Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. And welcome to BIO-key International’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Conference Call. During management’s prepared 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, Thursday, March 25, 2021. I would now like to turn the call over to Kimberly Johnson, BIO-key’s Vice President of Product Marketing. Please begin..

Thank you and thank you for joining us this morning. Participating on today’s call are BIO-key’s Chairman and CEO, Mike DePasquale; Chief Revenue Officer, Fred Corsentino; and CFO, Ceci Welch..

Thank you, Kim, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. As I begin, I want to thank the entire BIO-key team for their hard work and commitment during a very challenging year. I want to also acknowledge our customers who have stepped up to secure their assets in what has been an unprecedented time in our history.

Speaking on behalf of the entire BIO-key global organization, we have never been more enthusiastic and opportunistic and optimistic about our future as we are today. Despite the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic, 2020 was a transformational year for BIO-key.

And importantly, during 2020, we were able to accomplish a major recapitalisation of the company, putting us on a very sound financial footing for years to come. And we also completed the acquisition and integration of Pistolstar, the developer of PortalGuard, identity and access management solution.

The purchase substantially enhanced our suite of security, ID and authentication solutions, our talent pool, customer base and our addressable market, and also provided a very significant contribution to our second half performance.

In late 2020, we began to see business activity gradually moving towards more normalized levels, following COVID-related disruptions to our sales and marketing dialogues. Our business benefits from IT security challenges driven by the shift to remote work and studies, which obviously grew very rapidly in response to the pandemic..

Thank you, Mike. I’d like to highlight a few areas that underscore our optimism for the business. First off, as Mike mentioned, we launched our software-as-a-service model for the PortalGuard business to build on our on-premises solutions and position BIO-key to participate in the trend towards asset-light or cloud-based IT infrastructure solutions.

Our PortalGuard identity-as-a-service platform or IDaaS as we call it includes a highly scalable framework hosted within an AWS Cloud infrastructure that can integrate with our customers other cloud hosted data and solutions.

This new paradigm provides a range of benefits to all parties, including a scalable procurement experience with a far lower upfront costs for the customer, while providing a stable and far more predictable recurring software revenue stream for BIO-key versus variable or episodic license sales.

Our teams are very focused and building traction for our cloud solutions and building a growing base of annual recurring software revenue. I mentioned on our last call that we have integrated our sales and marketing functions around three primary verticals, education, financial services and government.

Within the higher ed vertical, one of our priorities is to target larger institutions. Given our recognition in the market, a significant installed customer base and the value we provide, we will continue to strengthen our position in the education segment.

As discussed in today’s release, we are very excited about BIO-key’s Channel Alliance Partner Program, which we consider to be a key force multiplier in our go-to-market efforts. As a result, we are focusing a significant portion of our time on this program, working to steadily build and support our base of productive partnerships.

The CAP program expands our paths to market by leveraging partner contacts, market knowledge and sales reach to new customers, where our technology solutions are a great fit. We have more than 50 partners and I’m confident that we can more than double that base in the coming months and continue to grow the channel on a global basis.

We are fast becoming a channel centric company and expect our partner revenue to grow significantly in the short- and long-term. We’re also developing programs to support each of our partners and have incorporated a direct assist program to help them close deals..

Thank you, Fred. BIO-key’s Q4 ‘20 revenues doubled to $1.1 million from $535,000 in Q4 ‘19, mainly due to the revenue contribution related to PortalGuard, which was acquired as of June 30, 2020.

Revenues for 2020 increased 25% to $2.8 million from $2.3 million in fiscal year 2019, with the increase due largely to the acquisition which more than offset the impact of IT project delays and disruptions related to the pandemic.

Sequentially revenue increased $120,000 in Q4 ‘20 from $943,000 in Q3 ‘20, with Q3 and Q4 being the first two quarters to include PortalGuard.

Gross margin improved to 71% in Q4 and 72 for the full year from negative levels in the prior years, neither of which is truly comparable due to non-cash and non-operating charges in 2019 that did not recur in 2020.

Excluding the prior year one-time impairment charge of $7 million, BIO-key’s Q4 operating loss improved 34% to $1.4 million from a loss of $2.2 million in Q4 ‘19. Likewise, for the full year 2020, operating loss improved 21% to $5.2 million from $6.6 million in 2019, also excluding the prior year impairment.

On the bottomline, BIO-key reported a net loss to stockholders of $1.4 million or $0.18 a share in Q4 ‘20, compared to a net loss of $9.5 or $5.29 per share in Q4 ‘19. For the full year 2020, the net loss was $9.8 million or $2.08 per share versus the $14.6 million or $8.21 a share in 2019, including the one-time impairment charge..

