Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Boresight (ASX:BST), Managing Director Justin Olde
Lel Smits: Boresight listed on the ASX in June following an $8 million IPO. Over the last year, revenue grew 55% on the back of growing Australian defence force engagement and international demand. The company has since secured a new Huntsville, Alabama manufacturing facility around 15 times larger than its current US premises, while also expanding its product range and customer base.
I’m joined today by Managing Director, Justin Old to discuss scaling since listing, building US capacity and expanding the product range.
Justin, welcome to the Stock Network. Thanks, Lel.
Justin Olde: Great to be here.
Lel Smits: Pleasure to have you on. And look, Boresight has reported revenue growth in the last year.
Can you outline for us the key priorities now that the company is listed and also now that you’re entering that next stage of growth?
Justin Olde: Yes, certainly. The key priorities for us at the moment are to grow our product portfolio, grow our manufacturing capability and boost our sales and marketing pipeline and get out there to a broader range of customers.
Lel Smits: Fantastic.
And when it comes to building your US capacity, the new Huntsville facility is around 15 times larger than Boresight’s current US premises. Can you outline really what’s driving this expansion and also how you feel the facility will change your US operations?
Justin Olde: Yeah, so 50% of our sales at the moment in the Target throne space are coming from the US. So it’s just logical that we start building them there.
Made in the USA is a very strong position to have, and we’re going to establish a Made in the USA capability. And so we’re essentially duplicating the manufacturing capability of our Canberra facility in the US and giving ourselves some wiggle room to expand beyond that.
Lel Smits: Excellent. And finally, how is Boresight expanding your product offering to meet really the very changing requirements of Defence customers?
Justin Olde: As the Defence customer gets better at dealing with the drone threat, we’re building a better threat. So we’re building faster drones, bigger drones, smaller drones, things that are more agile. And we’re making sure that we keep pace with drone warfare to make sure that we have threats that emulate, sorry, we have drones and systems that emulate the real world threats out there.
Because militaries need very realistic training. Drones are an interesting space. They’re actually very hard to kill.
And you can’t really, you can’t really prove that you can kill a drone, destroy a drone, unless you actually do destroy a drone. Using things like clay pigeons or paper targets, those kinds of things, get you along the way. But destroying real drones is real hard.
And you have to practice against a real threat, if you’re going to be confident that when the day comes, you can actually destroy drones effectively.
Lel Smits: Justin, thank you for the update from Boresight.
Justin Olde: No worries.
Ends