Mike DePasquale
Analyst · Maxim Group. Please go ahead
Thank you, Scott. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. We're encouraged by the progress of our financial and operational performance in Q2 that builds upon our solid start to 2017. Our total revenues grew by 113% to $900,000 not including a $600,000 professional services contract for a Fortune 500 telecommunications company that's deploying our biometric software to support their endpoint security implementation. We expect to fulfill that order over the next two quarters. Regarding Q2, our improved performance reflects the rising demand for secure biometric technology, as more organizations and individuals are realizing that fingerprint authentication is indeed the fastest most secured and most convenient option among various authentication modes. Rapid digitization is leading to increased cyber security incidence, which is why we continue to pursue a range of larger corporate and enterprise software opportunities. Primarily within highly regulated industries like healthcare, government financial services where they are protectively seeking robust solutions to protect and prevent unauthorized access to their sensitive data. I'll now walk you through a few noteworthy software and hardware deployment contracts that we announced recently that we believe indicate future revenue opportunity for BIO-key and emerging market trends. One such significant contract is with a global financial institution that selected our biometric ID solutions to secure their Windows 10 devices across 189 countries. The financial institution had recently upgraded all of its devices to Windows 10 operating system on a global basis. And they were seeking a secure biometric authentication solution that would be compatible with their newly upgraded solution. To support this, BIO-key provided an initial 5000 SideTouch compact fingerprint readers that been qualified and tested by Microsoft to support the biometrics signing capabilities of Windows Hello. Moving forward, this customer can integrate BIO-key's ID Director for Windows, which is a multi-factor single sign-on authentication software solution enabling secure authentication to a Windows domain application or website from any devices across the enterprise. This contract is a significant gain for BIO-key in many respects as it increases our global prominence and list of client references across the financial services sector where we are actively seeking opportunities to expand our footprint. One critical factor that gives BIO-key an edge over the competition is our ability to meet rigorous government compliance requirements. Government contractors and sub-contractors are constantly seeking solutions that will ensure they are in full compliance with the guideline set by the authorities. BIO-key's core VST algorithm earn top level accuracy scores from this after demonstrating top performance in key metrics amongst other commercially available fingerprint biometric products. As a result of this, we signed a global firearms manufacturer and Department of Defense government contractor that was required to meet the National Institute of Standards and Technology multi-factor compliance guidelines that impact all government contractors and subcontractors with an implementation deadline of December 31, 2017. BIO-key biometric authentication solutions met all of the requirements and were selected to deliver a secure, convenient and compliant biometric authentication solution to enable access to workstations and kiosks within their manufacturing facilities. Internationally, our software ID Director and SideSwipe Finger Scanners were selected by an Australian government agency to enable fingerprint authentication for their agency representatives countrywide. This contract marked our first client in Australia and it was facilitated by our new distribution partner Aquion a leading Australian IT products and services provider. BIO-key partnered with Aquion to establish a local channel to markets its biometric software and hardware solutions to enterprise customers and security resellers in Australia. And we look further to further our opportunity -- revenue opportunities in the Australian market. Asia-Pacific represents a strong market for BIO-key as well, and in particular for our line of hardware fingerprint readers. Our Hong Kong subsidiary continues to expand our presence in the region serving their growing demand for secure identification and authentication solutions. The introduction of TouchLock, our finger biometric and Bluetooth enabled padlocks open this up to an additional consumer market as well. We started distribution of TouchLock in the Asia-Pacific market in June and the sales momentum has been gaining significant traction. It is through the Hong Kong sales team that we successfully procured $158,000 worth of orders, initial orders I should say for TouchLock to distribution customers in Japan and in China and other parts of Asia. Additionally, the Hong Kong sales team open dialogs with some of the largest bicycle manufactures in both countries about bundling BIO-key's biometric locks with the purchase of their bicycles. We also signed a contract with the SmarTone a leading wireless telephone services provider in Hong Kong and Macau to support our sales and marketing reach in this large and dynamic market. The contract is part of a broader strategic sales and distribution partnership to offer TouchLock, padlocks to its online store and it's over 30 retail outlets. Additionally, we partnered with a leading Asian airline that will be distributing TouchLock, padlocks, which it will feature as an incentive item in its customer loyalty reward programs that includes 8 million members. The airline will also feature touch locks in an electronic direct mail promotion to its customers slated for this month. In Japan, we supplied DDS Inc., a leading Japanese security systems integrator with an initial 30,000 unit order of our SideSwipe fingerprint scanners to enable fingerprint biometric authentication of its custom applications. DDS which develops and delivers information security products to support the diverse online requirements of enterprise customers throughout Asia is the main system integrator for NTT, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Group, Japan's largest telecom governmental organization and corporate customer. Having DDS as a major BIO-key OEM customer in Japan is a great strike for BIO-key and we look forward to working closely with them for now and future revenue opportunities. In general, hardware solution sales continue to be a bright spot in our second quarter performance as we achieved solid sales increases for our SideSwipe, SideTouch and EcoID sales. Asia-Pacific represents one of the world's largest markets for physical security and we are pleased to see the spike in demand for our enterprise and consumer hardware solutions and we expect this area to be an important contributor to second half results. Overall, we feel confident that our subsidiary and the strategic partnerships we forge with leading national distributors will significantly expand our presence in the region. Domestically, we continue to manage and oversee expansion of our strategic distribution channel partners, including with Microsoft and Amazon to ensure that we are getting the best visibility and prominence from our distribution partners. We are currently in dialog with a leading television shopping network that reaches nearly 100 million households to develop BIO-key product based programming. And we are also engaged in preliminary discussions with a number of big box and specialty retailers regarding stocking our latest line of biometric locks. We believe this broad visibility will present both an excellent sales opportunity as well as a powerful platform to build business and consumer awareness and understanding of the benefits and value of our solutions. Looking ahead, we feel optimistic about BIO-key's future revenue prospects for both our hardware and our software line of products. The combination of comprehensive software and hardware offerings, with exposure to multiple biometric end-markets and a broad customer base of OEMs and system integrators should deliver additional revenue on multiple branch. Also in May, we were awarded a new patent for the utilization of biometric data. The patent method enables BIO-key and its licensees to leverage existing small area sensors to capture substantially more fingerprint service area leading to a higher degree of accuracy when performing a match. As you know, better accuracy leads to superior end user experiences and for the first time provides a means for higher security fingerprint authentications scenarios using small area sensors. BIO-key’s innovation will allow device manufacturers, application creators, enterprises and most importantly end users to place more trust in the security of a smaller fingerprint sensor. Finally, we are excited to have successfully up listed to the NASDAQ. Beyond providing a more visible, accessible and liquid market for our common stock, we believe the visibility and credibility provided by a NASDAQ listing should also provide substantial sales and marketing support by raising the visibility of our solutions and brand before perspective customers and partners on a global basis. BIO-key also secured a 36 month, $5 million common stock purchase agreement from an accredited institutional investor, we at our discretion are able to sell up to a total of $5 million of common stock at a floor price of $3.60 per share provided certain conditions to meet include even company stock trading in excess of $3.83 per share. In summary, where we cannot predict with certainty, the outlook on a near-term quarterly basis, we remain highly confident that we have the right technology and focus to expand the growth of our hardware and software offerings. As a result of our strong first half performance and our confidence in the remainder of the year, we are maintaining our full year guidance within the range of $6 million to $12 million. With those updates, I would like to invite Ceci to review our Q2 2017 financial performance. Ceci?