BIO-key International, Inc. (NASDAQ:BKYI) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Analyst: I got a couple more questions. I know I’ve taken a long time here. The SG&A and the R&D, the spending seems like it’s doubled from last year. Do you expect R&D and SG&A to remain at these levels? I know you guys are doing great R&D, and the marketing is I have been noticing has been excellent. But I’m just wondering if this is where you think you’re going to have to be?

Michael DePasquale: It’s a great question. No, we believe that R&D will certainly go down on the biometric side for our MobileAuth product, and we expect the PortalGuard R&D expenses to be flat, maybe somewhat negative, but we invested in two areas over the last 12 to 18 months. One is bringing the IDaaS, which is the cloud version of PortalGuard to market. So that was a significant investment for us. When we bought the company, they had just begun to define the IDaaS or the cloud solution. We invested to actually bring it to market. And right now, I would say 90% of our customers that we onboard, onboard to our cloud solution, which is hosted on AWS. So on-prem sales are really declining. It’s only certain customers, there are certain banks, county, state, and local governments that want on-prem solutions, but the majority of our customers are going to the cloud.

We invested very heavily there. And we still have investment to make in that area. So I think that will be flat as we proceed forward. On the MobileAuth side, we did the majority of that development through contract vehicles. And so, we had contractors working on that project. And so that will begin to decline this quarter and beyond. So I think our R&D expenses will actually go down in total.

Unidentified Analyst: For the fourth quarter, do you mean?

Michael DePasquale: Yes, the fourth quarter and beyond.

Unidentified Analyst: Does that mean that your – some of these apps have been completed and have been successful? Is that kind of what that means?

Michael DePasquale: Yes, we’re completing things right now, and we’ll be deploying them. So obviously, they’re deployable. But yes, the answer to that question is yes.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Then the last question, I think, is assuming you make the low end of your guidance of $1.7 million that might mean you lose. I don’t know. It could be – let’s say, your CapEx is the same it could lose $1.5 million or so. So you could be down to $1.3 million, say, by the end of the fourth quarter and if things slow in the first quarter I’m just wondering. You must – are there contingency plans to raise capital in the first quarter?

Michael DePasquale: We’ll do whatever we need to do. I don’t think we want to raise capital right now at these rates. We’d likely look at some sort of a debt instrument or another vehicle should we need the cash. But I don’t anticipate actually raising equity capital in this market. I think we have other options. And we also have a significant chunk of inventory, Dan, as we described in a number of projects in the works that will generate cash for the company all of that inventory is paid for.

Unidentified Analyst: Yes, no, I understand that you have the inventory. The problem has been…?

Michael DePasquale: We always have – I can say this, we always have plan A and Plan B, and so we always have contingencies to ensure that we can run this business. We have a very, very viable, vibrant business, especially, again, if you look at our software revenues are growing. We’ve got a great footprint now in EMEA to expand from. We’ve got a great channel partner network in Europe. We’re building out our channel partner network here in the U.S. It’s kind of a force multiplier, right, can’t have enough direct salespeople to cover the market the way you want to. You’ve got to really extend yourself through these partners and channels. And we’re doing that. We’ve invested very heavily in those areas, and that’s beginning to bear fruit for us.