Our next presenter will be Wave Power Global, ticker WAVE, W-A-V-E on the Nasdaq. Presenting today will be Board Member, Founder, and CEO, Inna Braverman. Inna will be joining us in mere seconds. Again, that is Wave Power Global, ticker W-A-V-E on the Nasdaq. Inna, if you're there?
Yes, I'm here. Hi. How are you?
Hello. Great to see you.
Nice to see you too.
Will you be showing your presentation today, your investor deck, okay?
Yes. Mm-hmm.
All right. Could you put that on the screen now? While you're doing that, I will get some preliminaries out of the way. Safe harbor statement. This segment may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating results, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans, or prospects expressed by management, constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical fact should also be considered forward-looking statements. Of course, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Inna, I am seeing your presentation up on the screen. We are ready to go.
Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm Inna Braverman, I'm the Founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power, and today I'll walk you through a little bit about our company and our unique technology. First of all, why wave energy? Eco Wave Power chose to develop our technology in the wave energy field because it is the renewable energy with the largest potential in the world. Wave energy, as opposed to other renewable energy sources, can actually operate 24/7 around the clock, as opposed to solar energy, which is a great resource but cannot produce at night or when there's winter or cloud coverage. Wave energy has the highest availability and is the least intermittent source of renewable energy. Also, 4.7 billion, which are about 60% of the global population, are currently living on the coastline.
With this type of population distribution, the need for wave energy is undeniable. If we are looking at the U.S. market alone, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, wave energy can supply up to 66% of all the U.S. energy needs. If we are looking at the hottest topic right now, which is AI and data centers, we see that the electricity demand could double to more than 945 TWh by the year 2030. With majority of data centers located on the coastline for cooling effect, wave energy becomes a real possibility of powering data centers as well. Usually the question asked is, okay, if wave energy is that great, if the potential is that big, why don't we see wave farms everywhere? We do see solar fields and wind fields, but wave energy is just starting its commercialization.
I would say that the answer lies in the photo before you. This is not Eco Wave Power. This is an illustration of another company called Pelamis. 99% of the developers in the wave energy field decided to go into the offshore, just like Pelamis did. The offshore is 4 km-5 km into the sea. When you go that far into the sea, the price becomes sky high. There's a need for ships and divers and underwater mooring and cables. Pelamis built a small station sufficient for hundreds of houses, and it cost in excess of $150 million in development cost, which is of course a very, very high price. In addition, these offshore power stations traditionally struggled with survivability.
In the offshore, you see waves of 20 m or even higher, like tsunami waves, and unfortunately, no manmade stationary equipment can survive the load of a 20 m wave height. So there was a lot of high-profile failures and breakages of these expensive offshore systems. Because of that, they struggle to secure insurance. They also have negative environmental impacts as they connect to the seabed and create a new presence on the seabed. It's very expensive and complicated also to connect these systems to the grid because there's no consumers nearby. In order to connect to the grid, they need to wire an underwater electrical cable to have the electricity transported to shore. Eco Wave Power decided on a completely different concept. It's what you can see on the screen. We don't go into the offshore.
We connect to existent manmade structures, such as piers, breakwaters, jetties, and other types of structures. The only thing that is in the water are the floaters, and the floaters belong in the water, and all the expensive machinery is on land, just like a regular power station, simple, easy, cost-efficient. How does the technology work? Our floaters connect to existent manmade structures, such as piers, breakwaters, and jetties. The floaters are going up and down with the movement of the waves. They're pushing a hydraulic cylinder, which transmits biodegradable fluid into land-located accumulators. A pressure is being built. The higher the wave, the higher the pressure, turning the hydraulic motor, turning the generator, and sending clean electricity to the grid or to end users like data centers. Here we can see the construction of one of our installations.
As I said before, because we are on existing marine infrastructure, we do not need any ships, we do not need any divers. Everything can be done from the land side using simple equipment, easy programming of work, and a cost-efficient process. Here we can see the inside and the outside of our power station. The only thing in the water are the floaters, which belong in the water, and all the expensive machinery and the more sensitive machinery, like the generators and the hydraulic equipment, is on land, just like a regular power station. The advantage in that is that we do not need very long construction timelines. Basically, the conversion unit comes to the site already fully assembled. One side of it connects to the floaters, the other side connects to the electrical grid, and you have an up and running system.
