Aware, Inc. (AWRE) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to Aware's Second Quarter FY '26 conference call. Joining us today are the company's CEO and President, Ajay Amlani; and CFO, David Traverse. Before we begin today's call, I would like to remind everyone that the presentation today contains forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations of Aware's management and involve inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Listeners should please take note of the safe harbor paragraph that is included at the end of today's press release. This paragraph emphasizes the major uncertainties and risks inherent in forward-looking statements that management will be making today. Aware wishes to caution you that there are factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results indicated by such statements. These risks and uncertainties are also outlined in the company's SEC filings, including its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements should be considered in light of these factors. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Although it may voluntarily do so from time to time, Aware undertakes no commitment to update or revise the forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Additionally, this call contains certain non-GAAP financial measures as that term is defined by the SEC in Regulation G. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in compliance with GAAP. Accordingly, Aware has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the company's earnings release issued today. I would like to remind everyone that this presentation will be recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Now I would like to turn the call over to Aware's CEO and President, Ajay Amlani. Ajay?

Thank you, Delaney, and good afternoon, everyone. I want to begin with revenue for the quarter was $3.3 million compared with $3.9 million in the prior year period, a result that was below our expectations. Quarterly performance was affected by the timing and variability of our stand-alone product business as well as the slower federal procurement activity related to the government shutdown. While the precise impact of the shutdown is difficult to quantify, it created a meaningful headwind during the quarter. The rapid advancement of AI is reinforcing the importance of the market we serve. As deepfakes, synthetic identities, injection attacks and other AI-enabled threats become more sophisticated, identity is becoming critical infrastructure for government and enterprise organizations. That is why we are focused so deliberately on the Awareness Platform. we believe the platform directly addresses this tailwind and where the market is headed by bringing biometric orchestration, decisioning, liveness detection, matching and partner technologies together in one unified environment. We expect the second half of the year to follow our typical seasonal pattern with revenue weighted more heavily toward the back half of the year compared to the first half of the year. The quarter reinforces the importance of the work we are doing to sharpen our focus, align our resources and build a more scalable business around the areas where we believe Aware can be most competitive. As we discussed last quarter, we are in the middle of an important transformation. We are moving away from a more fragmented product portfolio and focusing the company on the Awareness Platform, our SaaS-based biometric orchestration and decisioning platform. That transition takes time. It also creates near-term variability as we continue to support existing customers, pursue near-term opportunities and invest in the platform capabilities, we believe will define the next phase of growth for Aware. Our priority is clear. We are building a more focused company around biometric orchestration, liveness detection matching and the federal government and enterprise opportunities where our technology, experience and collaboration create meaningful differentiation. During the quarter, we continued to make important progress against that strategy. This quarter, we made significant updates to the Awareness Platform to help organizations make smarter identity decisions in real time. The platform is built to serve as an intelligent control plane for identity, enabling organizations to design, deploy, run and optimize biometric workflows through one unified environment. This is important because many government and commercial organizations are navigating increasingly complex biometric environments, often managing multiple systems, vendors, data sources and decisioning workflows at once. That fragmentation makes it harder to evaluate performance, manage fraud risk and deliver consistent user experiences. We are hearing this directly in customer conversation and at recent trade shows. This feedback is reinforced by our research, which found that 98% of organizations currently using biometrics are interested in biometric orchestration capabilities with organizations already using an average of 3 biometric vendors. The Awareness Platform is designed to address that challenge directly. It enables organizations to configure enrollment, verification, authentication and identification workflows, orchestrate multiple liveness detection matching and identity verification providers within a single transaction, evaluate and benchmark vendors in production, normalize outputs for more consistent decisioning across both government and commercial environments. We were also pleased to welcome 2 new integrated technology partners, ROC and Mitek to the Awareness Platform. These partnerships strengthen the platform and expand what customers can do through a single biometric orchestration