Aware reports Q1 2018 results, announces stock repurchase plan

Aware has reported financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2018 and also revealed that its Board of Directors has approved a program authorizing the biometrics software company to purchase up to $10 million of its common stock.

Revenue for the first quarter of 2018 was $2.9 million, a decrease of 30% compared to $4.2 million in the same quarter last year. Operating loss in the first quarter of 2018 was $0.7 million compared to operating income of $0.2 million in the first quarter of 2017. The company says that the decrease in revenue and resulting operating loss were primarily due to: lower biometrics software license sales; lower service revenue, and; no income from a patent arrangement that were partially offset by no cost of software licenses and lower cost of services.

Net loss in the first quarter of 2018 was $0.5 million, or $0.02 per diluted share, which compares to net income of $0.3 million, or $0.01 per diluted share, in the same period a year ago.

“Our results for the first quarter were below our expectations,” said Kevin Russell, Aware’s chief executive officer and president. “We have a number of opportunities that we are working on that we were not able to close in the first quarter. Our pipeline for 2018 looks promising, but we are unable to predict when opportunities will result in revenue. We continue to see interest in our product offerings in the government, commercial and mobile markets.”

Stock repurchase plan

Aware also announced that its Board of Directors has approved a program authorizing the company to purchase up to $10 million of its common stock by December 31, 2019. The shares may be purchased from time to time in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions at management’s discretion.

As of April 23, 2018, the company had 21,546,818 shares of common stock outstanding. Repurchases will be made under the program using the company’s own cash resources and will be in accordance with Rule 10b-18 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and other applicable laws, rules and regulations.

According to the announcement, the program does not obligate the company to acquire any particular amount of common stock and, at the company’s discretion, the program may be modified or suspended at any time. As of April 23, 2018, the Company had over $50 million of cash and cash equivalents.

Top ten multifactor authentication solution provider

In other company news, Aware has been recognized by Enterprise Security Magazine as a Top Ten Multifactor Authentication Solution Provider of 2018.

The Aware Knomi mobile biometric authentication framework applies face, voice, and keystroke biometrics to enable multifactor authentication using a mobile device, either as an alternative to passwords or as part of a step-up authentication scheme. Knomi can apply multiple biometric modalities simultaneously to boost matching and liveness detection performance with minimal impact on user experience and can be implemented with biometric data storage and matching occurring either on the mobile device or on the server.

Aware will demonstrate Knomi at next week’s connect:ID expo and conference in Washington, DC.

Article Topics

Aware  |  biometric software  |  financial results  |  multifactor authentication