Supercom Ltd (SPCB) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the SuperCom third-quarter 2022 financial results and corporate update conference call. (Operator Instructions) Participants of this call are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes.

I'd now like to turn the call over to Stephanie Prince of PCG Advisory.

Thank you, operator, and thank you to everyone joining us. With me on the call today is Ordan Trabelsi, SuperCom's President and Chief Executive Officer.

I'd like to remind you that during this call, SuperCom's management may be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address SuperCom's expectations for future performance or operational results. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that (technical difficulty) SuperCom's actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, uncertainties, and factors, please refer to the risk factors described in SuperCom most recent periodic reports on Form 20-F, Form 6-K, and SuperCom's press release that accompanies this call, particularly the cautionary statements in it.

Today's conference call includes EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure that SuperCom useful in evaluating its performance. You should not consider this additional information in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of this non-GAAP financial measure to net loss, a comparable GAAP financial measures (technical difficulty) see the reconciliation table located in SuperCom's earnings press release that accompanies this call. Reconciliations for other non-GAAP financial measures and comparable GAAP financial measures are available there as well.

The conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, October 26, 2022. Except as required by law, SuperCom disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstance that occur after this call.

It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to SuperCom's President and CEO, Ordan Trabelsi.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release for our financial results for the third quarter of 2022. You can find a copy in the investor relations section of our website at supercom.com, to continue to maintain our commitment to timely quarterly reporting.

And for our quarterly review, I'll start with a brief update on our recent business highlights, strategy, and Q2 results, followed by a Q&A session. The third quarter was a great quarter for SuperCom, with 102% revenue growth year over year. $6.3 million revenues in Q3. We won several important contracts in the US and Europe, and we're excited at the reception and early traction of our newest product, the Pure1. Highly innovative and best-of-breed, one-piece GPS tracking device. I'll go to more details in a few moments.

For those new to SuperCom. Since our founding in 1988, 34 years ago, SuperCom has been a trusted partner, providing cutting-edge electronic and digital security solutions to dozens of governments worldwide. As part of our mission, we strive to revolutionize the public safety sector worldwide, the proprietary electronic monitoring technology, data intelligence, and complementary services, which lead with our technology and entering 2022. We continued to invest heavily in research and development to ensure our product remains the most competitive in the market.

We're continuing to introduce new features into technologies through our proprietary platforms such as unique biometric and communication capabilities and much longer battery life. In parallel, we launched an entirely new solution for domestic violence. In recent years, we've become more and more aware of the immense challenge, which is that nations and governments worldwide face when dealing with their offender populations. First, many countries suffer from high recidivism rates, where people relapse to more criminal behavior after finishing their sentence, causing the criminal justice system.

Second, overcrowding is a key contributing factor to poor prison conditions worldwide, resulting in prisoners sleeping in shifts, on top of each other, or sharing the bed. Third, in 2022, about $80 billion were spent in the US to keep roughly 2.3 million people incarcerated, nearly 1% of the entire US population. Beyond that, the societal cost of incarceration, loss earnings, adverse health effects, and more, are estimated, and three-times these direct costs, at least.

Unfortunately, these issues aren't unique to the US and are prevalent globally. It is evident that prisons are far from ideal for solving many challenges in criminal justice. To help meet these challenges, we have leveraged our technology and services, expertise in government security, and experience teams to focus on the public safety sector.

We're seeing much success. And in just the past few weeks, we announced, and won and launched a $33-million national electronic monitoring project in Romania. As part of the project, the SuperCom domestic violence solution will enhance the security for those getting hit or hurt by their own family members, with an immediate notification of the police and to the victim when the offender has come within close range, posing a threat to their safety. With up to 15,000 monitored offenders per month, this project will help protect so many people. And we feel honored to have the opportunity to do this the project alone and change so many lives.

We also recently announced that SuperCom was awarded Croatia's first national electronic monitoring project, which we have already launched. In addition, we secured a new contract for Sweden's juvenile and national electronic monitoring project, the third and final remaining national EM contract in Sweden; all held by SuperCom as of now.

