Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ:AWRE) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ:AWRE) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript April 29, 2026

Delaney Gembis: Good afternoon, and welcome to Aware’s First Quarter FY ’26 Conference Call. Joining us today are the company’s CEO and President, A.J. Amlani; and CFO, David Traverse. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin today’s call, I would like to remind everyone that the presentation today contains forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations of Aware’s management and involve inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Listeners should please take note of the safe harbor paragraph that is included at the end of today’s press release. This paragraph emphasizes the major uncertainties and risks inherent in forward-looking statements that management will be making today.

Aware wishes to caution you that there are factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results indicated by such statements. These risks and uncertainties are also outlined in the company’s SEC filings, including its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements should be considered in light of these factors. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Although it may voluntarily do so from time to time, Aware undertakes no commitment to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Additionally, this call contains certain non-GAAP financial measures as that term is defined by the SEC and Regulation G. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in compliance with GAAP. Accordingly, Aware has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the company’s earnings release issued today. I would like to remind everyone that this presentation will be recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website. Now I would like to turn the call over to Aware’s CEO and President, A.J. Amlani. A.J.?

Ajay Amlani: Thank you, Delaney, and good afternoon, everyone. First, let me start with our performance this quarter. Revenue for the first quarter was $3.4 million, which was below our expectations. Transparently, we underestimated the pace at which the market was shifting and the degree to which our existing product infrastructure and architecture needed to evolve to meet it. The rapid advancement of AI has simultaneously raised the stakes and expanded the threat surface for biometric systems, making liveness detection and identity assurance more critical than ever, while making the job of protecting against spoofing and deep fakes more demanding. We did not move fast enough to get ahead of that reality, and this quarter’s results reflect that.

As part of our ongoing transformation, we took deliberate steps during the quarter to further align the business with our platform-first strategy. This included removing approximately $4 million in expenses and simplifying our go-to-market operating model. These actions represent a meaningful reset of our cost structure and are designed to support a more focused, efficient organization aligned with our highest return opportunities. Stepping back, this quarter marks the next phase of our transformation. 2025 was about building the foundation, strengthening our technology, expanding certifications and deepening our understanding of customer requirements. We are now in step 2, focusing the company around a single scalable platform strategy. At the center of that strategy is the awareness platform.

Q&A Session

We are moving away from a fragmented portfolio of components and SDKs and toward a unified biometric orchestration platform designed to serve both federal government and enterprise customers at scale. We believe biometric orchestration represents a critical layer in modern identity infrastructure, enabling organizations to integrate, manage and scale biometric systems and workflows across their environments with increased efficiency and simplicity. More importantly, this is not just a product decision and is grounded in market demand and data. In our recently published market research, the state of biometric security in the age of AI fraud and a founding 98% of organizations already using biometrics said they’re interested in investing in orchestration capabilities.

Additionally, nearly 90% report concern over AI attacks targeting biometric systems, further illustrating why they need visibility into orchestrating biometric workflows. The report is available on our website, and I’d encourage you to read it. Taken together, this feedback reinforces that we are aligned with where the market is headed, allowing us to build with a clear understanding of the opportunity in front of us. We also believe Aware is uniquely positioned to lead in this category. Our decades of experience, our deep scientific foundation and our strong intellectual property portfolio, particularly in liveness detection, represent a durable competitive advantage. It is the critical capability that will determine winners and losers in this space, and it is where we have historically been strong and intend to lead.

As part of this shift, we are prioritizing investment in the awareness platform and aligning our resources accordingly. This includes downshifting investment in certain legacy product areas, including portions of our law enforcement-focused offerings while continuing to fully support our existing customers and deliver on our commitments. At the same time, we are increasing our focus on the federal government, where our foundational capabilities have long proven and where we continue to see demand for modernization and biometric interoperability. In parallel, we have gained important insight from enterprise customers whose requirements are increasingly centered around cloud-based multi-tenant architectures. This feedback has directly shaped the design of the awareness platform, which is built to support scalable enterprise-grade deployments.

