BIO-key International Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 18, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q1 2026 revenue rose 34% year over year to $2.1 million, driven by a large banking customer renewal and stronger hardware sales tied to defense and other deployments.
  • Positive Sentiment: Gross margin remained strong at 82%, and operating expenses were roughly flat, helping narrow the net loss to $165,036 from $736,545 a year ago.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management said the business has better visibility into 2026 thanks to larger pipeline opportunities, more partner-driven sales, and multiple awarded deals that still need to be papered.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The company is working to regain Nasdaq listing compliance, with an appeals hearing scheduled for June 16 and hopes to return to Nasdaq by late June or July; shares currently trade OTC under BKYY.
  • Positive Sentiment: Executives highlighted growing traction in defense, financial services, EMEA, and public sector channels, including a new partnership with TD SYNNEX’s DLT Solutions to reach U.S. public-sector buyers.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
BIO-key International Q1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the BIO-key International's first quarter 2026 conference call. During management's prepared remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, listeners will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, Monday, May 18th, 2026. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Bill Jones of Investor Relations. You may proceed.

Bill Jones
Investor Relations Representative at Catalyst IR

Thank you, Chuck. Hosting today are BIO-key's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mike DePasquale, and its Chief Financial Officer, 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, Form 10-K, as filed with the SEC.

Bill Jones
Investor Relations Representative at Catalyst IR

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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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 2026 results and Q2 2026 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 2026 revenues reflect both new customer wins and growing long-term customer deployments in defense and financial services.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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. 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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

To better reach public sector opportunities in the U.S., which often require working with a pre-approved vendor, we recently partnered with DLT Solutions, a division of TD SYNNEX, the world's largest IT distributor and solutions aggregator. TD SYNNEX, SYN-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 multi-factor authentication.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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, healthcare 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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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 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. 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, 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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

I wanna thank our team who put a lot of hard work and effort into this launch, I encourage investors to review it at www.bio-key.com. 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. 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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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 16th, which is next month, about four 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 advisors 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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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.

Ceci Welch
Ceci Welch
CFO at BIO-key International

Thank you, Mike. We released our results this morning via press release. 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. 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. Results are therefore subject to adjustment. In Q1 2026, our revenues increased 34% to $2.1 million versus $1.6 million in Q1 2025. With the current year benefiting from expanded one-year software license renewal from a long-time banking customer who's serving over 30 million clients with our biometric identity solution. Overall, the license fee revenues increased 24% to $1.4 million.

Ceci Welch
Ceci Welch
CFO at BIO-key International

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 our previously fully reserved inventory. In line with revenue, our Q1 gross profit grew 33% versus the Q1 2025 $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 both in high margin license fee revenue and the sales of the fully reserved inventory. Our operating expenses were approximately $2 million in Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, as higher R&D was offset by lower SG&A expenses in Q1 2026.

Ceci Welch
Ceci Welch
CFO at BIO-key International

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 2025. Per share amounts and weighted average shares outstanding reflect the impact of the company's April 30th 1:10 reverse split, warrant exercises and other financing activities. Share counts are provided in today's press release. Turning to our financial position at 3/31/2026, 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.

Ceci Welch
Ceci Welch
CFO at BIO-key International

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 31st, 2025, when BIO-key had current assets of $4.5 million, including $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

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question will come from Jack Vander Aarde. Please go ahead.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
Analyst at Maxim Group

Hey, good morning, guys. Good morning, Mike, Ceci. Congrats on the strong results and strong fundamental outlook. Obviously, there's been a 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. I guess there's maybe some housekeeping questions, Mike, just quickly. The Nasdaq appeal meeting's coming up, I think next month, you said. That puts you on track to get relisted. Just to revisit those comments quick. The 10-K sounds pretty confident that that's gonna be filed by next week. Can I just get a confirmation on that?

