BIO-key International, Inc. Stock

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to BIO-key International's second quarter 2026 conference call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Friday, August 14, 2026. I will now turn the call over to Bill Jones of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hosting today are BIO-key's Chairman and CEO, Michael DePasquale, and its CFO, Cecilia Welch. As a reminder, today's call and webcast, as well as answers to investor questions, include forward-looking statements. These are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. Words such as anticipate, believe, expect, plan, or project, and similar words identify and express forward-looking statements.

These statements are made based on beliefs, assumptions, and information currently available to management, pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. For a more complete description of these risks and uncertainties that affect future performance, please see risk factors in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and the current Form 10-Q with the SEC. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements made as of today, and the company makes no obligation to revise or disclose revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events occurring after this call.

Now I'll turn the call over to Mike to begin.

Thanks, Bill, and thank you all for joining us this morning. After my remarks, Cecilia will review the financials, and then we will take investor questions. Let me start with the headline. Our second quarter bottom line improved 51% on 13% revenue growth. And for the first half of the year, our net loss improved almost 60% on 23% growth in revenues. To be clear, these results didn't meet our proposed expectations, not because of any softness in demand, but due to a delayed shipment for a hardware order that we had anticipated in Q2. The order was delayed, and we expect to ship it in the second half of the year.

Considering that shift, combined with the opportunities already in our pipeline, we expect continued growth and are targeting profitability for the second half of 2026. So let me spend some time talking about what's driving our outlook. It's really about the broader momentum we're building today, particularly across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, or EMEA, which is really starting to bear fruit. We're closing deals, adding productive channel partners, and developing new project discussions at an accelerated pace, all of which fundamentally underlie our business momentum. Our revenue gains are also supported by strong secular backdrops. According to Future Market Insights, the global market for authentication solutions is projected to grow rapidly over the next 10 years, from roughly $26 billion this year to over $114 billion by 2036.

This represents a 16% compounded annual growth rate as organizations of all kinds and all sizes take action to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. In the area of passwordless authentication, where BIO-key delivers industry-leading solutions, a recent FIDO Alliance report found that 68% of organizations are actively deploying or piloting passkeys for employee sign-in. In addition to our biometric and Passkey:WE passwordless solutions, our flexible authentication platform, PortalGuard, supports 16 different authentication factors and doesn't depend on any single device. This provides us with a unique ability to support complex authentication environments because when it comes to enterprise and government authentication needs, one size simply doesn't fit all.

To put that in context, let me walk through several recent wins and partnerships, most of which were announced just in the past few weeks. In the Middle East, we partnered with MaktabiTech to bring PortalGuard, including passwordless authentication and identity-bound biometrics, to educational institutions in Saudi Arabia, supporting their Vision 2030 digital transformation agenda, as well as to Jordan and the U.S. Separately, the Central Bank of Jordan is working with us on a national initiative to modernize authentication across the country's financial sector using our PortalGuard and WEB-key technologies to move away from passwords and tokens entirely.

We believe growing examples of national scale mandates, including sovereign ID, represent the future of authentication in the region, a future where we intend to play a substantial role. Turning to Europe, a national security agency in Portugal selected BIO-key and our in-country partner, Visualforma, to deploy PortalGuard and WEB-key with our FBI-certified EcoID fingerprint scanners. This follows our earlier nationwide public sector rollout and a digital identity contract we secured with Visualforma for deployment in a major Portuguese tourist city. It's an example of how one successful public sector deployment can help foster additional opportunities as trust and reference relationships continue to build over time.

In the U.S., Alabama's AOD Federal Credit Union, which serves more than 37,000 members, deployed our phishing-resistant biometric-based authentication solution through our partner, BlueAlly, citing our platform's flexibility versus alternatives that they evaluated, as well as reduced help desk burden from eliminating frequent password resets. As phishing and MFA fatigue attacks escalate against financial institutions, identity-bound biometrics is gaining traction as smart and powerful protection with a compelling cost of ownership. I'll also note, we continue to see attractive second half opportunities building in our EMEA pipeline. Our momentum in the region is broad-based, spanning government, defense, financial services, and now education.

We believe this reflects rising urgency among these customers, driven both by increasing cybersecurity incidents and growing geopolitical tensions, and supported by generally more favorable regulatory frameworks that let us move from first conversation to signed contracts more quickly. In the second quarter, we completed a 1-for-10 reverse stock split to support our continued Nasdaq listing. In July, we regained compliance with the Nasdaq listing rules and resumed trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market, which provides a visible and respected platform for our common stock. And earlier this week, we enhanced our financial liquidity and balance sheet through a warrant transaction that raised gross proceeds of $2.5 million. New capital will continue to support our operations and, more importantly, our growth initiatives and perceived financial strength with prospective customers, while also bolstering our compliance with current and proposed listing requirements.

Most importantly, we are focused on executing against the significant opportunities in front of us. Our go-to-market model continues to scale efficiently through partners. Roughly half of our new U.S. business and virtually all of our international business is developed through our channel network. On the domestic public sector side, we're building out our working relationship with our new partner, DLT Solutions, a division of TD SYNNEX. This relationship provides a streamlined procurement path into DLT's very large base of public sector customers, most of whom must work with pre-approved vendors to meet Zero Trust and MFA mandates. On the product side, our major PortalGuard 7.0 platform upgrade is now being demonstrated to prospects and has already begun to roll out more broadly across our existing customer base.

I will now touch on an area of exciting potential, which is the role biometric authentication can play in securing the AI ecosystem. We believe that human oversight of agentic operations really is a killer app opportunity for biometrics. Several recent high-profile AI control failures have helped to highlight the need and the potential for biometrics to play a critical role in providing non-repudiable authentication and approval for material AI agent actions. This isn't just our internal view. In January, the first governance framework built specifically for agentic AI was released at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting with a central pillar that humans must remain meaningfully accountable for decisions and actions taken by autonomous systems.

We see biometrics as the ideal method for enabling such human control. Separately, the Cloud Security Alliance have described a governance vacuum around non-human identities as service accounts, bots, and AI agents now outnumber human users inside many enterprises by more than 100 to 1. And most organizations have no reliable way to tie an agent's actions back to an accountable person. Chief Information Security Officers rank identity assurance for an AI world as a top security priority in 2026 and 2027. We think that's exactly the gap that biometric identity-bound authentication is built to close, anchoring high-stakes approvals to a real person rather than a device or a credential that can be shared, stolen, or cloned.

We are actively working to develop strategies around our existing solutions, such as Passkey:WE, and working to identify and develop strategic partners to build out AI governance connection points around this opportunity. Before I turn the call over to Cecilia, I want to reiterate our excitement about the business progress so far this year and the strength of our outlook for the second half and moving forward. It's a genuinely exciting time for BIO-key, as the work we put into this business over many years is increasingly being recognized and, more importantly, validated by a growing base of private and public sector customers around the world. With that, I'll turn the call over to Cecilia for her financial review.

Thank you, Mike. We released our results after yesterday's close via press release and also filed our Form 10-Q. Let me walk you through some of the important highlights. Total revenue for Q2 '26 increased 13% to $1.92 million compared to $1.7 million in Q2 '25. That growth was driven by a 53% increase in license fee revenue to $1.2 million from $800,000 reflected several new customer license agreements signed during the quarter. Hardware revenue decreased 19% to $460,000 from $569,000, principally due to the timing of customer deployments, including the absence of a large order Mike mentioned that shifted from Q2 into our second half, with a large deployment for a long-term customer in prior year period. Service, maintenance and other revenue decreased 28% to $231,000 from $322,000 due to lower non-recurring service revenues tied to product customization and the timing of recurring revenue service agreements renewals. The first half of the year, total revenue grew 23%. They're also driven primarily by the license fee growth.

Gross profit for the quarter increased 36% to $1.7 million from $1.2 million in Q2 '25, and gross margin improved to 87% up from 73% a year ago. That improvement reflects growth as well as larger concentration of high margin license fee revenue and increased benefit from sales of hardware inventory that had previously been fully reserved. Much of the reserved inventory relates to units originally purchased for projects that were delayed indefinitely during the pandemic. We have been selling that inventory into other markets and since it's been fully reserved, those sales carry 100% gross profit contribution. Total operating expenses decreased 5% to $2.2 million, principally reflecting lower selling general and administrative expense from our ongoing cost containment efforts, partially offset by higher expenses related to the reverse stock split and operating expenses, audit and tax-related costs.

In all, our Q2 '26 net loss improved to $577,000, or $0.56 per share, compared to a net loss of $1.17 million, or $2.01 per share in Q2 '25, a 51% improvement. For the first half, our net loss improved 59% to $782,000, or $0.75 per share, compared to $1.9 million, or $3.61 per share, in the first half of 2025. Weighted average common shares outstanding, and per share results reflect an impact of the April 30th 1-for-10 reverse stock split, as well as warrant exercises and other financing activities through June 30th.

Turning to the balance sheet, stockholders' equity was $4.3 million as of June 30, and we had $3.8 million of current assets at the quarter end, including $1.4 million of cash and $1.7 million of accounts receivable and $376,000 of inventory. Following the quarter end, we reduced the outstanding balance due for our outstanding note by $350,000 or 51% to $325,000 in exchange for the issuance of $81,100, or approximately $4.32 per share. And as Mike mentioned, we raised gross proceeds of $2.5 million earlier this week through a warrant inducement transaction involving the sale of 681,334 shares of common stock upon the exercise price of $4.06 per share, and the new issuance of warrants to purchase 1.2 million shares of common stock at an exercise price also $4.06 per share. Given the effect of the financing proceeds, the company's current cash position is now over $4.5 million, which provides ample working capital support for our operations and growth. As Mike outlined, we expect continued growth and we are targeting profitability for the second half of the year. Operator, we can now proceed with questions and answers.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group. Please go ahead.

Okay, good morning. Great update, Mike. So, Mike, maybe I'll start with a question on your business outlook for the back half of the year. Expecting revenue growth and profitability, which is great to hear. Just maybe touch on that, I guess specifically that large hardware order that got pushed into the second half? Do you have any line of sight there, visibility, how that's going to be allocated as it ships? And is it going to be, or is it going to be allocated across both the third and the fourth quarter?

It's hard for me to say right now. We'd like to see it all ship in the third quarter, but we'll see as things evolve. But more importantly, Jack, that's not the only large order or let's say project or contract that we're working for the second half. What I didn't mention in my prepared remarks is what we're really enthused and excited about is the size of our orders and the amount of orders and the size of our contracts are going up significantly. So as we work in the regulated industries, especially in government, defense, and in banking, the opportunities in general themselves are bigger, right? The user counts and user population are larger, and so therefore, so are the value of those contracts. So the reason that we're enthused and excited about continued growth in the second half and obviously getting to profitability is, you know, we need just a couple of those large ones to fall, and we should easily get there. So it's that order and many others that we're working in the second half as well in our pipeline.

Okay, great. No, I appreciate all that. Of course, things are... it's really growth across the board here. If I look at your license revenue as well, that did look like it picked up a bit here in the second quarter. I just want to kind of housekeeping question. Normally you have that slower third quarter sometimes in the licensing front because of EMEA. Now things have changed a little bit in your business model. Do we expect growth across, I guess, all the segments as well then in the back half, including license revenue?

Yes, well, first of all, license revenue is growing, and that's really what we're after, right? I mean, that's what drives our gross margin and maintaining a high gross margin, because most of our customers who buy our biometric, identity-bound biometric solutions, buy both hardware and software. But for sure, the third quarter, given again, like right now, virtually everyone is off right in August. So things don't pick up until first or so, first, second week of September. But I still feel like we have enough in the pipeline to have growth in the third quarter and absolutely, certainly significant growth in the fourth quarter as we close out the year. So, yes, I think we're going to continue to see growth across the board.

And, like what we're after, right? That's the business here, recurring revenue, signing customers up, getting more contracts in play, and building a recurring revenue base. That and, you know, maintaining our expense levels. We had a little bit of a blip in the second quarter with one-time expenses, but that was a one-time event. Our expenses have been very stable, if not declining. So, you know, we need to hold in that realm and we need to build that license revenue. With gross margins in the, you know, 85% range, it's, you know, most of what we sell drops to the bottom line.

Yup, no, definitely. This is actually, might be a historical record quarter on the gross margin front. I'm looking back at my model here, but no, that was great to see. And then plus you got this cash that came in with these warrant inducements and I think you're over $4 million of cash now pro forma. As you look forward and you're going to be profitable, I mean, is this cash? What are the specific use cases for cash? Or is this just good working capital on hand to have?

