Aware biometrics deployed for banking and land border security; Q4 results below expectations

Aware’s biometric facial recognition with liveness detection solution has been implemented by a number of banks in Latin America to provide their customers with secure mobile biometric authentication, the company announced.

Knomi biometric authentication will be integrated with their mobile app and security infrastructure for customers to log in without relying on passwords. Knomi supports multiple biometric algorithms for seamless mobile onboarding and a password-less authentication experience. Its software development kits (SDKs) and web services support biometric face and voice, and leverage these modalities for biometric capture, liveness detection and matching.

“Knomi delivers the reliability and performance of government-grade software that banks of this size require to scale biometric authentication to millions of users,” said in a prepared statement Bob Eckel, Aware’s CEO & President. “But it’s Aware’s ability to engage with our customers at the workflow and algorithm level, utilizing their existing robust processes providing continual optimization of the performance and user experience that sets us apart from other providers.”

Knomi will be featured at the FIDO Alliance stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency rolls out CaptureSuite for land border protection

After using Aware’s CaptureSuite biometric software for more than 25 years to protect air entry borders, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has rolled out the solution at U.S. land border crossings.

CaptureSuite is a set of three fingerprint SDKs that use a variety of algorithms to enable rapid fingerprint capture and quality assurance that is independent of the capture device used.

CBP will incorporate CaptureSuite software into its border stations to quickly capture tenprints of people crossing the U.S. borders to minimize queue buildup at crossing points and ensure optimal quality of the captured prints.

“Aware has been a trusted biometric product supplier to the U.S. Federal Government for over 25 years,” said Bob Eckel, Aware’s CEO & President. “As a U.S.-based company, we are proud to assist our government in protecting our borders, our citizens, and our service men and women.”

CaptureSuite will be presented at the connect:ID conference in Washington DC in March.

Revenue results below expectations in Q4

Aware reports $2.4 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2019, down from $4.1 million in Q4 2018. The decrease was mostly due to lower biometrics software license revenue and lower biometrics services revenue, but also lower biometrics maintenance revenue, the company explains.

Lower software license revenue were mostly driven by lower revenue from the software license agreement Aware entered into with a systems integrator in the second quarter of 2018 but also by lower license sales to other customers.

Reported operating loss in Q4 2019 was $1.7 million compared to an operating income of $0.3 million in Q4 2018. Net loss in Q4 2019 was $7.5 million, respectively $0.35 per diluted share, compared to a net income of $0.6 million, respectively $0.03 per diluted share in Q4 last year.

Revenue for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019 was $12.2 million compared to $16.1 million in 2018. The total operating loss for 2019 was $4.1 million compared to operating income of $0.4 million in 2018.

Aware reports the net loss for the year ended December 31, 2019 was $8.3 million, or $0.39 per diluted share, compared to a net income of $1.2 million, or $0.06 per diluted share in 2018.

The company also registered a $5.2 million tax provision that was partially offset by $1.0 million of interest income.

“Our revenue results for the fourth quarter were below expectations. We had a number of deals that were not closed and slid from the fourth quarter into the first quarter of 2020. As we enter into 2020, we are focused on executing a shift in our business model to a focus on long-term subscription-based accounts in the commercial and government markets,” said Robert Eckel, Aware’s chief executive officer and president.

“We have increased our emphasis on the front end of the business and have hired a vice president of worldwide sales and are looking to further leverage our multi-modal biometrics domain expertise, unique liveness spoofing prevention technology and customer-managed and integration ready biometrics frameworks, platforms and software building blocks to drive company growth,” Eckel added.

Article Topics

Aware  |  banking  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometric software  |  biometrics  |  border management  |  facial recognition  |  financial results  |  fingerprint technology