environment. ROC's biometric matching technologies provide a high-performance foundation for identity decisioning workflows within the Awareness Platform. Mitek's identity verification and liveness detection capabilities bring additional high assurance fraud protection functionality into the platform. Together, these partnerships have reinforced one of the core principles behind our strategy. The future of identity is not only about better individual algorithms, it is also about better orchestration. Customers increasingly want flexibility, visibility and the ability to optimize performance across multiple technologies and vendors without disrupting live operations. Second, we continue to advance our Intelligent Liveness capabilities. The fraud landscape is becoming more sophisticated, particularly as deepfakes, injection attacks, synthetic identities, virtual cameras, device emulators and replay attacks become more accessible. Customers are looking for solutions that can strengthen security without adding unnecessary friction for legitimate users. Our latest Intelligent Liveness enhancements are designed to help address that need. These capabilities use advanced optical and spectral analysis to help verify the biometric images originate directly from a real device camera sensor in real time. Importantly, this remains a passive user experience and typically operates under -- in under 2 seconds without requiring users to blink, move their head or complete challenge response actions. We believe this is a critical capability for the market. As AI-driven fraud continues to evolve, organizations need liveness technology that can adapt to increasingly complex attacks while preserving speed and usability. Third, we made meaningful progress in Intelligent Matching. We announced advancements to our matching algorithm that are designed to deliver approximately 10x lower false non-match rate compared to previous generations, along with a scalable architecture, intended to enable sub-second one-to-end matching across large biometric data sets. This matters because biometric matching performance and scalability are foundational to high-confidence identity systems, particularly in government border travel, financial services and other environments where accuracy and speed and scale are all essential. Taken together, the progress we made across the Awareness Platform, Intelligent Liveness and Intelligent Matching strengthens our ability to help customers move from fragmented biometric systems to more intelligent optimized identity decisioning environment. We are seeing renewed activity across the federal government market particularly in areas tied to homeland security, border modernization, airport infrastructure, traveler processing and biometric identity verification. Importantly, May represented the first full month of normalized operations for the Department of Homeland Security following the recent disruptions in government funding. We want to recognize the dedication of DHS employees and the important work they continue to do in support of national security even through a challenging operating environment. Since activity has normalized, we have seen an increase in conversations, RFIs, procurement activity and program momentum in areas where biometric solutions are highly relevant. There are several publicly visible examples of this broader activity, including DHS Traveler Processing and Vetting Software, TSA's Gold Plus and secure identity management support initiative and DHS' Interagency Border Inspection System. We believe this renewed activity aligns well with Aware's capabilities, particularly in biometric orchestration, liveness detection, matching and high-assurance identity workflows. It also supports a broader federal priority around modernizing security infrastructure, improving traveler border processing and leveraging trusted technology providers that can support mission-critical identity programs while the timing and revenue impact of these opportunities remains difficult to predict, the level of activity reinforces our confidence that the federal government market remains an important area of focus for Aware. We are also focused heavily on executing teaming agreements with key systems integrators and partners that are well positioned in these pursuits. While the timing and revenue impact of these opportunities remains difficult to predict, the level of engagement reinforces our view that the market need is real and that Aware has capabilities that are highly relevant to the direction federal identity infrastructure is moving. Looking at the second half of the year, we expect revenue to improve from Q2 levels and expenses to be lower as the cost reduction actions we discussed last quarter became more visible in our results. We also expect certain subscription renewals and customer activity that are typically weighted toward the second half of the year to support a more normalized baseline of recurring revenue. We will remain careful in how we discuss timing. Our business can be cyclical, and individual quarters can vary based on procurement timelines, renewal schedules and customer decision-making, but we do believe the second half of the year should reflect a stronger operating profile than Q2. To be clear, we are not where we want to be yet. Q2 is a difficult quarter, and we have more work to do, but we believe the actions we are taking are the right ones, focusing the company, building around the Awareness Platform, strengthening liveness and matching, pursuing near-term opportunities with discipline and aligning resources to the markets where we believe we can win. With that, I will turn the call over to David to review our financial results in more detail. Over to you, David.

