Earnings Labs

Intellicheck, Inc. (IDN)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 11, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Intellicheck Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Now, it’s my pleasure to introduce Mr. Bill White, Intellicheck Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, Bill. You may begin.

Bill White

Analyst

Good day and welcome to our shareholders, guests and listeners. Thank you for joining us today for the 2016 third quarter conference call to discuss Intellicheck Mobilisa’s results for the fiscal quarter ending September 30, 2016. In a moment, Intellicheck’s CEO, Dr. Bill Roof, will lead today’s call. Following management’s prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. Before I turn the call over to Dr. Roof, I’d like to take a few minutes to read the forward-looking statement. Certain statements in this conference call constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. When used in this conference call, words such as will, believe, expect, anticipate, encourage and similar expressions as they relate to the company or its management, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the company’s management, identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs about future events. As with any projection or forecast, they’re inherently susceptible to uncertainty and changes in circumstances and the company undertakes no obligation to and expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements whether as a result of changes, new information, subsequent events or otherwise. Additional information concerning forward-looking statements is contained under the heading of Risk Factors listed from time to time in the company’s filings within the Securities and Exchange Commission. Management will use the financial term adjusted EBITDA in today’s call. Please refer to the company’s press release issued this morning for further definition of and context for the use of the term. I would now like to introduce Dr. Bill Roof, Intellicheck Mobilisa’s Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Roof?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Thank you. Good day and welcome to the Intellicheck Mobilisa Q3 2016 earnings call. Today, we will present corporate earnings information for the quarter ending September 30, 2016. Q3 was a turning point for our organization, and I am excited to report progress with many of our operational and strategic goals that we are confident will ultimately return significant value to our shareholders. After our prepared remarks, we will answer questions from shareholders. Our Chief Financial Officer, Bill White, will now review the quarter ending September 30, 2016 financial results. Bill?

Bill White

Analyst

Thank you, Bill. I am pleased to discuss some of the financial information that was contained in our press release for the third quarter ending September 30, 2016, which we released this morning. We anticipate that our quarterly report on Form 10-Q will be filed with the SEC this afternoon. Revenue for the third quarter ending September 30, 2016 was $1,214,000 versus $940,000 in Q2 of this year. This represents a 29% increase in Q3 versus Q2. As we have indicated in prior earnings calls, we expected and are now seeing higher sustained margins due to our Software-as-a-Service business model. Gross profit as a percentage of revenue was 77.9% for the quarter ending September 30, 2016 and 79.6% for the quarter ending June 30, 2016. We also indicated on previous calls that we expected a continued decrease in operating expenses in Q3 over Q2. I’m happy to announce that for the quarter ending September 30, 2016, our operating expenses, which consist of selling, general and administrative, and research and development expenses decreased $852,000, nearly 34% to $1,676,000 compared to $2,528,000 for the 3 months ending June 30, 2016. This decrease is mainly as a result of completing new product development initiatives, general cost-reduction initiatives and a decrease in the employee severance cost. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter ending September 30, 2016 improved 62% to a negative $490,000 compared to a negative $1,293,000 in the quarter ending June 30, 2016. This represents a 62% improvement over Q2. The company posted a net loss of $727,000 for the three months ending September 30, 2016 compared to a net loss of $1,775,000 for the quarter ending June 30, 2016. This represents a 59% improvement over Q2 2016. As of September 30, 2016, our backlog, which represents non-cancelable sales orders for products not yet…

Bill Roof

Analyst

Thank you for presenting these encouraging financial results, Bill. During today’s call, I will repeat some information from previous calls, mostly related to product descriptions. We believe we have some new significant investors on the call today and we want to make sure we review the product functionality for their benefit. Let’s begin by reviewing our projections of breakeven in 2017. Two key components of our objective are increasing revenues and decreasing and positively leveling expenses. We will continue to focus on breakeven and Q3 represents significant progress toward that goal. We have an increase in revenues of 29% and a decrease in expenses of 34%. We are confident that we have the team, products and momentum to meet our projection of breakeven in 2017. During our August 11, Q2 2016 earnings call, we projected that our shareholders would see revenues increased quarter-to-quarter, while we hold expenses at a level commensurate with operating the business efficiently and achieving breakeven in 2017. Some may recall that projection is perhaps the first statement providing guidance put forth by this company in a very long time. In 2015, our shareholders asked us when we will begin providing guidance and we responded that we hope to begin providing some level of guidance beginning the second half of 2016. This we did during our August earnings call. Of particular note, Q3 2016 saw the company complete the staffing of our new sales force, with our new team quickly becoming effective in the new areas. While I cannot share specifics, I can tell you that we are seeing significant monthly sales pipeline opportunity growth. Last year, we implemented an aggressive plan to revitalize the company. You may recall among other activities that we reorganized and completely re-branded the company, raised operating capital to carry us through…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ryan Nelson from Special Situations Fund. Please go ahead.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