Our first question today comes from Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group..

Great. Good morning. Hi, Michael, Fred and Ceci. Thanks for taking my questions. Let’s start with a question on the revenue guidance for 2021 between $8 million to $12 million, which is encouraging. This exceeded my expectation certainly.

So can you provide maybe some more color as to the drivers of this revenue guidance, Michael? Maybe how much from -- and if you can’t break out things, that’s okay.

But whatever you can maybe share roughly as a breakout of PortalGuard versus core BIO-key and if there’s any Africa contracts, revenue contribution embedded in there, that’d be helpful?.

Thank you, Jack, and good morning. I appreciate the question. I think I can share some color on the revenue guidance. Certainly, $8 million to $12 million, we are attempting to be conservative. As we mentioned in our press release, and I mentioned in our prepared comments, we see there’s also significant upside on the Africa site.

As you know, the contracts are significant. They’ve been delayed now nearly a year. So remember, we had expected to begin generating revenue in the second half of 2020. That has slipped. We’ve now begun to deploy technology, but everything is certainly behind approximately three quarters to a year.

So there is significant upside in that guidance range, if in fact, the African business accelerates more significantly. So we do have some revenue associated with the African business in that guidance range.

But the bulk and the base for that range is our core business, which is fundamentally our biometrics and our identity and access management PortalGuard solution right now. So that’s the way we’re looking at it at this point in time..

Got it. That’s helpful. I appreciate the color there. And then just maybe between the -- I don’t know, maybe the lines are getting blurred now that PortalGuard has been integrated for quite some time now.

But is there anything you can share in terms of maybe the growth -- the revenue growth rates you’re expecting for 2021 between the core BIO-key biometrics business and then PortalGuard, would you expect them to grow at a similar pace or is there -- is one going to outpace the other as far as 2021 goes?.

It’s an interesting question, because there’s an integration of the biometric technology that’s also in the PortalGuard solution, right? So, fundamentally, they’re going to grow together, for sure. But we are expecting to see significant growth in our identity and access management our PortalGuard platform.

And remember, in my prepared comments, and as you have heard us say before, we support over 15 authentication factors. So biometrics is only one of those factors, right? There are 14 others that we support, pins, tokens, cards, keys, all those things, FIDO tokens.

So, we will see both of those businesses grow as we proceed through the year, but they’ll also grow together, because some customers will opt to buy biometrics and some won’t, but it doesn’t matter. We love all our children and we’re going to support all those authentication factors and support our customers in whatever they require..

Okay. Fantastic. Love all the childrens. Got it. It sounds like the children are growing and that’s great to hear. And then just maybe as, I’m going to -- I have two more kind of questions as relates to the first quarter. So you did mention this $500,000 revenue expectation for the first quarter from the Africa contracts, with Nigeria.

You’re already commencing the delivery, the first shipment.

If I just back up from that, just in general, for total revenue in the first quarter, just given seasonality, if there’s any other factors, would you expect the first quarter total revenue to be flat up or down from fourth quarter or is it too hard to tell?.

Well, I -- we don’t provide quarterly guidance, as you know. We’re providing annual guidance, because we don’t feel yet we’re able to be predictable enough to do that. We really want to make sure, again, where as accurate as possible as we come into 2021. I will say this about the quarter.

We did announce earlier this week that we would generate approximately $0.5 million from our Africa contract. And if you look at our run rate business, it’s pretty clear that you will -- that we will see sequential growth from Q4 of 2020 into Q1 of 2021. Where we’ll end up? We’ll see.

But we’re certainly believing they’ll be significant potential and opportunity for sequential growth from Q4 to Q1..

Okay. Got you. And then, if I may ask as well, just because it’s March 25th. There’s only a few days left in this quarter. How -- what’s your confidence level or certainty of receiving that $500,000 payment or at least recognizing that $500,000 revenue for the first quarter.

Is there a risk that a portion of it or all of it slips into the second quarter?.

Right now it’s high..

Okay. Fantastic.

And then, maybe just, Michael, what’s your overall sentiment, your current sentiment or feeling of just regarding the status of Nigeria and Africa as a whole? Is there a clear positive trend that you can point to or any visibility just in terms of like the reopening of their economy and the country altogether?.

Well, the economy is open. The country has been opened. But certainly been stumbling. Their economy is solely based -- not solely but mainly based around oil and oil has recovered, although, it’s been episodal in the context of price. So that’s been challenging for them. But I will say this about our projects and our programs there.

