Breakout year incoming.
There is a misapprehension in the market, especially visible on HC, that Pointerra isn't making sufficient material progress to ensure the timely viability of the company going forward. It's a persistent myth promulgated for whatever reasons, apparently visible in lumpy cash receipts reflecting poor or non-existent uptake by 'the market', or worse, churn by existing customers as they realise the platform apparently isn't fit for purpose.
Yet the quarterly updates show the exact opposite. Significant corporate and technical progress in the form of product refinement to meet, and in response to customer requirements, is not just ongoing but accelerating.
The Mining, Oil and Gas market being a case in point.
After 2+ years of development and refinement, the Mining, Oil and Gas Vertical is now reaching commercial maturity which will result in material cash receipts not yet factored by the market into FY23-24. Or at least, underappreciated.
Here is a 2-year development timeline to consider. Apologies for the length of the post, but it's easy to forget what has gone before, let alone recognize the synchronicity of the work that has been done and what is being put in place. I think it's worth the refresh to understand exactly what has been, and continues to be done, and what it means for revenues going forward:
Oct Q 2021
During the quarter Pointerra’s digital twin solutions developed for tier-1 mining customers in Australia and the US grew the ACV spend by existing customers whilst also helping attract new customers to this important sector.
The Company is working with customers including Rio Tinto, Newcrest, Anglo, Chevron, Yancoal and Oil Search to help these businesses solve a variety of planning, production, governance and ESG problems using the full suite of Pointerra3D solutions.
Jan Q 2022
Repeated the above. Steady as she goes.
April Q 2022
Pointerra3D’s penetration into the natural resources sector continues to grow as mining customers begin to understand the extensibility of the platform and its application in helping manage whole-of-mine operations.
Throughout the quarter the Company worked with existing customers to extend the Pointerra3D Analytics stack into underground applications to support mine planning, operational and safety use cases. This development is helping customers create a comprehensive digital twin combining surface and sub-surface assets, all hosted in Pointerra3D and available for use across the operation and enterprise.
The Company has also been progressing partnerships with remote sensing hardware vendors focused on the mining sector to deliver better outcomes for mutual customers. A key challenge for mine operators and sensor manufacturers is the need to rapidly turn data into actionable information, with time delays undermining the adoption of remote sensing techniques across the mining sector globally.
Pointerra3D is solving these problems by allowing sensor vendors to publish raw outputs directly to Pointerra3D to run Analytics and Answers, delivering timely insight to customers and further accelerating adoption. New partnerships with these sensor vendors include options to bundle Pointerra3D subscriptions with hardware purchases effectively opening new light-touch sales channels across the globe.
In January the Company invested further in the sales team for this sector, with a new role created to focus on building Oil & Gas customers, with an initial strategy of using Pointerra3D Core to support the global offshore inspection, repair and maintenance industry.
Typical Oil & Gas sector challenges are magnified by infrequent and costly offshore site visits, necessitating on-demand access to digital twins to support essential operational requirements. Pointerra3D is helping shrink workflows across a range of maintenance activities, reducing the need for field inspections and speeding up task work order generation through existing Pointerra3D platform functionality. The Company expects this targeted, high-value sector to become a material contributor to ACV growth in coming quarters.
July Q 2022
Recognition of the value Pointerra3D brings to the Oil & Gas industry is also growing, with the ability for Pointerra3D to provide detailed insight across an enterprise via the digital twin representing a compelling value proposition for these large organisations, who make massive investment in generating 3D data but experience immense challenges extracting full value from that investment.
During the quarter Pointerra worked with a major constructor of Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facilities to develop a POC solution for the digital transformation of their construction progress reporting and as-constructed workflow processes. Using 3D laser scanning, collected regularly throughout the build and at the end of construction, Pointerra3D Analytics is used to generate a digital twin that compares design models to what was actually built and tracks deviations from design as well as monitoring construction program progress.
A major challenge for FPSO constructors is accurate and timely progress reporting to support program milestone claims. Progress is often under-reported, which can significantly impact project cash flow. With construction contracts that are in the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, the ROI through more efficient workflows for program reporting using Pointerra3D is material.
During the quarter the Company also entered a collaboration agreement with one of the world’s largest Oil and Gas sector aerial inspection companies. Following a major strategic investment in LiDAR technology to enhance their offering they will be working with Pointerra to take a joint offering to market that will use LiDAR and imagery data to provide routine geotechnical hazard and risk monitoring for major Oil and Gas companies across North America and Canada.
The parallel focus on Pointerra3D solutions for upstream and downstream production assets in the Oil and Gas sector is also analogous with the transition experienced in the Utility sector, where Pointerra3D becomes the single platform where enterprises can seamlessly manage the digital twin of all above and below ground assets.
Typical Oil & Gas sector challenges are magnified by infrequent and costly offshore site visits, necessitating on-demand access to digital twins to support essential operational requirements. Pointerra3D is helping shrink workflows across a range of maintenance activities, reducing the need for field inspections and speeding up task work order generation through existing Pointerra3D platform functionality.
