DroneShield (DRO) shares are soaring on news it has secured two separate $11 million orders from allied defence customers for its counterdrone systems over the past month.
DroneShield has been working on Ukraine’s side since the country was invaded by Russia in February last year.
The company’s technology has been used to fight drones used for reconnaissance, directing artillery strikes and dropping charges. The conflict has been the first to highlight the potential of drones on the modern day battlefield.
But DroneShield’s deployment in Ukraine is not the only reason it’s hit its straps and secured these contracts with government agencies – the details of which remain secret due to defence sensitivities.
The company also has been recommended by the US military for the rollout of systems across America’s Department of Defence. It’s also been deployed in its first US airport (there are 10,000 airports in the US alone), its DroneGun featured in the recent Brazil Presidential inauguration, and gained numerous $1 million-plus deployments with US, European and other government customers.
DroneShield CEO and Managing Director Oleg Vornik said demand for the company’s counterdrone equipment and software-as-a-service offerings has now become mainstream.
“It’s also about preventing the smuggling of contraband into prisons, stopping cross border drug deliveries, drone disruptions to airports and other critical infrastructure, corporate espionage, domestic terrorism and more,” he said.
“It’s a $10 billion market that we’re tapping into with DroneShield, which provides pure-play exposure to the counterdrone and electronic warfare sectors, at a time when defence and security spending is increasing amidst global geopolitical uncertainties.”
DroneShield owns all its Intellectual Property, it’s operating in about 100 countries, and Mr Vornik says the company’s well placed to service more larger-value orders, many of which represent recurring-revenue opportunities.
“We do not require additional cap ex because the business, by nature, does not require expensive machinery,” he said. “We have developed sophisticated systems that we are now using to put together the hardware and software that we sell.”
“We’ve had record revenues every year since we listed on the ASX in 2016 and we expect another year of exceptional growth.
“Importantly, we expect to reach a profitable cashflow-positive position.”
Late last year DroneShield received a $3.7 million investment from Epirus Inc, a US defence unicorn developing software-defined directed energy systems.