BIO-key reiterates full-year guidance as first quarter revenue falls

BIO-key’s revenue for Q1 2018 declined by more than 40 percent from a year earlier to $841,000, but the company reiterated its previous guidance for full-year revenue of $8-12 million, and expressed optimism with increasing enterprise engagement in an announcement.

The lower revenue was attributed largely to lower software license and hardware reader revenue, partially offset by revenue from its new line of Bluetooth and biometrics-enabled locks. BIO-key had a gross margin of negative 40 percent in the quarter, but reduced its operating expenses by 12 percent with overhead reduction initiatives, and actually finished the quarter on March 31 with $1.3 million in cash and equivalents on hand, compared to $0.3 million at the end of 2017.

“We continue to see solid growth opportunities across our software, hardware and consumer hardware product lines,” BIO-key’s CEO Michael DePasquale commented. “However, as we have indicated and expected, BIO-key’s quarterly performance will continue to fluctuate based on the timing of larger software and hardware agreements, creating variability in our year over year and sequential quarterly comparisons as we saw in Q1 2018. For this reason, we continue to focus investors on full year results and provide financial guidance for full year revenue as we believe this longer-term measure presents a more relevant performance metric for our business.”

DePasquale also said that is working on a range of opportunities for customers, partnerships, and expanded distribution, particularly in Asia.

The company’s technology was selected during the quarter by organizations in the financial, manufacturing, and government sectors to secure shared workstations, strengthen network access and reporting, secure work areas, and respond to password-related security breaches, according to the announcement. It also launched its OmniPass Consumer password manager in January.

Article Topics

BIO-key  |  biometrics  |  financial results  |  fingerprint biometrics