There is an edict on the streets supported by the World Bank, funded by the World Bank to the tune of $480 or so million, almost a $0.5 billion. To put in place an identity management solution that can help to create an ecosystem for prosperity in Nigeria.

So right now, the edict is in place to enroll every citizen and provide them what’s called a Nigerian identity management number or NIM number. That number is akin to our social security number here in the U.S.

If in fact individuals are not enrolled and do not get that number, they will have a very difficult time participating in everything that the country offers, including on the commercial side, having a cell phone, because their SIM card is going to be tied to the NIM number.

Any of the social services programs that the country provides, welfare-based healthcare, all of those things they will not be able to participate in those services without a NIM numbers. So there’s a lot of pressure right now to get this done.

It’s been delayed, but everything that we’re seeing leads to and you can look at the -- you can Google Nigeria and NIM and registrations and enrollment. It’s not going exactly smoothly for them. But it’s moving and it’s going to move very aggressively. So we feel encouraged right now, that 2021 will be a breakout year there for us.

And we’re not relying just solely on Nigeria. So you’re going to see some other things coming from us in other countries and with other partners that can expand our opportunity base, including selling PortalGuard across those territories. Kenya is emerging as a high-tech HubSpot, not only in Africa, but in that whole sector of the world.

And so there’s plenty of tech opportunity there for growth and upside potential. So, yeah, we’re pretty encouraged right now about the potential and the opportunity..

Fantastic. Okay. Excellent. And then just maybe one more question, maybe two more questions from me. Michael, you talked about your strong backlog and maybe said pipeline as well in the prepared remarks. Are you able to quantify anything with regards to the backlog or pipeline or maybe you want to keep that undisclosed for now.

But is there any comments you or additional color you can provide with regard to the backlog and pipeline?.

Yeah. Yeah. We don’t have the numbers now to share, but I can’t say it’s growing. And it’s some of it is obviously the opportunity in potential we have in Africa, but a significant part of it as well is within our core business in biometrics, in PortalGuard and also with our CAP program.

I think Fred in his prepared comments made it clear that a force multiplier for us is the expansion of our Channel Alliance Program, so getting more and more feet on the street through this partner network to sell our solutions.

And now that we have an IDaaS, we have a cloud-based solution available, MSPs, managed service providers, MSSPs, Managed Service Security providers love selling the cloud solution because it doesn’t require a lot of on-premise installation and support. So that’s going to be a big significant part of our growth as well going forward..

Okay. Great. And then just one final question, the biometrics capability you cited remains the core differentiator of BIO-key versus competitors or other solutions are out there in the space.

So maybe either Michael or Fred, can you maybe just talk about what you’re seeing in the marketplace when negotiating new potential contract wins or customer wins.

Are there any competitors you’re consistently seeing at the deal table or the bake-offs and how are your win rates kind of tracking or trending?.

I think I’ll let Fred handle that..

Yeah, Jack. So biometrics is definitely differentiating and where we’ve seen the most traction right now is with our CAP partner growth. So we offer something very different and that they know and understand the certain markets, customers are required. So that’s where we’ve seen the most traction right now.

As it relates to competitors, there is always the typical competitive landscape. So there’s no one particular competitor that it stands out. And when it comes to our biometrics unparalleled, we certainly have the best solution integrated into the PortalGuard platform..

Okay. Fantastic. Well, guys, I appreciate the added color and congrats on the strong finish to the year and wish you the best of luck in 2021. That’s it for me..

Thank you, Jack..

Our next question comes from Dan Thomas , a Private Investor..

Hi, guys. Well done on getting at least initial drawn on Nigeria stuff.

But I was wondering was there any movement on the telecom deal that you can tell us about?.

Are you talking about the African deal, Dan or...

Yes..

… domestic? A similar in nature, everything is starting up together and so both of our contracts are moving forward..

So does that guidance that you gave us include revenues from both those Nigerian deals?.

As I described before, we’ve taken a conservative approach. I won’t repeat myself again, but we’ve taken a conservative approach. There is certainly revenue in the guidance from Africa but at a minimal level..

All right. So much talk about in the news about ship shortages.

Do you have the hardware inventory necessary to or can you manufacture or get it to ramp the way you’d like to if the revenues do come in?.

Well, that’s a great question. It’s interesting. We were a little bit limited in our ability to supply hardware this first quarter, because of some ship shortages from some of our suppliers. So that was a bit of a challenge.

But we are now very well prepared to be able to deliver product in the coming quarters and so we’ve arranged with our suppliers to be sure that we can do that. Again, we don’t like getting too far ahead of ourselves. Remember that we operate on a cash basis in the third world and so it’s a balancing act.