Hi. It’s actually Alex Silverman. How are you guys?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Hi, Alex. How are you?

Alex Silverman

Analyst

Good. Thank you. Can you help us was there – can you, a), help us with what the mix of SaaS revenue was as a percent of the total revs this quarter and how that changed versus just a quarter ago?

Bill White

Analyst

Yes, hi Alex. SaaS revenue this quarter is about 75%. We had about $0.5 million in Defense ID sales that had an equipment component to it, but about 75% was recurring revenue.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

Got it. So – and about $0.5 million was Defense ID?

Bill White

Analyst

Correct.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

Got it. So that’s very helpful. And is that why gross margins were just down a tad between second quarter and third given the hardware component of this quarter?

Bill White

Analyst

Yes. I mean, the reduction between second and third quarter was de minimis, nonevent, but yes, that probably had most of the reason to do with it, yes.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

Okay. And Bill did you – I apologize, I was frankly multitasking. Did you say that some – that 100% of pilots progressed into paying contracts? Was that for a specific product you were referring to?

Bill Roof

Analyst

That number is correct and that’s across our product line.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

That’s across your product line?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Right.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

Okay. So you had a number of Law ID pilots. I think you announced several quarters ago that I think in the press release, you said could equal $0.5 million a year of recurring revenue. Can we assume that those have progressed as – into paying customers or were those waiting on Nlets to progress?

Bill Roof

Analyst

We are in the implementation phase. So, they were waiting on Nlets to progress. Now that we are a few weeks after our Nlets partnership, we are talking to them again. We are talking to their state reps of Nlets and we are trying to get hooked up. So that was really the slowdown for us with the other Police Departments. So, our first Police Department was our alpha and beta site. Just a few months ago, they went live across Police Departments they converted from pilot to pay. That was our first one. In Nlets, we expect to see a much, much quicker sales cycle.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

Great. And then can you walk us through what the process with Nlets is going forward? In other words, is the software now hosted on their site? Can you just flip on a state easily or do you have to go through a process still? What – how should we think about it?

Bill Roof

Analyst

We are in the process of moving our hosting systems to Nlets to their hosting facility in Phoenix. And each state representative at Nlets has the authority after going through a process with us to make sure that we meet the state standards for encryption and all of the technical issues to allow us to connect to the state switch. So, we – this really streamlines us, because – so for example, in our Policing Department in Illinois, we are going to remove the hardware from that Police Department and move it to Phoenix. There is a component of availability of a Police Departments or county’s or city’s IT staff to be able to support us when we have to install locally. We don’t need that anymore. We won’t...

Alex Silverman

Analyst

So, if I understand – sorry, go ahead, I apologize.

Bill Roof

Analyst

We won’t need that anymore. We will be able to put our hardware, our servers at Nlets in Phoenix and have the Nlets rep from each state verify that we meet their standards and get us flipped into the state network. So that really is a streamlined process for us now.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

And I assume having gone through the Nlets approval process gets you a pretty far – gets you pretty far along with each of those state reps.

Bill Roof

Analyst

It does, we think. And the fact that we have already passed the state of Illinois and we are connected to leads which is their law enforcement data system and other states will look at them and say anyone who has got permission to connect to leads automatically has follow-on permission to connect to us. So, that type of thing exists among the states and we expect to see this really, really speed up card our process.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

And what’s the timing on hosting the software at Nlets, is it this year?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Yes, it’s going to be this year. We are moving – in the process of moving now. That’s part of our proposal that we had to write. We went through a multi-month proposal process for this. We had to actually give them our system architecture and have that approved that – how we would host there. So, we already know what that looks like, we just have to start it from earning it.

Alex Silverman

Analyst

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you very much.