One of the highest costs in traditional wind and solar farms is the cost of the land. In Eco Wave Power's case, the big machinery, the floaters, is not located on land. It is located on the marine infrastructure, like we can see here on the jetty, breakwater, pier. It is not prime real estate. Most of the time, we get these structures either free of charge or for a very small compensation for the structure's owner, thereby saving significant costs. In addition, these structures are always built in proximity to population density centers because their goal is to protect the population or the port from storms. That means you have a very nearby grid connection point.
Not only that the cost of land is super low or zero, but it is also very cost efficient because there is a very short cable to connect the power station to the grid. The advantages of our technology is that it is 100% environmentally friendly. It does not connect to the seabed. It is only installed on existing man-made structures, which already had impact on the environment. It is cost efficient.
We build the 100 kw here on the screen for $450,000 in comparison to the $150 million spent by Pelamis and other offshore entities. This is a real breakthrough. In addition, our system is reliable. As we can see in the video in the bottom of the screen, when the waves are too high for the system to handle, our floaters automatically go up above the water level, and they stay in the upward position until the storm passes.
When the storm passes, they go back into the water and commence operation. Our technology is also fully insurable by global reputable insurance companies. This is our patent portfolio. We have about 18 patents, 13 are approved, five patents are pending. We have patents in Israel, in Europe, in the United States, and an international PCT. Here we can see our development pathway. That is actually a very interesting slide. Currently, we are operating the first in history grid-connected project in Israel. We did it in a joint venture with EDF Power Solutions and 50% investment from the Israeli government as the Israeli Energy Ministry recognized us as a pioneer in technology. For three years already, the power station is sending electricity to the grid with almost zero downtime.
We also have a pilot project up and running in the Port of Los Angeles with co-investment of 50% from Shell. This is our first U.S. project. We just submitted a report to Shell showing that we successfully achieved the targets of the project. Now we also sent a copy of the report to the Port of Los Angeles with the goal of starting to discuss with them a larger scale project that we can make potentially on the outer breakwater of the Port of L.A., where we can house up to 60 MW of power. We're also working on our first two sales of projects. One is in Taiwan for I-Ke. They received recently a concession for the land in Suao Port on the east of Taiwan. They will be buying a pilot project from Eco Wave Power for that purpose.
Also in India, we signed an MoU with Fortune 500 company, oil and gas company, Bharat Petroleum, for a pilot project in Mumbai Oil Terminal. Our largest project today that we're developing is in Porto in Portugal. We have a concession agreement there for 20 MW. We're planning to start with the first 1 MW . Also, as part of our expansion and kind of global goal to meet demand of energy, we see that the biggest demand of energy is actually coming from the AI and from data centers. Recently, we were featured on in Jensen Huang's keynote, both in GTC Taipei, which was a few days ago, and also in GTC San Jose, which was three months ago in California. We believe that there's a strong bond between AI and energy.
We can use AI to improve our technology, to upgrade our technology. We're planning to use tools like NVIDIA's Omniverse, and the relevant GPUs in order to improve and upgrade our technology. In the same time, we can power data centers. As I said before, a lot of the data centers are now moving towards the edge. They're moving towards the coastline, so they can basically receive direct electricity from our power stations to the data centers, and that's a huge market segment for us. Here we can see a zoom-in of our project in Israel. The floaters that are in the water are in work mode, and the floater that is lifted in the photo, we can see it's in storm protection mode for illustration purposes. This is the inside of our power station during some testing with EDF and Siemens.
Siemens are working with us in strategic partnership for our projects. They provide us everything from the generator to the inverter to the grid connection. We use brand name on purpose because we can get them guarantees in global scale. This is the grid connection of our Israeli project. It comes to show that because the breakwaters that we connect to are in high population density centers, our grid connection is very short in length of the cable, easy to implement, and cost efficient. The company has over 400 MW in its project pipeline, and we're always in discussions with new electrical companies and new regions to add more projects to our pipeline. Now let's look a little bit at our expected revenue models. In the short term, we're mostly developing project through joint venture or turnkey.
Joint venture is like what we did with EDF for the Israeli project. Turnkey is like what we're doing with India and Taiwan, where we're actually selling the pilot at profit in order to penetrate the market. Our long-term strategy is definitely BOO, when we will hold the assets on our balance sheet and instead of selling the equipment where you can have a limited profit margin, we will actually sell the energy to the grid for 25 years, which is the expected lifespan of the system. I think there's an important thing to say here that Eco Wave Power was established in 2011. In the first year, we were working and developing our product, our technology. We wanted to get to a point that we feel comfortable with our technology. That we feel comfortable, we're starting kind of the distribution of the technology.