But we are pretty confident that we can satisfy the demand for the next three quarters..

And are you still manufacturing the product in China. Are they ramped up or….

Yeah. Yes. The answer is yes. And we are now in a normalized state right now. So we’re back to where we need to be. And that includes manufacturing products like our sites like site touch, EcoID. Those products are now fully available and our manufacturing lines are back open in full swing..

That’s great.

Would you expect your quarter breakeven number going forward to be? I think it was about 1.8, is that change or is that still a good number?.

Yeah. We think based on the mix and so it really depends on the mix. But we are looking at now about $2 million to $2.2 million..

I see.

That’s because of lower margins on the hardware, might be selling more hardware, is that it?.

Not necessarily, we’ve made some investments, as you know, we’ve expanded our staff. We’ve certainly opened our African subsidiary. So there is some upfront cost and expense that we are experiencing right now.

Some of it again is mix, right? The margins on hardware, if it’s our hardware, are one thing, if it’s third-party hardware, they’re a little bit lower. So it takes all of that into consideration..

So then have you begun hiring staff for the African office. I know you hadn’t done that yet, except for….

Now we are right now on the cust. So as things are opening and we see the need and we will have a requirement for support and so forth, we will do that. But we have not made any significant investment in staff in Africa as of this point to-date..

I see. And what would you consider a fully staffed African office, if you could make that kind of….

I can’t even imagine. It really depends on the ramp, how fast and how significant. Those contracts have -- had a face value of approximately $75 million, and so if they ramp more quickly, more aggressively, and our other business continues to expand. For example, if our partner network and sell of PortalGuard across the territory gets more significant.

There may be more staff required. But right now I couldn’t answer that question..

Okay. Let me ask a couple of questions on PortalGuard then I’ll get back in the queue.

Are you seeing any PortalGuard sales where the customer is also interested and buys the biometric component?.

Absolutely..

Okay..

Absolutely..

Have you charge extra for the biometric capability or is that just built in the PortalGuard now?.

The -- that’s a good question. The answer is it’s an authentication factor within PortalGuard. There is an up-sell for the hardware, right? That’s required to, if it’s finger scanners to support the solution in the system and it’s part and parcel of our offering today and it needs to be part and parcel of our offering..

Okay. Thanks. I’ll get back in queue..

It looks like our next question will be a follow-up from Dan Thomas, Private Investor..

Okay. I just got a couple more here.

What was the SG&A in the fourth quarter? Do you have that broken out?.

Ceci?.

As far as, you mean, what the selling cost, the general and administrative, marketing, et cetera?.

Yeah..

I do -- I don’t have in front of me, but the total at $1.7 million. I’m going to say that there is probably $400 in selling, maybe $500 in marketing and the rest in SG&A -- in G&A..

Okay..

Just off the top of my head..

All right. Thank you. And were the one-time charges must have been down in the fourth quarter.

I’m wondering how big they were?.

Yes. We had paid the debt off in the third quarter. So on the press release we put out the one-time like interest charges, et cetera, are down and our non-cash charges were down as well for compensation expenses, et cetera..

Okay. And I noticed that the cash flow was down $1.4 million.

Is that because revenues counted in the quarter weren’t collected until the first quarter?.

We actually did have a larger shipment at the tail end of the quarter versus the beginning..

Okay.

What was the accounts receivable and deferred revenue?.

What was the deferred revenue? What was....

And the accounts receivable, yeah. I guess I can wait for the queue. But I just thought you might have the numbers..

Yeah. No. I have for the deferred revenue at the end of the year was we had long-term and short-term are current and non-current. So we had a total of almost $700,000 there for deferred and accounts receivable of $548..

Okay. Got it. Last question for, Mike, first is about back where you made purchased in the fourth quarter, are you looking to add more shares. If you don’t want to answer that’s okay, just asking..

Yeah. Probably..

Okay. Okay. That’s all I got. Thank you..

Thank you, Dan..

Our next question will come from Ashok Mehta , a Private Investor..

Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I have a couple of questions just on the African contracts. The two that you won, the value is $75 million of the contracts. I just wanted to understand, I think, the -- when the contracts were won.

We -- it was supposed to be over two-year period that the contracts would be performed and I understand about the delay and so on. So if we reset, let’s say, it’s starting out kind of around now in terms of the first quarter.

Is the company expecting that we’re going to be earning approximately $75 billion in revenues over the coming two years? Is that a reasonable assumption? I just wanted to understand, assuming that these contracts get executed according to how they were won? So that was my first question is in terms of eventual revenue from these and kind of timelines that we expect.