Bill Roof

Analyst

You are welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Anthony Marchese, Private Investor. Please go ahead.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Hey, good afternoon, Bill. First of all, congratulations and I want to say you do a really outstanding job in giving us an overview of each product line, really, really truly great job. I have two questions. First, with respect to your operating costs, you have done a great job in reducing them. First question I have is what can we expect going forward? Are these expenses? Obviously, if you have sales expenses, they are going to rise. But other than sales expenses, do you feel as though this is the level that we should consider over the next two, three quarters?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Yes, we are – we expect to be on or about this level over the next few quarters. We are going to stay here as well as we can until breakeven. We are going to be bringing on more salespeople that will add a little bit, but we expect that the – obviously, that the revenues they bring in will offset that. So our goal is to remain about this level. It may be up a little bit, it may be down a little bit, depending on what opportunities arise and we decide to spend money on. But we will do that very judiciously and always with our goal of breakeven in 2017.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Okay. Second question I have, during the last conference call, you mentioned that you were imminently going to be coming out with a new product, we should check our – we should check for press release imminently and as of yet, I don’t think we have seen it, so could you tell me what happened or where we are or…?

Bill Roof

Analyst

At the risk of sounding the same as I did last time, I ask that you check press releases next week.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Okay, alright. Okay, we will do that. And another question I have is with – I am still laughing, sorry. With respect to your patent litigation, can you just give us a little more detail, not necessarily who you are suing because I think that’s a matter of public record, but in terms of are you – what expenses are you incurring, are you – do you have an outside law firm, give us an understanding of how much you are actually spending?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Sure. We initially took on our first lawsuit out-of-pocket and we – it was important to us to get claims adjudicated, which were adjudicated in the court here in Seattle. Those were the claims were allowed, so we are very happy about that. We wanted to do that before we moved ahead with other lawsuits with larger suspected infringers. And once we got into our second lawsuit, we were – and started seeing the need for expert witnesses, etcetera, second lawsuit being with a contingent firm, so that’s not costing us very much at all. We moved the initial lawsuit over to that contingent firm. So our legal expenses initially were high. We get the claims adjudicated now. Those suits are with contingent firm and our future suits will also be with contingent firms. So we had high expenses legally. Initially, they are way, way, way down now and will continue to stay down.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Okay. Now your patent litigation, if you can also sort of take us through – you have two sets of patents, correct, the patent litigation that you re pursuing right now is different or rather separate from the biometric patents that you purchased, is that correct?

Bill Roof

Analyst

The suits that we have currently filed are not based on the biometric patent portfolio that we purchased last year. However, we do believe there is infringement across our markets in – with our biometric patent portfolio and we are taking a very hard look right now on who is doing that, who we believe is doing that and what we should do about it. So we are going to vigorously enforce all our patents, whether it’s our original patent portfolio or this new one we bought last year. And we are spending a lot of time on that.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Great, okay, very good. I really appreciate the update. Thanks Bill.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Thanks Tony.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Joe Bernini, Private Investor. Please go ahead.

Joe Bernini

Analyst

Bill congratulations. Being an investor with the company since the IPO of Intellicheck, I have been here a long time. And a couple of the questions were answered already, unfortunately. But the pilots turned into sales and your SaaS model, but I have got to commend you and the team, this is a complete paradigm shift for the company between the products, the execution and redefining your sales force, I congratulate you all.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Thank you very much. That’s very kind of you. We appreciate that.

Joe Bernini

Analyst

I do have one last question, on the pilots turned into sales, you also said they would become a supporter or an encouragement to additional sales to other companies?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Yes. We – when we initiate our contracts with many of these customers, we ask and had in the contract that they will be a reference account for us. And almost everyone says, well, certainly if your system works, if your products work the way we expect them to, we would be happy to evangelize these to your future customers. And we are finding that word-of-mouth as being extremely helpful right now.

Joe Bernini

Analyst

You just picked up another sales force?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Exactly.

Joe Bernini

Analyst

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Thanks Joe. It’s nice to talk to you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mike Grondahl of Northland Securities. Please go ahead.

