Aware reports strong positioning in government biometrics market, financial fallout from COVID-19

Aware earned $2.5 million in revenue in the third quarter of its fiscal 2020, up sequentially on higher biometric software sales but lower on a year-over-year basis due to impacts from COVID-19, the company says.

The company booked operating losses equal to revenue, and a net loss of $1.8 million in the quarter, or a loss of $0.08 per diluted share. A year earlier Aware had a net loss of just $0.2 million, or $0.01 per diluted share, but losses were significantly reduced from Q2 2020, and the company has $42.3 million in cash and equivalents, down only $4.4 million from the beginning of the year.

Over the first nine months of 2020, Aware earned $7.9 million, compared to $9.8 million in the same period a year ago. Investments in sales and engineering resources, as well as non-recurring expenses squeezed the company’s overall results, and Aware reports a net loss of $6 million for the nine months ending in September, or a $0.28 loss per diluted share, compared to a loss of $0.9 million or $0.04 per diluted share in the first 9 months of 2019.

Aware CEO Bob Eckel noted the importance of being confirmed compliant to the industry standard for Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) from iBeta, which occurred near the end of the reporting period.

“In parallel, we’ve also increased our focus on operational and growth initiatives, including expanding our marketing efforts and reallocating resources to align our go-to-market approach with trends in our target markets,” Eckel states. “Our early traction on these initiatives has quadrupled subscription revenue and tripled the number of Knomi subscription customers year-to-date, as well as enabled Knomi to facilitate more than 10 million trusted transactions worldwide. We’re encouraged by our progress and look forward to realizing even greater ROI as we roll out our strategic roadmap in the coming quarters.”

Eckel states that with a strong position amongst blue chip government agencies, “a fortified balance sheet” and a strong biometrics portfolio, the company is better positioned for growth than ever before.

Other recent highlights for the company include the implementation of Knomi to support the authentication of offenders in the criminal justice system of Arkansas, and surpassing 10 million transactions protected by Knomi as it released an on-device version of the authentication software.

Article Topics

Aware  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  financial results  |  government purchasing  |  stocks