Major biometrics revenue gains reported for Safr and BIO-key

In an upbeat round of earnings announcements from publicly traded companies in the identity space, Safr biometrics offset declines elsewhere in RealNetworks portfolio during the first quarter of 2021, while BIO-key has reported dramatic growth and strong momentum in multiple business areas. Identiv thinks its improved outlook may be conservative, and Plurilock has filed for an equity offering.

RealNetworks raises $20M

RealNetworks reports revenues of $15.9 million in its fiscal first quarter of 2021, with its Safr facial recognition business growing by a robust 160 percent year-over-year.

Revenues from the biometric software are included in RealNetworks’ mobile services category, and combined with the company’s second artificial intelligence business, KONTXT, made up 29 percent of the $5.98 million booked in mobile services revenue during Q1.

The growth of Safr face biometrics revenue was driven by wins in the U.S. Federal market and among global commercial applications, according to the announcement.

RealNetworks had an overall net loss of $10.6 million during the quarter, an adjusted EBITDA loss of $3 million, which marked a seventh consecutive quarter of improvement on a year-over-year basis, and also completed a public offering of common stock just following the quarter’s end, raising $20.3 million to accelerate its AI business.

In the second quarter, RealNetworks expects to earn revenues of between $14 million and $15.5 million, as the company executes an investment year to prepare for expected double-digit revenue growth in 2022 and 2023.

BIO-key books major revenue and profit growth

BIO-key earned $1.8 million in revenue during its first quarter, up dramatically from $522,000 in the first quarter of 2020, with revenues from licenses up over 100 percent and hardware revenue up 1,193 percent. The latter figure includes initial shipments of the company’s biometric solutions to the African market.

Operating expenses increased only 7 percent, on a year-over-year basis, and gross profit spiked from $0.4 million in 2020 to $1.1 million in the past quarter, an increase of 182 percent, though gross margin decreased from just over 76 percent to just over 59 percent.

Recent highlights for BIO-key include a $1.2 million contract extension to supply fingerprint biometrics to a Fortune 500 company, and the deployment of its biometric multi-factor authentication by a U.S. West Coast State’s election office, and adding 29 new members to its Channel Alliance Partner (CAP).

“We also continue to focus on innovation and new product development to provide greater functionality and value to our enterprise customers,” comments BIO-key CEO Michael DePasquale. “We recently launched our new mobile app, BIO-key MobileAuth with PalmPositive, a touchless palm-scan authentication technology for IOS and Android systems. This easy-to-use app requires no specialized hardware, as it utilizes the device’s camera, offers fast registration and enrollment while supporting multifactor and Single Sign-on solutions to streamline logins, while also making them more secure. MobileAuth builds upon our substantial biometric experience to add touchless biometric capabilities to the 16 authentication factors already supported by BIO-key’s PortalGuard platform.”

“We plan to add other identity-bound biometric authentication methods, such as voice and facial recognition, to the MobileAuth application in 2021,” adds DePasquale. “This will extend our leadership and support for strong multi-factor authentication (MFA) that offers the highest levels of integrity, security, accuracy, and availability across devices.”

DePasquale noted momentum for its PortalGuard IAM solution and its CAP program, and says the company is on track to meet its revenue guidance range of $8 million to $12 million, the mid-point of which would represent a 250 percent increase over the company’s full-year 2020 result.

BIO-key’s VP of Product Kimberley Johnson, meanwhile, is listed among CRN’s 2021 Women of the Channel: Power 100 for her accomplishments in building up the company’s CAP program. Johnson successfully recruited new partners to BIO-key’s channel, enabled its channel sales teams to expand its global footprint and worked with partners on co-branded marketing and sales activities.

The company’s CRO and CAP program head Fred Corsentino praised Johnson’s achievements in helping BIO-key grow through deployments of its PortalGuard IDaaS solution.

Identiv launches biometric platform and reports strong RFID growth

Identiv’s revenues grew by 22 percent to $22.2 million, with its RFID focus area growing by 59 percent.

The company’s identity segment grew by 38 percent to $13.7 million. Operating expenses were down slightly, and Identiv reports a GAAP net loss of $1.5 million for Q1 2021, or $0.09 per basic and diluted share.
During its fiscal first quarter, Identiv launched its Velocity Vision platform, which it says supports government-grade biometrics.

The company reiterated its expectations of double-digit revenue growth for 2021, and between 20 and 25 percent during the first half.

Plurilock prepares to raise funds

Plurilock has filed a preliminary short form base shelf prospectus with securities regulators in Canada, enabling it to offer, issue and sell common shares, warrants, subscription receipts, debt securities and units for up to $50 million, within a 25-month period.

“We are pleased to announce the filing of this new base shelf prospectus which will provide Plurilock with the maximum financial flexibility to raise capital over the next 25 months as we continue to advance our growth and expansion strategies in the North American cybersecurity industry,” states Ian L. Paterson, CEO of Plurilock.

Plurilock recently filed a patent application to extend its behavioral biometrics to insider threats.

Article Topics

BIO-key  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  facial recognition  |  financial results  |  Identiv  |  Plurilock  |  RealNetworks  |  SAFR  |  stocks