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Yes. Thank you. By the way, good morning, Jack. Yes, our hearing was scheduled on Friday. We got notice that it was scheduled for the 16th of June. We're, you know, 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. Everything is in motion there, and our advisors are very confident that we have, we should be optimistic about being able to do that.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

You know, we traded for nine days above $1 before we got suspended, which was a statutory scenario with the Nasdaq. It's their process. You know, that was our only issue at the time. We will get back on and we'll keep everybody posted as we proceed forward. 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.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
Analyst at Maxim Group

Okay. No, I appreciate all that. That's very clear. 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, you know, 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 10-K and the Nasdaq? Just to clarify, one more question there.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

No. Quite frankly, no. I think you know, we have a very broad portfolio of customers in virtually every sector of the economy. You know, many of them have been with us for many, many years when we were an OTC company and then uplisted to the Nasdaq. 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 is necessary.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

We have built a very strong partners network, especially internationally. It's really in our hands right now just to continue to scale this business. It will scale very profitably, as you can see. You know, our gross margins have been hovering in that 75%-85% range for years. That will continue to be as we scale revenue into the $5 million-$10 million range on a quarterly basis. You can imagine what will drop to the bottom line.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
Analyst at Maxim Group

Excellent. You know, 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. I guess, like, what's going on in your, I guess, pipeline here, your go-to market? Do you have more visibility than you've had in, you know, in the past two, three years in terms of this demand funnel? All of a sudden, you have this $5 million of revenue it looks like set up for the first half. How's the back half looking to you? Are you already thinking ahead that far?

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

For the rest of the year, we have a number of contracts that have already been won, but need to be you know, been awarded, but yet need to be papered, meaning we need to get orders and so forth and so on. We're feeling real good about the entirety of 2026.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
Analyst at Maxim Group

Excellent. you know, 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, you know, 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, it's just interesting to look at 'cause 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?

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Well, I think, you know, as you close these larger license opportunities, the requirement for hardware is also significant. 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. Again, it can go hand in hand. As you mentioned, we maintain really good gross margins in our hardware. 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. Obviously it's all cash and all margin. That's helping us certainly this year and will continue to help us as we evolve through the year.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

But again, you know, hardware is part and parcel of our larger opportunities, so it's always gonna be there. 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.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
Analyst at Maxim Group

Yeah. Mike, just with all your main, your core verticals, obviously defense, has been very strong, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of development 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 where's the next leg up for you within those two 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?

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Absolutely. We have a really good sizable base in education, as you know, and that's continuing to, you know, evolve. Yes, education is a great market for us. 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? The banks in countries that manage the currency. We've had a number of wins. We have a number of opportunities in our pipeline that you're gonna hear about over time as we knock them down. They have a very specific need for ultra-strong authentication. In the international venue, they 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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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. I think financial services is a very strong and growing vertical for us, and you're gonna hear a lot more about that going forward.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
Analyst at Maxim Group

Excellent. Mike, if I could just ask kind of one more semantic 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. Also with your cybersecurity and just protecting, you know, 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 if in these themes of quantum down the road, as well as tokenization and crypto being more mainstream.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Great. Those are two great questions. You know, 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. I think this year you see it kind of hit the rails because there are other priorities. 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. You know, 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. Don't get caught up in the hype is my comment on both of those scenarios.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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 gonna be tomorrow. Certainly, we're right in the heart of that. I mean, again, if you look at where the money's being spent today and where things are moving, it's taking much, much longer. That's why you're seeing, you know, 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 kinda like AI, right? There's no doubt that AI is currently impacting our lives, personal and business, and it's gonna continue to evolve.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

It still has to find its footings, and the companies that are engaged in that technology are gonna come and go. We've been around a long time providing, you know, very, very basic and yet sophisticated, highly secure solutions for some of, you know, the most important applications on the globe. I think, again, you know, we're gonna continue to do that, right? We have proven that we can do that. We've been here for over 30 years.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
Analyst at Maxim Group

Excellent. That's.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

That's my, that's my perspective, Jack.

Jack Vander Aarde
Jack Vander Aarde
Analyst at Maxim Group

No, that's a great perspective, and I appreciate that rundown. It sounds like things are going very well right now for BIO-key. I appreciate the time. I'll hop back in the queue. Thanks.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Thanks, Jack.

Operator

The next question will come from Don Knauss, Investor. Please go ahead.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

Hi, guys. Yeah, very nice quarter. That's quite nice. I've got a couple 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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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. I mean, back of the envelope.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

Okay

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

not that sophisticated, right?

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

Yeah.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Probably use. And timing, right, on collections, receivables, that kind of thing. I think we're pretty solid, let's put it this way. We're not hemorrhaging as we have in the past.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

Right. What, Mike, your current ARR run-rate, is that now improved with some of these contracts?

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

Okay.

