DroneShield Ltd (ASX: DRO) employees are in the money after the company announced that more than 44 million performance options had vested after it hit a key revenue target.
Other DroneShield shareholders might not be quite so keen on the news, with the shares falling more than 6% to $3.91 following the announcement.
That said, DroneShield shares are still up significantly from their 12-month lows of just 58.5 cents, albeit also a long way down from the highs of $6.70 the shares have reached over the period.
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Aligning interests with shareholders
DroneShield said in a statement to the ASX late on Tuesday that 44.45 million performance options had vested with various expiry dates, "due to the company reaching the required milestone of $200 million of cash receipts within a 12-month rolling period''.
DroneShield Chief Executive Officer Oleg Vornik said granting options to employees gave them skin in the game.
Performance options align the DroneShield team and its investors, enabling DroneShield to attract the best talent and incentivise performance, whilst reducing the cash burden on the company as it continues to rapidly grow. We are pleased to reach this $200 million cash receipts milestone, and look forward to maximising performance for the remainder of this record year, and building a strong foundation for 2026 and beyond.
DroneShield also published details of the next incentive milestones, with one third of future tranches of performance options to be granted when the company respectively hits revenue or cash receipt milestones of $300 million, $400 million, and $500 million.
It also explained:
If a team member holds any of the recently-vested performance options, the revenue which satisfied the $200 million revenue performance hurdle will not count towards satisfaction of the $300 million, $400 million, or $500 million hurdles of the new options.
The company said it intends for the new options not to exceed 1% of its issued capital, in line with the best practices of employee share schemes.
Contracts continue to flow
Droneshield has had strong positive news flow in recent weeks, most recently announcing it had won a $25.3 million contract with a defence customer in Latin America.
Mr Vornik said at the time the contract demonstrated that DroneShield was continuing to position itself as one of the preferred counter-drone systems providers in Latin America.
He went on to say:
As demand continues to evolve, DroneShield is ready to meet the requirements from a region where drones play a key role in the modern warfare.
DroneShield was valued at $3.63 billion at the close of trade on Tuesday.
