James B. DeBello
Analyst · Needham & Company
Well, thanks, Peter, and good afternoon, everyone. Mitek had a terrific year, achieving a 63% increase in revenue over fiscal 2012. Over 20 million consumers have used the Mitek's Mobile Deposit technology, according to estimates by Celent Research. During fiscal 2013, Mitek strengthened its position as the leading innovator of mobile imaging for financial transactions, a category we created. Today, we stand stronger and more diversified with momentum going into 2014. One year ago, we set out to surpass 1,000 banks using our best-of-class Mobile Imaging technology, diversify our Mobile Imaging product line, broaden our patent portfolio and penetrate new markets. Today we have broader, more diverse IP, deeper and more relevant products, a stronger balance sheet, seasoned management team and double the number of customers using our technology within retail banks, insurance companies and brokerages. We ended the fiscal year with 1,420 financial institutions signed for Mobile Deposit, an increase of 856 from a year ago. We also transformed our product line, adding several new Mobile Imaging products to our portfolio. Two top 20 U.S. retail banks, U.S. Bank and BBVA Compass, went live with Mobile Photo Bill Pay. And we recently announced the imminent commercial launch of Mobile Photo Balance Transfer with U.S. Bank. Lastly, we introduced Mobile Photo Account Opening, which won Best of Show at Finovate, and subsequently entered into a partnership with Experian, a worldwide leader in risk management. We're convinced that our Mobile Imaging solutions provide the best consumer experience to millions of people. We continue to invest in our world-class Mobile Imaging platform and have developed Mitek MiSnap. MiSnap will provide touchless capture across all of our solutions. A customer simply hovers their phone over a check, bill or driver's license, and a photo is automatically captured without touching the shutter. And what's easier than that? Consumers will now have a common way to capture information from any document. And during the year, we completed a secondary offering, which brings us to a healthy $29 million in cash on our balance sheet. Mobile banking continues to flourish with 3 of the largest U.S. banks reporting over 40 million active mobile banking users. Just last week, American Banker said about mobile banking growth, "It's not stopping or even slowing down." They reported that bank customers did more banking tasks on their mobile phones in September than ever before. The world is changing in a way that's great for Mitek. There's a billion mobile devices out there with cameras. We want everyone of them to use our technology which transforms the camera into a keyboard. This isn't just about consumers sharing photos with each other. Consumers are getting in the habit of using their cameras to complete financial transactions. Let's take a look now at what's happening in the market. First, mobile was viewed as an add-on, a nice to have. Lets call this mobile also. Then, due to evolving consumer behaviors and smartphone proliferation, companies began designing new applications for consumers, who viewed mobile, not as a nice to have, but as a need to have. Let's call this, mobile first. Now we are seeing, both from our customers and independent industry experts, the rise of a new consumer, for whom mobile is not the best digital channel, but the only digital channel they use. Let's call this group mobile only. Our customers are telling us that the number of mobile only consumers they see continues to climb steadily. What do mobile only consumers want? They want convenience. They want speed, parity with every other channel, use cases that just don't mimic existing channels, but enable unique experiences by leveraging the power of smartphones and tablets. These changes are very exciting for the industry and particularly exciting for Mitek, since our Mobile Imaging products don't try to replicate an online process on the mobile phone, but instead, are designed from the ground up with mobile in mind. These trends, coupled with the synergies associated with offering more than 1 Mobile Imaging solution, makes us confident that a growing number of our customers will embrace a multiproduct Mobile Imaging platform strategy. Our products serve the entire financial life cycle of a retail banking consumer. From account opening to deposits, bill payments and even shopping for a better credit card. Increasingly, we are seeing the adoption of more than 1 of our mobile solutions. U.S. Bank is a prime example with 3 Mitek Mobile Imaging solutions. Mitek also experienced success moving into 2 new markets. We work with 2 of the top 5 insurance companies with Mobile Photo Quoting. We also initiated a Mobile Photo Bill Pay pilot with a major national direct biller. As we continue to enhance our solutions to fit the needs of the 21st century mobile consumer, we're confident we'll see even more opportunities in new markets. On today's call, I'll highlight some of the events that occurred in Mitek's fiscal fourth quarter and discuss areas of focus for Mitek in fiscal 2014. Starting with Mobile Deposit. 1,420 financial institutions have licensed Mobile Deposit and 805 have commercially deployed the product. That's an additional 361 signed and 246 live, our highest quarter-over-quarter increase. Mitek's Mobile Deposit technology is deployed by all of the top 10 retail banks in the U.S. As the #1 feature sought by mobile banking users, we believe that Mobile Deposit has driven consumer adoption of mobile banking. Take the recent example of Boeing employees credit union, the largest credit union in the State of Washington. Boeing introduced Mobile Deposit in November 2012. Within the first several months, the Mobile Deposit adoption rate exceeded their forecast by 200%. In another example, ING Direct also just launched new TV spots, featuring Mobile Deposit in both English and French for the Canadian market, featuring Bigfoot, a mermaid and a tooth fairy, they're hilarious. And you can view them on YouTube by searching ING Direct. With an estimated 20 million users, there's now a large base of consumers, who are potential users of additional Mobile Imaging solutions from Mitek. We think banks and other companies will need to provide secure, fun and convenient ways to offer their services via mobile in order to maintain their competitive position. This is the thinking behind our entire suite of Mobile Imaging solutions, including Mobile Photo Bill Pay, which I'll touch on next. Mobile Photo Bill Pay is just a cooler way to pay a bill. Javelin Research says that 40% of active mobile bankers expressed a desire to use Mobile Photo Bill Pay. It's really simple to use. After a user