In parallel to our success in the EU in the past quarter, we continue to expand into the US and won three additional new contracts across three different US states: Texas, Southern California, and Idaho. These wins are great for SuperCom, and they further increased our footprint in the US, facilitating more growth in the future. Furthermore, the recent win in Idaho represents our third win and third new customer in Idaho in less than a year. Adding to organically growing customer base and signaling just how rapidly our technology perform in new adjacent customers.

Our strategy has been to build amazing technology, expand our presence, and deliver outstanding services. We have successfully executed that strategy by focusing on the following key factors: our proprietary electronic monitoring technology scores highly from competitive RFP and supports various programs such as house arrest, GPS monitoring, rehabilitation services, and more. SuperCom has won over 50 new multi-year government projects since 2018. Our strong reputation recognition as a premium provider of electronic monitoring technology and services also contributes to our win rate. With each customer win and project deployment, we further strengthen our reputation, making us even more competitive.

Lastly, our strategic focus and management attention has shifted to IoT tracking business with the current revenues in developed countries. Electronic monitoring market was valued around $1.1 billion in 2020 and estimated to reach $1.6 billion by 2025. The US and Europe constitute about 95% of this market. In Europe. We have recently seen an uplift in our fee activity with an expected over $200 million in upcoming bid opportunities in the next 18 months. Altogether, these successes and opportunities have resulted into growing pipeline of business and a recurring revenue rate of above 80%.

More broadly, we see a global trend of government turning to innovative solutions and alternatives to incarceration to ensure public safety. And our PureSecurity technology solutions address these trends by providing an effective way to institutions to enforce home confinement while easing prison overcrowding.

In addition, it allows them to significantly reduce the associated costs of housing and inmates. For example, the total daily cost for monitoring an offender on home confinement or GPS monitoring is approximately $10 to $35, substantially lower than $100 to $140 cost a day at a correctional facility. More importantly, home confinement has been shown to reduce recidivism. Highlighting its effectiveness in helping offenders to improve their lives and making communities safer.

Throughout the year, we've announced many new project wins, some in the US, some in Europe, where we have been continuously displacing incoming offenders, win that over 65% win rate in the European competitive RFPs. We are proud to have won so many new contracts in such a short period, especially in times of uncertainty and volatility in the market due to looming threat of recession and unstable geopolitics.

Our business is recession-resistant in nature and the possibility of potential recession increases. We have multiple tailwinds to support resilience and growth in our business. In 2022, we strengthen operation infrastructure, grow our workforce, and maintaining our technology leadership. For example, amidst the ongoing instability in the global economy in the past few months, we successfully finalized the development of a new product, PureOne, as mentioned earlier. In addition, we have further owned our business plan, secured new contracts, and raised the needed financial resources to support our company during a time of volatility and uncertainty in the capital markets.

We have also started the Company's global sales division, including a new sales team with industry expertise as we continue shifting from passive bidding to an active outreach sales trends. The new wins and our improved sales teams are first steps in executing the company's US market expansion strategy, and have already driven increased activity with existing customers and numerous new demos and evaluations of potential new ones. As part of our growth plan, we believe there's opportunity to enhance our growth in new and strategic acquisitions of local electronic monitoring service providers, well developed a strong reputation and customer base in the respective local communities.

We constantly monitor the market for potential acquisitions that could generate significant value by immediately expanding market presence and providing vertical integration synergies. An example of this strategy is reflected to our $3-million acquisition of LCA back in 2016, and the immense strategic value and new project wins it has provided us. We have won over $25 million in new projects in California since that acquisition in 2016 alone.

Turning to our financials. In our last conference call, I noted that we expect revenue from the project mentioned above to continue to our financial results -- to contribute to our results in Q3 and Q4 financials I've mentioned before. I'm happy to share that we recorded 102% year-over-year revenue growth to $6.3 million in the third quarter, with our IoT division as the main growth engine achieving 150% growth in the third quarter compared to the third quarter of last year. Revenue from developed countries continued to increase, reflecting the completion of our five-year business plan to transform our business from unstable, emerging countries to developed countries. As a reminder, the legacy business comprised of one-time project revenues in Africa and South America, which is a sharp contrast variety tracking business in developed countries which generates recurrent revenue of above 80%.