Mike Grondahl

Analyst

Hey guys. Thanks for taking my question. First, just on the Retail ID, we are getting close to the holidays, can you kind of talk about some of the newer opportunities you have there and do those get live before the holidays?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Yes. We are – that’s a great question and the answer is, during the retail holidays, we typically don’t go live. The stores in our IT departments are gearing up beginning with Black Friday and they are gearing up now. And typically, their IT departments don’t have time to work with us to go live. So what happens in Q4 in the retail world is that we stack up these deals and then we start in earnest right after the New Year. So it’s typical. We saw it last year, too. They say I know we have a contract for your product, but we just can’t go live right now. We are going to slip it a quarter until after the holidays. We are seeing that right now and we expected it. So it’s not a shock to us, but I think that answers your question Mike, that we do see a slowdown in Q4 in the retail world.

Mike Grondahl

Analyst

Got it. And then Age ID, how do you kind of see that progressing in the next few quarters?

Bill Roof

Analyst

We see that progressing very well. I would really like to ask our VP of Sales, Paul Fisher, who is on the line, to talk about that because I would like to get some exposure from Paul to the shareholders. Paul, are you there?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Yes, Bill, I am.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Why don’t you go ahead and answer that last question, if you would.

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Yes. As far as Age ID, it’s a pretty consistent growth that we are seeing there. There is really no challenge as to market. It’s about efficiency, reliability, quick information to our law enforcement and also restaurant, convenience stores and so forth market. So we will continue to see the growth there. It’s – no challenges. We see market facing like holidays or anything we see in the retail space. So I think that answers your question.

Mike Grondahl

Analyst

Got it. And then maybe just lastly, it sounded like over time, you will be adding a little bit to sales, how can we think of that cadence kind of over the next year?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Do you want to respond to that, Paul or do you want me to?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Yes. Definitely, I will take it. So we have got a – we have added quite a few salespeople across the U.S. this year in the last two quarters, right. We will continue to do that as we see the markets grow. Right now, they are very much a generalist sales force, meaning they are attacking all of our products in markets. As those markets grow, we will look at specialization and maybe we have a law enforcement specialist by market instead of a generalist across the board, have a couple of specialists within each territory. So we are going to track it to revenue growth and make sure we are doing our due diligence there. And as the – like I said, the markets grow. From revenue perspective, we will backfill that with additional salespeople that could grow additional market share.

Mike Grondahl

Analyst

And I am newer to this story this year, when you say you have added sales in the last couple quarters, how many FTEs have that been?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

We have added four new FTEs in the last two quarters. I have got a team of nine, that includes direct sales and sales support.

Mike Grondahl

Analyst

Great, okay. Thank you, guys.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Anthony Marchese, Private Investor. Please go ahead.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Hi guys. I have a follow-up question, where – do you find – it would seem to me that you might find it easier to sell your retail product than your other product. How do you – I guess, whatever you are saying, how do your customers measure return on investment, I could see for example, in the retail area, you are preventing fraud. So they can actually see and touch how much money they are saving versus, for example, a liquor store where, let’s face it, you are taking sales away, obviously they shouldn’t be selling to them in the first place, but you know what I am saying, help us understand how do customers measure ROI? Is it a factor in what you sell?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Another good question, Tony. ROI doesn’t necessarily calculate in terms of dollars and cents. Sometimes it calculates in one’s responsibility to the community. So for example with Age ID, there’s a responsibility issue here. The local liquor stores especially, they live in a community. Their kids grew up there. They know the families. They don’t want minors drinking and driving and getting hurt or killing someone. There is also a compliance portion of that. Yes, there is a dollar and cents ROI in compliance because you avoid a fine or maybe being shut down. In Atlanta, there is a rule, a law that if you are caught selling to a minor they can shut your business down for an entire month. That’s going to put most people out of business. So, the ROIs are all over the place. With Law ID, we initially envision the Law ID product as an officer safety tool where the officer can scan a license and have – when he want some warrants and be on the lookout and terrorist watch list information in their hands on their smartphone in 10 seconds. That’s a lot quicker than walking back to their car, sitting down, typing the information or calling dispatch and waiting for a verbal response. That makes them safer. We have got problems with people shooting officers in the country right now. There is an ROI on saving a life, definitely. Also, having that information in 10 seconds can deescalate a situation. It could make the citizen safer. The officer may think they have got a bad guy. It’s not the person they think, they will know it in 10 seconds and they can deescalate. It makes the citizen safer. You can put a dollar value on that maybe. But certainly, the ROIs across some of our products are not measured in dollars and cents and we are real proud that we can stabilize, we can keep minors from drinking, we can be responsible to the community as well as save people money in the fraud arena.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Okay, great. I appreciate that. Two other questions. There was a major article I think it was in The Wall Street Journal a week or 10 days ago talking about actually with the holidays coming up, online sales, identity issues with online sales, do you have any initiatives in that area?