And no further dilution expected. Well, there's no further dilution expected. That's for sure. At this point, we have adequate cash resources to not only operate our business, but to continue to invest in the areas, as I mentioned, around agentic AI and security. Securing that whole ecosystem right now is really a wonderful opportunity for biometrics, and no one does it better than us. I mean, it's pretty clear, and we've been validating this, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, with many prospect customers and, in particular, partners, that we have a very unique offering. Roaming users and use cases where phones and tokens just don't work and because again they use users cannot have, for example, a phone in their hand if they're in a service bay, or they don't want them with a phone in a call center where you can take photographs of customer records and that kind of thing.

So, you know, we've got the perfect solution, and our Passkey:WE offering, which is now ramping is going to be a really big benefit for us. So, you know, we're just really optimistic about being able to take advantage of that. But yes, we're not anticipating any additional dilution at this point. We've got adequate cash on hand to continue to operate our business and we'd like to keep working at the highest level we can. It gives us credibility with our prospects and our customers. And so that was the impetus behind doing this last raise that we did.

Okay, great to hear. And just because you mentioned it, maybe one more question on Passkey:WE, just do you have like a rough sense, what percentage or just roughly how much of that is a business driver for your results, I guess, in the back half to get profitable or your revenues recently. Just kind of what does that make up in terms of BIO-key's overall revenue mix?

Well, we're just scaling. It's hard for me to give you a percentage, but it's the kind of solution, maybe put it in context, a solution that can be sold anywhere to anyone even if they're running today a competitive offering. So let's just take a classic Okta, ForgeRock, Duo, SailPoint customer that has those use cases that I just mentioned. They have employees in the call center. They have service employees that cannot utilize a phone or a token. They can take advantage of our solution because it can just bolt on to their existing what we call IdP. So it can just bolt on and can be utilized today without changing out their infrastructure.

So that's pretty powerful. We don't really know what the potential is over the next, you know, probably 12 months, but it's significant. And as we continue to, right now, we're in a number of different evaluations and pilots with some large customers. As we get more data and information on that, I think we'll be able to predict. But at this point, we know it's large. We'll see how large. And by the way, if we can attach this directly to those partners for them to make available to their customers that are in those fringe use cases, it can be even bigger. It could be really significant. But we have work to do.

Excellent. Well, great to hear, Mike. I appreciate all the time and I'll hop back in the queue.

Thanks.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Dan Camhi, Private Investor. Please go ahead.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Hi. On the Central Bank of Jordan, the release said that the central bank was developing an initiative. Does that mean that they're studying what they want to do or have they been, are you contracted and actually receiving revenues like in the second quarter or expect in the third quarter?

Yes, we are, and we're expecting it to be much more significant going forward. So, in the second half and then obviously into the first part of 2027, as we described in that press release, it's a significant initiative that could impact their entire user population. If you think about our South African bank customer where, you know, we're generating well over a million dollars in ARR, it certainly has that potential and capability, but will crescendo to that over the next probably two to three quarters.

I see. Will you be selling hardware?

Both hardware and software. But obviously our focus is on the software, right, the user accounts. That's always driving – well, again, our blended gross margins are really, really good, 75% plus. But obviously software is a higher gross margin.

I see. So what, what has to happen for you to actually ramp up and make some of these bigger sales? Is there some...

We're really in the deployment planning stage right now, it's how we go from point A to point B and, you know, there's a lot of work when you're doing a deployment this large, right? There's not only – there's logistics, there's everything, right? Provisioning, logistics, all that kind of stuff. So we're in the planning stages with them right now.

I see. But my question is, is this like a pilot where they'll then decide whether they want to continue to run?

No, no, no, no, no, no. No, we're well beyond that. So we've been selected. I think the press release was clear on that, as was the quote from the senior cyber research who's been working with us.

I see. And was that a competitive bid?

Yes. Believe it or not, it was a competitive situation, and we were selected sole source.

Okay. All right, let's switch to the Portugal release. How do we estimate the value of the rollout of BIO-key's IAM and biometric authentication technologies to the Portugal's public sector ecosystem? Is your margin, and what is your margin considering your partnering with Visualforma?

The margins are the same. You know, typically a partner, it could be Visualforma or, you know, it could be DLT, could be any one of our partners, domestic or international. Typically, they get a 25%, anywhere from 20% to 30% on the high end discount off the software. But again, the gross margin to us, because it's software, is the same. So it's 85% of a lower number, but it's 85%. So typically, again, Dan, that's the classic partner discount that these partners get. And so generally they get a discount on the software and then they're providing services to the customer. Right. And that's where they really make most of their money.

Right. They get obviously they get a margin on selling the product, but their real business is providing the services and all of the support to the end customers. And in EMEA, 100%, it doesn't matter how large the enterprise is or how small they are, they're generally buying through an MSP, MSSP, or reseller or distributor. So that's the way that model works. And it really is a force multiplier. And we bought the Swivel Secure Europe business, when we bought it four or five, almost five years ago now, we bought that to get the distribution channel and the resources that we have there now in EMEA to sell through our products, right? And we were always planning on a transition from selling the Swivel product to BIO-key product, right?

The Swivel product had a 50% gross margin. Our BIO-key products have margins that are significantly higher than that. What's astounding to me, especially over the last year, given that we jettisoned the SSE product and decided not to renew that contract, it's amazing how these partners have very, very rapidly picked up on the BIO-key solutions and the biometric component in the BIO-key solutions that they're now selling through to all these customers. It really is amazing, and that's why we have such a significant pipeline there.

Okay, and the first part of that question was, how do we value the rollout to the public sector?

Well, you know, you're talking about a country. You're talking about a public sector component in, I call it state and local, right? We did sell a large municipality a solution that now can be replicated into 50 or 100 types of scenarios like that and then you have what we announced last week or the week before was a federal government agency that secured our product for a very high profile defense-related initiative. So that was federal. We sold about four to six months ago a municipal-type scenario, and now, you know, connect the dots. You got references. What is that potential? It's certainly in the millions of ARR over the next, you know, quarters. But again, that business will be developed in combination with that partner and other partners as well that are selling in that space.

I see. Now, I think Portugal's got about 1 million people in their public sector. So are you basically looking to get that whole niche over the next couple years or something like that? Is that what we're looking at?

Again, if you're thinking about state and local, that's one thing, but think about all the government-related initiatives in security, in military, in intelligence. These are all the things that are ramping up, not just in Portugal. They're ramping up in every country in the region, in the fuller EMEA region, not just in Europe, in the Middle East. I mean, look at the way the countries in the Middle East are ramping from a defense initiative perspective, from an intelligence perspective. And the fact that, and this is why I think our business there has just astounding potential, because we're now collaborative. As a country, we are collaborating more with those Middle Eastern countries than we ever have before. And they're buying a lot from us on the defense side, right? Not just weapons, but we're collaborating from an intelligence perspective. We're collaborating from a financial perspective. So, I mean, I just think the potential is incredible.

Got it.

One other thing, Dan. And we have references, like real references. So when we find an opportunity or an opportunity comes to the doorstep through a partner, it's easy for us to refer them to someone who's already using the solution to solve a similar problem. To me, that's huge. That's 60% of what you need to continue to build and scale a business.

Yes, I understand. On Saudi Arabia, I found it interesting that they were interested in your technology for education, not necessarily for finance and defense. Is there an opportunity there?

Well, there is. And, again, it all comes down to the partners, right? So we signed on a partner that has a very strong base in education. And we have the references in other applications where it's being used. And so here, too, what I just described is a proof point that we can continue to find ourselves expanding into other sectors of the economy. And education is just one of them. We have a very large project in healthcare in a Middle Eastern country that we're deploying right now. You know, a lot going on.

Okay. You said Jordan was sole source. Is that true of some of these other ones too? Is there any competition? I'm just kind of wondering, who are you competing against?

Yes, so many of these projects come in through partners, but also come in through large technology partner companies as well. So, for example, we have been working very closely with SailPoint in the Middle East, who has, you know, multi, multi, multi-million dollar contracts to provide security solutions mostly for governance and, you know, not necessarily authentication, and they need an authentication partner, someone who has the flexibility and someone who provides the biometrics like we do, which is very unique. And so that's why, you know, our business is growing. It's the relationships with the partners and the big technology companies that are driving these large contracts on these international opportunities.

And that's where our group, in particular in EMEA, has done an incredible job. And they've been doing this for 15 years. So, you know, that partner network that we built there is very valuable because it takes a lot of time to build that network. It takes even more time to get real deals going with them. And then it takes just really good relationship management to continue to grow and scale the business.

Let's move to the U.S. The U.S. financial system seems to me like it's been quite resistant to moving towards identity-bound biometrics. Is the Alabama federal credit union any kind of even minor harbinger of change for that in the U.S.?

I think it is, Dan. I think that the whole, first of all, the cyber attack acceleration, especially since we've been engaged with the, you know, international altercations and geopolitical stuff that we're going through is kind of escalating. That's number one. Number two, I think the agentic AI situation has everyone on edge. And you're right, biometrics in general, right, there was this perception that biometrics infringed on privacy and the U.S. was all about protecting your privacy, right, not caring necessarily about your security. Well, I shouldn't say not caring, but caring less about the security and more about your privacy. That line is moving for sure because good security protects your privacy. It doesn't impinge on your privacy.

And that perception of biometrics potentially impinging on privacy is really starting to move. And I think consumers are starting to recognize that as well. And they're also recognizing the convenience of a biometric. They're also seeing that the traditional SMS, you know, multi-factor type authentication, that the hard token that we've been using for years, the validate accounts are going away. I mean, Microsoft announced it fundamentally that they're killing SMS authentication in Entra over the next couple of quarters, and they're going to passkeys. So, passkeys come out a direct, convenient, biometric option, which I think is going to accelerate the use of biometrics in general across the enterprise and across consumer apps in the coming quarters. And it's going to happen pretty quick.

I see. Is there an opportunity with Microsoft there to partner in any way?

You know, I'd like to say yes, but on the other hand, you know, if you look at Google and Microsoft, you know, Google Authenticator and Microsoft with Entra, they've kind of gone it alone, I should say, and they're trying to entrap all of their customers into utilizing everything that they make available. More experienced CISOs are rebelling against that because they don't want all their eggs in one basket. And so there, in my opinion, is the opportunity. It's not necessarily partnering with them. It's offering an alternative, which is better, faster, and cheaper than they can provide. Because they may lure you in and offer you a new component for free, right? And then next year, when you get your renewal contract, you notice that you just got a 20% hit. And now you're already using the solution and it's very difficult to switch out. So, yes. I think we play to that and we play very well there. Plus, we offer the 16 factors of authentication, including the biometrics, if that's in your bailiwick and you want to use it. That's our differentiator.

I understand. Let's talk about AI a little bit. In this non-repudiable authentication approval for these AI agents, what stops an AI agent from, say, intercepting a fingerprint and using it to authenticate later or identify later?

Well, that's a simple one, Dan. What stops that is the ecosystem and the technology infrastructure that you have around your biometric. Because your biometric is public information. When you walk into your office or you go into an office, to a store and you put your hand on the door, you leave your fingerprint there. If somebody really wanted your fingerprint, they could lift it. I mean, again, this is all theoretical, right? Your face is surveilled, you walk through Times Square, it could be now, it could be 500 times. I used to say 200, but it could be 500 times your face is surveilled. And, you know, if someone wanted your face, they could take a picture of your face.

What makes biometrics systems secure and protect from agentic scenarios is the ecosystem around the biometrics. So what is that? That's liveness detect, right? To ensure that it's real and your face is real or your finger is real or your palm is real or your, you know, your iris is real. So that's number one. It's all the encryption around the biometric. Remember, we're never matching a fingerprint or a face or a palm. We're matching a digital representation of that. So what are we doing? We are algorithmizing and we are encrypting. So we're encrypting the templates, then we're encrypting the transportation, the way we move the template from one place to another, whether it's on device or it's into a central system to match and back down for approval to, let's say, a mobile device, a phone or a tablet or a computer.

So it's that secure ecosystem that protects against that potential agentic formation. And that's where we have 30 years experience in doing that and why in very high profile, very high profile, high secure venues and environments, WEB-key, our product, our full and complete encrypted ecosystem for biometrics has been selected by some of the most sophisticated, if not the most sophisticated security organizations in the world. Long-winded answer, but...

No, no, I got it. I got it. That was good. A couple questions on the warrants, and then I'll be off here. What were the net proceeds on the warrants?

$2.5 million.