Gross profit nearly doubled as well increased by 96% to $2.1 million compared to $1.1 million in third quarter of last year due to high growth and project volume. Compared to the corresponding quarter last year, we increased our research and development investments at $333,000. While we continue to develop new products and improve existing ones, keeping us at the edge of innovation and technology leadership in our space, our sales and marketing expenses increased by $195,000, which for the company's new product growth strategy. And general administrative expenses increased by $262,000 to expand on management team.

The company had a positive EBITDA of $413,000 compared to $53,000 loss in the corresponding period last year, reflecting the benefits of economies of scale associated with deploying new IoT projects. And then continue to shift away from legacy business. We ended the third quarter with $3.1 million in cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash, which includes cash of approximately $1.74 million in gross proceeds raised in July, due to exercise in warrants by a stable credit and institutional investor. This cash provides us with the liquidity we need to continue investing in sales, marketing, and R&D, to drive revenue growth and expand our global footprint.

In closing, as reflected in our financials, we are starting to recognize the significant return on our years in the [identity] sector. We believe that we are well-positioned for continued growth and capitalizing on the opportunities fueled by these multiple drivers, including a strong presence and reputation in the US and European markets. The countercyclical nature of our industry, public policy shift to monitoring instead of incarceration, and returning to post-COVID levels of business activity, our recent announcement, our new contracts in Europe and the US are compelling examples of a successful business plan execution within a vertical that was SuperCom as a strong presence and excellent reputation.

For that, I'll turn the call over to operator to open for questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) Matthew Galinko, Maxim Group, LLC.

Hey, good morning and congrats on the strong quarter.

Thank you.

Do we start with maybe the US win, and did they result from the new sales push that you talked about that started a couple of quarters ago? Is that starting to convert into the fields or is this sort of still the sorts of deals you get by word of mouth or passive outreach?

Yes, the answer is yes. It is the results in the sales force. In the US, the market is more fragmented. So instead of bidding on large projects like Romania, which at [$30 million], or at Sweden, which $7 million. There we have to kind of have feet on the ground and go opportunity to opportunity. And some of it comes to us at word of mouth, some of it comes because we have good results in our previous projects, and some comes from reaching out to new customers. So either way, we need the active sales team with an active -- proactive strategy. And they've been doing demos, evaluations, and showing customers just how unique our technology is. That's leading into wins, and we've been announcing them to share with the rest on the public.

Got it. Terrific. And then on the domestic violence component, is there an expected launch in the US market? Are you having -- are your salespeople having conversations about that piece and is there some early indication of interest in the US market?

Let me quote one of our customers -- he's a service provider and reseller around domestic violence, and he says verbatim, as you provide me with the domestic violence solution, I will sell the bananas out of it here in the US. So maybe that answers your question. Many customers are waiting for it in the US, many resellers are waiting for it. Our focus naturally has been to provide it first to the regions with larger revenues like the $33 million projects versus smaller ones. And it's being adapted also to meet the US market needs and then will be spread out to California, the Midwest, and other states and locations. It's in the process and there's very high demand for what we see thus far. Do you understand how it works? I don't know if -- I mentioned first time how essentially that --

You can now please expand on that, if you could?

Yeah. Okay. So different from our other solutions where you have a bracelet in your house arrest, domestic violence is a little different and we're one of the only ones to do it at the world. Our bracelet, as you may remember, the battery runs for very long time, over a year. So if someone is hit or is violent in the family and they have a complaint. In many countries, they change the law to allow an immediate application of a bracelet -- our bracelet, which is small and long battery life on their leg. If someone hits, let's say, his wife, for example, you get to bracelet. And anytime he comes within 100 meters of her, her phone will notify her and the police immediately. Such that, we are effectively and dynamically enforcing restraining orders, which never been done before.

So now people have the safety and peace of mind that they actually complain. Somebody hits them, and they'll be protected with the use of this, I think, amazing technology. So it's -- others can't do it because their bracelet's too big and the person has to charge it every day, and it doesn't uniquely synergize with the mobile phone like ours does. So this fits perfectly with our infrastructure and many customers are seeing it, and we think it's going to have a big impact on the market around the world.

