Aware, Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to AWARE's fourth quarter and full year 2025 conference call. Joining us today are the company's CEO and President, A.J. Amlani, and CFO, David Traverse. Following their remarks, we'll open the call to questions. If you'd like to submit a question, you can do so at any time using the built-in ask a question feature in the webcast player. Before we begin today's call, I'd like to remind everyone that the presentation today contains forward-looking statements that are based on the current expectations of AWARES 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. The lawyer wishes to caution you that there are factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those 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 forelooking statements should be considered in light of these factors. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forelooking statements which speak as only 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, the call contains certain non-GAAP financial measures that the term is defined by the SEC and Regulation G. Non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in compliance with GAAP. Importantly, 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'd like to turn the call over to AWARE's CEO and President, A.J. Amlani. A.J.? ?

Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. Fiscal 2025 was a foundational year for Aware. While revenue-summing dynamics, particularly within the federal market, created variability in our financial results, the year was defined by meaningful strategic progress across our technology platform, leadership team, certifications, and market positioning. We strengthened the foundation of the business, expanded our competitive reach, and positioned Aware as a trusted biometric identity solutions provider. To reiterate, our efforts this year have focused on progressing our three-pronged transformation. First, advancing our core biometric technology with a focus on liveness and biometric orchestration. Second, strengthening our science-forward, customer-obsessed approach go-to-market model. And third, deepening strategic partnerships and certifications that build trust and scale. Starting with our first strategic pillar, advancing core biometric technology, liveness remains one of the most critical vulnerabilities in remote biometric systems today. Biometric injection attacks, deep fakes, and presentation attacks continue to evolve rapidly. Throughout fiscal 2025, we invested significantly in our science and research teams to remain a leader in this domain. Our next generation intelligent liveness combines deep biometric expertise with advanced spoof protection to deliver verifiable proof of personhood. In the NIST IR 8491 evaluation, Aware achieved best-in-class gender and race parity, earning the lowest racial bias rating in the market and ensuring fair, consistent performance across users at every high-risk touchpoint, critical for secure digital ecosystems. Aware Intelligent Liveness delivers sub-second capture speeds while materially reducing false negative rates and improving adaptability to emerging spoofing threats without introducing friction. We believe liveness is not simply a feature. It is foundational infrastructure for secure digital identity. Innovation will continue to be at the heart of our progress in this area. At the same time, we have continued to evolve our biometric orchestration capabilities, which you may recognize as our awareness platform. Our orchestration framework is designed to maximize system uptime, enable modular integration of multiple biometric modalities, and simplify deployment in complex customer environments. We are focused on building out our open architecture biometric infrastructure to bring civil and criminal identity management together in a single, secure, and highly scalable environment. By eliminating vendor lock-in and supporting a broad range of biometric systems, it gives organizations the flexibility to modernize on their own terms. We are working diligently to ensure enterprise grade security, interoperability, and scalability of our orchestration platform. Beyond orchestration, customer testing activity across our broader portfolio remains strong in both government and commercial sectors. Much of the demand is centered on defending against facial defects, injection and presentation attacks and threats that are evolving in real time. Organizations are actively evaluating vendors capable of mitigating these risks at scale. Initial customer feedback has been encouraging, particularly around algorithm accuracy, ease of integration, and flexibility of deployment. These evaluation cycles are often lengthy, especially in government, but the depth and rigor of engagement signal meaningful intent. We are also seeing continued engagement in fingerprint biometrics, where our long-standing expertise continues to differentiate us. A driving force behind our technology is the AWARE team. Over the course of fiscal 2025, we strengthened leadership across engineering, product, sales, and marketing. We recently welcomed a new head of engineering and a new head of product, both of whom brought immediate domain expertise and began implementing operational improvements from day one. These leaders are building upon a strong scientific foundation while driving tighter alignment between product development and customer requirements. Our third pillar centers on building trust and scale through strategic relationships and certifications. Despite procurement delays stemming from the lasting effects of the government shutdown, including delayed appropriations and slower procurement cycles, we saw continued engagement across U.S. and international government and commercial markets. During Q4, we successfully deployed our first mobile biometric solution within a U.S. federal agency. Law enforcement customer growth also continued with the onboarding of additional US agencies. While individually modest, these wins demonstrate growing international trust and institutional trust in our technology. We are expanding direct engagement with U.S. federal agencies at a time when Buy America priorities and supply chain considerations are increasingly relevant. As a U.S.