning, and then creating an ARR or recurring revenue stream for transactional fees that will start this quarter.

So I think we're going to see that business ramp into the second half. We do not have a lot built into our guidance for 2022. In 2023, I think you're going to see a significant increase in revenue against the two big contracts that we have as well as some newer relationships that we're building.

But what we're really after -- we've always said this, the hardware is episode. So you sell the hardware to facilitate the transactional business. That's really what we're after. And being able to secure transactions across the agency model in Africa, and not just in Nigeria but in other countries as well is really important for us.

Also, we continue to build on our partner network in Africa, and you're going to hear a lot more about that in the coming weeks and months. But in particular, we have a partner that has a contract for a large voting registration program in a country in Africa and so there's quite a bit of hardware associated with that particular contract that will come through BIO-key as well as software to support it.

So we remain really bullish on that market. It's probably the most significant emerging market on the globe and for the next few years. Also securing all kinds of transactions. banking, health care, insurance, there's government type access, that's just going to continue to grow and grow and grow.

Also on the other side of the business, Alex, given that we now have an office in Dubai and are serving the Middle East out of that office. We will begin to proliferate the sale of PortalGuard across many of the countries in Africa through the initiatives and efforts that Alex will be kicking off in the next quarter as well.

Okay, great. Lot of helpful color there. I appreciate that. And then maybe just lastly, Ceci, if you have it on hand, c ould you please remind me of the Swivel Secure revenue and then what stock comp was in the quarter?

Sure. So the Swivel was $725,000, probably 85% software and the rest services. And the share-based comp was 84,000 for the three months and 193,000 for the six months.

Great. I appreciate that. I guess that's it for me. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) Dan Kenny, Private Investor.

Hi guys. How much of the $350,000 in hardware sales was for Nigeria, if any?

About $100,000 or s o -- $120,000, off the top of my head.

Got it. And do that come off the original sale from last year, the $680,000 or is that -- no, because you already took that revenue. So is that original hardware sale -- has that been moved into a different way to account for that where the consultants have to get work and make income before you get paid on that? I don't quite understand what happened to that revenue.

I'll defer to Ceci, but no, that was new revenue, Dan, the $120,00 or so that I just mentioned is new sales and new revenue to new partner customers.

Right, so yeah, it was them. It was 105,000 new customer for African project, but it was sold domestically and it had been paid for already. So I fully recognize that revenue.

Okay. But what happened -- what's happening with that $680,000 revenue sale -- sale you took in revenues on almost a year ago now?

Yeah. So we are mechanizing -- I mean, sorry, we are receiving cash monthly on that. It's smaller -- on the smaller side now, but it's ramping up every month.

So (inaudible) okay. I just noticed there was a $150,000 reserve. I was just wondering what that was for? (inaudible) hardware or something but --?

No, that's actually for a bond that we have in Hong Kong -- will be fully disclosed in the 10-Q.

I noticed $122,000 in new debt. Was that for Swivel?

Yes, that's a loan that they have. It is like we got for -- during the pandemic, they received the same thing, government loan. And we are splitting it into current and long term. It's getting paid over the next -- 2026 basically, so.

Maybe a question for Mr. Rocha. What's the percentage of Swivel customers that have converted to PortalGuard at this point?

We continue to operate as two independent companies. That mean -- has not been converted yet and we expect that conversion going to be only see in the next year.

I see. And what's your head count at Swivel now, after the -- any reorganization?

Right now, in Swivel Secure Europe, we are 12 persons. That means we are half of what we have before and the rest the strategy is clearly BIO-key and that is where we are putting our focus.

I see. Thank you.

Pleasure.

Mike, the margin on your license fees looks like it's about 70%. Is that a reasonable number for the next couple of quarters?

Yes. Yes, that's a reasonable number. K eep in mind that the gross margin on the BIO-key PortalGuard licenses that are sold is much higher. But remember which Swivel and Swivel Secure and Alex's business, which is why again, you'll see us over the next year converting that base to BIO-key. We still pay a license fee to the mother company, right? The mother company Swivel Secure. So the margins are a little bit lower.

And I think Ceci mentioned that in her prepared comments. That's why you saw the gross margin. G ross margins across the board go down because of the mix of hardware. But more importantly, the license fee margin just will tremor a little bit because of that.

Got it. Just couple more questions here ma ybe. The SG&A looks like it grew about 50% in the second quarter over last year and 40% for six months or so. So the expense seems to be accelerating. Was that nonrecurring or is there something driving that increase? And where do you think that will settle out? What will be the growth rate in SG&A for the second half?

Well, I'll let the Ceci address the core question, and then I'll talk about the future, but go ahead, Ceci.

Yeah. So that is a full month of -- full quarter, excuse me, of the integration of Swivel. So a lot of that in SG&A is attributable directly to the Swivel, and research and development also has quite a bit extra in it for the development of MobileAuth. So going forward, I expect R&D to be reduced and SG&A to stay where it is, it's going to be level. We don't have any hiring in the second half of the year except maybe one more in sales, and that's about it.

Okay. I think actually -- that's it . Okay. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Dan.

(Operator Instructions) We're showing no more questions, s o at this time, the question-and-answer session has ended. I will now turn the call back over to Mike for closing remarks.

Thank you. I just want to thank everyone for joining today's call. We look forward to updating you on our Q3 call in November. In the meantime, we hope to see some of you at the HC. Wainwright Global Investment Conference in New York in September, where we'll be attending in person. As always, we will continue to provide regular news updates via press releases as significant develops happen within the business. Once again, thank you for your time this morning, and have a great weekend.

The conference has now concluded. T hank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.