That's helpful and sounds like a great solution. Appreciate it. Last question for me is on the single-piece bracelet that you -- I think you mentioned, you're seeing some early traction. Can you expand on that a little bit? Where is the traction? And at what point will we see that flow through in fields that utilize it or uptake within existing fields?

I didn't hear the first part, but you were talking about traction where? With the PureOne?

Yeah, with the one-piece unit.

Okay, great. So we have our 2P solution, which is a small bracelet that runs for a very long time without charging. It communicates with smartphone. Some customers like just a one-piece solution. There's no phone, just a piece of hardware on the leg. We developed that as well. We developed, of course, like everything else, we try to make it the most cutting edge in the industry, so we have the best features, lightest weight, longest battery life, best connectivity and security. And we launched it first in the conference in Europe earlier this year. And we really won a project with it in Sweden that we announced earlier this year. In the US, it's also very exciting and many, many customers are asking for it.

Because together with this, they will have a full suite of tools. They'll have domestic violence. They'll have the two-piece solution on the smartphone, and they'll have the one-piece solution. They'll have the alcohol monitoring solution. They'll have any management solution. All these works together, seamlessly on the same management studio on the cloud. It's very, very helpful and effective for the officers who are using this technology rather than having to go to different software tools for every different hardware. Here they have all in one and it makes their work much easier, much more effective.

Got it. Thank you.

Sure.

Ken Weiner, Private Investor.

Yeah, hi, good morning. The first thing I wanted to ask you about was the listing requirements.

Yes. And what is the question?

Well, basically, I think you're deficient in meeting the exchange's listing requirements.

Okay, so that, let me answer if I understand your question correctly. We have not met the $1 minimum requirement from the Nasdaq exchange. And we have essentially, until -- if I'm not mistaken, December 13th, to correct that. We are taking the proper measures. It's more of an operational issue in order to get this done and we are on it. We expect in time to have this resolved.

But when you say it's an operational issue, I mean the stock's $0.26, and you say the requirement is $1. So how do you feel with that -- excuse me?

We don't control the stock price. If the stock price doesn't reach a level that is required, we also have an ability to do a reverse split and adjust the stock price that way to meet the requirements until December 13th.

Okay. And secondly, obviously it's a tough market out there and a tough environment, but the company has a market cap of $9 million. I've been a stockholder of the company for some time and own a fair amount of shares. And I was wondering, what's your thoughts on that? And what one can do to explain your story better, so maybe more people can get interest in stock?

Right. Good question. In the past, we had more time to meet with more investors in conferences and go into more institutions and get the word out there. Lately, we've been extremely busy, as you can see. And we try to first focus on operations and that's how we're winning these new projects. We just announced a few weeks ago, the largest project in Europe this year, we won it. $33 million that we just announced this quarter. Double the revenues from last year and from the previous quarter, the stock is not adjusted.

Does that mean the market is valuing us correctly? I think not, but that creates opportunities for new investors to come in at this time. And hopefully grow with the company as the stock over time will adjust to the proper value.

I'm at a conference right now at the LD Micro Conference in California, where we'll be meeting investors all day. And we will try to integrate these conferences and these communications with investors as much as you possibly can. But again, our focus will be on operations, and we have to create the long-term value of the company, which is more important that this -- and a general strategy than maintaining the immediate stock price at every given moment.

No, I agree with that. But so let's talk about going forward. I mean, obviously, it seems like this quarter was a breakthrough quarter for you. In other words, it seems that you're gaining traction and you're hitting some of the goals you set out. Is the growth -- is the quarter an aberration or do you expect future growth in the coming quarters?

I don't think it's aberration. I think we have a strategy to grow revenues from where they've been. Sort of high level, we had a business of E-gov, which had revenues of close to [$30 million]. And IoT was close to [nothing], we grew that to close $10 million and while e-government declined. And our strategy is to keep on growing that [tens of millions of dollars]. So we don't think this growth is something unique that will not reoccur in the future.