Is that gross or net?

Gross. And, you know, there's a commission for the bankers was 5%, so... I guess that's what, $2.35 million, somewhere in that range, $2.3 to $2.4 million.

Okay, so does that mean – I think there were 600,000 of them. You had 1.1. Does that mean that somebody now owns a third of the company, and if they exercise the other 1.2 million warrants, what happens then?

Yes, so the way that works, and you can look at the filings, right? It's all detailed out there in the 8-K and so forth, is that the warrant holder will never own more than 10%, 9.9% of the company. There's a blocker in place. They will buy or that they bought all the warrants and they only take ownership of 9.9% at a time of the warrants, and the rest are held in abeyance. The company gets the money up front, right? Because they exercised all of the 681,000 warrants that they had.

So the answer is no, they will never own a third of the company. I see. And do we know how many of the warrants have been exercised so far?

Well, they've all been exercised. How many of them have been taken out of abeyance? I would say nearly half, give or take.

Oh, I see. I see. Okay. So quite a few.

Quite a large number. 275,300 in that range. 300,000, give or take, have already been taken out of abeyance. So about half in the last four days.

I mean, that by itself, I guess, could explain some of the price drop in the stock.

But there's no question. I mean, that is one. But again, it's also the general market. I've been watching – it's an interesting point you bring up. I've been watching a series of companies. They're not necessarily peers to us in the context of what they offer, but they're size-wise, you know, small, public Nasdaq companies. And there seems to be a mantra in the market this past couple of weeks, and it's sell on the news. I've seen really good earnings announcements. I've seen good contract announcements. And I've seen these stocks trade down, you know, 15%, 20%. So I don't think you can look at the stock price and say, well, it happened because of this or it happened because of that.

I think it's just a series of things. And it's a fact that the low end of the market has been experiencing this kind of volatility right now. And, you know, it is what it is. But, you know, look, we clearly were disappointed in our anticipated revenue for the second quarter. You know, getting that hardware order would put us way well over the top and obviously would have been a profitability. So that's one thing. But again, our business is still growing. So for sure, that's a factor.

The second thing, though, on the other side is, you know, our balance sheet is very, very strong right now. Our equity position is very, very strong right now. Having a few more shares outstanding strengthens our, you know, compliance requirements and so forth. That's very positive. So, you look at the pipeline and the things that I described over the last 45 minutes, all very, very positive. So, I think there are more positives than negatives out there right now, and we'll catch up, we'll catch back up, I'm sure. Because we're so undervalued by any metric that, all ships rise with the tide, and at some point, we will get our due fair value.

Well, your cash is, I think you're, just based on your cash, that's $2.50 a share. I think, if I'm computing this right, assuming you have about 1.8 million shares outstanding. One question on the cash, I think you had 1.4 at the end of the last quarter, the second quarter, and you got 2.3, but somehow you have 4.5 now. That's not the 800K and higher. You pulled in some of the receivables or something in this quarter or something like that happened? How did you get that extra cash? I'm a little confused.

I think, Cecilia—

Yes, we have collected receivables from the June close through July.

Okay. And added more. Okay, that's good. All right, last question. In your 2025 Form 10-K, I saw the line, we expect that the growth in revenue will alleviate our going concern within the next 12 months. I'm not sure. Has that line remained in the recent Form 10-Q?

No, that did not remain, but normally the end of the year is where it matters the most. And, you know, that's where we're headed.

I see. So you guys, is that still something that you feel is valid? I mean, what has to happen? What do the auditors or what do the SEC regulations say about allowing you to say something like that? Because I don't think I've ever seen that in any of your Form 10-Ks.

Well, the auditors approved us saying that, so.

I think Dan, it's pretty straightforward, right? You're on the right path, meaning that you're crossing the line between using cash and being cash neutral. You have enough cash on the balance sheet to operate the business for a couple of years, even with the burn that you have. And so that gives you comfort to say, listen, this is not a going concern scenario because if there's a blip or a downturn, the company has enough cash to continue to operate. I mean, it's not that complex.

Okay. Okay. I appreciate all the time you guys gave me. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Showing no further questions, this concludes today's Q&A session. I'll ask Michael DePasquale to provide closing remarks.

Thank you again for joining today's call. We genuinely appreciate your continued interest in BIO-key, and I look forward to updating investors on our progress on our next call. We will be participating in the H.C. Wainwright Conference in mid-September. And as always, we'll continue to update investors via press release on significant developments in the interim. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to our IR team, whose contact information is provided in today's press release. Thank you, everyone, and have a terrific weekend.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the BIO-key International's First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, Monday, May 18, 2026.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Bill Jones of Investor Relations. You may proceed.

Thank you, Chuck. Hosting today are BIO-key's Chairman and CEO, Mike DePasquale; and its CFO, Ceci Welch. As a reminder, today's call and webcast as well as answers to investor questions, include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

Words such as anticipate, believe, expect, plan, and project or similar words identify and express forward-looking statements. Such statements are made based on beliefs, assumptions and information currently available to management pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. For a more complete description of risks and uncertainties, which affect future performance, please see risk factors in the company's annual report, on Form 10-K as filed with the SEC. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements made as of today, and the company makes no obligation to revise or disclose revisions to these statements to reflect circumstances or events occurring after this call.

Now I'll turn the call over to Mike to begin.

Thanks, Bill, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. After my remarks, Ceci will review the financials, and we'll open up the call to investor questions. Our Q1 '26 results and Q2 '26 outlook reflect the benefit of our team's hard work, particularly over the last year, we're also seeing expanded appreciation for the unparalleled value that our biometric identity and access management solutions provide in securing mission-critical applications and data.

Borrowing the old phrase, BIO-key has built a powerful suite of biometric solutions with the belief that customers will come. That strategy is really starting to play out for us in a meaningful way, and I will discuss that.

Our Q1 '26 revenues reflect both new customer wins and growing long-term customer deployments in defense and financial services. Last year, we launched our defense and intelligence cybersecurity initiative targeted primarily in foreign markets for more secure identity and access management solutions.

Our customer base now includes several of the world's most prominent and significant defense organizations, and our success in meeting their strategic needs is proving very valuable in supporting new opportunities. But it's not just government, defense and highly regulated industries. We're also seeing traction with enterprise customers, particularly in EMEA and the EMEA markets. Our progress in these regions is supported by an expanding base of strong regional distribution partners as well as foreign regulatory frameworks that are favorable to our strong biometric options.

Outside of EMEA, we have also added new partners in India and Vietnam, where we are seeing solid opportunities in future periods as these partners ramp up their marketing and sales efforts.

To better reach public sector opportunities in the U.S., which often require working with a preapproved vendor, we recently partnered with DLT Solutions, a division of TD Synnex, the world's largest IT distributor and solutions aggregator. TD Synnex employs 23,000 people globally and offers a massive portfolio of IT hardware, software, cybersecurity and cloud services to over 150,000 customers in more than 100 countries, while DLT is their kind of public sector arm domestically.

We're integrating our PortalGuard IAM and Passkey:YOU biometric solutions into DLT's platform of offerings. The partnership provides a streamlined procurement path, enabling their extensive base of public sector customers to easily purchase and deploy our solutions, many of which face mandates to adopt Zero Trust digital infrastructure and implement multifactor authentication.

With our solutions, customers can easily meet these requirements and anchor digital access to a person, rather than to just a device. We're working closely with the DLT team to help them educate public sector customers on the solutions and compelling ROI that BIO-key can provide. On our year-end call, I reviewed several factors that are shaping the market for our solutions today. So I'll just provide a brief overview of those. First, the continued expansion of digital services and mobile use cases that require secure authentication is widening our market opportunity.

Second, we believe demand for the secure digital access BIO-key uniquely provides will continue to expand as organizations confront a more sophisticated and persistent cybersecurity threat landscape. Third, we expect passwordless authentication to continue to gain traction and become the standard this year and beyond, as enterprises look to reduce risk from phishing, credential reuse and misuse as well as account takeover attacks. BIO-key enables unique and highly secure passwordless solutions.

Fourth, biometric authentication should see growing adoption in the highest value use cases as we've seen in military, defense, financial services, health care and other highly regulated industries where security and trust are most critical.

Fifth, the rise of AI-driven threats really escalates the need for more resilient identity strategies that surpass vulnerable, yet widely deployed authentication methods like phones. And finally, the market is moving towards more unified access platforms that unite workforce, partner and privileged access under a single flexible foundation. These trends play directly into BIO-key's strengths, and we are starting to see them in our financial results.

Today, our business is predominantly a subscription-based business with recurring revenues. Approximately 50% of our new business comes through our partnership model domestically. And as I've mentioned a number of times before, 100% of our business is sold through channel partners internationally, providing a very, very efficient and more importantly, a scalable model.

I also want to mention that we launched a new website in mid-April, that is designed to better support our partners and customers in understanding how BIO-key can meet their needs. We believe it's an important step to support our growth goals. I want to thank our team who put a lot of hard work and effort into this launch, and I encourage investors to review it at www.bio-key.com. And as always, we welcome any feedback that you can provide.

From a financial standpoint, BIO-key is in a solid position to continue to fund our growth. We ended Q1 with a book value of $7.6 million, or approximately $7 a share, including over $2 million, or $2.07 per share in cash, and we expect this position to continue to hold or improve as we approach the second quarter -- the end of the second quarter. As we mentioned a few days ago, our shares were recently suspended from NASDAQ.

Today, we are actively working to return our shares to the NASDAQ capital market and have secured an appeals hearing, which will be held on June 16, which is next month, about 4 weeks from tomorrow. In the interim, our shares continue to trade on the OTC markets under the symbol BKYI. Although we cannot be certain of the success or timing of the panel's decision, our advisers believe there is reason for optimism regarding a return to NASDAQ trading by the summer.

In summary, our business is off to a very strong start, and we are confident in our first half outlook and very optimistic regarding the balance of the year and beyond. After years of hard work, we believe BIO-key has never been better positioned for growth and improved financial performance, and we will continue to update you, all of our shareholders, on our business and listing process as we proceed forward.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Ceci to review the Q1 financial results.

Thank you, Mike. We released our results this morning via press release, and we plan to file our 2025 10-K this week, after which we will file the 10-Q and be up-to-date on our filings. So let me provide a brief overview of our Q1 results.

Keep in mind that the review of our financial statements has not yet been completed by the independent public accounting firm, and results are, therefore, subject to adjustment. In Q1 '26, our revenues increased 34% to $2.1 million versus $1.6 million in Q1 '25.

With the current year benefiting from expanded 1-year software license renewal from a long-time banking customer was serving over 30 million clients with our biometric identity solution. Overall, the license fee revenue increased 24% to $1.4 million.

Our hardware revenue increased more than 100% to approximately $531,000, due to increased purchase from biometrics hardware solutions, including hardware sales related to a foreign Defense Ministry, defense expansion as well as the sales from of our previously fully reserved inventory.

In line with revenue, our Q1 gross profit grew 33% versus the Q1 '25, $1.8 million, and we maintained a strong gross margin of 82% in both periods. This compares to the first year gross margin of 77.5% in 2025 and 81% in 2024.

Gross margin benefited growth in high-margin license fee revenue and the sales of the fully reserved inventory. Our operating expenses were approximately $2 million in Q1 '25 and Q1 '26, as higher R&D was offset by lower SG&A expenses in Q1 2026.

Higher revenue and gross profit combined with relatively flat operating expenses led to a net loss improvement of $165,036 or $0.15 per share in Q1 2026, versus the net loss of $736,545, or $1.57 per share in Q1 '25. Per share amounts and weighted average shares outstanding reflect the impact of the company's April 30, 1-for-10 reverse split, warrant exercises and other financing activities. Share counts are provided in today's press release.

Turning to our financial position at 03/31/26, our book value was $7.6 million, or $7.04 per share compared with $7.7 million, or $7.07 per share at year-end. BIO-key had approximately $4.5 million of current assets, including $2.2 million of cash and cash equivalents and $1.6 million of accounts receivable. This compares to December 31, '25, when BIO-key had current assets of $4.5 million, including $2 million -- $2.7 million of cash and $1.2 million of accounts receivable.

As Mike mentioned, we expect to be profitable and cash flow positive in Q2. Operator, we may now proceed with the questions and answers.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question will come from Jack Vander Aarde.

