Aware Inc (AWRE) SEC Filing 10-K Annual report for the fiscal year ending Monday, December 31, 2018

Exhibit 99.1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Kevin Russell

Aware, Inc.
781-276-4000

Aware, Inc. Reports Fourth Quarter and 2018

Financial Results

BEDFORD, MASS. – February 12, 2019 – Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ: AWRE), a leading supplier of biometrics software and services, today reported financial results for its quarter and year ended December 31, 2018.

Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2018 was $4.1 million compared to $3.1 million in the same quarter last year. Operating income in the fourth quarter of 2018 was $0.3 million compared to an operating loss of $0.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2017. Net income in the fourth quarter of 2018 was $0.6 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, which compares to a net loss of $0.6 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, in the same period a year ago.

The increase in revenue and operating income in the current three month period compared to the corresponding period last year was primarily due to higher services sales, and to a lesser extent higher software maintenance sales and lower total costs and expenses. This was partially offset by lower patent related income from an unaffiliated third party this quarter.

Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2018 was $16.1 million compared to $15.5 million in 2017. Operating income for 2018 was $0.4 million compared to $1.1 million in 2017. The increase in revenue was primarily due to: i) higher services revenue related to the software license agreement we entered into with a system integrator in the second quarter of 2018 for a large project; and ii) higher maintenance revenue. The increase in revenue was partially offset by: i) lower software license sales primarily due to a large imaging software license sale to a medical imaging customer in 2017 whereas there was no such sale in 2018 that was partially offset by higher biometrics software sales in 2018; and ii) no royalty revenue in 2018. Lower operating income was primarily due to lower patent related income from an unaffiliated third party in 2018 that was partially offset by higher revenue in 2018 and lower total costs and expenses in 2018.

Net income for the year ended December 31, 2018 was $1.2 million, or $0.06 per diluted share, which compared to net income of $1.0 million, or $0.05 per diluted share in 2017.

Kevin Russell, Aware’s chief executive officer and president, said “2018 was a year of improved revenue due to higher biometric software license, maintenance and services sales and a continuation of investments in product and business development to strengthen our position as a leading global supplier of biometrics software and solutions. In 2018, we had a large license sale of our Knomi™ mobile biometric authentication solution to a large commercial customer as well as additional licenses to multiple other customers. We were also pleased about the selection to provide our BioSP™ software and services for the United Kingdom Government biometric matching platform. We also made enhancements to multiple product offerings including our face, voice and fingerprint solutions. As we look to the future, we continue to be encouraged by the interest in and the worldwide opportunities for our biometric solutions in the government, commercial and mobile markets.”

About Aware

Aware is a leading provider of biometrics software products and development services to governments, system integrators, and solution providers globally. Our products include SDKs, software components, workstation applications, and a modular, centralized, service-oriented platform. They fulfill a broad range of functions critical to biometric authentication and search, including face, fingerprint, iris, and voice capture, sample quality assurance, data compliance, capture hardware peripheral abstraction, centralized data processing and workflow, subsystem connectivity, and biometric matching algorithms. The products apply biometrics to enable identity-centric security solutions for applications including banking and payments, border management, credentialing and access control, intelligence and defense, and law enforcement. Aware is a publicly held company (Nasdaq: AWRE) based in Bedford, Massachusetts.

See Aware’s website for more information about our biometrics software products.

Safe Harbor Warning

Portions of this release contain forward-looking statements regarding future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties, such as estimates or projections of future revenue and earnings, and the growth of the biometrics markets. Aware wishes to caution you that there are factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results indicated by such statements.