Member Info for schlemiel

'Final Words

'During the company’s 22 years, we have never experienced a period of such intense consolidation as right now. With the present atomized DMS market, we believe the consolidation of market players are inevitable. Smart Eye has taken a decisive and strategic step forward to grasp the future by joining forces with Affectiva. We are now in pole position'

Martin Krantz CEO of SmartEye

I can't see Bernstein buying more. CA's only got around £110k left on its balance sheet and it needs that to pay CA's operating costs.

It is this obliteration of its cash balance that I find intriguing. It may suggest Bernstein sees a monetisation event on the immediate horizon though I could be wrong, which is the normal state of affairs for me

A robust financial outlook

Seeing Machines' financial performance is at an inflection point.

2021 marked the long-anticipated commencement of automotive royalty revenues as over 120,000 new vehicles hit the roads with Seeing Machines’ driver monitoring systems embedded.

These royalty revenues are expected to increase sharply over the next 2-3 years as production of the vehicles carrying Seeing Machine’s DMS technology ramps up. The royalty revenue carries margin of around 90%. Our research indicates the average revenue earned per license is ~A$10. So, with 100m cars produced each year, you can see how this rapidly expands.

The company is well funded with over A$47m net cash and the current trajectory indicates profitability is in sight.

Overall, the growth potential in this space is enormous. There are around 100 million cars manufactured across the world each year and our industry analysis indicates that by 2028, 90% of cars will have tendered for driver monitoring systems.

Finally, M&A activity in the automotive supplier market has been heating up. Qualcomm and Magna are currently in a bidding war for Swedish automotive technology company, Veoneer. Qualcomm’s offer implies a US$4.6 billion valuation.

Seeing Machines could similarly find itself in the cross hairs of a lucrative takeover as tech giants seek to make inroads into the autonomous driving technology space through established businesses with leading proprietary technology.
Gain exposure to global microcaps

Portfolio Manager of the Spheria Global Microcap Fund, Gino Rossi, recently wrote about the benefits of blending global microcaps with large caps in investment portfolios. You can read the Livewire article here.

You can also discover more on the Spheria Asset Management website.

end

https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/a-global-microcap-with-vision

So, what’s under the bonnet?

Seeing Machines’ Fovio Driver Monitoring Platform employs computer vision algorithms to track movement of a driver’s face and eyes. It’s automatic, unobtrusive, and intelligently aware.

The algorithms can accurately and in real-time, measure a driver’s visual attention to their environment, assess their degree of drowsiness, and ultimately detect if the driver has passed a threshold of risk. The technology precisely analyses head pose, eyelid movements and eye gaze under a full spectrum of lighting conditions, including through sunglasses.

This data is then processed to interpret driver attention, focus, drowsiness, and impairment levels. Risk mitigation is then enacted through intelligent alerting of the driver as well as adjusting a vehicle’s wider control systems.

Conditionally autonomous vehicles and advanced safety functions, such as collision avoidance systems, require a reliable measurement of a driver’s level of “engagement”. But Seeing Machines’ technology is different – it’s designed to allow vehicle systems to hand over control intelligently and safely, or take back control from the driver.

Although the company is continually innovating, Seeing Machines’ technology is underpinned by more than two decades of scientific research into human behaviour in real-time.

Regulatory tailwinds

The global industry standard for vehicle safety – the European New Car Assistance Program (NCAP) has mandated that vehicles must include vision tracking technology – the sort of technology that Seeing Machines is a market leader in – to receive a 5-star NCAP rating.

We think competition in the auto sector will force more and more manufacturers to gain higher safety ratings through implementing the sort of technology platforms offered by Seeing Machines.

Further, driver monitoring system (DMS) applications that combat drunk and distracted driving are being supported by legislators globally.

A white paper on the legislative history of drunk driving, released by the Centre for Alcohol Policy in the United States, outlines support from law enforcement and increased adoption of safety technologies by original equipment manufacturers as key forces to ending drunk driving.

cont........

The global auto industry is currently evolving at a rapid pace and during such periods of structural change, equity markets present genuine disruptors and genuine pretenders.

Differentiating between the two is our job as active managers.

Autonomous vehicles are at the forefront of auto innovation, but we don’t think investors need to risk their capital punting on the could be winners in the race to full autonomy.

Instead, the global microcap space (which includes businesses with market caps of up to US$1 billion) provides opportunities to gain exposure to established tech distributors that are driving innovation in the auto sector.

Enabling machines to 'see'

It sounds like the sort of story you’d hear from a tiny speculative tech company, however Seeing Machines Limited (LON: SEE) is the industry leader in vision-based monitoring technology.

