Socket Mobile, Inc.

Welcome to the Socket Mobile, Inc. Q4 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Jen, and I will be your operator for today's call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding mobile data collection and mobile data collection products, including details on timing, distribution, and market acceptance of products, and statements predicting the trends, sales, and market conditions and opportunities in the markets in which Socket Mobile sells its products. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from the results anticipated in such forward-looking statements because of a number of factors including, but not limited to, The risk that manufacturer of Socket's products may be delayed or not rolled out as predicted due to technological, market, or financial factors, including the availability of product components and necessary working capital. The risk that market acceptance and sales opportunities may not happen as anticipated. The risk that Socket's application partners and current distribution channels may choose not to distribute the products or may not be successful in doing so. The risk that acceptance of Socket's products in vertical application markets may not happen as anticipated, as well as other risks described in Socket's most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Socket does not undertake any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. On the call with me today are Kevin Mills, Chief Executive Officer, Dave Holmes, Chief Business Officer, and Lin Zhao, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Kevin Mills. Kevin Mills, you may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our revenue for 2024 was $18.8 million, an increase of 10% over 2023. We recorded margins for the year of 50.4%, a slight increase over the 49.7% recorded in 2023. Our operating loss was 2.5 million, a slight improvement over the 3.1 million loss in 2023, a significant portion of our operating loss related to employee equity compensation. Overall, 2024 was a difficult year from a revenue point of view. We started 2024 with an expectation that we would be able to add revenue in the latter portion of the year from our extreme products. The extreme products are targeted at the industrial market. During the year, we engaged with a good number of customers, received positive feedback on our solution, and experienced a good level of interest from customers. However, the evaluations have taken much longer than we expected. And as a result, we did not have any meaningful deployment in 2024. We are continuing to work with these potential customers and do expect to see deployments in 2025 that will enable us to grow our revenue and establish a foothold in the industrial market. In 2024, we spent $4.7 million on R&D, primarily on improvements to our capture SDK, which continues to be the foundation of our business. We upgraded our capture SDK in significant ways, and we currently support all the major operating systems and the top three cross-development platforms, which is allowing us to grow our brace of applications that support our data capture solutions. With that said, I'd now like to turn the call over to Dave Holmes, who will outline our plans for 2025. Dave.

Thank you, Kevin, and good afternoon, everyone. As Kevin said, today I'd like to highlight a few of the significant milestones that we achieved in 2024 and talk a little bit about what we were focused on in 2025. In 2024, we concentrated on expanding our market presence in new markets with the launch of several new products, primarily focused on the industrial environments. Although adoption has taken longer than we expected, we now have several positive proof points that point to our investments in this category beginning to pay off in 2025. including our first long-term commitment from a Fortune 50 Tier 1 industrial customer. The ruggedized scanning market is large, and our entry into this space will help us diversify our business beyond retail. XtremeScan product line is comprised of three different configurations, XtremeScan case, XtremeScan, and XtremeScan grip, all designed for iPhone. This product family represents a significant milestone in our commitment to delivering high-quality data capture solutions for our customers in industrial, manufacturing, warehousing, oil and gas, and airports. Xtreme Scan is designed to enable iPhones to withstand harsh industrial conditions, offering robust scanning capabilities with military-grade durability. This opens the door to new customer segments that demand the ultimate performance in the most difficult environments. The Xtreme Scan product family grew in 2024 with the introduction of several Xtreme Scan Mag devices designed for the increasing number of workers who use a single phone for both personal and business needs. The bring your own device or BYOD category represents a significant yet underserved market where we see strong growth potential. Xtreme Scan is fully compatible with iPhone 16E. iPhone 16E is a durable, cost-effective device ideally suited for industrial environments. With an extra-long battery life, enhanced drop resistance, and the trusted iOS platform, it is expected to quickly become the go-to device for demanding industrial sectors. XtremeScan combined with iPhone 16E will empower industrial businesses with durable, adaptable, and future-forward data capture technology. We believe that iPhone 16E makes the choice for enterprise customers a lot easier. This clarity allows decision makers to feel good about the device commitment they're investing in. Over 80% of young people in the US are iPhone users. As these people move into the workforce and become frontline workers, employers can deploy familiar devices with a well-known operating system and user experience to help minimize training and mistakes and maximize productivity. iPhone 16E with Xtreme Scan can become an obvious choice for industrial customers with data capture needs for digitizing their workflows. Beyond new products, we also invested in our customer and developer experience in 2024 by introducing a new website, developer portal, and AI-powered developer support, which we call Alfred. Alfred is helping our developers around the world with multilingual support to integrate our capture SDK into their apps so they can enable best-in-class scanning capabilities into their mobile apps. Our new product and technology investments will extend our reach and diversify our customer base. Ultimately, this will make us more sustainable and less dependent on retail as we become a more complete data capture company. With that, I'll turn it over to Lynn for more details on our financial results. Lynn?

Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon, everyone. Our 2024 revenue increased 10.2% year over year, compared to $17 million in 2023. Growth margin rose to 50.4%, up from 49.7% in 2023, driven by the allocation of manufacturing overhead costs across higher production volumes. Operating expenses for the year reached $11.9 million, reflecting a 2.8% increase from $11.6 million in 2023, primarily due to higher peer-related expenses from salary adjustments and the increased benefits costs. In 2024, we reported an operating loss of $2.5 million compared to $3.1 million loss in 2023. The net loss per share was 30 cents in 2024 compared to 27 cents in 2023. Both years reflected the adoption of Section 174 of the Tax Cuts and Job Acts of 2017, requiring capitalization and amortization of R&D expenditures. Adjusted EBITDA for 2024 was negative $318,000, compared to a negative $1 million in 2023. Revenue in Q4 2024 grew 10% year-over-year to $4.8 million, up from $4.4 million in the prior year quarter, and it increased 25% sequentially from $3.9 million in Q3 2024. Gross margin for Q4 was 51% compared to 52.8% in Q4 2023. and 49% in Q3 2024. Operating expenses for Q4 reached $2.9 million, marking a 2.9% year-over-year increase, but a 1.8% sequential decrease from the preceding quarter. We recorded a Q4 operating loss of $411,000 compared to $475,000 loss in Q4 2023, and the $1 million loss in the preceding quarter. Q4 adjusted EBITDA was $138,000 up from $52,000 in Q4 2023 and the $505,000 loss in Q3 2024. Diluted earning per share in Q4 was zero cents compared to eight cents in Q4 2023. Both quarters included income tax benefits of $550,000 and $1.4 million, respectively. Turning to our balance sheet, we ended 2004 with a cash balance of $2.5 million. During the year, we invested $0.8 million in capital expenditure, spend of $.5 million in operations and raised $1 million through the issuance of subordinate convertible notes. As of December 31st, 2024, our inventory level, net of reserves stood at $4.9 million compared to $5.4 million a year earlier. This wraps up our prepared remarks. Now I hand the call over to the operator for questions.

Jen. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad now. You'll be placed into the queue in the order received. Please be prepared to ask your question when prompted. Once again, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your phone now. And our first question will come from Steve Swanson, investor.

Good afternoon. Are we going to need to raise any cash this year? If so, how much and when do you foresee that happening?

Currently, we do not have any plans to raise cash this year. So we start the year with enough cash. We expect the first six months to be a little bit of a strain on our cash, but then we expect in the second half to be cash positive. But we don't expect to raise any cash this year, right now. So that's the current plan.

All right, thanks.

And once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 at this time. And it appears there are no further questions at this time. Kevin, I'll turn the conference back to you.

Thank you, operator. I'd just like to thank everyone for participating and wish you all a good afternoon. Thank you.

And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending.