The chief executive of an Australian company that saw its share price skyrocket by 68 per cent on its first day of trading has disclosed the key driver behind the rapidly growing business.
Boresight, a manufacturer of drones designed for shooting practice, made its debut on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on Wednesday. The company's shares climbed from an initial 20 cents each to as high as 38 cents during the session, before closing at 32 cents per share—a significant boost for the emerging firm.
CEO Justin Olde, a former major in the Australian Army, revealed that the business was born after shooters identified a critical issue with their anti-drone practice exercises.
"Boresight was conceived about five years ago," he told Business Now. "Another Australian company was particularly good at shooting down drones and it became economically tedious for them to go down to JB Hi-Fi and buy several thousand dollars worth of drones only to shoot them down in a few hours and then back down to JB Hi-Fi."
"Boresight was conceived out of that to make a cost-effective drone for that counter drone warfare target practice training testing and development environment."
The company has sold approximately 6,000 of its drones since launching operations, with each unit priced at around $1,000. Mr Olde emphasised that this cost is lower than the price of the ammunition fired at the drones during training.
"$1,000 is a relative thing," he said. "You need a drone that flies very consistently (and) is easy to fly. The military don't want to spend a lot of time trying to train someone to fly a drone they're going to shoot down."
The CEO highlighted that the true innovation lies in the backend system, which can control up to 20 drones simultaneously. "The really smart part of our system is actually the back end that flies up to 20 drones at this point in time—and that number is growing—very simply and safely with one operator with limited training."
Mr Olde also noted that demand for counter-drone training has surged in recent years due to the increasing use of drone technology in modern warfare, further fuelling Boresight's growth.
"We've seen a lot of it in the Ukraine-Russian war and now in the Middle East," he said. "Australia, for instance, now has a … program happening and so they're slowly ramping up their consumption of drones as they get better at shooting them down."
Boresight's impressive ASX debut follows the success of another Australian start-up, DroneShield, which specialises in anti-drone defence technology. DroneShield listed on the ASX at 20 cents per share in 2016 and has since risen to $2.77 as of Wednesday's close.
