Shares in ASX microcap Nanoveu Ltd (ASX: NVU) have jumped more than 30% after the company said it would acquire a Singapore-based drone company.
Nanoveu said in a statement to the ASX that it would acquire Spinoff Robotics, a company which, "develops and operates proprietary drone platforms, bringing aerial robotics, mechanical design, fluid dynamics and engineering capabilities in-house''.
The consideration for the purchase is three million Nanoveu shares plus four million performance rights subject to milestones being achieved.
Spinoff Robotics founder Dr Chee How Tan would also be issued two million performance rights, also subject to milestones being achieved.
Image source: Getty Images
Purchase leads to total drone solution
Nanoveu said the acquisition meant that it would now be able to offer a full stack drone solution across software, hardware and airframes.
Nanoveu's technology includes tethered drone solutions, and drones which can operate without GPS, which are highly resistance to jamming.
The company said further re the acquisition:
Spinoff develops clean-sheet aerial platforms engineered from first principles, with full in-house control over airframe, aerodynamics, flight control and on-board sensing, to meet mission-specific requirements. The acquisition will add two technologies validated by tier 1 customers, along with in house-developed proprietary drone products (the ALICE tethered drone and the METRON sub millimetre photogrammetry system). Furthermore, the acquisition will bring underlying engineering capability to design and build next generation purpose-built drones for identified target verticals.
Nanoveu said it would now, "hold every foundational layer required to design and field its own proprietary drone platforms from the ground up across mission profiles ranging from persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance overwatch to battlefield-grade tactical platforms''.
The company added:
The acquisition arrives at a moment when defence procurement globally is accelerating, allied governments are mandating sovereign and trusted-supply-chain drone capability, and recent geopolitical events have exposed the operational vulnerability of GPS-dependent and RF-reliant aerial platforms.
As well as defence applications, Nanoveu said there was a large market for drone security systems to be used by airports and data centres.
Nanoveu Executive Chairman Dr David Pevcic said regarding the deal:
The proposed acquisition of Spinoff Robotics is a defining step in the build-out of Nanoveu's autonomous drone platform, providing the in house deployment surface to scale ECS-DoT silicon and validate next-generation edge-AI functions — including multi-chip configurations, GPS-free navigation and mission-specific perception workloads — in one of the highest-volume edge-AI markets. With proprietary airframes and sensing sitting alongside the Company's silicon, edge-AI IP and autonomy algorithms, Nanoveu is placed to own every layer of the stack required to ship validated reference designs into defence, critical-infrastructure security and industrial inspection.
Shares surge
Nanoveu shares traded as high as 8.4 cents, up 33.3% before settling back to be 12.7% higher at 7.1 cents.
Nanoveu is valued at $68 million.