Ceci, congrats on the strong results and strong fundamental outlook. Obviously, there's bit of noise here, and it's unfortunate with the NASDAQ delisting, but it sounds like things are on track. It sounds like you feel good about it. So I guess just maybe some housekeeping questions, Mike, just quickly. The NASDAQ appeal meeting is coming up, I think, next month, you said -- and that puts you on track to get relisted. Just to revisit those comments quick. And then the 10-K sounds pretty confident that, that's going to be filed by next week. Can I just get a confirmation on that?

Yes. So yes, our hearing was scheduled on Friday, we got notice that it was scheduled for the 16th of June. So we're in the process of preparing for that. We expect that, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks that we will get through that process and God willing, without any bumps in the road, be fully compliant all the way around and get back on the capital markets, certainly, maybe late June or July. It depends on the timing for that panel. So everything is in motion there, and our advisers are very confident that we have -- we should be optimistic about being able to do that. As you know, we traded for 9 days above $1 before we got suspended, which was a statutory scenario with the NASDAQ, it's their process. And so that was our only issue at the time. And so we will get back on, and we'll keep everybody posted as we proceed forward. So that's for sure going to happen. As it relates to the filings, yes, we expect that we'll get everything filed. We're hoping to have both the K and the Q filed this week, so we will be fully compliant and up-to-date on everything out there. That's it.

Okay. I appreciate all that. That's very clear. And these results seem to give you -- a good leg in that race, I would say, to get back to status That's great to hear, Mike. Maybe just in terms of the cash and the balance sheet and given these recent results here, which it sounds like you're on track for potential profitability here. No issues with funding your existing growth initiatives and also with just your customer discussions there's no -- any implications there or distractions with the tech team and NASDAQ. Just to clarify one more question.

No. Quite frankly, no. I think you know we have a very broad portfolio of customers in virtually every sector of the economy. And they -- many of them have been with us for many, many years when we were an OTC company, and then uplisted to the NASDAQ. And so it really isn't impacting anything that we do. We're on a greater solid footing from a financial perspective than we probably have been in many, many years. We have enough money to obviously operate our business and to continue to invest in the growth initiatives that we have.

As I mentioned, it's all about scale for us right now. We've got a great product. We continue to improve and evolve that product as is required and as necessary. And we have built a very strong partner network, especially internationally. And it's really in our hands right now just to continue to scale this business, and it will scale very profitably, as you can see. Our gross margins have been hovering in that 75% to 85% range for years, and that will continue to be as we scale revenue into the $5 million and $10 million range on a quarterly basis, you can imagine what will drop to the bottom line.

Excellent. And Mike, just looking at your outlook for the second quarter/the first half of this year, it's significant progress from last year, obviously, and also just historically in recent memory. So I guess like what's going on in your, I guess, pipeline here, your go-to-market? Are you feeling like -- do you have more visibility than you've had? Now in the past 2, 3 years, in terms of this demand funnel, all of a sudden, this $5 million of revenue that looks like set up for the first half. How is the back half looking to you? Are you already thinking ahead that far?

Well, it looks very good. It looks very strong. I mentioned that in my prepared comments. So there's no question. we have better visibility. What's happening, Jack, is we are -- first of all, we're going after larger opportunities. And so when you have $500,000 to $1 million or over $1 million transactions in the pipeline, and they're with the larger partners who have very strong positions in those end-user customer environments, the confidence goes up, right? And it doesn't mean, again, you win every deal, but we have a very strong pipeline for 2026. Full year, right?

First half, certainly, we're very honed in on, and we know exactly where we stand at this point. And for the rest of the year, we have a number of contracts that have already been won, but need to be -- have been awarded, but yet need to be papered, meaning we need to get orders and so forth and so on. So we're feeling real good about the entirety of 2026.

Excellent. Maybe just if I'm looking at, I guess, the sort of -- it looks like hardware revenue really picked up this quarter. Is this just -- I know it could be lumpy, but is this a something that's a new dynamic that's being integrated in most of your deals that you're seeing now? You do have strong gross margins on the hardware side. But it's just interesting to look at because hardware can kind of go up and down while license revenue seems to be more steady. What are you seeing from the hardware side in terms of the deals that you are bringing to the table?

Well, I think as you close these larger license opportunities, the requirement for hardware is also significant. So many of our Ministry of Defense customers that utilize our technology, have to put many touch points in place for access for all of their force members or their staff. So again, it can go hand-in-hand. As you mentioned, we maintained really good gross margins in our hardware. And Ceci mentioned in her prepared remarks that we are selling our fully reserved inventory right now in greater volumes. And so that's going right to the bottom line. And obviously, it's all cash and all margins.

So that's helping us certainly this year and will continue to help us as we evolve through the year, but again, hardware is part and parcel of our larger opportunities. So it's always going to be there. And yes, it's certainly more lumpy than the software and license revenue is, but it's still a very strong part of our full and complete offering, which is what customers want. They want a full and complete offering from one vendor, and we provide that for them.

Got it. And Mike, just with all your core verticals, obviously, defense has been very strong, and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of developments in the geopolitical world here today to keep driving that. Outside of defense, looking at education and financial services, I suppose. Where do you see you're having, I guess where's the next leg up for you within those 2 segments? Do you feel like you're growing at -- is there an opportunity in education in your business as well as financial services that you're seeing with defense?

Absolutely. So we have a really good sizable base in education, as you know, and that's continuing to evolve. And so yes, education is a great market for us. But does it have hyper-growth potential like financial services? No. I believe financial services has significant growth for us. We have been targeting with our partners internationally, national banks, right? So the banks in countries that manage the currency. And we've had a number of wins. We have a number of opportunities in our pipeline that you're going to hear about over time as we knock them down. And they have a very, very specific need for ultra-strong authentication. And in the international venue, have no restrictions or very few restrictions in the context of privacy and so forth that we deal with here in the U.S., right, on a daily basis.

And so biometrics are a really good option for them because they can positively identify individual staff and the likes who enter their portals or their applications. So I think financial services is a very, very strong and growing vertical for us, and you're going to hear a lot more about that going forward.

Excellent. And Mike, if I could just ask kind of one more thematic question. Just wondering if you could share any thoughts that you may have. Two of the kind of, I guess, growing industry dynamics that are these trends now, especially in the legal world. You have the Clarity Act that's coming up here, seems to be moving further. With just tokenization real-world assets and just crypto in general, given your financial services industry? And also, with your cybersecurity and just protecting biometrics in general, quantum is becoming somewhat of a theme that people are focused on a bit. Just wondering if you have any thoughts on where BIO-key sees or fits in, in these themes of quantum down the road as well as tokenization and crypto being more mainstream?

Great. Those are two great questions. So RWA, right, real-world tokenization, all that stuff that everyone is hearing about and talking about is certainly evolving. But it's happening much, much slower than anyone had anticipated. And I think this year, you see it kind of hit the rails because there are other priorities. So I kind of feel really good about where we are because we're serving the real world today, their needs and their requirements. While we're investing in things like quantum, all of the latest and newest generation encryption theories around quantum proofing and so forth are all things that are on our plate right now and that we're researching. But don't get caught up in the hype is my comments on both of those scenarios.

Look at where we are today, look at the real-world issues that we have today and look at real-world solutions that solve those problems today, but also have a perspective for where the puck is going and where we're going to be tomorrow. And certainly, we're right in the heart of that.

So I mean, again, if you look at where the money is being spent today and where things are moving, it's taking much, much longer. And that's why you're seeing a number of the companies that fundamentally have no current technology to address issues and problems, and are only looking in the future are really struggling.

Now again, it's kind of like AI, right? There's no doubt that AI is currently impacting our lives, personal and business, and it's going to continue to evolve, but it still has to find its footings, and the companies that are engaged in that technology are going to come and go. We've been around a long time, providing very, very basic and yet sophisticated highly secure solutions for some of the most important applications on the globe. And I think, again, we're going to continue to do that, right? And we have proven that we can do that. We've been here for over 30 years. That's my perspective, Jack.

Excellent. That's a great perspective, and I appreciate that rundown. It sounds like things are going very well right now for BIO-key.

Next question will come from Dan Kamis, investor.

Yes, very nice quarter. That's quite nice. Kind of a couple of housekeeping questions, I guess. Do you have a cash flow from operations number for the first quarter by any chance? I know you guys don't usually do that, but I'm just wondering.

I'd have to revert to Ceci. I think we ended the year with about $2.7 million-or-so in cash, and we ended the first quarter with about $2.3 million. So I mean, back of the envelope, that's sophisticated, right? Probably use and timing right on collections, receivables that kind of thing. So I think we're pretty solid. Let's put it this way. We're not hemorrhaging as we have in the past.

Right. And what's, Mike, your current ARR run rate, is that now improved with some of these contracts?

Similar, I guess, the answer, it's episodal, right? So if you have to look at our receivables, right, from quarter-to-quarter, but I would say, yes, as these larger projects land, obviously, the receivables are pretty significant. So yes, I think it's certainly improving as the business is improving.

I'll just add to, it depends on when some of the bigger shipments are, some of them come at the end of the quarter and some come at the beginning because they were we didn't get them in the quarter before. So like Mike said, it's episodal based on timing.

Okay. Ceci, can you say how much of the hardware sales was the written-off inventory?

Yes, it was in the financials, and I don't remember off the top of my head, but hold one second, basically $100,000.

I see. I got it. And Mike, were these inventory sales kind of a one-off thing? Or was there any softer licensing associated with sales?

There's a combination of both. And it's -- I think we're starting to see, and I think it will be reflected in our results in Q2 and beyond, more significant sales of that reserved inventory.

That's good. If you're profitable in the second quarter, would you be able to offset profits with prior losses to avoid taxes like we've been hoping for years?

I assume. I mean, we have plenty of NOLs, right, net operating losses. And so I'm sure our accountants will -- and our tax accountants will help us with that. But yes, for sure.

Okay. A couple more conceptual questions, I guess. Is it harder to win the large U.S. contracts in the military and financial area than EMEA? And if so, can you give some color on why that might be?

I think what you asked is why are we so successful internationally on the defense side? And is it more difficult on the U.S. side to win those contracts?

And financial.

Yes. I mean, it's hard to say. I think, there's a different dynamic internationally. There's no reticence at all to using biometrics, right? I mentioned in my comments, the privacy and concerns about all the regulatory scenarios like BFA in the United States, right? They don't exist internationally. We've had programs in the U.S., like, for example, in Texas, where they were using biometrics to manage the food stamp program. And the privacy monitors, fundamentally killed that program, and their expenditure went up 4x, because people were cheating.

So we have a different dynamic here in the U.S. and it permeates throughout not only the public sector, but also the private sector as well. And that doesn't exist. It is much less difficult on the international front to deploy these solutions. So I mean, I think that's the simple answer. Now do we have U.S. opportunities? Absolutely. Do we have U.S. customers? Absolutely. Do I believe that business is going to grow? Absolutely. I do believe that.

In particular, I am really excited about the TD Synnex DLT opportunity because they're a monster in that space. And they have customers in every state in the U.S. We are doing really well in state and local government, right? We have the perfect solution for biometrics, right, for highly secure access. And with a partner of that size, that gives us -- it just opens up a whole market for us.

So working closely with those partners, that's really the force multiplier in how we're going to scale our business. So, yes, I do believe that there's a difference. And I do believe, though, however, there is an opportunity on both sides of the world.

Great. Well, on some of these global bank contracts or financial contracts, defense contracts, can you say who your competition is for these contracts? And again, maybe you've talked about this before, but just to reiterate, what's the differentiator in financial services for you in these global?

It's clearly the full and complete authentication -- biometric authentication option that we provide, and the flexibility to use 16, 17 other factors. So one size doesn't fit all. And in banks, for example, in branch or for staff in office, biometrics may be perfect. However, they may have outsiders, meaning outside the physical infrastructure that need to access information. And we provide -- because we have a full and complete platform with PortalGuard, we can provide all of those different options, using a phone, using a card, using a token or a key.

So I think that's our competitive differentiator. And bringing again that very strong option with biometrics really separates us from everybody else in the space. There are large biometric players like IDEMIA, for example, or NEC, but they're going after airports and border control and all that other stuff. They don't have the authentication, SSO, single sign-on, network log on. They don't have all of that software. That's the front end of companies and enterprises or a public sector agencies' portals and applications, right? We front-end all of that. That's our competitive differentiator.

I see. And who, when you go after these contracts, who do you see competitive wise going for these contracts, too?

Well, if they're looking at and seriously considering biometric for everybody or even for just a piece, well, guess what? It's not Okta. It's not SailPoint, it's not ForgeRock. It's not them because they don't have that. They can partner with us. In fact, SailPoint is becoming a very, very big partner for us internationally, where they're providing all of the privileged access, and all of the higher-level authentication management, and we're providing the actual authentication technology, as I just mentioned, the 16 factors, including the biometric. So it really is -- I always think it's -- everyone has a competitor, right? There's no such thing as one company that dominates a space without competition.