The distribution is, I would say, probably the hardest part because wave energy is a new type of renewable energy source. As such, most of the governments or states, they don't have policies and regulations for wave energy. That's why we kind of need to install multiple pilots in many markets. I think we're doing a great job since we have the first pilot in the U.S., we have in the Middle East, in Israel, we have one coming in Portugal, which is Europe, and we have two coming up in Asia, which is in Taiwan and in India. Right now, while we're putting the pilots in place, we need a little bit of patience because the pilots are serving to create the regulation, the legislation, and the awareness for wave energy.
Once the pilot phase is finished in each and every location, our goal is to continue to commercial scale installation. That's actually when we can experience a significant ramp up in our revenues, in the orders that we can execute, and significant growth for the company. Why Eco Wave Power is in good position? I would definitely say that Eco Wave Power is the most advanced wave energy company in the moment, and most companies are still very early on in their computer re-simulation or wave pool testing, or non-grid testing. Eco Wave Power already has three years of grid-connected experience in Israel. We have our first project here in the Port of L.A.
As many of you may know, U.S. is a very bureaucratic market, so the fact that we were able to get the licenses successfully from the Port of L.A. and from Army Corps of Engineers, that's very important milestones, and we will soon commence our installations in Taiwan, India, and Portugal. We also have strong support from the research community. According to IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, point absorber, which is the type of our technology, will dominate the wave energy market in the near future. We also recently appeared on an NREL report, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, stating that wave energy projects that are combined into or integrated into existent infrastructure are kind of the correct way to go because it can save significant costs and assist the commercialization. We also have strong strategic partnerships.
We have EDF, which is the largest renewable energy developer in Europe, Shell in the United States, Bharat Petroleum in India, and IKE in Taiwan. Our company is recognized by the United Nations. We've received the Global Impact Award from the United Nations. We're a Solar Impulse Efficient Solution. We're also part of Sustainable Markets Initiative of King Charles and the World Economic Forum, and we receive recognition and grants from European Commission and European Union. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much for that great presentation, Inna.
Thank you.
We're now going to take your questions. If you have a question, please type it into the text box that will appear after you click on the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom window. We've already received many questions here. For investors just who are completely new to the story, can you briefly explain what Eco Wave Power does and what makes your technology different from others?
Eco Wave Power developed a unique, innovative wave energy technology that traditionally is producing clean energy from the waves, the goal is transmitting it to the grid, creating clean power to a country, to a city, to a port, through the grid. Now Eco Wave Power is also kind of pivoting and looking into a new direction of not necessarily connecting to the grid, but also providing direct power to data centers, which right now have huge requirements for clean electricity or for electricity in general. We're seeing companies like Microsoft that stop the development of certain data centers just because they couldn't get enough electricity at the site of construction. AI is the future, and we want to become the energy layer for AI.
"Wave energy, it has been discussed for decades," this person writes. "Why now, and what has changed in recent years to make it feasible now?"
It's absolutely true. Wave energy was discussed R&D'd for decades. Everybody always knew that wave energy is the least intermittent and the strongest renewable energy source that exists. Because solar kind of developed before, wind energy commercialized before wave energy, I was sitting in rooms and people were saying, "Okay, we have solar, we have wind as renewable energy. Why do we need wave? Why do we also need that?" I think now with everything that's happening, the AI boom, AI is so hungry for electricity, that there's even a feeling of being desperate for electricity. Everybody are looking for power, maybe generating power in space or putting an orbit of solar panels around the sun to generate more electricity, not to stop the AI boom.
I think whereas in the past, wave energy may have been perceived as a luxury, we can develop it, we cannot develop it, that's kind of a matter of choice. Right now, energy is being sought after super urgently, I think that before mankind decides to go and harness energy in space, which is very impressive and futuristic, we should definitely look at what's here on planet Earth. Wave energy is right here. We can harness it right now. We can build commercial projects in 18- 24 months, so you don't have to wait hundreds of years to get energy in space. You can get energy from the waves, clean energy from the waves right now.
Okay. Thank you very much. The world, it is facing rapidly growing electricity demand, as you have spoken about, from, of course, AI and data centers. How is wave energy going to fit into that trend?
