After languishing at around 4 cents a share for the first half of last year, the Pointerra Ltd (ASX: 3DP) share price took off last July after the ASX technology company announced a significant investment from well-known Australian tech entrepreneur, Bevan Slattery.
Slattery is a kingmaker in Australian tech circles, having founded Nextdc Ltd (ASX: NXT), Megaport Ltd (ASX: MP1), and Superloop Ltd (ASX: SLC).
Slattery's placement was for 50 million shares at 5 cents each, raising $2.5 million for the company. Since then, the Pointerra share price has exploded, skyrocketing 900% to 50 cents. It briefly touched on a 52-week high of 67 cents.
What does Pointerra do?
Pointerra's technology helps clients manage, visualise, and analyse extremely large and complex 3-dimensional geospatial datasets.
This sounds like complicated jargon but is actually pretty simple. Mining, infrastructure, and many other companies need to analyse sites in significant detail before commencing construction or excavation operations. Previously, analysing extremely large 3D datasets would require a significant amount of computing power.
However, Pointerra's data-as-a-service (Daas) business model allows companies to outsource these complex data operations. Clients can transfer (either online or via a physical hard drive) their geospatial data to Pointerra, and Pointerra will host their data for them. The data is then stored on the cloud and is accessible via a web browser from just about any device, anywhere in the world.
The amount of money Pointerra charges its clients depends on the amount of data hosted for each client. It also depends on the service performed. As well as simply hosting the data on the cloud, Pointerra can process data and perform analytics. It also operates a 3D data marketplace, connecting buyers and sellers of 3D data and charges commissions on these transactions.
Why did Slattery invest?
In the company announcement released to the market back in July 2020, Slattery stated that he viewed Pointerra as having the "potential to be a world leader in (3D geospatial analysis) and ultimately to help feed the geospatial systems behind industries including telecommunications, renewable energy, and autonomous vehicles."
Slattery's comments not only show the faith he has in Pointerra as a company, but also the wide breadth of applications for geospatial analysis technology, particularly in developing industries like autonomous vehicles.
More recent news out of the company
In its most recent market update, released towards the end of November 2020, Pointerra reported that its annual contract value had increased to US$5.82 million, an uplift of 18% since the company's previous business update on 15 October 2020. The growth had come courtesy of new and existing companies across a broad range of sectors in both Australia and the US.
At the time of writing, the Pointerra share price is sitting at 50 cents a share, giving the company a market capitalisation of $338.72 million.
