PORT TOWNSEND — The revenues of Intellicheck Mobilisa Inc., a Port Townsend-based company, have soared since Nelson Ludlow returned as president and CEO last November.
The company reported this week a profitable third quarter, which is July through September, with revenue of $2,579,000.
The third quarter revenue is a 388 percent increase over the $528,000 revenue reported in the fourth quarter of 2012, when Ludlow returned, the company said.
“I am very pleased with the progress we are making in rebuilding the company,” Ludlow said.
“This progress is due to several factors, including our new and expanded product line; a more profitable and predictable business model, namely SaaS (Software as a Service); and improved service support for our customers.
“We believe our new emphasis on mobile applications will continue to be beneficial for the company and its shareholders, as there is increasing demand for mobile applications,” Ludlow said, adding, “I am optimistic about our future as a company.”
Ludlow took over as CEO from Steve Williams following the company’s Nov. 8, 2012, financial report in which it disclosed that it lost $381,296 on revenue of $2.1 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30.
Ludlow, who grew up in Port Townsend, co-founded Mobilisa in 2001 and built readers for identification cards for military bases.
Mobilisa merged with Intellicheck, a company based in New York City that had additional commercial applications, in March 2008.
Ludlow, now 52, was made CEO of the combined company and moved the headquarters to Port Townsend.
He ran it until 2011 when he left for other opportunities, he said.
Williams had succeeded Ludlow as president and CEO of Intellicheck Mobilisa, based at 191 Otto St., in April 2011. Prior to that, he was the company’s chief operating officer.
Ludlow returned immediately after Williams “was separated from the company,” according to a prepared statement released by the company then.
Ludlow does not know the status of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of trading reported in December, and the investigation is not listed on the SEC website as being concluded.
“The company was never under investigation,” Ludlow said in an interview with the Peninsula Daily News.
“It was about people who worked there,” he said.
“The SEC contacted the company and we cooperated by giving any information they wanted.”
Ludlow said that no one at the company has spoken to SEC investigators in several months.
“Our understanding is these things take a couple of years,” he said.
Revenue for the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, increased 21.7 percent to $2,579,000 compared to $2,120,000 in the year-ago third quarter, and up $858,000 or 50 percent from the second quarter 2013, the company reported.
Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $287,000 compared to a loss of $102,000 in the third quarter 2012.
Net income for the quarter was $16,000, or $0.00 per fully diluted share, compared to a net loss of $381,000 or $0.01 per share loss in the year-ago third quarter and a net loss of $647,000 or $0.02 per share loss last quarter.
The company renewed a $2 million line of credit with Silicon Valley Bank.
During the third quarter, the company launched its first major iPhone application, barZapp™, for alcohol servers to verify age, and barZapp 2.0 for iPhone was released subsequently. An Android version was released in the Google Store two weeks ago.
When the smartphone camera is pointed at a bar code on a driver’s license, the application will check to see if it is a fake ID and also calculate the person’s age, Ludlow said.
In July, Yahoo Finance said that the application was ranked as the third most downloaded paid iPhone business app in Apple’s App Store based on daily sales.
The national Transportation Security Administration approved Mobilisa’s two mobile The Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, card readers.
They were the first such devices to be approved by the Department of Homeland Security, the company said.
Two facilities purchased these new readers, the company said.
The Army issued Authority To Operate, ATO, approval for the company’s new military base identification card scanning system.
The Fugitive Finder product received government FIPS-201 — or Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 201— certification, and the Army’s Fort Polk in Louisiana purchased these new readers.
The company also installed mobile readers for ID cards at a major U.S. national security facility, which it did not identify.
It launched a test of new State Aware Software ID-checking product, which guides data collection based on individual state laws, at a major national retailer, also not identified.