Bill Roof

Analyst

We certainly do and we understand that that’s an issue. We have looked at the numbers. We understand the fraud numbers across all of the avenues of fraud, whether those be internal employees, whether it be shoplifting, whether it be fake IDs and fake credit cards, whether it be online, whether it be in the brick-and-mortar store, we are actually addressing all of those.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Okay. And final question, you had mentioned earlier in the year, a development project with, I guess, a company called Visualant. I am just curious as to where you stand with that. Had you gone further or what you need to do to – I think you have mentioned you had a customer, in fact, who could complete the products. So can you just take us through where you are with that?

Bill Roof

Analyst

We are moving ahead with Visualant. We’re doing it slowly, so we can conserve cash. We’re controlling our expenses. The deal we have with Visualant gives us lots of time to build the product. We’ve been doing our market research. We have multiple customers now who could use this product, all the way from the federal government down to individual stores or credit card providers and so forth. So we are in the product definition phase right now. We are defining what the product needs to look like, how it’s going to be implemented. There is going to be a form factor that we have to design and we have got some designs on the drawing board right now for the device that actually reads the chemical tag-ins. So that’s all progressing and it’s progressing at a decent pace, and it’s not costing us much money at all, the way we are going right now.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Final, final question, could you just briefly take us through how that product works?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Sure. The Visualant product is – they call it, we call it ChromaID. Every object in nature and every object in the world has a chromatic response. So, if you shine particularly light pattern, different frequencies, etcetera, added it will return a unique signature. And what we are looking at are some government requirements to make sure that, for example, military ID cards and visitor passes at bases, etcetera, are – have built-in counterfeiting – anti-counterfeiting technology. We believe Visualant is perfect for that because we can produce ID cards and visitor badges that have a unique chemical tag-ins built into the paper, the plastic that returns a unique signature, and then we can shine a light at it and get the signature back. We can tell whether that’s fake or real. That’s a real fundamental description of how that works, but that could be worked – that could work for passports. It could work for currency. It could work for ID cards. It could work for credit cards, driver licenses. It has a wealth of uses out there.

Anthony Marchese

Analyst

Great. Alright, thank you very much. Really appreciate the time and effort in explaining that.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Thanks very much, Tony.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Jim Kennedy from Marathon Capital Management. Please go ahead.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Hi, Jim. How are you?

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Good. Thanks for good quarter. Great call. Couple of additional questions in each area. Number one, did I hear you correctly earlier say that you were talking with the top 15 credit card issuers?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Yes, I did say that.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Okay. Obviously, you can’t talk about – we can all figure out who the top 15 are, but could you kind of clarify a little bit as to the benefit to them? Obviously, you are reducing fraud at the store level, does that fraud typically end up on their tab or is that split with the retailer? In other words, why would they have such interest in this?

Bill White

Analyst

Yes, hi Jim. Bill White. There is – the merchant processing agreements vary between the merchant and the merchant processor and there is different loss share arrangements. So, the answer is the merchant and the processor normally will share the loss in some fashion. Smaller merchants, 1, 2 store merchants probably eat 100% of the fraud where larger merchants have more leverage to negotiate.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

So in other words, there is pain at all levels, in other words?

Bill White

Analyst

Correct.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Okay. And then can you speak – I know you can’t talk about individual retailers, but can you give us at least some experiential results as to the amount of fraud you are cutting, either dollar wise or percentage wise at the retail level in your customers’ stores?

Bill White

Analyst

Yes, yes, certainly, Jim. We have a lot of data points now to evaluate the ROI and what we are finding is that a retailer will pay for our software within the first 2 months of the year for the entire year. So, it’s about a 6:1 payback on an annual basis on average.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Okay. So payback is 2 – you said 2 months approximately?

Bill White

Analyst

About 2 months, yes, one point.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Okay. And have you sized the amount – shall we say it’s really not an addressable market for you, but the amount of fraud at that retail level for in-store credit card applications. How big is that fraud?