I think wave energy fits perfectly into the trend because, as I said, data centers have a tendency moving towards the edge. They are moving many times into ports or close to marine infrastructure, close to the water, also because they need cooling. I think that we even have a port that we signed a letter of intent few years ago, and suddenly we met a company that builds a 100 MW data center there right into the port that is already identified as suitable for wave energy generation. Right now, the sites that we thought of as kind of traditional sites where we can just use the breakwater and connect the electricity to the grid, are also becoming sites that can accommodate AI and data centers.
That is great, and that creates a very strong bond between wave energy and data centers, since the energy is produced where it is actually needed. We are thinking of combining our technology also maybe with unique cooling technology for the data centers, as the cooling right now takes 20%-40% of the electricity needs of a data centers, adding a security layer to our data centers, and then really creating, like Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA said, a complete AI factory. The data center is not standalone, but it comes with the electricity source, the cooling, the security, and everything combined.
I noticed that I remember being at the Mediterranean. The tides there aren't very strong, right?
Yeah. The waves in the Mediterranean are of lower nature. Obviously, you get much higher waves in Hawaii, Portugal.
Right.
Scotland, locations that are open to the ocean. Remember that our Israeli project is a proof of concept project. It's the first time wave energy's connected to the grid, so it definitely has sufficient waves for the testing and for the work that we're doing to develop the technology, to learn how to connect to the grid, and everything else.
Yeah. That was just my personal thing. Which leads into this question that we got here. You're growing, as you mentioned, all over the world, multiple international markets. Talk about the global demand for your technology.
Yeah. We're seeing a really strong demand for the technology, first of all, because Eco Wave Power enjoys the advantage of being a first mover in the industry. Right now, as I said before, most wave energy developers, most companies are still very early on in their development cycle. They're in wave pool testing, they're in computerized simulations, they're in off-grid testing. It's interesting to see that there is strong awakening towards interest in wave energy, and specifically wave energy for data centers. I recently read in Business Wire that a company called Panthalassa just raised about $140 million from Peter Thiel at a valuation of $1 billion. They still didn't build anything connected to the grid, but they're promising to build something that would also connect directly to data centers.
I think that shows of the growing demand and the growing attention that wave energy is receiving right now. Right now, we are in discussions with multiple renewable energy companies, traditional energy companies, data centers developers, AI giants, about potential collaboration in energy production for them. I think we're going to a very exciting time for Eco Wave Power, where Eco Wave Power will be able kind of to shine. Our energy is needed, our energy is clean, and I think we will be announcing some exciting developments soon.
Your technology is installed on existing coastal infrastructure and not offshore platforms. What advantages does that provide from a cost, permitting, and scalability perspective?
The advantage is really all around because once we don't go into the offshore, we don't need to spend so much money. We don't need ships, we don't need divers, we don't need underwater mooring, we don't need cables. We install our floaters to existent manmade structures, so the infrastructure is there. You don't create any new presence on the ocean floor. You're not being a danger for upcoming marine vessels, because you're connecting to the structures, and the marine vessels stay far away from this structure already for security reasons and safety reasons. It's cost efficient, it's easy, it's close to the grid, it's easy to operate and maintain. Being connected to an infrastructure makes the whole process so much easier, including licensing.
What would you say are the most significant milestones the company has achieved in the past 12 months?
I would definitely say that in the past few months, we announced a number of exciting milestones. We started publishing energy generation from our Israeli project, showing how we produce electricity in waves between 1 m-2 m , which we deem relevant to our project. We also announced the completion and the official opening of our Port of L.A. project together with Shell. We opened the project in September last year. Recently, two months ago, we announced the successful completion of the report for that project, showing that we met all the regulatory, operational, and other milestones that are related to that project. We also started our discussions and our development of everything that's related to AI. We're working on the one hand of adjusting our technology to become an energy supplier to large scale data centers and AI companies.
On the other hand, to improve our technology by building a digital twin using NVIDIA's Omniverse and other kind of tools that we have working for us. I think that we had very exciting 12 months, and I also believe that the 12 months that are ahead of us will be even more exciting, and we'll have more catalyzers because we have three projects that are on the way, Portugal, Taiwan, and India. We have all the new AI work that we're doing and adjusting our technology to be able to provide direct energy to data centers. I think we have a very interesting year ahead of us with many catalyzers.
Now let us look ahead a moment. Looking ahead to the remainder of this year, what are the key catalysts and milestones investors should be looking out for?