Seeing Machines’ driver monitoring technology is currently used extensively in the auto and aviation industries. Our research indicates clients currently using Seeing Machines Technology include General Motors, Daimler, Caterpillar, Emirates, Qantas, Progress Rail, Coach USA and Transport for London.

Vehicle models in which Seeing Machines’ technology can be found in include Mercedes EQ Series (Electric Vehicle), Mercedes S-Class, Ford F150, Cadillacs, Escalades, and Mustang Mach-E.

In Aviation, Qantas 787 training simulators as well the Royal Australian Airforce’s HAWK simulators use the tech.

cont.......

For consumers, the trade-offs are different and, for the time being, more hypothetical. Right now, companies such as GM and Ford say their eye-tracker data won’t be uploaded to the cloud or stored for more than a few minutes on chips inside the car.

How long will that hold true? As with a smartphone, “You have to trust your manufacturer to not spy on you,” said Martin Krantz, chief executive of Swedish driver monitoring system maker SmartEye.

The lure of marginal revenue could push manufacturers in a different direction as eye-tracking vendors find new ways to monetize drivers’ data.

“That’s the wondrous thing about software,” said Seeing Machines CEO Paul McGlone. Theoretically, after warning a drowsy driver, the system might put the nearest Starbucks on a map and a coupon on the driver’s phone. “The feature list from the [auto manufacturers] is exploding at a ridiculous rate,” he said.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-04-29/driver-monitoring-tech-self-driving

Can SEE or a potential acquirer of SEE extract monetary value from SEE's eye tracking and occupant monitoring data?

https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/insights/industry/automotive/monetizing-data-connected-vehicles.html

The amount of data a vehicle generates is set to explode

One major trend emerging in the global automotive sector is vehicle connectivity. Vehicles are now able to capture and share many types of data, including geolocation, vehicle performance, driver behavior, and biometrics data. Though GPS functionality has supported navigation systems for years, smarter applications of the data are adding significant value in the form of real-time traffic updates and road safety alerts. Uses for vehicle health and operational functionality data are also spreading as vehicle manufacturers continue to develop app-based tools to monitor key maintenance statistics. And while the use of advanced biometric data is still in its infancy, new sensors in the ****pit can allow vehicles to monitor key attributes of their occupants, including stress levels, heart rhythms, alcohol consumption, and fatigue.

cont........

2.30..mmmm

After 2023 is when SEE's earnings growth really kicks in

https://www.brownstoneresearch.com/bleeding-edge/cybersecurity-firm-nozomi-networks-receives-cia-funding/

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And that’s what this Veoneer bid is all about.

Qualcomm knows that its business is shrinking, and it’s desperate to add new lines of business beyond wireless handsets.

But here’s the thing – Qualcomm has never been a good steward of the assets that it acquires. It doesn’t absorb and integrate smaller companies very well.

And if we look at the company’s plans for Veoneer, Qualcomm has already said that it wants to sell off most of Veoneer’s business. It only wants to keep the software assets related to ADAS technology.

The reason is that the ADAS technology is tightly integrated with semiconductors and carries higher margins. Most of the rest of Veoneer’s business is generally lower margin.

Veoneer knows that Qualcomm’s goal will be to break up and sell parts of the company…. That’s probably not going to go over well with Veoneer’s key employees.

So this is an awkward transaction anyway we slice it. And it shows just how desperate Qualcomm is.

If it wants to get a foothold in the automotive industry, which would be a smart move, it’s going to have to do something a lot bigger…. For example, German semiconductor firm Infineon. I’m not suggesting that would be easy, and I bet that European regulators wouldn’t like it. But that’s the kind of exposure to the automotive industry Qualcomm needs.

Within the next 24 months, after the wave of 5G smartphone purchases has passed, Qualcomm’s revenue growth will slow down dramatically. It may even turn negative by 2024. We can expect that it will be on the prowl for more acquisitions.

Regards,

Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge

Now is the perfect time for Hurricane to assuage and calm the market's fear by updating on the bondholder issue and the FPSO extension.

I wonder who it is or indeed if it's 'no one' at all?

''and we look forward to partnering with CAE on this program and potentially others in the future.”

No longer a trial, now upgraded, fully endorsed and operational. If such SEE tech is a must for RAAF then it's a green light to others.

https://www.cae.com/news-events/press-releases/cae-australia-to-upgrade-raaf-hawk-full-mission-simulators-with-eye-tracking-technology

https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/05/drunk-driving-provision-could-fuel-demand-for-driver-detection-technology/?guccounter=1

I can't recall where I read this but Hurricane is known as one of the 'most reliable producers' (in terms of quantity, time and quality) in the North Sea. I'm sure someone on here will have picked up on this reference on their readaround the company

abnormal activity

nm

Fingers crossed a decent % materialises cos I and no doubt other holders need this and indeed HUR to come good for personal reasons....