With that being said, we don't control the growth in every quarter. They're dependent on the timelines of our investment of our government customers. We're dependent them choosing when to where the contracts, when to launch the projects and when to finish a significant milestone. We just launched a project to Romania. We've done a lot of work in this quarter. We continue to do work in the following quarters. But we will not be able to control exactly what work will be done in this quarter, that also depends on our customer.

Furthermore, we're bidding on many, many, many other projects around the world, in Europe and the US. And we expect to win many of them. And as we win, they will layer on to our recurring revenue base, which is over 80% and continue to grow our revenues. So our strategy is consistently to grow our presence. With that, we'll grow revenues. And with that, the company will grow. This is just a nice example. People will see what can happen, and much more than this is going to happen, and how it immediately impacts on profitability. Thanks to operating leverage.

Because we don't need to grow our operating cost structure significantly to add more projects and more units, which is up to 15,000 units. We could add tens and tens of thousands more units without changing almost anything to operating structure. Maybe adding a new person here or there. But everything will result for operating leverage and profitability will come, and the contribution margins of each additional bracelets, let's say, was very high.

And what about the debt maturities? Are you able to service the debt? And how about the priorities on debt?

With Fortress, our current maturity is around December 2024. And we believe our creditors see our vision and they believe in it. And they've worked with us to adapt the structure and the requirements to the goals of the company. We will be able to service to debt over time. That's not our current focus right now as we're also very much focused on growth. But in time, we will be able to handle it and they believe that as well.

And the last question is what are your terms of the contract? What's your accounts receivable total right now?

Let's open up the PR, but things around $13 million.

How much?

One second. I think it's around $13 million. I have to get the exact number.

So you'd be selling $6 million, and you have accounts receivable, $13 million. What are you terms?

Well, the way that works is a little different than normal business. Yeah, the trade receivables down in this quarter were $13.7 million. The way it typically works, we have large project deployments. And we're deploying a large project, you get paid when you reach certain milestones. So we recognize some of the revenues percentage of completion. So for example, we can deploy in one quarter, a ton of the work recognize some revenue for that work, and we still don't get paid. Sometimes it's overdue, it just haven't been billed. It's unbilled revenue.

Most of our customers in the US and in Europe are very timely payers. This is one of our goals for move into the developed countries away from Africa and South America, where we had more delays. Some of our trade receivables are still from those old revenues from the E-gov business. Some of them have been written off and discounted. But the new revenues from the IoT tracking business have actually been a very timely payers, and we're happy with that.

And the last question is, what -- on the big contract that you landed for ['32]. When do you start to recognize revenues for that?

We already have started. Did you see that (inaudible)?

Yeah.

The go-live was early October. It's probably one of the fastest go-live projects in the world, in the space. And it's a brand-new country that -- I mean, a brand new EM country. They never done electronic monitoring. And we were excited that we're able to support them to launch such a huge project so fast and without any experience in EM for them. It was a great win for us and for them, we did a great job. And we think this is another capability that we bring with us to future projects, not just great technology and great services, but also great execution with a very timely deployment.

And the other question is when you're dealing with government and -- is your financial condition or your stock price an inhibitor for lending deals?

The time that they talk to us, and they usually do. Once they talk to us, they get comfortable. If they have technical limitations, we could team up with other vendors. They usually have a local partner who speaks the language, who works for the government. They're usually a much larger company, telecom providers, IT providers. Being up with them, we're financially perfect.

All right. Thank you very much. Good luck.

Thank you.

Zvi Rhine, Sabra Capital Partners, LLC.

Hey, good morning, Ordan. Congratulations on the Romanian win, I know how valuable that is to your business. As it relates to, you said that that you're already generating revenues. Were any revenues from that project actually recognized in the third quarter, in the $6.3 million? Can you tell us how much of that was and how much cash of that you received?

We can't share that at this point . We're not sharing the revenues per project. I don't have that information readily available. But we did start recognizing in Q3, we'll continue recognizing in the following quarters. And the cash is -- the project only started in October. So it takes a little bit of time to get the cash, but also have to meet certain milestones to get that.