As I said, definitely we have an exciting year ahead of us. We are working on three projects in the same time. As I said, the Taiwanese project with IKE, our Indian project with Bharat Petroleum, and our project in Portugal, which we are very much looking forward to developing. We also are in negotiations with other electrical companies and other locations around the world for putting pilot plans or larger scale installations. In the same time, we are in negotiation with a number of data centers developers on powering larger capacities of power necessities for the data centers. I think what's important for investors to know and to see is also look at our company and how it is structured. Almost 50% of our company is owned by insiders, by David Leb, the co-founder of the company, and myself.
Because of that, our interest is very much aligned with the interest of our shareholders, which I feel that is very important. Also, the company has no warrants outstanding, no debt. It's a super clean company with a super tight float. We have around six million ADSs approximately out there, and only half of it is the free float. There's not a lot of shares out there, so every time we have good news, the stock responds very well. I think we're a micro-cap company, but we're a super healthy company, with 50% holding by the co-founders, which align our interests very well with the interests of the investors. We are in the best era to be an energy company because energy is the most needed source with everything that's happening with AI and data centers. We're very excited.
Inna, that was a fabulous presentation. Very exciting. Love your ticker, by the way. WAVE. Perfect. Eco Wave Power Global is the company. For more information, write us at wave@redchip.com or call us 1-800-RED-CHIP. Inna Braverman, thank you very much for an excellent presentation.
Thank you so much. Bye bye.
See you soon. Coming up next at 3:00 P.M. Eastern here on today's RedChip Future Tech Investor Conference, BIO-key International, OTC BKYI. Presenting today, CEO Mike DePasquale. Mike, are you there?
I am. Good afternoon.
Great. Is that your presentation that I'm seeing there on the screen?
You are.
All righty. So you're all set. Again, it's Mike DePasquale. The company is BIO-key International, OTC BKYI. Let me get some preliminaries out of the way, Mike, then you can jump right in. Let's do the safe harbor. This segment may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating results, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans, or prospects expressed by management, constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical fact should also be considered forward-looking statements. Of course, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Mike, we're looking forward to hearing your presentation.
Thank you very much, and thank you very much to RedChip and the team for inviting us to participate. We're really enthused about that. Again, we appreciate the opportunity. I'm going to spend about 10 or 15 minutes talking about BIO-key, giving you an overview of our company, our technology, some of our customers, and the business opportunity ahead. Again, our symbol is BKYI. We're trading currently on the OTC markets. Our share price has been in the $4 range. We have about one million shares outstanding and a market cap of slightly under four of $5 million. Noteworthy here is if you look at the players in our space, even some of the smaller ones that are public companies, we're grossly undervalued in regard to, again, our comps. I just kind of say that here.
We'll talk a little bit more at the end of the presentation about that. We're certainly in a very good position. The company has been growing, we're expecting to achieve profitability actually in our current quarter. What do we do? BIO-key provides advanced identification and authentication solutions, which fundamentally provide a replacement for the current technologies that we're all very accustomed to using, which are passwords, pins, tokens, cards, and keys. Our technology platform is all-inclusive. It includes all of those authentication factors. Our differentiator, what differentiates BIO-key from the other participants and players there is our biometric technology. We've been in business for over 30 years. We really cut our teeth in developing this technology and maturing it and getting it to the point where it is today.
It is highly scalable, it's highly accurate, and it is the only way to positively identify an individual as the person who presents themselves. The opportunity for what you keep hearing about phishing-resistant technologies, Zero Trust, phoneless and tokenless technologies, because we can't always use a phone to authenticate ourselves. For example, if you're in a call center or you're on the manufacturing floor. BIO-key provides 17+ ways for our customers to authenticate themselves no matter where they are or what they're doing or how they present themselves. I'll go into a little bit more detail about that as we continue and evolve along. Here's just a representation of some of our customers. We have customers in virtually every sector of the economy. Our real sweet spot are the regulated industries.
If you look at defense, for example, three of the top four defense ministries on a global basis utilize BIO-key technology for access to all of their intelligence information. Very critical, highly secure information. Banks. We have a number of international and national global banks that utilize our technology for employees to access all of their information. In fact, the largest bank in South Africa, Capitec Bank, has over 30 million of their customers enrolled in the BIO-key solution. When they present themselves at the branch or at the ATM, they simply scan their finger and enter their accounts. Healthcare. The Cleveland Clinic, Nationwide Children's Hospital, a whole series of hospitals and clinics around the country utilize our biometric technology for access to EMR and EHR patient record systems.
