10th Oct 2014 08:28
LONDON (Alliance News) - Seeing Machines Ltd Friday outlined plans to diversify its sources of revenue, including expansion into markets outside of mining.
The company said that in the current financial year, a majority of its revenues will still come from the mining sector, but over the next two years it expects mining's share to reduce as it grows revenues from the commercial and road transport market, passenger vehicles and rail, and then consumer electronics, aviation and simulation.
For the commercial road transport market, the company is developing a new product based on its Driver Safety System technology that is used in mining, with a broader functionality and a less rugged and lower-cost design. It expects to make this product available for customers in the second quarter of 2015, and in the longer term plans to integrate it into new commercial vehicles as an original equipment manufacturer product.
It plans to integrate a number of sensing technology and capabilities into a range of after-market solutions for commercial vehicles, to be launched in 2016. It also is seeing interest from the aviation and simulator markets, Seeing Machine said, and expects business and investment plans for this market to be finished by March 2015.
Seeing Machines upped its headcount to 90 as at June 30, compared to 47 a year before, as part of a push to enter new markets. Over the next year to year-and-a-half it plans to continue investing in staff, resources and infrastructure, in its technology and engineering capabilities, and developing its technology into new products.
The company is continuing to work with Caterpillar Inc as its global sales partner, signing 16 deals with Caterpillar dealers to date. It is working with Caterpillar to combine its technology with Caterpillar's own products, as well as working to see how it can be used for Caterpillar's product and service offerings outside of Mining.
It also is continuing to work with Electro-Motive Diesel Inc under their strategic agreement, and said it has already identified "three potential trial partners" through this agreement.
It entered a strategic alliance with TK Holdings Inc, the Americas subsidiary of Takata Corp, in September. It has seen "strong interest" from a number of global automotive manufacturers, it said. Finally, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Samsung Electro-Mechanics Corp to jointly develop a face- and eye-tracking technology for consumer electronics.
Seeing Machines expects revenue from the consumer market to take longer to develop than automotive and rail, but the size of this market underpins its belief that the deal will generate "significant value for the company over the longer term".
Shares in Seeing Machines are trading down 0.8% at 5.95 pence Friday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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