Ceci Welch
Ceci Welch
CFO at BIO-key International

I'll just add, too. It depends on when some of the bigger shipments are, 'cause some of them come at the end of the quarter and, you know, some come at the beginning because we didn't get them the quarter before. Like Mike said, it's episodal based on timing.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

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

Ceci Welch
Ceci Welch
CFO at BIO-key International

Yeah, it was in the financials, and I don't remember off the top of my head. Bear with me one second. Sorry. Too much open up here. Basically $100,000.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

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

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

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

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

You know, I assume. I mean, we have plenty of NOLs, right? Net operating losses. I'm sure our accountants and our tax accountants will help us with that. Yeah, for sure.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

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? If so, can you give some color on why that might be?

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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?

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

Financial too.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

I mean, you know, 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, you know, concerns about all the regulatory scenarios like BIPA in the United States, right? They don't exist internationally. You know, we've had programs in the U.S., like for example, in Texas, where they were using biometrics to manage the food stamp program. The privacy mongers fundamentally, you know, killed that program, and their expenditure went up 4x because people were cheating. 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. That doesn't exist.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

It is much less difficult on the international front to deploy these solutions. 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 gonna 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, you know, every state in the U.S. We are doing really well in state and local government. Like, we have the perfect solution for biometrics, right? For highly secure access. And with a partner that size, it just opens up a whole market for us. Working closely with those partners, that's really the force multiplier in how we're gonna scale our business.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Yeah, I do believe that there's a difference, and I do believe, though, however, there is an opportunity on both sides of the world.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

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

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

It's clearly the full and complete authentication, biometric authentication option that we provide and the flexibility to use 16, 17 other factors. One size doesn't fit all. 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. Because we have a full complete platform with PortalGuard, we can provide all of those different options using a phone, using a card, using a token or a key. I think that's our competitive differentiator. Bringing, again, that very strong option with biometrics really separates us from everybody else in this space.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

You know, there are large biometric players like IDEMIA, for example, or NEC. They're going after airports and, you know, border control and all that other stuff. They don't have the authentication, you know, SSO, single sign-on, network logon. 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.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

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

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Well, you know, if they're looking at and seriously considering biometric for everybody or even for just a piece, guess what? It's not Okta. It's not, you know, 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, you know, 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. It really is, I always think it's, everyone has a competitor, right? There's no such thing as, you know, one company that dominates a space without competition.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

We just really don't see any of those players able to do the same things that we do for a customer. It's pretty unique. There are, you know, 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, which is strictly authentication.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

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?

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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 wanna be able to reinvest in the things that are gonna help us scale, right, our partner network, you know, again, ensuring our technology is leading edge, right, not bleeding edge, as Jack had asked questions about, you know, what's the future, right? I call that bleeding edge. We wanna be on the leading edge, not the bleeding edge. Yeah, we'd love to be able to do that. Over time, I'm hoping we will be able to do that. We only have 1.1 million shares outstanding right now, anything we can do in that realm would be just incredible.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

We are grossly undervalued, especially with the Nasdaq suspension. That certainly devalued us probably about 20%, 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 revenues projected to be about $5 million, we'd be trading, you know, one time one half year's revenue. It's obscene. Again, bumps in the road with the Nasdaq suspension and the timing of that. It wasn't a, 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. That devalued us for sure, but I think that's recoverable, right? You know, all ships rise with the tide.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

If the business continues to perform, right, we're gonna achieve the level of value that we should achieve. There aren't many. Look around the industry. There aren't many profitable companies, public companies that, you know, smaller companies like BIO-key and Security that are profitable, if any. I can name a couple. Trust Stamp.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

Yeah.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Aware, you know. They're not profitable. I think we're gonna grow into that valuation, if we continue to perform.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

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

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

We don't believe so. We don't believe so. We have some help with that, we're not concerned at this stage. Yes, we do have advisors that we've hired who have deep experience in the process. We wanna put our best foot forward, all that'll be covered.

Don Knauss
Investor at Private Investor

Okay, that's all I got. Thank you very much. Great quarter.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

Thank you.

Operator

Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. 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.

Mike DePasquale
Mike DePasquale
Chairman and CEO at BIO-key International

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.

Operator

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

Executives
    • Ceci Welch
      Ceci Welch
      CFO
    • Mike DePasquale
      Mike DePasquale
      Chairman and CEO
Analysts
    • Bill Jones
      Investor Relations Representative at Catalyst IR
    • Don Knauss
      Investor at Private Investor
    • Jack Vander Aarde
      Analyst at Maxim Group
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