Is that -- was the Romanian project is the biggest driver of the increase sequentially in the accounts receivable? The receivables went up by about $1.2 million sequentially. Is Romania the biggest driver of that?

I think it's fair to say. I mean, Romania is the biggest driver of change in this quarter. It's the biggest project we have, and we just started launching it. So it impacted all the metrics, including the consumable.

And what about gross margins for the nine-month period? So year to date, you have a 33% increase, give or take on the topline, but gross profit was essentially flat. So can you give us just a little bit background on the impact of some of these new projects, on your gross margins, and where do you think the gross margin percentage should kind of stabilize at in one year at a full scale for all these new projects you've rolled out?

I'll start with the end. If you look at the cost structure of our hardware, and the data cost, and the cloud cost, contribution margin of every additional bracelet is way above 50%. Over time with economies of scale and operating leverage, those would be the gross margin for the business. The operating cost, the fixed ones will be very insignificant, and everything else. It would just be the contribution of the variable cost, which is every digital bracelet, above 50%. It's significantly above.

At this point, we're deploying new projects. And just like in our past days, it's also in this one. During the project deployment stage, there's hardware to buy, they're servers to buy, there's communications, [Intel], there's IT. And those naturally have lower margins. You're paying IT person to come in, and Intel servers that connect cables. You can't get a 50% margin off of his work. You get 15% or 20%.

So when you launch a new project, the initial stage will have a lot of lower margin components. And as everything starts to run seamlessly and you're more into natural flow of recurring revenues and margin of offenders, the margins will be higher. So in these two quarters, new project started, especially this big one, and that impacted the margins temporarily. But over time, we will continue to converge into the same core of our business, just higher margin.

Okay. And as it relates to the domestic violence, which seems that could be a very, very attractive new market for you. Obviously, that was included in the Romania project. How many other jurisdictions that you're involved in include that domestic violence application?

On top of my head, there's at least one or two other countries in Europe that we're doing domestic violence. I won't say names, I don't want to be unprecise. But in the US, many states and counties are asking for it. We just haven't completed the adjustment to the US market. It's different technology, different needs, and different processes, different laws, and we just updated it to just a matter of time and resources.

Okay.

But yeah. It is something that we believe can -- ensuring the core of our technology and the core of what we can do, and the core need of domestic violence is something that we will be able to do probably better than anyone else in a significant manner. So it is one of the things that excites you the most about our upcoming future and growth.

It sounds promising. And the last question is you had a press release regarding an E-gov contract for around $1.7 million, and you've alluded to having a tough time collecting and the receivables from E-gov customers in the past. Can I presume that --

Not this one.

Not this one. Okay. That's what I was (multiple speakers).

No, not this one. This wasn't great. We're not focusing as much as E-gov as you noticed. Especially not the ones were going to give us challenges with collections. E-gov is there to support our requirements. And requests for cash is much more stringent than it was in the past. Again, because we're not focusing on this, we don't want to give them any additional comfort. They want to get the equipment, they need to pay. A lot of it upfront. And we have leverage in getting cash from this customer, for example.

Okay. Great to hear. Well, congratulations on what's seemingly some positive steps forward.

Thank you very much.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question is coming from Mike Walters.

Hello, Ordan. Can you hear me?

Yes, good morning, Mike.

I wanted to say congratulations on the great quarter. I'm a big fan of everything you are, everything you do, and everything you stand for. And I've just had just a few questions. I love your excitement, by the way. I can tell you -- I saw your webcast and that your smile, all the things that you say, quite amazing.

A question (multiple speakers). I could tell, you too. I wanted to ask a question about-- so I know you've had numerous contract wins over the past year. So some of the revenues from the $33-million contract that were reflected. So in this quarter ending, is all 10 of those contracts reflecting in this quarter? Or will there be more reflection going into the fourth?

Maybe help me understand your question all better, which 10 contracts are you speaking of? We have many contracts from different locations.

Yeah, I know. Like so, I know there are like five or six in the United States going into the end of last year and then in quarters one and two, and then on numerous here going in throughout 2022. And also, are they --they are reoccurring? Yes?

