Provider of advanced surveillance technologies, Digital Barriers, has released a trading update for the financial year ended 31st March 2013. We spoke to Managing Director, Colin Evans, this morning, and he described the key message as one of “sales momentum”. Indeed, the company has announced a couple of significant sales.
The first, valued at £2m, is via one of its British channel partners – “a small specialist systems integrator” – into one of its government customers. The partner will integrate three of Digital Barriers’ technologies into the capabilities it delivers (TVI video products, Thruvision passive screening products, and OmniPerception facial recognition products) to support security operations in remote and hostile overseas locations. The sale represents the single largest sales of both the body scanning and facial recognition technologies.
The second highlighted sale is strategically significant. Singtel – the Singapore mobile phone operator – is white labelling Digital Barriers’ video streaming technology and will sell it as a ‘video surveillance-as-a-service’ solution to its enterprise customers. It is Digital Barriers’ first annuity revenue deal. The offering will formally launch in April but early signs are that Singtel’s enterprise customers are interested. Evans suggests that he would need to see 6 months trading to predict how uptake will progress.
Overall, Digital Barriers has said that it will broadly meet consensus forecast when it announces results at the end of May. Profits will be a little lower than expected due to depreciation on an increased level of demo stock being put out into the field. In terms of revenue though, the only disappointment appears to be in the US (Asia Pac, Middle East, UK all performing well). The company has been investing hard across the pond but the slow-down has impacted US government sales. As a result, the US business remains a very small proportion of the company’s revenue picture. Evans hopes (as does everyone) that the US will soon "adjust the the new reality" and start releasing some funds for investment.