I know the ramp-up is a little bit waiting to be firmed and so on.

But I just wanted to clarify that?.

Great question and the answer is, yes. Our expectation is now on a two-year basis that the potential for those contracts continues -- we believe continues to be $75 million. So we expected the ramp to be a gradual ramp and then to hit full swing, a couple of quarters after the start. So that’s still our intention in our plan.

Again, as I mentioned a number of times in my prepared remarks and also in the Q&A, we’re being very conservative about our guidance, because it is unpredictable. We’ve seen again the delays, everything that we’re seeing indicates that things are going to start up and our goal and objective is to hit that $75 million over the next 24 months..

And then if I can ask, in terms of sort of mix in terms of hardware or software, in terms of that revenue level over the life of the contracts, as well as kind of -- what kind of bottomline kind of impacts.

Can we expect if these are performed according to plan?.

Well, for sure in the beginning as we’ve mentioned a number of times through the past year. There’s a lot of hardware upfront to be able to facilitate the entire ecosystem, identity management and authentication ecosystem. So there’s a lot of hardware upfront as you saw in our announcement.

This week in fact, the first shipment is finger scanners to support the enrollment for individuals across the country. So that’s going to be a big part of it and obviously the margins on hardware are not like the margins on software. So our software margins, especially in PortalGuard or biometrics could be upwards of 80%, 90% hardware.

Obviously ranges depending upon hardware that we manufacture or third-party and that can be anywhere from 20% to 50% or 60%, so it’s a wide range. But for sure, we wouldn’t do it, if it wasn’t profitable and so on the significant numbers that we could be talking about here, the large numbers.

We think it will have a very positive impact to the bottomline as we move forward..

All right. Okay. The other question that I had was just in terms of the other opportunities, you actually mentioned that you’re -- I think looking at other opportunities in Africa.

So I think just a general question, is this a lot of things that you -- lot of potential kind of opportunities that we’re talking about just in terms of kind of volume of RFPs and so on that you might be going after or -- and if the size of some of these similar potentially the size of some of these other ones that you may -- that you won last year..

Well, there is some of that and there’s also what I would consider our standard business. So, for example, selling PortalGuard, as I mentioned before, across perhaps, banking, finance and healthcare or in manufacturing. So selling our core product for identity management don’t authentication to the commercial and government agency topology in Africa.

We’re doing the same in Asia. We’re going to start ramping up there again outside of China, of course. But in Japan and Singapore, we’re going to be selling PortalGuard and PortalGuard like solutions including our biometrics across that landscape.

And so that’s not episodal, that’s more, again, it’s more mainstream and it’s more of what we do -- similar nature of what we do here in North America and in Europe. So that’s our goal and objective.

So to build that base business as well, so not just the event-based business, but the recurring kind of AAR type business that we’re building here in the U.S. to build that across the globe..

Okay. Okay. Yeah. That’s all I had. Thank you very much for taking my question..

Yeah. Thank you for the questions. Thank you..

Our next question comes from David Flooring , Private Investor..

Good morning..

Good morning, David..

I’m a long time investor going way back to when Tom C was with Osage and I’m just curious with how you guys announced your contracts? Why don’t you ever put a $1 value even for some of the smaller ones and if it’s not worth putting a $1 value on there, what good is it even make the announcement of the contract?.

That’s a great question. I get that question probably 10 times a year from investors and other interested parties. The challenge that we have in general and this is really gotten, it’s ramped up for us over the last 24 months or so. The customers we deal with use our technology to secure their infrastructures.

Ad they do not like their competitors or hackers or anyone else to know, number one, what they’re using and what they’re doing. And so we have a very difficult time, forget the dollar value, we have a very difficult time sometimes naming our customers.

And when we do sometimes we take a risk we -- there is a backlash, let’s put it this way, it happens. And so we have to be very cautious, number one in naming, who were doing business with.

The second part is from a competitive perspective, we do not want to share, because people can extrapolate on a per-user basis knowing the size of the company, we don’t want to share our pricing with our competitors. We don’t think it’s good business. We don’t think it helps us in any way shape or form and so we’re very cautious about that.

So that’s the simple answer and those are the facts..

This will conclude our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the call back over to Mike DePasquale for any closing remarks..

Thank you, everyone, and I appreciate the time that you took today to participate in our call. We look forward to updating you on our first quarter call in late April or early May, and we will continue to provide interim news and updates as warranted. Thank you very much and have a great day..

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect..