The DroneShield Ltd (ASX: DRO) share price is pushing higher during afternoon trade following a business update from the company.
At the time of writing, the defence contractors' shares are up 5.71% to 18.5 cents. In comparison, the All Ordinaries (ASX: XAO) is down 0.21% to 7,757.8 points.
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What did DroneShield announce?
Investors are buying up DroneShield shares after the company reported a record performance for 2021.
In its statement to the ASX, DroneShield advised it achieved $10.5 million in revenue last year. This represents a 94% increase when compared against the prior comparable period (FY20 $5.4 million).
In addition, customer and grant cash receipts totalled $14.8 million in 2021, a 174% growth on 2020 levels.
Notably, the company broke new records, despite COVID-19 continuing to impact business operations. The diversity in receipts primarily came from Australia, the United States, and Middle Eastern customers.
This consisted of payments across multiple product lines such as DroneShield's $3.8 million contract with the Australian Department of Defence.
In addition, DroneShield is actively engaging in a potential US$55 million contract with a Middle Eastern customer. Although details are sketchy at this point in time on who the deal is for and what it involves.
The company noted that it has over $200 million in its sales pipeline across the globe. This is a small fraction of the total $6 billion addressable market for counter-drone, electronic warfare and signals intelligence products.
DroneShield declared a healthy cash balance of $9.5 million, with no debt.
Management commentary
Speaking on the outstanding achievement, DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornik said:
2022 is shaping as another record year, with over $200m in sales pipeline diversified across geographies and products, underpinned by our talented staff who are global leaders in their respective technology segments.
We have also taken advantage of our supply chain relationships to secure access to material amounts of complex circuit board and other inventory, which serves as a further differentiator to our customers, reducing final product delivery lead times, in the current environment of supply chain disruptions for much of the industry.
Importantly, Software as a Service (SaaS) and, generally, software-related revenues are expected to continue increasing as total percentage of customer cash receipts.
About the DroneShield share price
Over the last 12 months, the DroneShield share price has pushed marginally higher by around 3%.
The company's shares reached a 52-week high of 22.55 cents in September last year, before treading lower.
At today's price, DroneShield presides a market capitalisation of around $77.37 million, with approximately 418.23 million shares on issue.
