Entering 2024, we are backed by a strong cash position and balance sheet that offers us the flexibility to evaluate all ROI opportunities with the potential to expedite our growth strategy. That completes my financial summary. And now, I’d like to turn the call over to Craig to discuss the progress we made on our go-to-market initiatives. Craig?
Craig Herman: Thanks, David. 2023 proved to be an important year for Aware, as Bob highlighted earlier, and as we expected it would be. Throughout the year, we remain steadfast in our commitment to scale through strategic partnerships, expand and retain our core customer base and business segments, and advance the product market fit of AwareID. These concerted efforts contributed to our exceptional performance and set the stage for continued growth and success in the future. During 2023, we further advanced our go-to-market strategy by strategically investing in key areas of our business. We prioritized front-end investments introducing a series of product enhancements across our portfolio in the latter part of the year guided by valuable feedback from our customers.
Additionally, the formal launch of our partner program in Q3 and the optimization of our organizational structure were pivotal in our ability to achieve our financial goals for 2023. These initiatives collectively strengthened our market position and propelled our success in the year. Since the launch of our formal partner program in the third quarter, we have been actively expanding and refining our partner ecosystem to maximize its impact. Central to this effort was the development of a dedicated partner portal where partners can access enablement and call marketing materials to increase their knowledge and selling power of Aware Solutions. Presently, our partner network is comprised of 65 active partners with two notable additions in Q4, namely Serban Group and Avanza Solutions among others.
These partnerships bolster our market reach and underscore our commitment to collaborative growth and success. In November, we added Serban Group to our partner program. Serban Group is a leader in integrated digital, technology, business consulting, and support and has deep connections with financial service firms, governments, and commercial enterprises across LatAm and Europe, which we expect to leverage to amplify Aware;s presence in these high-growth markets. In fact we already have three opportunities in conversation that stemmed from this new relationship. Another recent addition to the partner program was Avanza Solutions. With their regionalized trusted and specialized expertise across the Middle East, our collaboration with Avanza Solutions will be instrumental in helping us scale and maximize the opportunity in the Middle East region.
In fact economic data points to the Middle East becoming the fastest growing region in the world for financial services and e-commerce. This presents a tremendous opportunity for Aware. In addition to expanding our partner network, we successfully onboarded several new customers this quarter across key regions such as the Middle East, Latin America, and beyond. As Bob mentioned earlier, notable additions include a technology provider in Argentina, a tech company in Dubai, and another Turkish bank to our portfolio. Here at home, we have partnered to be the foundational technology for ITI, a company deploying self-serve DMV kiosks across the U.S. Furthermore, our collaboration with PeopleSERVE has significantly enhanced our global online presence and expanded Aware’s use cases.
By partnering with PeopleSERVE to combat proxy testing fraud, Aware is tapping into a vast market opportunity. PeopleSERVE administers millions of exams across more than 200 countries and territories, offering us an extensive platform to increase our market share and drive growth in this burgeoning sector. With our partnerships and customer relationships continuing to generate increasing momentum in markets across the globe, we are confident we have built a strong foundation that we can leverage to drive future ARR. As we enter 2024, our team’s initiative is centered on continuing to sharpen the focus of the product, market fit for our SaaS-based platform, driving incremental subscription base revenue, and leveraging our partner ecosystem to capitalize on our increasing pipeline of opportunities in our core and target markets.
I’d now like to turn the call back to Bob for additional discussion on 2024. Bob?
Robert Eckel: Thanks Craig. We’ve entered 2024 with $12 million in annual recurring revenue, which is approximately the same amount of total revenue the company generated when we began this transformational journey at the end of 2019. This shift from a short-term book-and-ship company to a recurring revenue machine is now beginning to pay off and will continue to pay off as evidenced by the positive cash flow achieved for the first time in years. Our go-to-market strategy in 2024 will center around our enabled partner ecosystem and targeted use cases for our robust Biometric Identity Platform. We will focus on sustainable growth for scale, both in expanding and upselling our existing customer base and in adding new logos. We’ll continue to prioritize quality ARR over onetime revenue.
And we’ll still anticipate quarterly fluctuations due to specific timing of awards. Furthermore, we will be maintaining our commitment to business efficiency as we build towards profitability. In fact, we further reduced our annual operating cost by more than $1 million in Q1 of 2024. This was made possible by leveraging our engineering resources and our efforts to optimize our product lines, go-to-market strategy and targeted product market fit. Of course, if an opportunity arises that warrants additional investment, we are ready and able to address it given our available cash resources. Building upon our solid performance and the solid foundation established in Q4 and 2023, we’re confident that Aware is well positioned to sustain its momentum and drive additional recurring revenue, paving the way for continued double-digit growth and success in the coming year as we build towards profitability.
We appreciate everyone’s continued support. And with that, we’ll now open the call to questions. Matt, please provide the appropriate instructions.
A – Matt Glover : Thank you, Bob. [Operator Instructions] First question. Craig, last quarter, you mentioned gaining momentum within the gaming space. Can you provide an update on the traction you were seeing?
