RealNetworks reports continued growth from facial recognition in Q3 financial report

Oct 31, 2019, 4:33 pm EDT | Luana Pascu

RealNetworks reports continued growth from facial recognition in Q3 financial report

Digital media software company RealNetworks has announced significant financial progress in the third quarter financial report, the company says in a press release.

RealNetworks had already announced great success for its SAFR biometric facial recognition software in its Q2 2019 report that saw revenues of $44.2 million. According to current figures, the third quarter revenue rose to $45.0 million from just $17.6 million during the same timeframe last year.

The SAFR live video artificial intelligence and biometric facial recognition platform was recently integrated with the Nvidia Metropolis Software Partner Program to improve technology deployment in smart city projects. In June, SAFR biometric facial recognition was rolled out in a museum in Europe on MOBOTIX cameras to provide live analytics.

Some other financial highlights include free-to-play casual mobile games such as Delicious World which led to a 30 percent year-over-year revenue increase, a 35 percent decrease in operating expenses compares to the same period in the previous year, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $3.2 million compared to a loss of $6.3 million in the prior quarter and a loss of $3.3 million in the prior year period.

In May, RealNetworks reported Napster had been added to the parent company’s product portfolio that resulted in a positive net income of $1.5 million in that quarter. In August, RealNetworks and Napster entered a loan agreement for $10.0 million to use for working capital and business activities, out of which $6.1 million was available at the end of the third quarter.

“In the third quarter, we continued to make solid progress with two key growth initiatives: our SAFR facial and object recognition platform and free-to-play casual mobile games,” said Rob Glaser, Chairman and CEO of RealNetworks. “For SAFR, we entered into new verticals through partnerships with systems integrators and GPU market leader, NVIDIA. We also gained traction in our commercialization efforts through collaborations with leading Video Management Systems.”

“In Games, our free-to-play casual mobile games continued to perform well and scale up,” Glaser added. “This is particularly true with Delicious World, which is on track to become our most successful casual game ever in terms of revenue and engagement even though it’s only been in global release for six months. These successes, along with our ongoing commitment to carefully manage our costs, have resulted in a significant improvement on the bottom line.”

For the fourth quarter, the company is expecting revenue in the range of $40.0 million to $43.0 million, and an adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $2.0 million to $5.0 million.