In education, we have nearly 200 colleges and universities that utilize the BIO-key solution, not biometrics, but the other authentication factors for access to all of their information and all of the student and instructor portals. Anywhere that you're using a PIN, a password, a token, a card, or a key, you can utilize and take advantage of the BIO-key solution set. You likely know, the security industry is going through just a tremendous growth curve. It has been for a long time, and cybersecurity in general is a very big category. We focus on what we call the front door or the access to the information and the portals that any company, enterprise, business, or government may have.
There are tremendous drivers now, on a global basis and also domestically here, that are forcing more advanced security and multi-factor authentication to be utilized as a mandate. For example, here in the U.S., to get cyber insurance, you have to be utilizing multi-factor authentication. There's no way around it. If you're a government contractor, or you do any work at all with the government, you have to meet the NIST standards for security within your own company, and that means all of your employees and your vendors and contractors have to meet those compliance requirements. BIO-key provides all of the solutions and technology for authentication to ensure all of those compliance items. I mentioned before phoneless, tokenless biometric authentication. This is very advanced technology that basically can identify an individual in a very positive way.
I can use your password, I can use your PIN, I can take your little token and plug that into the computer. There's no differentiation in that context. However, with our biometric technology, when you put your finger down or utilize your face on a mobile device or even your palm, we know it's you. The devices that we use, in particular for fingerprint, test for liveness and have very serious encryption to ensure that they can't be compromised from things like a man-in-the-middle attack. You're talking about the most highest level of security, and along with that, the most convenient security. You don't have to enter long passwords that you have to change every two weeks. You don't have to carry a token with you. You don't have to use multiple PINs and perhaps even other technologies to authenticate yourself, including your phone.
You can do this all from your desktop or your mobile device, and you can do it in particular on a desktop or a tablet utilizing your finger. What are the real drivers in the context of the business, the industry, for governments and for enterprises? Well, clearly, I mentioned before reducing cyber risk, and meeting all of the compliance hurdles so that you can ensure yourself, and be sure that if you have a data breach, right, or something like that is coming into or through your backdoor, that you can identify it, right? We can provide the technology to do that. We clearly are providing a more convenient way for users to authenticate. The least friction, right? Putting your finger down is a lot less cumbersome than, again, entering a 12-digit password along with a PIN or plugging a token into a USB port.
We also reduce cost. For sure, enterprises have multiple technology solutions in the cybersecurity venue, and we can whittle that down so that at least access to the front door is utilizing one solution that has the flexibility to meet whatever their authentication requirements are. As I mentioned to you, we support 16 or 17 different factors of authentication. Then, of course, again, as I mentioned before, all of the regulatory requirements in healthcare, called HIPAA, for example, all the NIST requirements for governments and government contractors, all of those items get addressed directly by what we provide our customers, both enterprise and government. It's pretty clear that biometrics in general are being much more widely accepted than they were even five years ago. They're becoming a standard, for example, for travel. The TSA is utilizing biometric technology, including facial recognition and fingerprinting, to authenticate and identify individuals, right?
Crossing borders in the EU. Globally, around the world, large databases of biometrics are being built by governments to ensure that they could positively identify individuals. Defense ministries are realizing that the only way they can avoid compromise, especially with sensitive information, is to utilize biometric technology. It has to be highly qualified. It has to be highly scalable, and it has to be widely available and universally available, and we provide the platform to be able to do that. Similar in nature in the banking business. In the regulated industries where they have those drivers, we're providing those solutions and technologies.
We have a number of, I consider them emerging opportunities, in call centers, as I mentioned before, where you can't utilize a phone to authenticate yourself, in oil and gas services, and we're working with many international governments in areas such as tax, similar in nature to the IRS here in the U.S., where they're enrolling citizens and ensuring that they really are who they say they are, especially if they're presenting themselves for benefits, or some sort of a government program. As I kind of mentioned at the start, we are on the verge of getting the company to profitability. Our annual recurring revenue base is growing. Our gross margins hold steady in the 75%-80% range, and sometimes that range will move a little bit depending upon the amount of hardware that we sell, along with our software.
We have over 45 million global users that authenticate with BIO-key on a daily basis, we continue to expand our business, especially through channel partners. The bulk of our business on an international basis is sold through partners and channel partners. Domestically here, it is kind of a hybrid. We are selling direct, but also building a growing base of partners who are representing our solutions, our technology to their end users. We, again, will continue to grow. We continue to manage our costs. We have invested tens of millions of dollars in building out the current platform we call PortalGuard and WEB-key that we have built over the last 10 years, and we are really starting to reap the benefit of those investments now.