The Company expects this targeted, high-value sector to become a material contributor to ACV growth in coming quarters.
October 2022
The Company continues to grow market share in the resources sector, with steady growth attributed to Pointerra’s “land and expand” approach whereby individual sites/assets commit to the platform to solve operational efficiency challenges and through proven success, the footprint expands to other sites and eventually to enterprise deployment. This growth trajectory is expected to accelerate as the significant safety, efficiency, and cost advantages
Pointerra3D brings to the sector are recognised.
As the Pointerra3D Analytics stack for mining and extractive industries grows by solving significant operational challenges in both open cut and underground operations, so does the business case for global mining companies with diverse operating assets to invest in a single enterprise solution.
Pointerra3D’s ability to simplify the technology stack for complex extractive industry operations is expected to be a significant driver of growth.
A successful paid PoC completed during the quarter for a global Tier 1 mining company has progressed to the next phase.
After successfully proving Pointerra3D Analytics capability to extract single features reliably and repeatedly from SLAM (Simultaneous Location And Mapping) LiDAR data the scope has been expanded to include additional features as well as change monitoring/detection indicators in the underground environment and will help build out a comprehensive sector solution that can be marketed to mining and extractive industries operations globally.
Recognition of the value Pointerra3D brings to the Oil & Gas industry is also growing, with the ability for Pointerra3D to provide detailed insight across an enterprise via the digital twin representing a compelling value proposition for these large organisations, who make massive investment in generating 3D data but experience immense challenges extracting full value from that investment.
Pointerra is partnering with leading North American aerial mapping operation Barr Geospatial to develop a solution focused on the inspection and monitoring of midstream and upstream activities.
The collaboration was first mentioned in the June 2022 quarterly and Barr Geospatial has become one of the largest operators of high-end Riegl aerial LiDAR sensors and is an ideal partner for growing Pointerr3D’s Analytics and Answers solutions in this large sector.
Under the partnership Pointerra3D will be used to exploit multi-epoch LiDAR data libraries to identify change and risk metrics along linear Oil & Gas infrastructure. Underpinned by a subscription revenue model that delivers insight through Pointerra3D Answers, the solution is a key pillar for growth in the Oil & Gas sector.
Pointerra3D also becomes a key component in providing holistic solutions to global Tier 1 companies that operate across an integrated Oil and Gas supply chain.
Jan 2023
Pointerra3D’s resource sector solution leverages mature Analytics developed for other sectors (primarily Utilities and Transport) to solve specific challenges in the mining and oil & gas sectors, including fast and scalable feature extraction and compliance to design analytics to aid in the management of critical operational controls, whilst also improving ESG compliance. High degrees of automation providing answers rapidly to support decision making are foundational elements of Pointerra3D Mining Analytics.
During the quarter Pointerra continued to expand its services to the mining and resources sector across a number of Tier-1 mining companies, with a particular focus on developing data Analytics for 3D point cloud data acquired via SLAM LiDAR in GPS denied, underground environments.
Throughout calendar 2023, the Pointerra team will continue to work with these customers to further optimise the generation of digital twins from sector-specific analytics. The Company expects this work to deliver material subscription growth through the expansion of services to other sites and mining operations around the globe.
Apr 2023
Integration and partnership with Emesent’s Hovermap is driving growth for both companies in the sector, with Pointerra3D’s automated data processing and feature extraction analytics allowing miners to operationalise and grow the use of Hovermap hardware.
Innovative mining customers continue to drive development of Pointerra3D Analytics stack to support mining operations. Oil & Gas customers and prospects accelerate use of Pointerra3D Digital Twins to support remote operations for offshore production assets that have restricted physical access.
Jul 2023
Pointerra3D continues to grow its footprint in the resources sector as Digital Transformation programs build momentum and organisations are seeking end-to-end solutions that are open, scalable and easy to use.
Pointerra3D has now been adopted by a number of global Tier-1 resources companies and is being relied on to operationalise the use of 3D capture hardware solutions that were previously challenged by time delays in data processing and analysis. Pointerra3D has solved these problems and is now building Digital Twins for resources companies across the world.
The Company continues to execute against its Oil & Gas strategy focusing on production facilities throughout the quarter with numerous deals in APAC and North America progressing through the sales pipeline.
ANNUAL REPORT 2023
In the emerging key target market sectors of Mining, Oil & Gas, and Transport, the business development and product teams successfully leveraged the Company’s proven electric utility sector model of working with customers and prospects to systematically automate slow, inefficient desktop workflows to Pointerra3D, delivering operational productivity, safety, and regulatory compliance to the sector. Pointerra now counts a number of Tier 1 global resources companies and Australian transport utilities as customers that are expected to scale their use to become material enterprise customers in coming periods.
The global Mining, Oil & Gas sector is set to become the next high-growth market for the Company as the adoption of Digital Twin solutions becomes operationalised to drive construction, production, safety, and compliance outcomes.
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