But we just really don't see any of those players able to do the same things that we do for a customer. So it's pretty unique. There are probably a bunch of regional or smaller players that we may compete against or an MSP that's trying to pull together pieces of a solution to do what we do. But no one big player that actually matches exactly what we do for what we do, right, which is strictly authentication.

That's actually amazing. I got just a couple more. Outside of cash, I think the market is assigning the value of your business at about $2.5 million. If you start generating cash, could you see the company buying back shares or declaring a dividend or something like that?

We'd love to do that. I don't think we're in a position to do that today. I don't think it would be prudent, right? Obviously, we want to be able to reinvest in the things that are going to help us scale, right? So our partner network, again, ensuring our technology is leading edge, right, not bleeding edge, as Jack had asked questions about what's the future, right? I call that bleeding edge. We want to be on the leading edge, not the bleeding edge. But yes, we'd love to be able to do that. And over time, I'm hoping we will be able to do that.

We only have 1.1 million shares outstanding right now. And so anything we can do in that realm would be just incredible. We are grossly, grossly undervalued, especially with the NASDAQ suspension, that certainly devalued us probably about 20% where we -- below where we were when we were on the NASDAQ, and we were still undervalued at that time. I mean, if you think about our first half revenue is projected to be about $5 million, we'd be trading onetime 1/2 year's revenue. It's obscene. But again, bumps in the road with the NASDAQ suspension and the timing of that, it wasn't, again, an issue with us from an operational perspective, it was strictly a miscalculation of the very specific date requirements for the NASDAQ, right? 10-day notice 10 days trading above $1. So that devalued us for sure, but I think that's recoverable, right?

All ships rise with the tide. If the business continues to perform, right, we're going to achieve the level of value that we should achieve. And there aren't many look around the industry, there aren't many profitable companies, public companies that smaller companies like BIO-key and Security that are profitable, if any? I can name a couple. Trust me, they're not profitable. And so I think we're going to grow into that valuation if we continue to perform.

Okay. Last question. The associated hearing, I believe that has legal adviser fees to get back on the NASDAQ. Will that be expensed against your revenue in the second quarter?

We don't believe so. We don't believe so. We have some help with that, and we're not concerned at this stage. But yes, we do have advisers that we've hired to have deep experience in the process. So we want to put our best foot forward, but all of that will be covered.

[Operator Instructions] And this will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Mike DePasquale for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you again for joining today's call. We genuinely appreciate your interest in BIO-key, and I look forward to updating investors on our progress on our next call. As always, we will update investors via press release of significant developments in the interim. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to our IR team whose contact information is provided in today's press release. Have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to BIO-key International's 2025 Year-End Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. I will now turn the call over to Bill Jones, Investor Relations. You may proceed.

Thank you, Jerry. Hosting today are BIO-key's Chairman and CEO, Mike DePasquale, and its CFO, Ceci Welch.

As a reminder, today's call and webcast as well as answers to investor questions include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. Words like anticipate, believe, expect and project or similar words identify and express forward-looking statements. These statements are made based on beliefs, assumptions and information currently available to management as of today and pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. For a more complete description of the risks and uncertainties that affect future performance, please see Risk Factors in the company's annual report, Form 10-K with the SEC. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements made as of today. The company makes no obligation to revise or disclose revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events occurring after this call.

Now I will turn the call over to Mike to begin. Mike?

Thanks, Bill, and thank you all for joining us today. After my remarks and Ceci's financial overview, we will open the call to investor questions.

As highlighted in today's press release, we had a broad base of achievements in 2025 that position BIO-key for improved top line and bottom line performance in 2026 and future periods. Kicking off the year, we now anticipate Q1 '26 revenue of approximately $2.2 million, representing a 37% increase over Q1 and 2025 and a larger sequential improvement over Q4 '25 as well. We also expect a substantial improvement in our Q1 '26 bottom line performance exceeding each of our fiscal '25 quarters, and although we were disappointed by our 2025 revenue performance, we are now seeing much more urgency and focus from our customers and prospects, to take action in better securing access to mission-critical systems, particularly in the military and defense, financial services and regulated industries.

Our 2025 revenue comparison versus 2024 was also impacted by two significant factors totaling roughly $2 million. The first related to a $1.5 million 2-year license renewal with a foreign national bank, the bulk of which was recorded in 2024. This caused roughly an $800,000 decrease in recognized revenue related to this customer in 2025 versus 2024. Despite revenue recognition timing related to this customer, the relationship continues to grow nicely, and earlier this month, they executed an expanded 1-year license renewal of over $1 million for 2026, which represents an approximately 30% increase in revenue over the previous contract.

Our year-over-year revenue comparison also reflected the completion in 2025 of our strategic transition to selling only BIO-key-branded solutions in the EMEA region. As anticipated, this transition is beginning to benefit our gross margin and growth prospects as we rebuild our EMEA pipeline with BIO-key-only solutions and sales opportunities that carry substantially higher net margins. While these factors led to lower year-over-year software license, both Hardware and Services revenues grew in 2025 due to the expansion of our customer base and licensed endpoints.

Turning to our outlook. Let me review key trends in the enterprise authentication market that support our optimism for 2026. First is the increasing need for secure access to digital platforms and protection against growing cybersecurity threats, which is driving rapid growth in the authentication solutions market. Global sales are estimated to be $23 billion in 2025 and projected to reach almost $100 billion by 2035, representing a compound annual growth of almost 16%. As cybercrime becomes more sophisticated, we expect businesses and governments to increasingly embrace advanced authentication technologies such as those that BIO-key provides to safeguard sensitive information and maintain customer trust. This surge in demand for enhanced authentication solutions is being driven by the widespread adoption of digital services, e-commerce, online banking and the growing use of mobile devices.

Authentication solutions, including biometrics, MFA, digital certificates are all crucial to ensure that only authorized individuals gain access to private information or systems. A key gap we fill is that mainstream MFA solutions offer only device-assisted authentication, whereas our PortalGuard platform is a complete MFA offering with phoneless and tokenless authentication that leverages biometrics.

Our Passkey:YOU Solution provides web key secured hosted FIDO2 passkey authentication for tokenless, phoneless and passwordless authentication with biometric efficiency. By the year-end 2026, passwordless authentication will be the default for workforce access across almost every enterprise. The shift is being driven by the increased vulnerability of passwords to phishing, credential reuse and account takeover attacks. More than 70% are already moving towards passwordless adoption and about 3/4 of enterprises expect to invest in passkeys or passwordless tools this year. Biometric authentication adoption is expected to continue to grow, particularly in the most sensitive and high-value use cases in the regulated spaces such as military and defense, financial services and health care, where we have already seen growing adoption.

The traction we see is also aided by more supportive regulatory frameworks in many foreign jurisdictions as well as by escalating geopolitical risks, which we're all aware of. AI-driven threats are forcing security leaders to rethink how access decisions are made, emphasizing the need for much more resilient identity strategies, where biometrics can play a pivotal role as opposed to conventional methods that are most vulnerable to AI-powered attacks. Authentication technologies are converging towards unified access for workforce, partner and privileged access under single strategic foundations. Our PortalGuard Passkey and Biometric Solutions provide infinite flexibility in deploying to any component of a company's employee population despite infrastructure and job function. Phones and tokens are no longer necessary and with 16 types of auth-factors, one size no longer fits all. These significant shifts in how enterprises approach authentication with a focus on security, convenience, compliance and evolving regulations, play directly to our strengths.

In 2025, we launched our Defense & Intelligence Cybersecurity Initiative, which is discussed in today's press release. We also highlight several recent contract wins and momentum we are seeing in the defense and financial sectors, as well as significant new partnerships, both domestically and internationally. Since that's in the press release, I won't repeat it here, but we can certainly address any questions regarding any of those areas in the Q&A session.

In terms of our continuing investment in R&D and new product development, in Q4, BIO-key formally introduced the new FBI FAP 20 Certified EcoID III fingerprint scanner. EcoID III is our most advanced reader, which pairs encrypted device-to-host communication with liveness detection for faster, more secure authentication. EcoID III is primarily for highly regulated industries and the most sensitive zero-trust environments such as defense and banking.

We're also finishing up work on our most significant update ever for our PortalGuard Identity platform, Version 7.0. This includes a major platform monetization, significant new configurability and flexibility and improved lower-cost deployment capabilities. It is currently undergoing comprehensive third-party security testing for an expected release during the second quarter. Our updated product offerings and unique biometric capabilities give us a sustainable competitive advantage, particularly as I discussed in the regulated industries due to those strict compliance standards.

Our defense and banking niches, in particular, have significant global upside in 2026 and beyond. Today, our business is predominantly subscription-based, and we continue to utilize a partner-centric model, in which roughly 50% of our new U.S. business and nearly 100% of our international business is sold through a network of sales channel partners, including Amazon and TD Synnex, which we have built relationships with over the last few years.

Turning to overhead and cost. In 2025, we were able to reduce our total SG&A expense by almost $800,000 or 11% and total operating expenses by 7%. This mission continues, and we are optimistic about the potential benefits of AI adoption in our processes to drive even further operational efficiency, productivity and lower cost. These initiatives play an important role, along with our growth efforts to progress the company toward our goal of reaching breakeven and profitability in 2026.

Finally, we also made great strides in strengthening our financial position in 2025, ending the year with $2.7 million in cash, up more than $2 million from 2024 and increasing our book value to $7.6 million versus $3.8 million at the end of 2024. Our current cash position and expected cash receipts provide a solid working capital base to support our growth plans for 2026. We're off to a strong start this year with building momentum in several key verticals. We expect top line expansion, combined with expense management to meaningfully advance our goal of reaching our target again of breakeven and profitability this year, and we are well positioned in terms of financial liquidity to fund our growth plans.

Given the growing adoption of BIO-key's flexible passwordless, tokenless and phoneless authentication solutions that we are seeing, we expect 2026 to be a very exciting and productive year for our company and for our shareholders. We're entering the most exciting chapter in our company's history, one defined by innovation, strategic expansion and relentless focus on delivering value to our customers and our shareholders. Significant growth and profitability are in sight and with the right team, technology and partnerships in place, we are poised to deliver long-term shareholder value.

Now let me turn the call over to Ceci for a review of the financials.

Thank you, Mike. We released our results this morning, so let me provide a quick review. Reflecting the factors Mike addressed earlier, the total 2025 revenues decreased 12% to $6.1 million versus $6.9 million in 2024. 2025 revenue did benefit from over 100% increase in Hardware revenues to $1.3 million in 2025, largely due to increased purchases of our Biometric Solutions, and Service revenue increased 6% to $1.2 million due to BIO-key's growing customer base and new customer deployment.

In Q4 of '25, License Fee revenue decreased 26%, Hardware revenue increased 85% and Service revenues decreased 10% as reflecting the factors Mike discussed as well as the timing of deployment. Our 2025 gross margin was 77.5% as compared to 81.4% in 2024, primarily due to the mix of software fee -- License Fee revenue and Hardware revenue as a percent of total revenues. Gross margins on license fee improved 91% in 2025 from 88% in 2024, reflecting the benefit of selling branded products versus third-party products in the EMEA region.

In 2025, we reduced our SG&A costs by 11% due to proactive cost management, including reorganization of sales personnel, reducing marketing show expenses and lower audit fees, partially offset by higher professional fees related to BIO-key financing activities. We will continue to focus on cost reduction opportunities as we move forward in 2026.

Research and development engineering costs increased 4% in 2025 due to support the new product development, as Mike discussed. As a result, operating expenses decreased 7% overall in 2025. Lower operating costs helped to offset the impact of lower revenue in 2025 as BIO-key's net loss increased to $4.6 million or $0.69 per share from $4.3 million or $2.09 per share in 2024. BIO-key's Q4 '25 net loss increased to $1.7 million or $0.19 per share as compared to the $1.4 million in 2024 or $0.46 per share. Weighted average common shares outstanding, which reflect warrant exercises and other financial activities are provided in today's press release.

As of December 31, 2025, BIO-key had current assets of $4.6 million, including cash of $2.7 million as compared to the prior year-end of $1.9 million, which included $438,000 of cash. Accounts receivable increased 73% to $1.2 million at December 31, 2025, from $718,000 at the end of 2024, and our book value increased to $7.6 million at year-end 2025 from $3.8 million at the close of 2024. We plan to file the 10-K within the next week.