Thank you, Ajay. Let's review our financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. Revenue for the quarter was $3.3 million compared to $3.9 million in the prior year period. Software license revenue. Operating expenses for the quarter increased to $6 million compared to $5.9 million in the prior year quarter. The higher expenses include costs related to hires we made in 2025 that are partially offset by spending reductions we have made in the first half of this year. We will continue to make adjustments to our operating expenses as we focus on our strategic objectives. Net loss for the quarter was $2.6 million or $0.12 per diluted share compared to $2 million or $0.08 per diluted share in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $2.3 million compared to $1.4 million in the prior year period. Turning to our results for the 6 months ended June 30, 2026. Total revenue was $6.6 million compared to $7.5 million in the prior year period. The decrease reflects lower perpetual software license revenue. Operating expenses increased to $13 million compared to $11.3 million in the prior year period. The higher expenses include onetime severance costs of $700,000 as well as higher compensation costs related to hires we made in 2025. As we noted in our Q1 call, we reduced operating expenses by $4 million on an annualized basis starting in Q2 2026. And we will continue to make adjustments to our operating expenses as we continue to focus on our strategic objectives. Net loss of $6 million or $0.28 per diluted share compared to $3.4 million or $0.16 per diluted share in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $5.5 million compared to $3 million in the prior year period. We ended the quarter with approximately $16.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities and no debt. Our balance sheet remains strong and provides flexibility as we execute our strategic plan. We continue to manage expenses carefully while investing in our strategic priorities, including the Awareness Platform and pursue opportunities in the federal government and enterprise markets. As Ajay noted, we expect the second half of the year to be stronger than the first half of the year from a revenue perspective based on typical seasonality supported by the timing of certain customer activity and subscription renewals that are typically weighted toward the back half of the year. We also expect lower expenses in the second half as the cost reductions we implement become more fully reflected in our results. That said, we expect quarter variability to continue. Our revenue could be impacted by the timing of perpetual licenses, procurement cycles, renewals and service activity. For that reason, we continue to believe the business is best evaluated over multiple quarters rather than any single quarter in isolation. Our financial priorities remain unchanged: maintain discipline on expenses, preserve balance sheet flexibility, support our existing customers and align investment with the areas we believe create the greatest long-term value. With that, I'll turn it back over to Ajay for closing remarks. Ajay?

Thanks, David. We are confident that we are taking the right steps to position Aware for a stronger future as this transition continues. We have sharpened our strategy around the Awareness Platform, continue to advance our liveness and matching capabilities and are focusing our resources on the markets and opportunities where we believe we can compete most effectively. AI continues to reinforce the importance of that strategy. It is helping us accelerate aspects of product development while also increasing the urgency of the challenges and customers -- that our customers face. As sophisticated AI-driven fraud becomes more accessible, identity assurance is becoming even more critical across government and enterprise environments. At the core of our view is a simple principle, identity does not originate in a document or a database. It originates with the human being. Biometrics provides a digital translation layer that helps organizations establish trust in that human identity. We are also encouraged by the renewed activity in the federal government market, with DHS operations normalized in May, we are seeing increased momentum in conversations. RFIs, procurement activity and programs tied to homeland security, border modernization, traveler processing and biometric identity verification.

execute against near-term opportunities, maintain expense discipline, support our customers and continue advancing the Awareness Platform. We know this transition will take time, but the market need is clear. Our technology is increasingly relevant. The Department of Homeland Security and other government customers remain open, and we believe Aware is moving in the right direction. That concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the call for questions. Delaney, please provide the instructions.

First question, you've put a lot of emphasis on the government opportunity this quarter, how should we think about that translating into the commercial side of the business?

Yes. Actually, this is a really important one. Commercial organizations and government organizations, both face increasingly similar challenges. AI-enabled fraud, regulatory pressure, operational complexity and the need to deliver secure digital experiences without adding friction. All of these things are actually shared between both commercial organizations and government organizations. There's actually a really nice like 2-way exchange between commercial organizations and government organizations. Commercial organizations view technologies adopted by government vendors or -- by government as government grade, right? Like they look at it as a higher threshold, a higher bar for security, for accuracy, for scalability, for reliability. So commercial sort of looks at those types of government vendors favorably. Government, same way, right? They actually look at commercial companies quite a bit as they do benchmarking against commercial companies to see what kinds of vendors they're picking for some of their most important needs. And they want to be able to operate at the speed of the commercial sector with the same kind of usability and flexibility that people expect. Commercial customers recognize biometrics are very disconnected. They have multiple vendors in different places and the workflows and the systems and the performance and the fraud risk. Those are all really important components. This is where the Awareness Platform is highly relevant for both commercial and government customers, the SaaS-based biometric orchestration platform and decisioning platform, and that allows you to design, deploy, run, optimize workflows through one environment that Aware provides to our customers. Through a single transaction, you can benchmark vendors in production, you can normalize outputs from work assistant decisioning. You can perform liveness matching, identity verification, all through the Awareness Platform. So both commercial and government really have a need for real high-confidence identity decisions. And basically, there's a 2-way street here that basically allows us to benefit between government adoption and commercial adoption as both industries look at each other for benchmarking.