You are going to see the revenue grow, you are going to see the margins hold in that 80% range, you are obviously going to start to see us become profitable this quarter and beyond. With that, I will take any questions that anyone may have. Thank you again for allowing me to present today.
Thanks a lot, Mike. One of the more differentiated aspects of your platform is the ability to provide phoneless and tokenless authentication. In conversations with customers, what types of environments tend to recognize the value of that approach most quickly?
I would say for sure, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, that the regulated industries, the ones where they have a mandate, whether it is driven, again, by the government, or it is driven by their commercial insurance, or it is driven by scalability and controlled access. Industries like banking, finance, healthcare, and of course, government, those are the ones that really benefit the most from this technology out of the gate.
Are you seeing regulatory compliance increasingly becoming a catalyst for customer adoption, or is the primary driver security and operational efficiency?
Well, security and operational efficiency always drive enterprise decisions, and I think we all know that, right? At the end of the day, yes, the mandates are really forcing companies and governments and government agencies to look at especially the biometric technology that we've been developing, and we've been marketing over the last 20 or so years. The adoption rate is really about to explode.
Mike, as you were mentioning in your prepared remarks, you've built traction across defense, banking, healthcare, and other highly regulated industries. What common security challenges do those organizations share and why? I'm sorry. What characteristics make them well-suited for biometric authentication?
Yeah. Well, typically they have something very, very compelling to protect, right? In those industries, in finance and banking, for example, they're protecting customer accounts. They're protecting transactions, many high-value transactions, right? There are transactions that cut across, as I mentioned to you, international, national banks that represent hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in transactions. There's a very high value in many of those regulated spaces. In healthcare, it's protecting privacy, and it's protecting individuals' access to, again, their healthcare information, and ensuring that it's not shared or compromised is very, very important. Records need to be very accurate, and you don't want anything to breach or compromise those records. I think that's a very compelling issue in those regulated spaces. They have something very high value to protect.
With that high value, they look for advanced and highly secure solutions. Many of them, because even a password, and I should have probably said this before, a password can be secure if it's 12- 14 digits and you change it every week and a half, and you don't put it on the little yellow stickum paper and put it up on your computer terminal or on your laptop. As long as you keep it to yourself, it could be pretty secure. That's really hard to do. I think we all know that, right? That's why we're starting to use passkeys, right? You're starting to see passkeys and other authentications like Microsoft Authenticator. Other things come up to utilize multi-factor authentication. It's the ease of use of the biometric that really drives the personal adoption, right?
I love using it because it's simple. I don't need to enter that PIN or the password. I don't need to plug anything in. I just put my finger down and I'm in. It's both convenience and it's security, and biometrics provide the highest levels of both.
Thanks, Mike. Very interesting what you're talking about there. We invite you to continue to submit questions to Mike DePasquale. If you're joining us on Zoom, of course, we invite you to join us on Zoom. If you're on social media, use the link provided there to join us on Zoom. Once you're in Zoom, click on the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. Type your question into the text box. Does your installed user base influence product development or your ability to expand relationships with existing customers?
Absolutely. I've always said that the easiest way to acquire a new customer is to get it referenced from an existing one. Your install base is very important to you, and listening to your install base, gaining a good understanding of their needs and requirements, and keeping close relationships with the people who make decisions and who can really help craft our future direction is really important. I think for any company that's absolutely critical.
Defense and national security, Mike. How significant are they going to become as governments continue increasing spending on cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection?
That's a great question. It's one I probably should have addressed before. I don't think it's a secret for anyone who's listening on this call that the entire geopolitical environment has been turned upside down over the last six months in particular. It's been changing over the last few years, but over the last six months, it's changed dramatically. We're seeing a tremendous increase in government defense budgets, and it doesn't matter what country. All of the EU countries. In the Middle East, we're getting tremendous traction where, again, unfortunately, they're dealing with issues that continue to evolve.
Defense budgets, defense spending is certainly increasing, and because, as I mentioned before about references, because we have a good collection of customers that are utilizing us in particular for access to that secure information, that highly confidential information, it gives us a really good business opportunity going forward.
Regarding the Nasdaq hearings panel appeal on June 16th, can you outline the definitive timeline for filing the delayed 2025 Form 10-K? Is the delay purely administrative, or are there underlying auditor reconciliations holding it up? Do you expect a full listing restoration by this summer?