With that, operator, let's please proceed to the question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today is from Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group.

So Mike, I think just -- you already addressed it pretty well. I just want to also just kind of get a little more clarity on the 2025 revenue was a little softer than you initially expected. But obviously, great to see you're targeting a strong first quarter '26 with $2.2 million of revenue. That's fantastic. Just trying to better understand the 2025 result.

So one of the reasons mentioned was due largely to a significant contract renewal with a foreign retail bank in 2024 that didn't benefit 2025. Can you just maybe speak to this a little bit further? Is this an active customer? Are they due for an expansion or renewal in 2026? Just help me better understand that particular customer.

Yes. So -- and in my comments, Jack, by the way in my comments, I mentioned that they did renew for 1 year at over $1 million. So about a 30% increase in value of that contract. So it was a 2-year contract that we closed in 2024. We took the revenue all in 2024 for that 2-years. So that's why, again, in 2025, obviously, it wasn't repeatable. So that's what I was trying to say.

But you're looking for a little more color on 2025. And I would sum it up this way outside of the comments that I made in the prepared session. We went through a significant transition in our EMEA division. That took a little bit longer than we expected, but quite frankly, is going to have a huge benefit for us here too in 2026 and going forward because of two things. Number one, we're selling BIO-key-only solutions with and including our Biometrics, which are getting very, very good visibility, especially within the regulated industries, and that's banking, defense, health care, that kind of thing. The second piece is the reason this again took a little bit longer, the deal size in EMEA is -- some of the deals are 7-figure, but most of them are in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars. So they are larger deals. They're all through channel partners. They're typically with larger customers, and the benefits are incredible when they close.

But that took us a little bit longer to get over the chasm in 2025. And I think that's why we underperformed our expectations there. Most of it was timing, but we are very bullish and very encouraged about 2026, and we will take advantage of that benefit. And that should get us to our goal and objective of breakeven profitability and obviously being cash flow positive this year.

Okay. Great. No, I really appreciate that extra color, Mike. That actually makes a lot of sense. And then just to be extra crystal clear, is this -- in the press release, you did -- you referenced all these various specific deals in highlights. Is this the customer that I'm looking at? Or is this a different one under the financial sector, you secured a $1.04 million 1-year license renewal with the foreign bank. Was this -- is this that customer from 2024? Or is this a separate entity?

No, that's that customer.

Okay. Great. And then Mike, let's talk about the first quarter because this is definitely a point of emphasis that I just -- it popped out to me. Here we are, we're basically the last day of the first quarter as of today. So it sounds like you have a pretty good read-through on that $2.2 million target. Is this any of the -- I guess, one, any of the slippage from the fourth quarter that slipped into the first quarter? And then two, do you have a good sense of the mix of that revenue? Is it mostly license revenue? How do I think about that? And is it growth across all three segments?

Well, the majority will likely be License revenue, but there's also some strong Hardware revenue as well, but very good margins. As you know, our blended gross margins are always never lower than the high 70s all the way up through the low 80s. So depending upon that mix, you're going to be looking at an 80-plus percent, if not more, gross margin across the board, whether it's hardware or software combined, that's what you can expect.

Excellent. That's helpful. And then -- just maybe if we could just touch on some of these large deals you're seeing in some -- it sounds like you're seeing more urgency, as you mentioned, from customers across -- you started listing a segment here and there, and then you started basically covering all your segments, it seems that -- where would you say -- if you could just highlight like maybe a handful of potential -- maybe deals that aren't in stone yet, but things that are kind of in the background that you're working on that could really move the needle. Would you say that these opportunities are in Europe and they're in your defense, your military and defense sector primarily, the financial banking financial services primarily? Or is it really all over the board? Where are you seeing the largest needle mover opportunities that maybe you haven't talked about explicitly yet?

Well, for sure, and we've discussed this before, we've developed quite a niche in defense and in government right now that, including and incorporating our Biometrics is getting significant uptake. So I don't have to remind you of the geopolitical scenario we're dealing with and certainly the sense of urgency around security. Within our niche, we have a sub-niche, which is focused on intelligence and information, and so that's top, top priority. And our solutions not only provide the level of security that's required, but convenience and availability and scalability, and that is critical and important in those segments.

We're seeing the business on a global basis and the expansion will be on a global basis. It will be in EMEA, in Europe and in the Middle East. We have a couple of very large opportunities in South America right now that we're working with some very large partners, notorious partners. And the relationship that we announced just a couple of weeks ago with TD Synnex, as you know, they're one of the largest resellers and VARs in -- they're global, but certainly here in the U.S. and they're very focused on the state, local and federal business, and they are going to help us as a force multiplier, grow our business there as well. So it's across the board. I mean we have opportunities, for example, in the gambling space, right, to secure access to information, in banking in both large national banks as well as some regional banks as well, in health care, some national ministries all the way down to hospitals. As you know, we've been in that business for a long time.

So we cut across every sector of the economy. But certainly in the regulated space, that's where I see continued growth. And it's not -- let's put it this way, if you're a defense or a government contractor right now, your business is going to blossom and grow. And each of those contractors, forget about the government themselves, has to secure at the NIST level, right? They have to secure and meet the compliance hurdles that are required to do business with the government, and that's a huge opportunity for us. And that's why our relationship with TD Synnex, I think, is going to blossom and be significant here domestically.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from [ Dan Camis ], a private investor.

Were your expenses in the first quarter about the same as fourth quarter?

Well, we haven't reported the quarter. So I can't comment on the exact numbers for expense and so forth. We did and do believe our revenue is going to be in the range that we predicted. But certainly, the first quarter should be similar to all of the other quarters. Sometimes events like, for example, when we attend a large event and we spend money perhaps there, it could be a little bit higher. We are relaunching our website right now and planning to do so early in the second quarter. So there might be some expense associated with that. But other than that, we're pretty stable.

Okay. So we should see pretty significant improvement in cash flow in the first quarter, it sounds like. Should we expect -- or can you give us any clue as to what to expect for expenses in R&D in 2026?

We're -- I think I mentioned in my prepared remarks that we're about to launch one of the most significant upgrades and enhancements for our PortalGuard platform Version 7. So a lot of that money has already been spent. We've been working on this for nearly 1.5 years, 2 years. And so I would think our R&D expenses are going to be relatively stable. I don't expect them to grow significantly. And we're really hoping, and we have a very intensive initiative going on within the company to assess AI-related tools, and we have contracts with a number of them -- and we're assessing where and how we can use those not only within all facets of the business, but within development to do two things: Number one, become more efficient and more productive; but ultimately reduce cost and increase our time to market.

I see. Anything revolutionary about this version? Or is it a marginal improvement and upgrade in your offerings that you can talk about...

It's significant, and we'll be announcing that shortly, especially for partners, Dan, where some of our larger partners want to be able to control, to mix and match and to deploy because everything is subscription now, to be able to deploy licenses, pull them back if, for example, the customer decides to cancel and to utilize those licenses in other accounts and so forth. So the ability to have multi-tenant management for those partners is a really big deal, and that's part and parcel of what we're doing here amongst many other enhancements for security, the incorporation of mobile technologies, a whole host of different options and availability. But a lot of this is focused on making our partners more involved in the dashboard and management of the solution set.

I see. Is there anything, I guess, in that 30% increase you mentioned in the $1 million foreign bank renewal that you're particularly excited about? Or was it just more licenses or...

Excited about a couple of items. Number one, obviously, the growth and the increase in the user population, but also the assessment of our more advanced technologies like one-to-many, that could dramatically change the way they operate and increase the size of this contract as we continue through this year and into next. So I'm very excited about that opportunity. And I think it's revolutionary because it could be one of the largest deploys of this type and this nature in the world. So we're enthused about that. There's a lot of growth potential ahead for that as well.

Are you saying that you're going to be scrubbing their database on a one-to-many basis?

No, no, no, they already do that. I mean that's [indiscernible]. I'm talking about some more advanced use of the technology.

Okay. I guess we'll be hearing about that then.

Hopefully.

You said it's a good start toward our goal of achieving breakeven results in early 2026. Are you saying there's a -- I'm just trying to clarify that statement in your release. Are you saying that, that's -- there's a potential for breakeven in the second quarter? Or were you just saying that you basically reduced your cash burn in the first quarter?

I think we're saying that our goal this year, right, is to be breakeven or profitable and to be cash flow positive, and that's our objective. And when we get there, I can't specifically say, but it's -- we should be there in the early part of 2026. That's our goal and objective.

I mean...

Again, it's not that sophisticated, right? You can look at our expenses in the -- I'm saying $2 million range, right, give or take, right? It could be higher, it could be a little bit lower. You can look at our revenue in the $2 million to $3 million range. You can look at our gross margins in the 80% range and you can figure it out. So that -- again, that's our goal and objective, right, to get there, to be there. And I believe we have as I mentioned and closed in my prepared comments, I believe we have the team, we have the partners, we have the product. And now we have, I'll call it, a very captive market, especially, again, in our niche on the regulated side to be able to get there.

Got it. Any evidence in the first quarter? I mean, I think one bug has always been U.S. businesses adopting passwordless adoption. You're indicating there's a significant move in that direction. I'm just wondering if there's any evidence in the first quarter that U.S. businesses are willing to purchase from BIO-key rather than their usual large competitors?

Yes. No doubt. New business, no question, yes. And again, that partnership, look, Synnex is a large company. They're a large public company. You can look them up. They're very enthused about offering our solutions and technology, especially in their public sector business. So I mean, that's a very strong proof-point that we can expand and them as a force multiplier, right, with the customer base they have, nevertheless, the partner network they have, we should see significant growth in that business.

Well, along that line, I think recently, when you've mentioned the partner announcement, there's usually been some underlying deal that supports it. Is that what's going on with TD Synnex?

We have a whole series of deals going with them. And you'll hear more about it as we're able to announce them.

All right. That sounds good. Can you say anything about your ARR, where is that running in the first quarter? Or are we still between $6 million and $7 million?

Yes, we're in that range. Again, we've transitioned -- other than our legacy customers, we have a handful of legacy customers. For the most part, our business is a subscription business. And even those legacy customers, we're migrating them, especially now that we have new and enhanced features and products, we have a good reason to be able to migrate them. So that sector of our business is definitely substantial, and multiyear deals are our total focus.

And so even when we're on-prem, we can be subscription and we can be multiyear and still fit within the confines of their requirements. So that's another really big advantage that we bring to the table. And that's why I believe in the regulated industries, we're doing so well, where many -- especially international clients do not want hosted solutions. So everything here is kind of moving to the web, right, to AWS or Oracle or Azure, no question, here domestically. However, internationally, there's still a pension for storing and housing customer data on-prem, and we can go both ways. So we can offer our customers the opportunity to do it either way. And more importantly, and this is a new feature in Version 7, to be able to do both at the same time and to be able to transition seamlessly. So that's a powerful, powerful differentiator for us.

Got it. A couple more, I think. Any changes in the Boumarang asset or any news on that?

No. I know they have an S-1 filed now, which I think is public information and are looking at -- they've done a couple of acquisitions of like product, and that's really all I have at this point. I have no other information.

So no change in that asset value at all?

No.

Last question is, I think probably you have about 10 business days to get the stock above $1 before to stall a reverse split. At this point, is there anything you think that could still forestall such a split?

Yes. That's a great question. I didn't even think about quite honestly, the proxy that's out there. Obviously, belt and suspenders, right? We're not going to risk the potential to lose our NASDAQ listing, right? That's not going to happen. So obviously, the Board, it was prudent for us to file the proxy. We have until early May, I think the first week of May to have the stock trade for 10 consecutive days over $1, if that happened, we certainly would not do the reverse split.

But if we need to, we certainly will. And so our shareholder meeting is scheduled late April. I'm hoping that in the next month that we're going to be able to find our way clear to seeing the stock trade up. But as you know, this geopolitical scenario hasn't been kind to anyone, and it doesn't matter who you are, what space, what industry, has been broad-based, and it's a difficult market. So who knows? But we certainly are in a position to do whatever we need to do to protect ourselves, especially now, as the wind is at our back, and we're feeling much more optimistic about significant scale of our business going forward. So I hope we don't have to do it, Dan, but if we do, we will.

Showing no further questions. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'll ask Mike DePasquale to provide any closing remarks.

Thank you again for joining today's call. We genuinely appreciate your interest in BIO-key, and I look forward to updating investors on our progress on our Q1 call in May. In the interim, we will update investors via press release of significant developments. If you have any questions, please reach out to our IR team whose contact information is in today's press release. With that, operator, please conclude the conference. Thank you, everyone, and have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to BIO-key International's Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Friday, November 14, 2025.

