Strat Aero plc LON:AERO, an international aerospace company focused on the rapidly emerging Unmanned Aerial Vehicle sector, has told DirectorsTalk that it has successfully raised £370,000 (before expenses) by way of a placing (“the Placing“) of 74,000,000 new ordinary shares of 0.1p each at a price of 0.5p per ordinary share.
This capital will be used as working capital, to fund ongoing litigationand to expedite the continued development of the Company’s integrated UAV offering, which covers all aspects of the value chain including the provision of hardware, software, and data analysis services.
The Company has experienced an encouraging trading period during which unaudited consolidated revenues for the Group for the six months to the end of June 2016 were approximately USD410,000 and with recurring revenues from Geocurve continuing to grow, the Company expects to show continued progress is the seasonally more active second half of the year. Further revenue growth can also be expected from its commercial training activities, following the award ofNational Qualified Entity (“NQE”) status by the Civil Aviation Authority (“CAA”) alongside the agreement with Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (“LKW”) to roll-out its UAV services to the Malaysian market, further revenue growth.
The Company continues to make positive progress with its surveying and wind turbine inspection offering and continues to focus on its costs base to reduce overheads and optimise performance. In the industry overall, the contractual take up of UAV Services remains behind analyst expectations however there are positive signs that the adoption of UAV technology is becoming more acceptable to mainstream business. The Company’s unaudited cash position at the end of June was approximately USD 286,000.
Graham Peck, Chairman of Strat Aero, said, “We continue to make positive strides in the development of our UAV service offering and this funding, which follows the roll-out of our UAV training services into the Asian market as well as our newly granted National Qualified Entity status by the CAA, will help to strengthen our position as we continue to capitalise on new growth opportunities. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our long-standing shareholders who continue to demonstrate their support and we remain confident we will be able to continue to develop Strat Aero into the first choice of UAV enabled technology services to the commercial, educational and military sectors.”
