7th Mar 2016 11:18
LONDON (Alliance News) - Sensing technologies developer Seeing Machines Ltd said Monday revenue had increased almost six-fold for the six months to December 31 and pretax profit had surged, as it agreed a follow-on deal with a major automotive manufacturer.
Seeing Machines Ltd said revenue for the first half of its financial year was AUD29.3 million, almost six times higher than AUD4.2 million the previous year, while pretax profit swung to AUD11.2 million, from a loss of AUD4.3 million. Seeing Machines said this growth came on the back of its signing of a global product development, licensing and distribution deal with Caterpillar Inc, the US construction machinery and equipment company.
Under the deal, agreed in September, Caterpillar has taken on responsibility for Seeing Machines' existing DSS rugged off-road product and the pair will also work together on developing new products.
Caterpillar is paying Seeing Machines AUD21.8 million over a four year period, although all of this has been recognised as revenue in the current period. Stripping out the Caterpillar fee, Seeing Machines said other sales and service revenue for the half year was AUD7.4 million, up 76% from the same period last year.
Seeing Machines added its cash at December 31 was down to AUD10.2 million, from AUD14.2 million, resulting from the increase in research and development activities.
It said it expects total revenue to be "significantly higher than last year" for its full financial year ending June 30, due to the licensing fee, but said other sales and service revenue may be marginally lower, depending on how quickly current assessments for its Fleet product convert to larger deployments.
Elsewhere, Seeing Machines said it has secured a "major follow-on order" for its second generation automotive driver monitoring systems from an unnamed large automotive manufacturer, in partnership with tier 1 automotive supplier Takata Corp.
The customer, which first placed an order for the first generation system in September 2013, will be using the older system in its 2017 models, and the second generation technology will be integrated into more than ten, higher-volume, 2018 vehicle models.
Seeing Machines said the second program expands the driver monitoring system "offering across a number of the manufacturer's international car brands as DMS become part of the brands' advanced driver assistance systems offering".
No financial details of the deal were disclosed.
Shares in Seeing Machines were up 5.5% at 4.49 pence on Monday morning.
By Hannah Boland; [email protected]; @Hannaheboland
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