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If Mike D goes down, he will take the rest of BIO-key down with him.
In my 15 years of following BIO-key, I cannot remember a time when they have been a “must”. Especially in a large-scale government or regulated industry. One significant issue, is that the fingerprint templates created by BIO-key fail NIST MINEX III compliance tests.
As of June 2020, BIO-key is no longer a participant in MINEX III, which is the source of truth for fingerprint matching accuracy.
Clearly, they’d rather not participate in 3rd party validation than be on record as FAILing the official NIST tests.
More dilution possible.
Sell something besides stock.
I don’t remember BKYI putting any of those patents (or the technology itself) to any use.
BKYI took a chunk of money from the Chinese, then used a portion of it to “buy” the rights to patents and software from the same group in China, in order to keep the balance for themselves.
The transaction was about getting a few million dollars from Chinese.
Basically, if I need $10, you give me $20 for a ton of equity, then I “buy” something for $10 that neither you nor I have any use for. Now I have $10, and you have the controlling shares of stock.
Learned that PortalGuard is approximately $5000 per year (at 20% discount). The price is only loosely based on # users. This is at the 10k user tier, which is probably about as high as they go.
So I estimate that each of the PRs represents about $5k per year gross.
That is not a lot of revenue, and it explains why we don’t read about revenue in the PRs, and also why Mike refuses to answer these questions on earnings calls.
I don’t understand the need for a PR every time they get a new customer. I’ve been in the IAM space for 15+ years, and the PortalGuard solution, while decent, I suppose, is a very small player in the SMB and edu space (I’m told it’s very cheap, though, < $10 per user). Subscription pricing far lower.
I was also told by their other small competitor in the space, that PistolStar only had 3 employees, when BIO-key acquired them.
Well, at least this finally resolved the questions that I addressed regarding ID Director for Windows being an OEM that BIO-key was paying license fees for. I forget who challenged that, but now you know. Good luck & maybe (but maybe not) this will lead to revenue. Numbers are pretty unimpressive.
I’ve said it before, and I still feel strongly that companies like BKYI should not be allowed on NASDAQ. The performance is so consistently sub-par, that they need to turn things completely around and prove that they can perform at a level that makes them investable. They have never done that.
I realized today that this delay is actually a smart idea. There is a benefit to combining a bad Q4 with a solid Q1. This allows for focus on positive outlook for 2020 and put last years shortcomings behind us.
Pretty smart.
Right. I just have concerns that the delay in reporting was nothing but a stall tactic. I’m not discounting the effects of a global pandemic on many companies, but I was hoping for a steady climb in business, with the new “contract” announcements, followed by a strong or decent Q4.
I now have a greater level of concern about Q4, as I know for a fact, that there was no impact caused by COVID that would have caused delay.
My finger is on the trigger, if I’m wrong. I’m ready to buy, but still timid as I’ve seen the price skyrocket, only to fall back to its normal level.
If BKYI plays the COVID-19 card as an excuse for ANYTHING related to 2019 performance, I may just puke. In 2017 and 2018, they used a weak excuse of “trade war with China”. I know there can be issues, but the excuses are sadly pathetic.
What about Q4 & 2019 earnings??? Why no announcement?
When BIO-key hosts their Q4 & FY 2019 earnings call, Mike will either discuss the African contract(s) from Q1, or he will decline any significant comment on Q1 bookings.
If the Africa contracts are legitimate, then we will hear all about them. 2020 guidance will also reflect a significant revenue hike.
If not legitimate, then BIO-key will ignore, dismiss or delay any response regarding the contracts / Q1 business.
Further, as I’m once again interested in BKYI, both as short-term and long-term buy, I want answers. We need to know once and for all if this company can execute. Therefore, we should listen to Mike’s portion of the previous 4 (FOUR) earnings calls - did BIO-key deliver on any/all/none of the expectations set on the calls?
I just want to make my money back. I don’t care if I’m day trading based on 1/2 day spike or long.
I still have my doubts, as BIO-key’s competition has law enforcement, registered traveler programs, state ID’s, national ID’s & passports, etc. while BIO-key has a partner in Nigeria.
Not very promising.