So yes, let me help clarify and explain a little bit. Since I think 2018, we won 50 new projects. The latter that we started the smallest $100,000, $300,000 project and grew in size to $1.8 million; in Canada, $3.7 million; in Czech, Denmark, and in Sweden, $7 million. We aim to continue growing the scale and the latter, and we just won a project of $33 million, our largest project in past decade and largest EM projects now in Europe.

Every project that we win, in theory, adds a recurring revenue base because there's always a recurring revenue component in every project. And some projects, it's the majority of the component. Like in the US, almost everything is charged and billed per unit per day. In Europe, that's also prevalent, the structure, but sometimes they want to purchase units. And then the recurring revenue part is the smaller part of the actual full revenues.

That being said, we've been launching projects consistently at different start dates every month or two. We keep launching and they add onto the current revenue base. The amount of unit is up to them, based on their current needs, based on their political goals and structures. And we're here to support. So Q3 has revenues from many different projects around the world.

And a big change in Q3 is this Romanian project. Before, we switch Romania and other projects also, were rolling. And because the recurring revenue structure, they keep on adding on top of each other. The reason why you sometimes see a slowdown in revenue growth is also because we are still phasing out the E-gov business, which the business used to be $30 million back in 2015. That's for biometric passports, ID cards in Africa and South America. We have been phasing that out while together growing this IoT business.

So yes, we are -- this revenue does reflect -- this quarter does reflect many revenues from many different projects, and we strive to continue to reflect these revenues and to have new ones with new projects that we will must.

Awesome. In the webcast, I heard you had said basically -- like I got -- if I understood correctly, electronic monitoring works on land, obviously in subways, so underground and in buildings high up in the air. Is that -- do you guys ever have any issues with that? Like if the -- because I know like on phones, from my cellphone, sometimes I'll go into an area where it's a little bit dark or whatever, and I might have trouble with the loading of the service. Do you ever run into issues like that? Or is it just a constant very accurate system that last, that works pretty much everywhere?

It's a great question and let me get a little bit technical, if you don't mind. First of all, no communication system is perfect. But what is important, at least for our business plan is to always be one-step above the rest. So everyone else have been developing their own proprietary location tracking technology for the past 10, 15, 20 years. And these are small companies with $100 million, $200 million in value or revenue. They're competing with companies like Samsung and Apple for location, and Google for location services. Obviously, so much competition.

We developed our own location as well, but we also integrate all the location services from all the largest companies in the world. So when we provide location services, we offer multiple channels to track locations. If you're underground, we don't now use GPS, we're using WiFi networks through the Google Network. So you could track someone underneath the ground in the subway, which almost nobody else can in our industry. When you're in the building, we also have inmate monitoring technologies. Where we have a low frequency signal that were able to look at where somebody precisely within the floor. So not just here in this building, be it in the 12th floor, or is on 20th floor, and so forth.

So SuperCom has been dealing with location technology since 2005. And we have been able and lucky and fortunate to combine all these technologies into this unique proprietary solution. So when it comes to testing our technology application capabilities -- as you know, the customers are blown away when they test the weight of our product. I said, the customers are blown away when they take the security of our product. Many of our employees and staff have been in military and intelligence and security, and we bring top-notch security products. So once again, I believe our customers are blown away. And this is what helps us win more and more projects. I think the more projects we deploy, and more customers will see why we are unique, and that will allow us to grow even faster throughout the world.

Awesome. It's very exciting. It's like Star Trek, almost like I can see the possibility. Those are pretty vast and they're going like there's -- I don't really see a lack of need for things that are not just people, but also places and things that need monitored on a continuous basis. And that leads me to my next question, which do you foresee in the future this being just limited to -- I know inmate tracking and the house arrest is amazing market for that. But I have a great imagination. And I speculate that there's probably other opportunity (multiple speakers).

Yeah, for application. Like I was wondering, I don't know like maybe you could -- because I know they monitor like, athletes need monitoring sometimes when they're doing their practices; military, obviously, when they're in training or in the field; senior citizens, maybe monitoring center -- another question. I leave the question after question, I'm sorry, apologize. But with the biometrics, how extensive are your biometrics? Like are you measuring heartbeat? Are you able to measure heartbeat and stuff like that or?

