Seeing Machines (LON:SEE) achieved record turnover in the first half as its driver monitoring equipment business DSS showed excellent revenue growth.
However, the company, which does its books in Australian dollars, said that there is uncertainty about the full year outlook due to timing issues along with the continuing strong performance of the Australian dollar.
Investors welcomed the report, sending shares in Seeing Machines up 3.5 percent to 3.75 pence.
On the financial side, the company achieved a 73 percent increase in revenues to a record A$4.02 million as revenues at DSS soared 650 percent to A$2.6 million. Net losses for the period reached A$0.75 million compared to US$0.4 million in H1 2009.
Profitability was negatively impacted by the strong Australian dollar which accounted for over 50 percent of the loss and significant expenditure on research & development (R&D) as well as additional sales and support staff to grow the DSS business.
Since the period end, the company has announced new mining contracts for global gold and copper resources and that new channel partners for DSS in South America are already undertaking projects with global mining majors.
Seeing Machines was upbeat about its prospects, noting that its faceAPI product is now poised to contribute more strongly to revenue from 2012 on. Earlier this week, Seeing Machines signed a production licence for faceAPI with Shenzhen Super Perfect Optics.
“The company has a very healthy and growing pipeline of opportunities which are being progressed. Our strong focus is to continue to grow and develop this pipeline and to convert opportunities to revenue,” said chief executive of Seeing Machines Nick Cerneaz.
Cash reserves climbed from A$0.55 million at the end of 2009 to A$2.5 million.
Daniel Stewart & Co reiterated its ’buy’ stance on Seeing Machines, and its target price of 6.8 pence a share represents approximately 88 percent upside to the current price level. It is expecting increased marketing activity to deliver further DSS orders in the second half.
Seeing Machines focuses on vision based human machine interfaces. Its technology platform allows machines to see and track human faces and certain facial features.