I expect 1 or 2 days of volatile trading to allow for day trading techniques to pay out b/n 100% - 250%, but you must buy early (8:00 AM EDT) and hope you can sell by 3:00 EDT.
It will be more difficult moving forward, but just wait for a PR, then buy. Sell @ $2.00, so you don’t get stuck with the stock at the end of the day.
Sorry, IDEMIA not IDENIA.
It would be a MAJOR deployment of BIO-key, if they had participated in one of the known traveler programs.
But alas, none of the fingerprint ID systems for this purpose, utilize BIO-key.
NO TRAVELER, STATE, or NATIONAL ID SYSTEM USES BIO-key.
Neither for any of the registered traveler programs (TSA, Clear, etc), nor law enforcement, passport, drivers license, or other federal or military
None of the fingerprint biometric ID systems use BIO-key. They all use Daon, Crossmatch or Sagem Morpho (now IDENIA).
That would be insider trading. Even MD knows better than that.
The surge, that we see with BKYI, is so short-lived (literally 4-6 hours), that you must buy/sell tactically.
There is no strategic investment into the company itself; rather, the only way to make money is to trade based upon PR.
So, you must anticipate a PPS increase based solely on self-promotion. Then sell the same day, ahead of everyone else.
For this reason alone, BKYI belongs on the pink sheets. Leave the NASDAQ forever, or build a revenue base that is investable.
While I like the perspective that you offer on this stock, the fact that BKYI is once again in a steady decline is reflective of price manipulation (by PR marketing) followed by the hangover of reality.
It’s not in my scope of reality to expect BKYI, with a market cap of $10M (or so, depending on the day) to close and collect on $70M out of Africa.
That’s just not reasonable.
Perhaps, if revenue grew over a few quarters or a year, then presumably so, but this doesn’t resemble reality.
Is there a 2019 earnings call scheduled???
BKYI has NOT and does NOT manufacture any of the biometric or BT locks that they try to market. It is a ploy!
They just buy the minimal amt. required to have their logo printed on them. There is no IP.
It seems totally justified to de-list, in my opinion. It’s just not right, that a company that is so small (in terms of revenue) be publicly traded at all.
Hopeful, but curiously cautious, as we wait for 2019 earnings.
I just completed my own Corp tax filings for 2019.
&
My One-man consulting biz (literally just myself) has higher TTM revenues than BKYI.
So, how does one justify an investment in this stock? Is PPS just so cheap that it creates a get rich quick possibility?
Doesn’t ANOTHER reverse split just piss off investors?
I read that article, and I must admit that it's good to see BIO-key in the company of IBM, Alphabet, etc., even IF BKYI is in the micro-cap category.
It has been interesting to watch this stock climb over recent days.
On the other hand, I don't remember seeing any PR regarding any new large customer acquisition. If BIO-key can hit even the low end of their $6M - $12M guidance, then they'll have survived a tough year and come out smiling.
The issue that I foresee, and I absolutely expect to hear about it on the 2019 earnings call, is that BIO-key made the switch from perpetual to subscription-based licensing, which will cost them around 60% of recognizable revenue this year.
This is unavoidable, BUT I've done it, and if you can build an ARR model, then you are financially set, and you may even grow.
THAT is what I want to hear. If ARR is not significant, then 2020 will be brutal.
China payment received = NO
Low Guidance missed = YES
NASDAQ Delist = Feb 9, 2020
That’s good “Headline News”. That’s the kind of news that’s been missing for a while.
This is good news, but is it “Headline News”?
Time will tell, I suppose.
I found the filing here:
https://seekingalpha.com/filing/4701122
It's really bad.
Where is this report? I can't find it, and I'm curious to preview Q3 ahead of tomorrow's call.
Pretty good day - up 15% at 3x avg. volume & increasing market cap by over one million bucks.
I honestly didn’t think the new Chief Revenue Officer would make it through November, but maybe Fred will surprise all of us with a big Q3. Heck, maybe BIO-key will exceed 2019 guidance! With a new, "rock star", CRO executive taking th lead on sales, I look forward to (and expect) a significant year over year Q4 & FY 2019 even more so than Q3.