[Operator Instructions].

I will now turn the call over to Bill Jones, Investor Relations. You may proceed.

Thank you, operator. Hosting today are BIO-key's Chairman and CEO, Mike DePasquale, and its CFO, Ceci Welch. .

As a reminder, today's call and webcast as well as answers to investor questions include forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. Words like anticipate, believe, expect, plan and project and similar words identify and express forward-looking statements. These statements are made based on the beliefs, assumptions and information currently available to management as of today, pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

For a more complete description of such risks and uncertainties, which affect future performance, please see Risk Factors in the company's annual report, Form 10-K as filed with the SEC. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements made as of today, and the company makes no obligation to revise or disclose revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events occurring after today's call.

And now with that, I'll turn the call over to Mike to begin.

Thanks, Bill, and thank you all for joining us today. After my remarks and CC's financial review, we will open up the call to investor questions.

From a big picture standpoint, we reported revenue of approximate $1.55 million in Q3 '25, roughly in line with revenue in the first 2 quarters this year, and we reported year-to-date revenue of slightly under $5 million. The roughly $600,000 decrease in both the third quarter and year-to-date revenue in 2025 compared to last year. It is largely due to quarter-to-quarter variability resulting from the timing of some larger customer orders.

We had particular strength in last year's third quarter from 2 large orders, one from a long-time banking customer, which was more of a catch-up for expanding their deployment and another one from an ongoing rollout of solutions by a long-time defense industry customer. Both customers are still very, very active. And the defense customer had a $140,000 order after the quarter closed in October that we really expected to get in the third quarter rolled over to the fourth quarter. And we continue -- and we expect continuing deployments in orders even this quarter and beyond.

In addition, we expect our large banking customer to renew their contract, their subscription contract in early 2026 on their steadily expanding deployment of our solution. The customer has over 29 million users enrolled in our solution with the potential for meaningful future additions. They made a major expanded investment in our solutions in 2023 and 2024, including a $900,000 upgrade to our fingerprint only biometric customer identification technology. And this option or solution allows them to identify clients with just a single fingerprint scan eliminating the need for any other identifiers, including a card or an ID number. And that, in essence, is saving them approximately 30 seconds per transaction, which time is money, which is meaningful for them.

Their current annual license fee is now over $1 million scheduled for renewal in early 2026. And whether they choose a 1- or a 2-year contract, we expect that we'll see $1 million to $3 million in business and renewal in the first quarter. Across the board, and this is general within our business, we enjoy very high renewal rates in excess of 90%, meaning our churn rate is in the single digits.

The lumpiness that we see in our quarter revenues is more of a function of timing of renewals, new deployments, our large customer expansions, and there can also be true-ups for additional software licenses. Q3 is generally a seasonally slower period for us, particularly in Europe due to the summer holiday period. But we expect to close out the year very strong as we advance our channel sales efforts in the broader Europe, Middle East and Africa regions, where we are now focused solely on BIO-key branded solutions.

Additionally, we're in the final stages of developing new marketing messaging for our website and our business development. This messaging and collateral should be implemented during the fourth quarter to get us well positioned for the start of the new year. To support this project, we engaged an external marketing firm earlier in the year to work with us on our new website content and targeted marketing strategies. We're finalizing a major website overhaul, focused on improving again the content, the navigation with a plan released prior to the Gartner IAM Conference, which is held mid-December.

We also plan to release a significant update to our PortalGuard identity platform. PortalGuard operates as a single MFA, multifactor authentication user experience providing a broad set of 17 factors of authentication, including, of course, our identity-bound biometric options to meet virtually any use case.

Version 7, which is the new version represents our most significant update ever. It features major platform modernization, enhanced configurability with improved deployment capabilities. Development is expected to conclude within the coming weeks, after which we'll undergo rigorous internal and third-party security testing. The time line for general availability is late Q1 or early Q2 in 2026.

Also in Q3, we introduced our new FBI FAP 20 certified EcoID III fingerprint scanner, which is aimed primarily for the regulated industries. Although BIO-key is primarily a software company, providing a total solution, including state-of-the-art hardware is essential in supporting our annual recovering revenue software model.

The EcoID III reader pairs encrypted device to host communications with liveness detection for faster, more secure authentication. We've delivered initial volume EcoID III orders for defense and government customers in Q3. We also expect government-related and highly regulated industries like financial services, higher education and health care to gravitate towards our new reader. Our PortalGuard platform, our IDaaS, Passkey:YOU solution, all pair very, very nicely with the new EcoID III fingerprint sensor.

As I mentioned on our call last quarter, we launched our cyber defense initiative in response to increased global defense spending, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, and our success with some significant high-profile deployments in these markets. Incorporated in these rising defense budgets is a significant emphasis on cyber resiliency and security as a priority. Today, two of the top four largest global defense agencies by spending are using BIO-key technology to secure all of their critical information. We are well positioned to capitalize on these growing defense budgets and spending and are advancing a growing pipeline of opportunities based on the deployment of our solutions by some of the most respected military security and defense ministries and agencies.

Supporting this initiative, we are adding select resources to engage with contractors who will help us expand our market reach. We expect to see a growing base of new contract activity from these efforts, building on deployments this quarter and beyond. A primary factor in defense industry deployments is our ability to support critical infrastructure and access to sensitive environments with advanced biometrics and our multifactor authentication technologies without reliance on mobile devices or hardware tokens.

Biometric authentication is better suited than these engagements given its enhanced security, accuracy, convenience and ability to better prevent fraud and unauthorized access compared to traditional methods. Biometrics minimize false positives and improve the precision of access control. In addition, uniquely tying individuals to actions and access events, aids in monitoring traceability and insider threat management or improved accountability and audit trails.

Streamlining access processes also reduces time spent on logins and boost productivity for defense personnel while maintaining strict security. For defense agencies managing highly sensitive data and infrastructure, we believe biometrics are growing as a preferred choice over traditional methods alone. And our references in that space gives us a unique competitive advantage.

We are gaining momentum, as I just described in the defense sector as well as in banking, government, higher education as the rising incidence of security incidents highlight potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities. In addition, growing regulatory requirements and increasingly stringent cyber insurance underwriting standards requiring MFA adoption helped create opportunities for our superior biometrics and portable authentication options.

We are excited about the growth prospects into next year. And though given our size, and as I just described, the variability of our business, our business may continue to fluctuate on a quarterly basis based on the timing of larger orders. But as we work to build the business, we'll continue to keep a sharp focus as well on our cost structure, seeking to reduce our breakeven levels and support our goal of positive cash flow and profitability.

Ceci will walk through the numbers but let me highlight that we have been able to reduce our operating expenses by over 10% through the first 9 months of 2025, while at the same time, expanding our global reach and suite of solutions.

Finally, as far as funding our runway to profitability after the close of the third quarter, we were able to raise approximately $3 million net of fees and related expenses through a warrant exercise transaction priced at $1.02 per share. This funding significantly expands our cash liquidity, puts us in a stronger position to pursue growth. And as we expect, they close a strong close to 2025, we are in a very, very good position from a financial perspective to be able to grow our business and actually overachieve our objectives coming into the new year.

With that, let me turn the call over to Ceci to review the financials, and then we'll take questions.

Thank you, Mike. We released our results this morning, and we plan to file our 10-Q later today. Let me walk through some of our highlights. Our Q3 '25 revenue was $1.5 million versus $2.1 million in Q3, down approximately $595,000 year-over-year, principally due to the large orders Mike referenced in Q3 2024 that we did not have in this quarter. Those orders accounted for approximately $665,000 of year-over-year difference, offset by some new orders. As a result, our license fee revenue was $918,000 in Q3 '25 versus $1.4 million in Q3 '24. Service revenue increased slightly to $268,000 in Q3 '25 versus $267,000 in Q3 '24 as growth of recurring service revenue more than offset the decline in customer service revenue, supporting large customer upgrades in Q3 '24. .

Hardware sales declined to approximately $364,000 in Q3 '25 from $436,000 in Q3 '24 due to the timing hardware shipments in support of ongoing customer rollouts. Partially offsetting the timing difference was the sale of fully reserved inventory in Q3 '25. And now we have approximately $2.8 million remaining in fully reserved inventory for which we have several potential customers.

Q3 '25 gross margin remained strong at 77% compared to 78% in Q3 '24 as the absence of third-party license software offset a lower portion of our license revenue. BIO-key may further inroads in trimming operating expenses, which decreased 8% to $2.1 million in Q3 '25 versus $2.3 million in Q3 '24. This reflects a 13% or $208,000 decrease in SG&A expense, offset by a 5% or $31,000 increase in research, development and engineering expenses required to support the generation product introduction, including the EcoID III and our forthcoming PortalGuard upgrade.

Reflecting lower revenues tempered by lower operating expenses, BIO-key Q3 '25 net loss was $965,000 or $0.15 per share as compared to $739,000 or $0.39 per share in Q3 '24. For the first 9 months of 2025, our net loss was $2.9 million or $0.50 per share as compared to a net loss of $2.9 million or $1.69 per share a year ago. Per share amounts were based on 6.6 million and 1.9 million weighted average shares outstanding in Q3 '25 and Q3 '24, respectively, and 5.8 million and 1.7 million for the first 9 months of 2025, respectively. Reflecting shares issued for warrant exercises and other finance-related activities.

As of September 30, BIO-key had current assets of $3.7 million, including $2 million in cash compared with 2024 year-end current assets of $1.9 million and $438,000 in cash. Accounts receivable and different factor increased 21% to $959,000 at September 30, 2025 from $792,000 at year-end 2024. BIO-key also secured gross proceeds of $1 million for working capital and to support ongoing operations with the September 30 issuance of a senior secured promissory note.

As Mike mentioned, subsequent to the close of the third quarter, we generated net proceeds of $2.9 million from the exercise of warrant agreements to purchase BIO-key shares at an exercise price of $1.02. Accordingly, the cash proceeds of the financing were not reflected in our Q3 balance sheet, '25.

And with that, all of you, operator, let's proceed with the question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from [ Dan Khamis ], a private investor.

Well, it's been about 10 months, I think, since you announced the Bank of Egypt win, was that a recurring revenue deal? Or were the permanent licenses? And are you expecting similar revenue from that client customer in 2026? .

Absolutely. Yes, the answer to that question is that was an initial deployment that we announced just about a year, give or take, 10 months ago. And we are expecting an expanded deployment and that may even happen here in the fourth quarter. So the answer to that question is, yes, that is a growing. deployment. .

I see. And a follow-up on that is, since you partnered, I think, with Raya on that, does that mean your margins are lower on that project? .

Not at all. Our gross margins on software are 90-plus percent, and so they remain 90-plus percent from a gross perspective. I'll make a comment about partners just as kind of an aside. You may have noticed over the last month or so, we've made a number of announcements with partner companies that are bringing us into local markets throughout the Middle East, in Africa and in Europe, and you're going to see even more coming in the near term. That's a force multiplier. These are very significant.

If you read these press releases that we've made, these are significant players who have significant resource in the local markets and have influence in particular industries, some in government, some in banking, health care and so forth. And what you get there is you get local cultural support, you can influence, and given that 90-plus percent of business in EMEA, in general, that's Europe, Middle East, Africa comes through partners. This growing base in our -- what we call our CAP Program, right, Channel Alliance Program is going to pay significant dividends for us as we proceed forward.

And every one of these partners that we've signed like Raya comes with a deal, right, historically, right? Partners get signed and then you go out kind of license to hunt, try to find an opportunity. What's happening here, particularly again in EMEA, is that we're signing these partners because they have a deal. We've already been working with them and they want to go out and represent what they perceive to be the most unique and capable identity and access management, biometrically enabled platform that's available. And you can see, again, based on all those announcements that we're getting, we're making very, very good progress.

Yes, that's helpful. Just on the Bank of Egypt still, the first step was to handle the NBE employees, right, and then move on to B2B and B2C. Are we looking at non-employee expansion as a, say, 2027 target?

Well, I think 2 things. Number one, the initial deployment was I believe, in the range of 20-or-so thousand users, and that was not the full employee base. So there is still an expansion in the existing enterprise employee base. And the answer to the second question, which you see what we call CIAM, Customer Identity and Access Management, the answer to that is, yes, there is definitely an opportunity to take this to customers. Similar in nature to what we do with Capitec Bank in South Africa, where they're utilizing our biometric technology not only internally for employee and employee access, but for customer access. .