The next question comes from John Phillips. Has Aware had any involvement with the 2026 implementation of the Mexican government's Unique Population Registry Code, CURP, a national biometric ID system. Did Aware bid for any role in this project either directly or through a channel partner?

Yes. Thank you for your question, John. Mexican government's biometric initiative is actually a huge identity modernization effort. We believe it underscores the growing global adoption of biometric technology. As a matter of policy, we don't comment on specific customer pursuits or bids or potential opportunities, but we do and can say, right, that governments globally are leveraging biometrics is sort of the source of truth when it comes to identity frameworks. And that is because the physical document or verifying the physical document digitally is really hard. You can't really stick a driver's license or a passport into a computer very easily, you can maybe take a picture of it, but you can't really tell if it's a real document. You could doctor the photo. There's a lot of different things that you can do with physical documents. But identity actually lives in the human. It's that -- and biometrics are that translation layer between the human identity and a digital format. And so biometrics are really very strong at being able to determine deepfakes and real live humans. That's why we prioritize liveness within our capabilities. And we also have a significant number of -- there are a significant number of AI-enabled threats to identity right now. If you look at most breaches, they're actually caused by compromised passwords or credentials and biometrics serve to be able to protect organizations from the bad actors that are getting more and more AI capabilities to try to break systems and organizations are turning to biometrics as a primary defense mechanism, which provides a nice tailwind for our business.

Thank you, Ajay. This next question also comes from John Phillips. Does Aware have any involvement in multilateral biometric data sharing agreements that the U.S. Department of State has signed with allied nations, such as the recent DHS CARICOM partnership or other similar agreements?

Sure. Again, it's actually the Department of Homeland Security that signed that specifically with CARICOM and -- but these are, again, specific government programs, which we do not comment on agreements, pursuit, et cetera. What we can say, though, is that there's an increased public activity around biometric modernization, interoperability, border security, traveler processing, identity verification. These are all areas where Aware has a really deep experience, where our technology is highly relevant and under new DHS policies, it's really well fit for companies like ours. There's a huge prioritization on buying American, American-made software. Not many biometric companies and solutions providers are left here in the United States. In fact, we are the original U.S.-based biometrics company founded in 1986. And so we are being turned to by government organizations to provide solutions directly. And that's going to help us in a variety of these different initiatives that are being introduced.

Next question also from John Phillips. What were the results of the Orlando MCO Airport biometric exit program trial that Aware participated in with iProov and others? Did Aware's solutions demonstrate a competitive advantage over the other 2 solutions provided?

Yes. Thank you again for the detailed question. Yes, the program itself that was announced, but we don't comment on the specific programs, the results of pilots, right, or performance against any other vendors in those environments. But what we can say is biometric exit, identity verification and aviation. It's one of the biggest markets for biometrics, right? It's deployed globally. The United States is actually one of the laggards in terms of the adoption of biometrics at airports, whether you're traveling internationally everywhere across the globe, you're going through sophisticated biometric systems. They complement the officers that you are actually interacting with to provide additional information in intel that allows them to be able to make the right decisions in terms of whether or not they should grant you access into different places. And so these are markets that are very large internationally and domestically, you're starting to see biometrics show up at TSA checkpoints when you're going through border security and on the back end, there's a lot of other biometric systems that are actually operating. I can tell you like within the aviation industry in general. Like every time you go through a TSA checkpoint, every time you log in and try to get your boarding pass and you use face ID, every time you check a bag, these are all areas where biometrics are looking to supplement and complement the use of a human employee and that actually allows for better technological innovation, better customer experience, you're seeing consumers turning towards biometric solutions and choosing to go through biometric access instead of human-based programs. So it's able to improve security and reduce wait times at air, sea and land borders across the board. We've supplied all of the different providers in this market historically. They're all our customers, they've always been our customers. But what's different now is that the government and airports and airlines are wanting to be able to turn directly to Aware to be able to supply them with and configure identity workflows, orchestrate multiple biometric technologies, evaluate performance and production and make consistent identity decisions across complex operating environments. So the border and aviation market continues to invest in modernization. We believe the combination of biometric orchestration, Intelligent Liveness, Intelligent Matching, U.S.-based company expertise, positions Aware really well for the opportunity ahead.