The platform continues to evolve, and we are actively engaging with customers to refine capabilities and ensure a strong product market fit. We are encouraged by the feedback we are seeing and believe this positions us as we plan for a broader platform rollout later this year. Step 3, which we expect to begin in the coming quarters and accelerate into the fall is about scaling, bringing expanded platform capabilities to market, including continued advancements in liveness and providing single integration access to top-performing systems so that customers can test and evaluate performance as well as quickly deploy biometrics anywhere across their business. As we move through this transition, we expect near-term variability to continue. Our focus is not on optimizing for quarter-to-quarter results, but on building a more durable, modern and scalable business that can deliver steady, long-term growth and broader adoption of the platform.

While this business did not meet our expectations this quarter, we are confident that the actions that we have taken position us more effectively for the future. A key example of continued progress is our performance in independent real-world government evaluations. During the quarter, we delivered strong results in the DHS remote identity validation rally Track 3, where our Intelligent Liveness solution demonstrated the ability to stop sophisticated attack ors while maintaining a high-quality user experience. We view results like these as more than technical milestones. They are a direct reflection of our commitment to building high assurance, production-ready technology that can operate at scale with speed and accuracy in the most demanding environments.

These validations are critical prerequisites for winning large government and enterprise deployments, and they reinforce our confidence in the platform as we are continuing to build. With that, I will turn the call over to David to review our financial results in more detail. Over to you, David.

David Traverse: Thank you, A.J. Let’s review our financial results for the first quarter of 2026, which ended on March 31, 2026. Revenue for the quarter was $3.4 million compared to $3.6 million in the prior year period. This decrease reflects lower perpetual software license revenue and was partially offset by higher maintenance and services and other revenue. Operating expenses for the quarter increased to $7 million compared to $5.5 million in the prior year quarter. The higher expenses included onetime severance costs of $700,000 as well as higher compensation costs related to hires we made in 2025. As A.J. noted earlier, we have reduced operating expenses by $4 million on an annualized basis starting in the second quarter of 2026.

And we continue to make adjustments to our operating expenses as we continue to focus on our strategic objectives. Net loss for the quarter was $3.5 million or $0.16 per diluted share compared to $1.6 million or $0.08 per diluted share in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $3.2 million compared to $1.5 million in the prior year period. We ended the quarter with approximately $19.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and we have no debt. Our balance sheet remains strong and provides flexibility as we execute on our strategic plan. We expect the savings of the actions taken this quarter to be more visible as we align our expenses with our strategic priorities. Given the nature of our business and the transition underway, we expect quarterly variability to continue.

And as a result, we continue to believe performance is best evaluated over multiple quarters. With that, I’ll hand it back to A.J. for closing remarks. A.J?

Ajay Amlani: Thanks, David. We have been transparent with you today about where we fell short. We underestimated both the fit and capability demands of the current market and the speed at which AI is reshaping what customers need for biometric infrastructure. That is on us, and the restructuring actions we have taken this quarter reflect genuine accountability, not a reaction to 1 quarter, but a deliberate reset towards our opportunity to lead us as a biometric orchestration platform player. We are intentionally moving away from products that will not be relevant in our new paradigm and concentrating our resources on the areas where we have a proven durable advantage. Chief among those is our liveness capability to help combat AI-powered spoofing and deep fake threats and our proven track record serving the federal government.

The awareness platform is how we bring this to market at scale, giving customers a single integration point to access, evaluate and deploy best-in-class biometric capabilities across their environments. The early feedback reinforces that this is the right direction, and we remain focused on executing the rollout with discipline. We are building toward consistent long-term growth from a sharper, more defensible position. We believe the path forward is clear, and we are committed to it. That concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the call for questions. Delaney, please provide the instructions.

Delaney Gembis: Thank you, A.J. At this time, there are no questions. That completes our Q1 FY ’26 broadcast. As a reminder, this presentation is recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website. Thank you, and you may now disconnect.