Great. That's a great question. Obviously, we are looking to file both our 10-K and our 10-Q shortly, and that's very quickly. I think we're very close. We expect that to happen shortly. Our hearing is scheduled for the 16th, which is Tuesday, a little less than a week away, and we are confident that the hearing panel will recommend our relisting onto the Nasdaq Capital Market.
Mike, you noted that Q1 software license revenues increased 24% to $1.4 million, and your gross margin is holding firm at an elite 82%. As your first half revenue scales to that guided $5 million target, what percentage of this top-line surge is carrying over to positive net income? Is the operational profitability you are calling for sustainable into the second half of the year without sequential spikes in R&D or SG&A?
Good question. Let me address the expense side first. Our expenses are pretty steady. Obviously, SG&A, as we sell more, there are things like commissions, obviously, that go up slightly, but our R&D budget has been basically flat since we've invested, as I mentioned before, very heavily in building out our product. We're at a steady state right now. From an expense perspective, we expect to be reasonably steady state through the year. As it relates to dropping net income to the bottom line, well, the first part of the question, is our growth sustainable into the second half? We believe with the pipeline that we have, we're certainly capable of sustaining that level of growth through the second half and into the full year. The answer to that is yes. We believe we can do that.
As you know, the third quarter is always variable because the European business is a little bit off with the vacations early in July and August. We have a very robust pipeline for the second half, I'm pretty confident that we will do very well there. As it relates to what drops to the bottom line, our gross margins, again, have been relatively steady. I think if we hold at this level, we will certainly achieve profitability, and I think we'll continue to achieve that as we evolve through the end of the year.
Thank you very much for that, Mike. Cybersecurity is often viewed as a technology story, but there is also a strong business case around reducing friction and lowering costs. How do customers typically quantify the ROI from deploying BIO-key's solutions?
Well, there are multiple factors. For example, using advanced solutions in technology like this almost immediately eliminates all of the password resets and the IT support that's generally needed and required to be provided when you're using those traditional technologies. That's one area that almost immediately can go away and go away very quickly, right, with self-service password reset, utilizing biometrics and other authentication factors to be able to supplement that. That's one. The second is quantifying a higher level of security and potentially eliminating or thwarting a breach or a cyber attack. Pretty hard to quantify that, but when it happens, we know what the numbers are. That's another level of cost savings and ROI that customers can expect. The third piece is that there's a small capital investment in buying the hardware if you're going to utilize a finger biometric solution.
That's a one-time cost. You put that at the kiosk. You put that on your desktop computer. You put it on your tablet. You buy that device once, and you can utilize it for years to come. More importantly, multiple individuals can use that device. It's not like buying these FIDO tokens, right, these YubiKey, where one person has a key. Well, you actually have to buy two for them because the statistics show they get lost or are broken, and you have to buy two keys for every individual. They get broken, they get stolen. If the person leaves, you've got to try to get them back. There's a sunk cost in that, and that cost continues. With our biometric technology, it's just the licenses for the users to be able to utilize and take advantage of that technology going forward.
You've highlighted opportunities in IoT, autonomous systems, and connected devices. How do you think identity management evolves when the users are not only people, but increasingly fleets of devices and autonomous systems?
Certainly a very interesting question. One thing that we haven't even brought up here is AI, right? When we talk about autonomous, we're generally weaving in AI. We're weaving in synthetic identities, the ability to make a synthetic identity or to thwart, for example, a biometric system, or to thwart a password system, or to breach whatever, right? To be able to get through the back door into your servers and your systems. What we bring to the table here is highly secure, highly encrypted, and by the way, this is quantum-proof as well, and certainly we're evolving to ensure that as the quantum technologies continue to evolve, we evolve with them. We're providing solutions that meet all of the highest hurdles to thwart those kinds of attacks. And as I mentioned, even on our devices, liveness detect.
A synthetic or a gummy finger is not going to work on one of our devices because it's going to check for liveness. That's the way we become more secure as a society. It's the way we become more secure from an enterprise perspective and a government perspective as well.
That will wrap up this segment with BIO-key. Mike DePasquale, thank you very much for a very interesting discussion indeed.
Thank you very much. Wonderful to be here, and glad that we were able to participate today.
Hope to see you again soon, Mike. Thanks a lot.
Right. Have a great day.
For more information on BIO-key International, that's ticker BKYI. Earlier, I mistakenly said it a different way. BKYI. Reach us at 1-800-RedChip or email us at the ticker, BKYI@redchip.com. Mike, thanks again. See you soon.
Have a good day.