Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Steven Crowley - Craig-Hallum Capital.
Steven Crowley - Craig-Hallum Capital
In terms of this contract R&D line, that's continued to be robust and I guess it's appropriate for us to assume that you're able to fund some worthwhile projects, or you have been able to fund some worthwhile projects via that mechanism. The number has been a bit higher than I've forecasted. It seems to be solidly above a million dollars. How should we think about that revenue item as we move forward. Can it hang a million dollars a quarter or is there going to be some pretty significant variability in that line.
Curt A. Reynders
We are happy that we reported a 311% increase in contract R&D in the quarter but it continues to remain a challenging contract funding environment and we don't know how many future contracts we'll win. Contract R&D can fluctuate from quarter to quarter due to timing and amount of contract wins and a number of factors that are beyond our control.
It's important to remember, though, that our long-term strategy has been to reduce our dependence on contract R&D toward future of products and licensing as our primary revenue sources.
Steven Crowley - Craig-Hallum Capital
All of that understood. Is it a fair assumption on our part that you've been able to point that project works towards areas of significant interest for your commercial endeavors.
Dr. Daniel A. Baker
Yes, we have been able to get contracts in areas that we consider strategic to us. We don't break down the specific areas that are funded, R&D versus company-funded R&D that we fund ourselves, but I highlighted three of the areas, biosensors, magnetic compassing sensors, and anti-tamper MRAM, that are areas that we consider strategic and we've been able to make very good progress on those.
Some of the contracts, as we discussed before, are dependent on our performance. In other words, is we execute well on these contracts, then the funding can continue, or at least we have a shot at having the funding continue.
So the funding and the revenue line that we had this quarter is a credit to our team. They've executed very well. We certainly hope that they'll continue to execute well and that we can continue to gain these contracts. But it's difficult to predict. We don't always have a lot of long-term visibility and with government contracts there's uncertainty relating to the change in administration, what the priorities might be in the Department of Defense and other government agencies, and that's difficult for us, or anyone, to predict.
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