Okay, great. Let me answer both of your questions. First of all, on the applications, I'm a big believer in focus and we have to understand that the size of our company and the resources that we have. A large technology is great. Every application, every industry requires a sales force, product team, marketing team. You have to understand the nuances for every different market if you want to be there.

In the past, in 2005, we've been developing the [cash] technology. We have components, which will work great in almost any market. Just like we're tracking offenders, we can track livestock, and medical equipment, and senior citizens, and children, and athletes. And we could take all the signals that are being, let's say, amplified and projected from people's bodies. And we can take those signals, and we can analyze them and process them, and use that for intelligent decision-making for many different markets applications.

All that being said, we cannot lose our focus. And right now, we're looking at a $1.6-billion industry. We have unique solutions, unique technologies, and we can change and disrupt it, and that's exactly what we're doing. And we still have a far way to go, $1.6 billion. Our annual revenues recently were $12 million, now they're growing. And we get a larger market share, we team up with more companies. Our technology is more prevalent throughout the world, and we know that we are creating a huge impact, just like we're doing with Romania right now, for tens of thousands of families. Then we'll be ready to move on to the next industry, and the next industry, next industry, leveraging exactly the same technology, but using different application.

That's for your first question. The second in terms of heart rate data, anything that you see, that you've seen online or on TV. Any technology has been advertised, we have the access to it. Unless that's something that you haven't seen like a proprietary ability military-grade -- and I was in the military as well -- secrets, we'll not be able to access those easily. But all the heart rate beats, even brand signals, EEG energy, other things that you see on wearables and all that, we have that just like any other company would. And we have a team that could analyze that data very efficiently, but we're not there yet. And we're focusing first on this current market, and we don't need the heart rate to track offenders. That's not part of our solution today.

Okay. I love it though, your vision. I like that you have the focus. You mentioned, your focus is -- laser-focused vision on what's on trend right now, that's nice. I think the thing that probably answers on that, it doesn't really answer all my questions for sure, I have lots. But I appreciate your time Ordan, and congratulations to you and the SuperCom team.

Thank you very much, Mike, and have a good day. Thanks for dealing with us.

You too.

[Jesus Irarch]

Good morning and congratulations, like everybody has been saying since the company is going well. I was just wondering, I know in July, you guys got an extension for --

For the requirement. For $1, yeah.

Yes, exactly. Do you guys have any plan to work on that? I mean, I know the company is going well, but there's always short sellers and so on. Is there a plan in case by December is not above the $1?

December 13th timeline we have, as its prices and regions on its own. We have measures in place to resolve it to reverse splits and other mechanisms.

Okay. So you guys are working something, but there's nothing has been decided so far?

Nothing that's been announced. And of course, we will work on it in the back channel. It's a very common and one of situations [after the magic just happens], the company sometimes especially when our stock was only around $1, [$0.10, $0.20], before the market conditions came, which impacted many stocks around the world, hit us as well, now [under dollar]. But again, we have measures in place to resolve it.

Wonderful. And another question just related to that, just concerning, I mean, the price that -- there's [so live], would you guys consider doing like buybacks before it starts going up, or that's not part of the plans?

We haven't announced a new -- we're talking about corporate buybacks. We haven't announced a new one. We've done that in the past. It all depends what the cash on hand. Right now, as you see, we need our cash because we're launching new projects to manufacture new equipment consistently. On this latest one, it's 15,000 units and potential. So we're not very eager to do a corporate buyback. That being said, sometimes insiders like our Chairman, Tsviya Trabelsi, have been buying back and we announce it to the market once in a while. As you can see in the press releases in the last year or two, you'll see some announcements of insiders buying.

Okay. That's all I have. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) There are no further questions in queue. At this time, I will pass the call back to Ordan for closing remarks.

I want to thank you all for participating in today's call and for your interest in SuperCom. We are doing big things and making a big impact, and we look forward to sharing our progress on our next conference call, filings, and press releases.

Thank you, and have a good day.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's event. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.