takes a picture of the bill through the financial institution's app, Mitek's technology auto-populates the fields required to make a mobile payment. That means paying a bill is as easy as taking a picture. No more keystrokes, and no need to make a payment via the post office. As of the end of September, we had 14 financial institutions signed for Mobile Photo Bill Pay, and 9 of these were live. And the list continues to grow. On Tuesday this week, we announced that First Bank, a bank with $13 billion in assets, will be the first regional bank to offer Mobile Photo Bill Pay. Financial institutions that have offered Mobile Photo Bill Pay are experiencing significant first-mover advantages. These include higher checking account balances, stronger customer loyalty and lower customer churn. But paying a bill, doesn't always happen through a bank. In fact, only 15% of all bills are paid via bank's online systems, and that's why they're interested in deploying our Mobile Photo Bill Pay product to increase that. But retail banking is just the first market for Photo Bill Pay. Most of us pay bills directly to our service providers, such as a cable company, a telco, or even a utility. That's why, we believe Photo Bill Pay can be used by many industries. In fact, any company that bills their consumers directly. Recently, we implemented a pilot with a leading national communications company to enable their customers to pay their bills using our Mobile Image technology. While still in the pilot phase, we're very excited about the results and are seeing interest from other billers for the same concept. As you can imagine, we're working very diligently to expand adoption across all of these opportunities. Now moving to the latest addition to our Mobile Imaging portfolio, Mobile Photo Account Opening. Have you ever tried to open an account online? It's a tedious process with lots of keystrokes. But in a mobile first world, there's a lot of people who want to open accounts on their phone or tablet, and they want to do it quickly with the fewest keystrokes. In fact, Javelin reported in July that nearly 90 million people attempted to open an account on a mobile device or online last year, with over 25% giving up and abandoning the process. This is the problem that our Mobile Photo Account Opening product solves. During the fiscal fourth quarter, Mitek debuted our newest product at Finovate, the leading technology forum, for bank executives. Our award-winning Mobile Photo Account Opening product addresses a major need in the market. Our solution enables the user to open and fund an account in as few as 60 seconds. A user can breeze through the process by taking a picture of his or her driver's license. A user can also take the picture of a check to immediately fund the new account, combining our Mobile Imaging assets. In its debut at Finovate, we were very pleased to see that Mobile Photo Account Opening left people buzzing, with one critic calling it a breakthrough, and we were excited to take home the Best of Show award. This was followed by a U.S. News & World Report article on the future of money that used Mitek's Mobile Photo Account Opening as "the way of the future." Mitek also recently partnered with Experian. This collaboration allows customers to seamlessly integrate Mitek's Photo Account Opening with Experian's Precise ID fraud detection and prevention platform and has resulted in several sales leads. Working with the best-in-class consumer fraud detection companies further enhances our innovative Mobile Imaging solutions. Mobile Photo Account Opening can be deployed for practically any type of account opening. You can imagine that this is an equally painful process for consumers in other markets, ranging from e-commerce to healthcare, insurance and social media. We think of our Photo Account Opening solution as a great product with great potential. Adding to our suite of mobile solutions is Mobile Photo Balance Transfer. How many times have you received a credit card offer in the mail? If you're like me, you end up shredding a lot of paper. Well, after piloting Mitek's Mobile Photo Balance Transfer over the past few months, San Diego County Credit Union has experienced a 75% increase of mobile balance transfers since beginning their advertising. These are valuable new customers for their credit card and a lot more efficient way to acquire customers compared to the costly direct-mail programs of the past. Happy bank, happy customer and a very happy Mitek. Last week, we announced that U.S. Bank will make balance transfer available to all of its mobile banking consumers later this month. U.S. Bank, the fifth largest bank in the U.S., is an excellent example of a customer using multiple Mitek Mobile Imaging products. As I mentioned before, this is their third. As additional customers sign up for multiple products, we believe they'll experience a positive portfolio effect. The benefits include the ability to provide a consistent user experience and the opportunity to interact with customers, multiple times a day. I might note that our ability to deploy several solutions on our Mobile Imaging platform is unique and a competitive advantage for Mitek. At this point a year ago, I discussed several focus areas for fiscal year 2013. One of these areas was to diversify our product offerings. We executed on this in 2013 with the successful launches of the Bill Pay, Account Opening and Balance Transfer. Another focus for fiscal 2013 was to reduce the volatility of our reported revenues. And we delivered four consecutive quarters of at least $3 million in revenue. As we move into fiscal year 2014, we feel that we have momentum and are in a strong position with unique and highly desirable products in the market. This brings me to our priorities for fiscal year 2014. We're very excited about the number of customers who are deploying and developing their mobile platforms by offering more than 1 Mobile Imaging product for Mitek. By using Mitek's mobile offerings, there's a great opportunity for these institutions to attract new customers and strengthen their relationships with existing customers. First, we'll increase the number of Mitek mobile solutions deployed by existing customers. Second, we'll invest in our product platform to maintain our first-mover advantage and continue to provide the best-in-class experience. And lastly, we'll adapt our existing technology to provide mobile imaging for financial transactions outside of banks. As I stated earlier, fiscal 2013 was a very successful and transformative year for Mitek. We expect to see additional successes in fiscal 2014 and we'll continue to be the leading innovator in mobile imaging for financial transactions. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Russ.