According to his bio, Fred Corsentino has some impressive accomplishments - SIGNIFiGANTLY growing revenue by tens of millions of dollars over the course of a few quarters. Now that Fred has been running sales for well over one year with BIO-key, and having launched several new technologies in 2019, there should be no reason not to expect a repeat.
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My primary concern, is the launch of their Channel Alliance Partner Program earlier this year:
I have been in this industry long enough to know that any technology vendor building a sales channel will not increase sales, unless there is significant demand for that vendor's products. Channel partners will focus their efforts on the products that sell for high margin and that sell fast. If the vendor's product(s) is not in high demand, then the sales reps will focus on selling other products from other vendors.
Over the past few years, BIO-key doesn't have the sales volume required to capture and maintain a partner's mindshare; for the past few years, BIO-key just simply doesn't add many new customers, and when they do add a new customer, they seem to very small, departmental purchases.
Further, with the OEM of third-party software that comprises ID Director for Windows, there simply is not enough margin to distribute among all of the parties. As ID Director for Windows seems to represent a majority of BIO-key sales, this could be/become an issue.
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My Channel Alliance Partner Program
Honestly, I don't believe that BIO-key will ever have the need for a CAP program; however, my experience has taught me that the value of the partner is to service the customer, not the vendor. More and more, the customer wants their own partner to perform services and provide support, so that they don't have to employ experts or learn something new. This is the "new channel", and it's focused on services revenue, with software margin as an added "bonus".
I was thinking about what @jonQ is saying in this post, and the timeline that is mentioned.
I belong to the same technology market and similar category as BIO-key.
When I look at the BIO-key stock chart and expand the timeline to max - all the way back to the 90's, I see a company that has experienced zero growth in the past 2 decades.
What I see is so completely uninspiring that I don't understand why anyone, especially myself, even cares about this stock.
I suppose that we're all waiting for that "special moment", where the company turns things around and begins the journey to success.
But It's been almost 20 years of flat line.
Life is too short.
@wickw50 - I will be on a flight during this call, but perhaps someone will agree that this is information that needs to be discussed on Friday, but I cannot participate.
Regardless, I would like to pursue a public response to these questions, so that we know what's really going on with BIO-key sales.
I struggle to understand how a company that has been doing business for over 25 years, and proclaims to be an innovator and leader in biometric security solutions, can barely generate $4M in annual sales/revenue.
As I'm almost 20 years into my career in the IAM and MFA space, I don't consider those revenue numbers to be representative of a technology leader, as I have colleagues in this space that exceed individual quotas larger than $4M.
Otherwise, without a significant quarter or two, it seems that BKYI is running out of time and money.
I look forward to hearing something new and interesting on Friday.
There are a few things that I would like to learn from the Q3 earnings call:
1. Will Mike D finally address the question of who owns the technology, ID Director for Windows? The debate over whether it's an OEM (which it is - simply rebranded RapidIdentity from Identity Automation, formerly 2FA, Inc.) has been debated for over a year, and it seems to represent practically all of all BIO-key's new customers and PR. It would also be beneficial to hear Mike describe the profit structure (margins) from the top selling BIO-key product (virtually all NEW license sales announced in 2019) although the biometric software licenses have been small by industry standards).
2. What were Q3 (and Q2) revenues generated from the "NEW" ID Director for SAML? This is the only new product announcement in 2019, and as hardware sales have decreased ~50%, how has this new product affected revenue?
Has ID Director for SAML generated any revenue at all in 2019? Any significant logo's?
We know directly from the BIO-key CEO, Mike DePasquale, and SVP, Jim Sullivan, that ID Director for SAML was supposed to provide out of the box biometric support for the major IAM vendors. Mike D should address this and give specific examples.
3. BIO-key launched a highly exclusive :) Channel Partner Program 30 days ago, have any significant distributors, VAR's or GSI's enrolled, other than the M.O.U signed with Africa?
4. What happened to BIO-key's algorithm quality as applicable to the United States federal government NIST standards? Not only has BIO-key been OMITTED from the Template Generator and Template Matcher Leaderboards, but they FAILED all, 100%, each and every one, of the compliance tests.