Okay. So -- but is that 2027? Is that by any chance next year?

I think all of this is on the table for some -- again, the employee expansion is on the table for this year. And I believe in 2026, they'll begin looking at the CIAM deployment.

On the defense side, I think in the second quarter CC, you mentioned iterating to multimillion dollars with your largest defense ministry. Last week, you announced one of the largest Middle East sector deployments in the region. With another unnamed defense organization. Is this contract on the same scale as this longer-term defense ministry?

It's even bigger. It has bigger potential. So the answer is yes, they're very large. Most of these defense ministry opportunities, depending upon the size of the country are large opportunities. And they have a really good expansion potential because usually, you're starting with a base population so that they can get going and then they're expanding out to additional users and enrolling additional users. So these are large deals, and they have a really long tail, and they're very sticky, meaning once you get involved, they do a lot of betting they look at a lot of different options. But once you get involved, you're there for a significant period of time.

Sounds really good. With all these bank and defense wins, do you have any kind of feel for what your current ARR is, the recurring revenue?

Our ARR is growing. I would say we certainly are in the because you have to back out when you look at our total number includes hardware and software. But I think our ARR base, including renewals on our traditional contracts, right, the traditional PortalGuard business that we purchased probably are in the $6 million to $7 million range right now. And our churn, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, is in the single-digit range as well. So I would say that's a good number. .

Yes, that's a remarkable churn. Your Echo III ID or EcoID III release said the price point, high-quality scanners was significantly reduced. Is the price lowered relative to EcoID II? Or does this third version compete with a different quality of scanner?

Definitely competes with a higher-quality device. We sell to, what I call, FBI-certified PIV-certified readers. One is called the PIVPro, which we've been selling for many, many years. That's a very high-quality optical device, glass platinum. The EcoID III competes with that device at a lower price point. So it's $49.99, list price quantity 1 versus the PivPro, which is in the high 60s, low 70s. That's number one. Number two, the new EcoID III is much higher quality and carries liveness detection and full encryption on device.

The EcoID II did not have that capability. So the EcoID II was priced a little bit lower at $44.99, but it didn't have encryption and it did not have liveness detection innate in the device like the EcoID III does. We sold, I guess, initial order is about 7,500, a little under 10,000 units to one of our defense customers out of the gate as soon as we were able to deliver the product in Q3.

Okay. It's been a year about since you received the boomerang stock. I assume the 9-month put period is over and you didn't return the stock. Is there any update on the value of that asset now?

I think we'll be looking at that as we do our audit for calendar 2025, fiscal 2025. But I know they've made a number of small acquisitions and I know they're involved in some strategic scenarios, nothing that I can speak to, but it appears that, that value is certainly intact. .

One more question, I guess, for this round here. I think your -- have you done any research into -- well, I mean the stock is trading anywhere from 1x to 100x the flow for the last 3 weeks, any research you've done to figure out what's driving that kind of action? .

It's a tough question to answer. First, I think announcements typically drive volume, right? And so we've seen significant volume in the stock on some of the announcements we've made. Why our stock would trade 450 million shares on 1 single day and turn $400 million in trade value is it's almost cereal, and I don't have a particular answer for that. I think there's a lot of interest in our space. There's an awful lot of interest in security. And in particular, we have a very unique offering in a very strong niche in defense and banking, and we have great references. So if you look at where we are today from a market capitalization perspective, if you look at the numbers, we're very undervalued. .

And so perhaps there's interest in investing and taking a position in a potential company that has a lot of upside. But those are only theories and I can't really say and understand at any level why we see those days with that kind of volume.

Okay. Is there anybody else in the queue right now?

Operator?

Yes. We do have another questioner in.

Okay. I'll get off then.

And your next question comes from Jack Vander Aarde are with Maxim Group. .

Mike, I'm juggling a few conference calls this morning, so I had to join this call a little late. So I apologize if I'm being redundant, the guidance, this is something new that popped up. And so I just want to know what kind of led to your decision process to feel confident enough to install a formal guidance parameters. And then can we expect formal guidance framework for 2026 on the next earnings call? .

Thanks, Jack. First of all, I appreciate you're pretty busy today. Yes, we're pretty confident in our position right now. I think, again, you've seen the announcements. You've seen that we're starting to see the results of the investments we've made, in particular, in this, I described partner network that we've been building. So we have more confidence because typically, these deals are RFP or they're very large opportunities that are being worked and their competitive. And you'll know a couple 3 months before you get the contract signed that you actually won the order and won the business. So the pipeline now is pretty solid, and we feel good about that. So that's the reason behind that. .

I'd love to be able to give guidance and as we get more predictable, we'll do that. But look at this quarter, look at the third quarter. Quite frankly, we expected at least $200,000, $250,000 more in business that didn't materialize not because the business went away, but just because of the timing, one of our customers, one of our defense customers had to change budgets. And so it caused 1.5 weeks delay in processing the order. That's an order we expected in the third quarter, wound up falling to the early part of October. Nothing to do with the business or the efficacy of that contract just timing. So that's what makes it difficult for us, Jack. And I hope that we'll be more predictable in the beginning part of the year, we'll be able to do that. .

Okay. Great. Two more questions there, Mike. I guess the first one was, I recall, a large renewal that was coming up, I think, in 1Q, '26. Is this still on track? And is that the case? .

Yes. .

Okay. Great. And then just, obviously, there's -- we just had the longest government -- U.S. government shutdown in history, had that -- does that have any impact on your business in the fourth quarter? Or just any of the growth initiatives or just anything operationally did that have an impact? .

Not at all. Not at all. We didn't see any impact at all. Typically, we're flying way above that in the context of security. And so it's kind of a mandate. And we've never really seen any of that impact anything that we do. Just doesn't......

And then can you just touch on maybe as you look at 2026 outside of the large renewal in 1Q '26. Are there any other major upcoming renewals throughout the year that I should be aware of? And then also any expansion opportunities that you see coming up throughout the year?

Well, I think there's a lot of that on all sites. In particular, again, our pipeline of new deals, new opportunities that are spawning as a result of our footprint growing in both defense and banking, in health care. So you're going to see a lot more happen over the coming over the coming months and coming quarters.

You're going to see renewals from, again, that large banking and finance contract that we've had, we've had for years and continues to grow and expand. And you're going to see expansions like we discussed in the last question period with customers like the National Bank of Egypt and others that are continuing to expand their existing deployments, right? Not only for employees or internal use, but also ultimately out to customers.

So I think there's an awful lot of that on the horizon. And I go back to the point that I was trying to make with Dan, and that is the expanding partner network is a force multiplier for our company. That is going to have a huge impact in our ability to double and triple our business in the coming quarters and the coming years.

Great. Maybe just one more follow-up. Speaking to your channel partners, can you just give us an update on all the various channel programs you do have. The Channel Alliance Program, I recall, was a major growth area, a couple of years ago, and I just haven't gotten a clear update on that. What's the status of the Channel Alliance Program and some of your other partnerships? .

Yes. Well, again, in Channel Alliance Program, you've seen a number of announcements we've made just recently. I won't repeat that. But those are all partners that are part of the Channel Alliance Program that we have. We have distributors. We have MSPs, what we call, managed service providers. We have MSSPs, managed service security providers, right, or managed security service providers. We have resellers. So there's various components within the CAP Program for different types of partners that service end user customers. And that is just continuing to grow.

But more importantly, it's not quantity, it's quality. What you want are significant players who have a cultural and a local expertise who deliver services to large companies, mostly large companies and do it over a period of time where they have credibility. And when they come in and recommend the solution, the customer takes a look at it. So that's what we're driving. We're not trying to drive quantity anymore. We're trying to drive quality.

Yes. No, I'm happy you said that. And I think just another part of that though is, are they -- are any of your channel -- are your Channel Alliance Partners, or is there a portion of them that are exclusively reselling and pushing BIO-key? Are they also servicing other or providing other vendors support as well. How does that kind of, I guess, break out within the Channel Alliance Program? .

Yes, that's a great question. We do have some partners that exclusively sell the BIO-key IAM solution. But most of these players sell all the core broad software like Microsoft and Oracle, and you name it, and all of the network security, Cisco and so forth. They typically provide all of that to an end-user customer and the security piece is one component of their overall solution or service for that client. So it really depends.

But as it relates to security, we have some that exclusively sell BIO-key and some that sell other solutions as well. But remember, our unique competitive advantage, and I don't care if you look at Okta, SailPoint, Ping, ForgeRock, it doesn't really matter. We have the biometric component that they don't natively have. So that's our differentiator. So even if we're not exclusive, we tend to be exclusive because they don't have what we have.

Got it. Great. And then I guess I'll ask one more.

And Ceci, maybe this is a question for you as well. Just the margins were really strong again for the licensing revenue, which is great to see. I think that's helping the breakeven case. I look at the operating expenses and you guys have done a good job of keeping those tamed. Going forward, do I expect any changes in the operating expenses? Or is this -- are there any further cost savings? Just curious because it does seem like you're tracking towards that breakeven number on maybe even a smaller base of revenue because of those strong margins.

Yes, we are just analyzing everything. So it's just something that every quarter people are looking to spend on this, that and the other thing. And we're just trying to make good decisions on those types of things. As we said in the past, we've lowered all of our rents for all of our places. We're just doing what we can. And so we will continue to do that, just keep our eyes on the prize, so to speak.

Great. And Mike, do you echo those comments, though, just in terms of do you see profitability breakeven on the horizon?

Absolutely. No question in my mind. I do see it. I think it's a combination of things. It's, again, the pipeline. It's some of the larger renewals. It's also us managing and scaling around our existing resource pool, which, again, with the CAP Program gives us the ability to do that, right? Typically level 1 and level 2 support for these customers comes from the partner, right? We're there as a backup. This business scales very, very nicely with the model that we built. And even on the hardware side, the hardware that we sell, we get really good margins. We don't do anything without a 50% plus margin, even on the hardware side. Blended, we're in that 70%,80% range, and we think we can stay there.

And your next question is a follow-up from Dan Khamis.

So it looks like your revenues are going to be flat or down year-over-year. The very good news, of course, is that the expenses have come down. But in terms of revenue, have you isolated the basic reason for flatness? Was it the loss of swivel revenue? Or what caused it to be flat, I guess, is my question.

Definitely, the transition from third-party to BIO-key product that took a little while to get productive. We're productive now. So I think you're going to see actually far better results. That's number one. And I think number two is we had an anomaly last year with our banking customer having to catch up.

And so in particular, in the third quarter, we had over $0.5 million in revenue that was not recurring. It was pretty much a onetime shock. So I think that's it. I mean there is nothing here in this business other than timing that I am concerned about right now. I think we're in a really, really good position. We're lowering our breakeven point. We're growing our partner network, which again is a force multiplier to get more deals and more business. And we're operating in a market that has just insatiable demand. I mean, defense banking, huge market opportunities for advanced security. And we've got the solutions, and we've got the references and the quals to be able to solve those issues.

And it goes back to what we call zero trust, but more importantly, it goes back to no phone, no token and fundamentally utilizing a passwordless solution that can be used across the enterprise because, again, our focus is enterprise right now. But we're blending and moving the CIAM. And I just think we've invested very, very heavily over the last 4 years in R&D, in sales and in marketing and expanding our footprint globally, especially now in the Middle East. You're going to see more of an expansion coming in the Asian markets. Stay tuned for that. That's going to have a huge impact on us.

Okay. Just as a final thought, I think with the $3 million in cash, you're probably still at about 1x book value. I know you and Jim have been doing some buying in the second and third quarters, maybe about $25,000 worth. I would just like to hear your take on why you think BKY is the best investment for that $25,000.

I think we're fundamentally undervalued, look at us, take any multiple, take any comp. And I think, again, we're just we've been traditionally undervalued. We've done a lot of financing. So I want to be brutally honest, right? I understand that, that created overhang, and it creates sometimes investor trepidation. There's no doubt or debate about it. But I felt, we felt, keeping the company alive with the notorious base installed base of customers we have. We're in a really good position. And I think we are we're not grabbing the value that we deserve. And I think you're going to see that unlocked in the near term in the future.

Showing no further questions. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'll ask Mike DePasquale to provide closing remarks. .

Thank you, and thank you again for joining our call today. We greatly appreciate your interest in investment in BIO-key and look forward to updating you on our progress. If you have any questions, please reach out to our IR team via phone or e-mail, and they will be very responsive. Their contact information is in today's release -- our earnings release. With that, operator, this will conclude the call. Thank you, everyone, and have a terrific weekend.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.