This completes my financial summary. I’d like to now turn the call over to Craig to discuss the progress we’ve made on our go-to-market strategy. Craig?
Craig Herman: Thanks, David. During the first quarter, we remain steadfast in our commitment to scale through strategic partnerships, expand and retain our core customer base and business segments and fortify the product market fit of Aware ID. These coordinated efforts led to gradual improvements in our quarterly performance and laid the foundation for continued growth and success going forward. As Bob mentioned, we achieved several notable customer successes this quarter. One of the more significant wins was the expansion of our relationship with a major U.S. federal government agency. We were able to increase this large 3-letter agency’s use cases to include enrolling biometric and biographic data of their employees and contractors.
Aware’s technology is utilized across dozens of agencies within all 3 branches of the U.S. federal government. And these contract expansions underscore the security and user friendliness of our products. In addition to growing our domestic footprint, we also continue making progress in our global expansion. In Q1, we renewed and expanded a significant multiyear contract with one of the largest international police organizations in Europe. This contract is part of our growing portfolio in border management and immigration, which is a rapidly accelerating market with promising opportunities for Aware. We also onboarded several new customers in Latin America, such as Imply and OpenPass. Imply is a leading provider of ticketing, access control, cashless solutions, ATMs and LEDs in Brazil, while OpenPass is a prominent online financial platform in Argentina.
We are excited to get these contracts live and anticipate they will contribute to recurring revenue in the future. The final customer win I’d like to highlight is our successful go live with another leading bank in Turkey, which was signed in Q4 2023. The swift turnaround from securing the contract to getting the customer live is a testament to the excellence of our customer success team and the out-of-the-box readiness of our enhanced products. Furthermore, this quarter, we showcased Aware’s cutting-edge technology at several industry events, including Training magazine’s Training 2024 Conference & Expo, Channel Partners Conference & Expo and the more recent ISC West in April. The reception of our products at these trade shows has been fantastic, and we are seeing tremendous excitement for our biometric solutions among a multitude of potential leads.
Our partner program remains instrumental in expanding and securing our recurring revenue base. Since its inception, we have continuously worked to enhance all aspects of this ecosystem to maximize its ROI. This past quarter, we optimized marketing expenses and strategy within our formal partner program by expanding their access to and improving the ease of use for co-branded marketing materials. Additionally, as mentioned on our last call, in Q4, we rolled out a dedicated partner portal where partners can access enablement and co-marketing materials to increase their knowledge and selling power of Aware solutions. We are continuing to build on this with focused ongoing product and sales enablement. We also officially launched our marketing development fund program in Q1 for partners that qualify.
This will help us invest more deeply with those partners who are looking to aggressively expand our footprint in their markets, ensuring our partners have ample resources to succeed is at the forefront of our go-to-market strategy. And this commitment is translating into increasing momentum across the globe that we can leverage to drive future ARR. Looking ahead, our team’s initiatives remain focused on accelerating the product market fit for AwareID, generating incremental subscription-based revenue and leveraging our partner program to convert our promising opportunity pipeline. I would now like to turn the call back to Bob for additional details on our key growth drivers and the outlook for 2024.
Robert Eckel: Thanks Craig. As we look to the full year, we are reiterating our expectations to achieve double-digit revenue and annual recurring revenue growth in 2024. As we look to the future, our expanding pipeline of opportunities and increasing partner acquisition momentum, combined with our growing base of recurring revenue and enhanced operating leverage position us well to achieve sustainable growth and positive cash flow. With these advantages, we are well positioned and have the resources to strategically invest in customer acquisition enablement and back-end fulfillment to support our growth objectives. We continued the advancement of Aware and in this next stage of growth as a biometric identity platform provider, we are going to further strengthen our offerings as a biometric solutions provider to deliver industry sector-specific solutions for their common use cases.
This will be done by providing platforms for partners to build solutions and providing our own targeted solutions. Through this, we can further accelerate the adoption that drives our top line. Ultimately, at a high level, we are here to help organizations improve business results through biometrics. Lastly, before moving to the Q&A portion of our call, please take a few moments to answer the survey built into the webcast player. Matt, please provide the appropriate instructions.
A – Matt Glover: Thank you, Bob. [Operator Instructions] Craig, you highlighted the rapid turnaround in signing and going live with the Turkish bank in Q1. Can you provide some context around the typical timeline for such an implementation? And what were the primary factors that drove the expedited timeline in this specific case with the bank in Turkey?
Craig Herman: Sure, absolutely. The typical timeline really depends on a number of factors, right, complexity, products, resources etcetera. However, there are some pieces that can add velocity to an implementation just like what we saw in Turkey. In this case, we were engaged with a knowledgeable of a partner in Turkey, DVA. We have been working together with DVA for a number of years. They bring a lot of market and technology knowledge to the table. It is – it also a real – important piece is a customer that is motivated and has specific milestones and a timeline, which again, this customer did. And then finally, we are able to move fast due to our understanding of the market, biometrics and their needs that we had gathered throughout the sales process. And when we reviewed that kick off, got us out of the gate really fast. All of these items are ways that this project moved fast and how we anticipate future ones as well.
Matt Glover: Thanks Craig. The next one is for David. David, can you provide some additional context around the nature of the subscription renewal delays and any insights into the underlying factors that contributed to this lower than expected growth?
David Traverse: Sure. Thanks Matt. Yes. So, the quarter-to-quarter fluctuations that we expect to experience these, especially as a small company, they are largely due to the timing of revenue recognition. So, for example, in Q1, there was a delayed reorder from a large on-prem international agency within our partner ecosystem that we now expect will be completed in the second quarter instead of traditionally in the first quarter. When it is completed, it should contribute to our software subscription revenue in Q2 as well as beyond.
Matt Glover: Thanks David. Craig, you mentioned the official launch of the market development funds during the quarter. Can you provide some additional details on what this initiative entails? What are the key elements or components of the market development fund? How do you anticipate it will support your go-to-market efforts going forward?