See for yourself, as I'm always challenged on these statements:
https://pages.nist.gov/minex/results/reportcards/pdf/minexiii/biokey+0005_generator_report.pdf
- I realize that Mike will not answer any questions with specific details.
- I expect *with full confidence that revenue targets for Q3 will be missed.
- I know BIO-key will keep on keeping on, and someone will invest or lend them money for ops.
- I hope that one day I'll meet Fred in a bar and hear all about "lessons learned".
I guess I should call BIO-key out more often. I was a bit harsh yesterday, but completely honest.
I’ve seen BKYI fluctuate daily and even post significant gains, like today.
I do t remember seeing
>700k trades in a single day before, though.
No doubt someone is behind this (I.e. Lind Global Macro Fund, LP.). But it was a good day for someone.
WICKW5o - Understood.
I just hope to hold them accountable for “claiming” to be a technology company.
I support your efforts to call them out as a scam. I’ll continue to defend the IAM marketplace from their false pretenses & misdirection.
Together, shareholders, traders, customers and the market as a whole, will certainly avoid BKYI.
BIO-key is NOT a company to do business with.
BIO-key is NOT an investment.
I have been waiting for someone to ask this question for a while!
There is an obvious lack of demand for BIO-key hardware and software. Not to discount BIO-key's inability to reach the most minuscule of revenue targets every quarter/year, and despite the fact that executive management is completely oblivious as to how to meet the demands of today's technology marketplace, but what is BIO-key's purpose in this universe, and why do they deserve to exist?
To the question at hand...what is the technology? Software or hardware? What is relevant?
I'm going to skip right past the fact that BIO-key prints its logo on fingerprint biometric padlocks and bicycle locks, because nobody cares. It's a niche market, and anybody that wants to import that crap from China can do so. I definitely like the fact that BIO-key thinks they are unique in this market; they are not. There are > 2000 products for sale on Amazon alone.
For 2 years, BIO-key CEO claims that hardware sales will increase at Christmas, but seriously, who believes that this is a consumer product that has any potential to sell as a gift item?
Enterprise software products offered by BIO-key have been the focus of recent press releases, but are ultimately low margin 3rd party technologies that are either resold or sold as OEM.
Software companies take advantage of free marketing by offering demo software, publishing on-demand demo's on YouTube, offering live webinars, etc, in order to generate demand for their solutions. BIO-key has no (zero, none) demos online. BIO-key has no engineering-level technical expertise in MFA for Windows or Active Directory. BIO-key does not employ a single developer that has any code-level experience with their ID Director for Windows product. They cannot support the code. They cannot support a customer.
Most recently (and I LOVE this), they announced a new ID Director for SAML product. Fortunately, this new technological breakthrough from BIO-key is based on a decade-old standard that is widely adopted and technical expertise is commonplace. Because the SAML 2.0 standard has such wide adoption, open-source code is widely available. One example of open-source SAML SP and IdP project is Shibboleth, which is used to add SAML functionality into core product functionality.
It's worth noting that open-source projects, such as Shibboleth are not designed to build a commercial product that functions only as a SAML IdP, but as stated before, the purpose is to enable SAML support for an application. BIO-key released a product called ID Director for SAML, which is nothing more than a Shibboleth open-source project, with very limited functionality and directory support.
I encourage anyone to request a demo of the ID Director for SAML demonstration. Ask technical questions. Ask architectural questions. Ask general product questions - you will not get answers.
To summarize, BIO-key does not have products that are in use today, nor that address the technical issues that we face today. Ask for a Roadmap for ID Director for Windows or SAML.
This stock is just odd. The bid/ask spread is 15% of the stock price. Someone buys or sells 100 shares, and the share value moves 10%.
Just an observation.
At this price and very low volume, I can’t see the value of listing BKYI on NASDAQ.
The stock did better during the years it was delisted. It didn’t do well, but market cap was 2x - 3x what it is today.
I’m sure they could get into an ID market, like their competition, that they could possibly win some big contracts and stop chasing the small deals.
The PR from these tiny transactions may actually be hurting the stock price.
I suppose $5k - $6k is better than nothing, but if you’re going to make a business from SMB, then you need many many more transactions.