Bill White

Analyst

We don’t know that right now. We have got a lot of fraud numbers that we have been able to get our hands on, but we don’t know what portion of that is fraudulent by use of fake IDs to get – to gain credit cards. We have larger overall fraud numbers, but that’s not broken out. We just know that the banks and the retailers know it’s a problem. And obviously, when we do check and cut the fraud down, then we have got some data points there, but that may not be representative of the entire retail industry.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Jim, there is a lot of ways to cut the fraud. There is internal shrink. With respect to our fraud, what we found is fraudulent account setups is a big one that we could stop in its tracks. That return merchandise without a receipt, we are stopping that fraud in its tracks or account lookups where a customer comes in and wants to put a purchase on their account using a fraudulent ID and we have stopped that in its tracks as well, so yes.

Bill White

Analyst

That’s called a card not present. Oh yes, I am Bill White, but I forgot my credit card. Here is my driver license. And they will go ahead and they will put the purchase on Bill White’s credit card and it really wasn’t Bill White that we could stop that type of fraud, too.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Got it, got it. Okay. And then the nature of your discussions with the issuers, do you think it will end up being a situation where rather than them necessarily being a client of yours, it might be that they require their merchant network to have this technology in place or else they may pass that merchant who assume more of the risk?

Bill Roof

Analyst

You are dead on with that, Jim. We are seeing all of the above. Everything you just mentioned, we are seeing right now.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Okay. And then switching gears over to hospitality, you mentioned the word hospitality early on. Are you speaking just to liquor stores in Age ID or is there a much larger hospitality effort here? And if so, what does that encompass?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Well, certainly, yes, I am going to ask Paul to address that also. Paul, would you go ahead and respond to Jim on that?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Yes, definitely. Thanks, Jim. Hospitality market would include what you just talked about in regards to age restricted products, but we also expand that into the guest in hotel environment. So, we are talking to multiple hotel chains that would expand our opportunity there in the hospitality industry.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

And would that include – I know in a lot of stores and even in the ABC states, would that include grocery stores, too, because I know you can walk into a pharmacy or a grocery store in certain states and buy beer and wine?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Yes, we are talking to the grocer and c-store chains also.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Okay. Has anyone in that genre picked up the service or the technology, yet?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Active discussions underway, I don’t believe that any are revenue-ing at this time.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Okay. And then the arrangement that you have in North Carolina, which I am guessing is the first of its kind with Carolina Data Systems. Is that likely to be the business model in the states that are ABC controlled, which remind me again I think there are about 18 of them?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Yes, that’s correct. That’s one of our forward-looking strategies because we believe they can get us quicker time to market rather than us go get 38 ABC entities in a particular store.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Okay. So that would be the strategy in those ABC states. What about the other approximately, what other, 40 states that do not – that are not ABC?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Yes, that’s true, Jim. It’s a point-of-sale integration strategy. So that’s also across market strategy. If we could find a point-of-sale provider and do the integration with that point-of-sale provider, again, that gives us quick time to market.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Got it. Okay. And then Bill, could you just remind us, or maybe Paul, in terms of the structure of the sales force, you said it’s 9 people now with a couple in support. Are we geographical? Are we vertical? Do you think it will stay in that structure going forward?

Paul Fisher

Analyst

We are geographical today. It will move to more of a vertical alignment in the future as we grow revenues.

Jim Kennedy

Analyst

Got it. Okay. Okay, very good. Appreciate your time.

Paul Fisher

Analyst

Thank you, Jim.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from Michael Kellen from First Eagle Investment Management. Please go ahead.

Michael Kellen

Analyst

Good morning or good afternoon. On your second quarter call, you referred to 8 clients where pilot programs were necessary perhaps even underway, but whose annual revenue collectively could be over $5 million. Could you bring us up to-date on those particular clients? And since you mentioned that pilot-to-pay conversion was running at 100%, I was wondering where those are 8 clients stood?

Bill Roof

Analyst

Well, sure. We are still on pilot. The pilots are going well. We are in discussions with some to move into pilot. Those discussions are going well. In some of those cases, we have been in competitive proposal mode and have done very well with that too. And so there is no real change. We still standby that and we are moving ahead. It’s not moving as quickly as we had hoped, but we are still making advances in that area.

Michael Kellen

Analyst

Thank you.

Bill Roof

Analyst

Thank you, Michael.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer portion. I would like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing comments.