Thank you, Ajay. One more from John Phillips, when do you anticipate quarterly revenue will begin to sustain the growth?

Yes. Thank you, once again for the question. These actions we're taking are designed to create a stronger foundation for consistent performance over time. We're transitioning the business and transforming it. It's a more focused scalable platform strategy. We're moving away from a fragmented portfolio of components and SDKs, focusing on the resources of the Awareness Platform, Intelligent Liveness, Intelligent Matching. And so the government and commercial opportunities, we believe we can compete very effectively. We've also taken a lot of cost actions on the other end, right, to better align expenses with our strategic priorities. And while we continue to support customers and pursue near-term opportunities. In the second half of the year, we do expect revenue to be stronger than the first half based on typical seasonality, customer activity, subscription renewals, while expenses should be lower as those cost actions that we took in the earlier part of the year become fully reflected. Longer term, we expect this to continue as the Awareness Platform helps to unlock a more scalable model by giving customers one environment to orchestrate biometric workflows. And then also, right, the tailwinds from the government market and AI-driven fraud, regulatory pressure, identity modernization, the strategy positions Aware for a more sustainable growth over time.

Next question comes from someone called MS. Is Awareness market ready?

For this question, Brian Krause, our CRO, will take the answer to this question. Go ahead, Brian.

Sure. Thank you, Ajay. And thank you for the question. The answer to the question is yes. The Awareness Platform was announced earlier this year. And today is market ready and available for customers to demo trial and procure. As you also heard on June 9 and read in today's release, we did actually add 2 new technology partners to the platform over the course of second quarter in ROC and Mitek, both of which we're very excited to have.

Next question also comes from MS. What competitive advantages does Aware have with biometric orchestration?

Thanks, Delaney. Thank you again for the question. It's a great question. We feel strongly that the Awareness Platform has a number of competitive advantages with respect to biometric orchestration. The first of which is that ecosystem of technology providers that we are integrating or have already integrated on to the platform essentially now allows customers one single API architecture development access to the very best biometric technology on the planet. So nowhere else can you connect to this depth of quality of technology in our space through a single API. And this road map for technology partners and the product design road map is also being managed by a company that has 35 years of expertise in this space and the team that has hundreds of collective years of experience and expertise in this space to make sure that those advantages stay defensible and continue to be fostered.

Next question also comes from MS. One year ago, you announced a key customer secured this quarter with a top 15 global financial institution. What is the current status of this new customer?

Sure. Yes. Thanks again for the question. The customer that we're referencing here, I'm happy to report is still a customer. I'm also happy to report is in year 2 and is beyond renewal of that first year contract at this stage. Also very excited to report that over the course of Q2 that was just reported, we did work with this customer to help them test and evaluate some additional Aware technology for potential future use. So happy customer, renewed customer and hopefully expanding relationship for Aware into the coming quarters.

One last question from MS. How many sales pitches to new prospective customers demonstrating your products did you make at customer premises?

Thanks again for the question. I won't get into specific operating key results for the revenue function in particular. I will address the question by saying that both outside external market interest, understanding the Awareness Platform and our other technologies remains strong and steady. At the same time, the productivity of our revenue team remains at or above all expected benchmarks.

Thank you. That completes our Q2 FY '26 broadcast. As a reminder, this presentation is recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Thank you, and you may now disconnect.