-based biometric provider, we believe we are well positioned to compete both directly for federal buyers and indirectly through system integrator partners. Both channels remain core components of our federal strategy. While procurement timing remains dynamic Biometric modernization continues to be an area of focus within DHS and related agencies. Internationally, we continue to deepen relationships across both advanced and developing markets, where digital identity systems are increasingly recognized as foundational national infrastructure. In the fourth quarter, we launched a pilot program with the Caribbean nation to deploy biometric time and attendance systems for government employees, further expanding our global footprint. We also are seeing expanding engagement in aviation and border-related use cases. During Q4, we successfully tested biometric boarding at Orlando International Airport, which now serves as a flagship reference for our direct travel and border strategy. In partnership with the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, our technology supports contactless passenger processing under the Biometric Exit Program. This program demonstrates how biometric orchestration can improve throughput, reduce document handling, and enhance traveler experience in one of the busiest airports in the United States. We also continued to expand our partner ecosystem through new strategic relationships, including integrations with digital workflow providers and collaborations with biometric hardware vendors. These initiatives remain in early stages, but we believe they strengthen our long-term go-to-market strategy and broaden our reach over time. We also continue to perform strongly in independent government led evaluations, including DHS related biometric testing programs. Our face and fingerprint algorithms have improved meaningfully in accuracy, bias mitigation and scalability. During the year, we successfully completed DHS river phase matching evaluations and achieved ISO 30107 Level 3 certification for presentation attack detection, placing us among a small group of global providers that meet the highest standards for liveness detection. In the selfie-to-document match track operating under the first alias MTDS1, Aware was one of only five vendors to meet all DHS high-performance benchmarks. We were also one of just three to achieve zero failure to extract rates for both selfie and document images, and we delivered the lowest false match rate among that group, including against demographically similar imposters. These results highlight the accuracy, resilience, and real-world readiness of our platform at scale. We also achieved ISO 27001 certification, the leading international standard for information security management. As enterprise and government customers increasingly acquire formal validation of security practices before engaging with vendors, this certification strengthens our ability to compete in larger and more regulated opportunities. We also completed independent biometric bias testing, conducted by Bixi Lab, an NVLAP-accredited lab under the ISO IEC 19795-10 standard. The full system evaluation, covering both liveness and matching under real-world conditions, delivered outstanding results. These results reinforced the accuracy, consistency, and fairness of our technology across critical applications, including border control, national ID, financial onboarding, mobile authentication, and enterprise access control. Finally, in addition to our biometric and liveness evaluations, AWARE recently achieved FIDO2 server certification, validating our ability to support secure passkey-based authentication layered with biometric verification. This certification confirms compliance with FIDO Alliance standards for cryptographic authentication and interoperability, capabilities that are increasingly expected in regulated high assurance environments such as payments and financial services. When combined with our intelligent liveness technology, this approach helps verify real user presence, reduce phishing and automated attack risk, and deliver fast, seamless identity experiences. These certifications are not simply badges. ISO 30107 level 3 demonstrates our technology can defend against increasingly sophisticated presentation, deep fake, and injection attacks. ISO 27001. It validates our corporate security posture and operational rigor. Together, they materially strengthen our credibility with both enterprise and government buyers. More importantly, these validations are how AWARE becomes a trusted provider for top tier one enterprises and leading government agencies worldwide. The largest institutions require proven performance, independent verification, and enterprise-grade security before they deploy biometric infrastructure at scale. Our certifications and evaluation results meaningfully expand the universe of opportunities we could pursue and have already enabled us to compete with several large engagements that previously would not have been accessible. With that, I will turn the call over to David to review our financial results in more detail. Over to you, David.

Thank you, AJ. Let's review our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year, which ended on December 31st, 2025. Starting with the fourth quarter, revenue in the fourth quarter was $4.7 million compared to $4.8 million in the prior year period. The slight decrease reflects lower perpetual software license revenue, partially offset by higher maintenance and services and other revenue. Operating expenses for the quarter improved to $6.1 million compared to $6.3 million in the prior year quarter. The lower expenses largely reflects the one-time costs incurred in the prior year period related to the former CEO's transition, which includes severance and acceleration of stock-based compensation expense of $600,000. As we know in our last earnings call, we continue to expect operating expenses to reflect the strategic investments we are making. Net loss for the quarter was $1.5 million, or $0.07 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $1.2 million, or $0.06 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $800,000 for both Q4 2025 and the prior year quarter. Turning to our results for the full year, for the full year, revenue was $17.3 million compared to $17.4 million in 2024. The slight year-over-year decrease was driven by lower perpetual license revenue, which was partially offset by increases in maintenance and services and other revenue. Net loss of $5.9 million, or $0.28 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $4.4 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA loss of the year was $4.6 million, which adjusted EBITDA loss of $3.9 million in the prior year period. End of the year with $22.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and no debt. Our balance sheet reflects the increased investments we've made throughout the year to enhance our team, advance our core technology and certifications, and support go-to-market initiatives. We will continue to allocate capital to our strategic priorities and build a stronger, more competitive business. While we remain confident in our long-term positioning, we believe we will continue to experience quarterly results that remain uneven given the nature of our procurement cycles and customer conversion timing. This is particularly true in government and large enterprise markets, where funding and execution timelines can shift from quarter to quarter. As a result, quarterly results may not fully reflect the underlying progress we're making. For that reason, we believe performance is best evaluated over multiple quarters. With that, I'll hand it back over to AJ for closing remarks. AJ?