Breakdown
In our increasingly threatened world, you cannot over-emphasize the global need for effective management of threat. Although there is no shortage of companies with claims of commitment to achieving this, perhaps the most reassuring has been Patriot One Technologies Inc., the Canadian company that is setting new standards in weapon detection with its innovative designs and security systems. The company manufactures radar technologies for the security and defense sectors to detect concealed weapons. It is focused on the aerospace and defense industries, and has the primary aim of using custom software solutions to provide new ways of combating the rise of both domestic and global active threats.
Patriot One Technology Inc. was founded in 2010, but became incorporated in the province of British Columbia on March 7, 2016. It is over 7 years in developments, and has rights to develop, license, manufacture, and distribute worldwide. The company developed its first technology with a $2.5 million grant from NATO and NSERC (National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada) in collaboration with a research team led by Dr. Natalia Nikolova at McMaster University, a well-respected Canadian center for research. It prides itself on its mission to be the foremost proponent and provider of innovative threat detection and counter-terrorism technologies and services for public safety. Its motto, Deter, Detect, and Defend, is firmly based on that belief.
Patriot One is the developer of the revolutionary PATSCAN; a first-of-its-kind Cognitive Microwave Radar (CMR) concealed weapons detection system which has generally become a very effective tool for the countering of active shooters and public terror threat before they occur. The product is commercialised as an automated alert system capable of covertly screening moving individuals for on-body concealed weapons such as handguns, knives, grenades, and explosive vests. The “cognitive” ability of the technology to assess threats which enables it to continue to learn even after installation allowing it to make better and smarter detection, is the unique quality about it. PATSCAN, the next generation of the company’s award-winning CMR 1000 software and radar solution, was officially launched in April 2017 and is the first cost-effective solution for Active Shooter prevention available today.
As the pressing need for increased public security in schools, casinos, hotels, stadiums, and office buildings continues to be emphasized, the industry is expected to get more and more competitive. Royal Physics, for instance, is a UK company that claims to eliminate security checkpoints and transform video cameras into intelligent security systems fusing radar technology and artificial intelligence to detect concealed weapons at a distance unobtrusively. Other notable competitors in the industry are Qinetiq Security, which uses a millimeter wave-length system, and Evolv, which specialises in fixed security screening. Some other top competitors of Patriot Technologies Inc., are Metrasens, Security Matters, and Indegy.
Headquartered in Lisle, Illinois, Metrasens was founded in 2005. Despite being a strong rival, it however generates $78.5 million lesser in revenue than Patriot One. Security Matters, another top competitor of Patriot One, was founded in 2009, and is headquartered in Nashua, New Hampshire. It operates in the same sector as Patriot One but has a smaller work force. Indegy, founded in New York in 2014, generates $88.9 million less in revenue compared to Patriot One. However, despite the keenness of the industry, Patriot One has some competitive edges the foremost of which is the uniqueness of its technology. The technology doesn’t require a human operator and subject compliance, and it has a minimal space profile. Also, it can be covertly deployed. Hence, it simply doesn’t have an exact substitute as it is more advanced than its peers.
Much of the tremendous progress made in leaps and bounds in the past 3 years by Patriot One can be attributed to its exceptional management team. Scott M. Shepherd, an alumnus of the University of Toronto and Dalhousie University, who has worked with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Export Development Corporation, Imperial Chemical Industries PLC and Trafalger House PLC as well as a stint as Chief Financial Officer with the Nexus Group of Companies in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, is the Chairman of the Board of Directors. He is also the president and founding director of Northstar Trade Finance Inc., and he has been active with the promotion of small and medium sized exporters in the world.
Management
Martin Cronin is the CEO, President and Director. An expert in the areas of counter-terrorism, conflict resolution, and government/corporate interface, he has extensive experience in high intensity conflict environments and he recently served as CEO of a private company specializing in communication and survivability technologies. Before moving to the private sector, Martin was British Consul-General to Western Canada, based in Vancouver. He has over twenty years of experience in the field of international diplomacy with the British Government including postings in Yemen, Jordan, Sweden, Pakistan and Iraq. Also, with over 25 years of experience in global manufacturing operations and supply chain management for the high-tech and custom automation industries, Robert Lex has led successful operational excellence restructurings built around a set of core principles starting with a customer-centric outside-in approach, while developing scalable and efficient processes. Robert is the Vice-President of Operations.
Franco Cerantola’s career spans over 31 years of successful experience in engineering/operations and program management in the aerospace, telecommunication and high-tech industries including defense and detection sectors with national and international exposure. After many years of extensive experience in the management of personnel, multi-million-dollar budgets, P & L, manufacturing and technical projects as well as the establishment of strategies to develop new markets, he currently serves as the Vice President of Product Delivery. Dr. Paul Rice, PhD has over 15 years of experience in technical and management roles with startup companies in the security sector, and is the Vice President of Research and Radar Systems. His education includes a PhD in Microwave Engineering from University of Manchester, MEng (Hons) 2i Electrical and Electronic Engineering with French.
Phil Lancaster, a former British police officer, is the Senior Vice President of Business Development and Government Relations. He brought to the company his extensive career in law enforcement and different corporate management roles, his passion for excellence, and an aptitude for business opportunity. Other notable members of the management team of the company include Jeff Tindale who is serving as the Senior Vice President of Capital Markets, Paul Borselli, the Vice President of Marketing and Communications, and Mike Barnsley, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Corporate Secretary. The company also took a very prudent decision when it appointed the former Homeland Security Chief, Tom Ridge, as a strategic advisor.
The management team has been incredibly adept at identifying opportunities and keying into them. This is obvious in the many strategic agreements they have signed. On 13 March 2017, for instance, Patriot One partnered with the prominent Jewish Community Centre to deploy concealed weapon detection systems. Approximately a week after, it entered into its first overseas distributor agreement with Kinetic Six Ltd of Hereford, UK. On March 23, 2017, it announced its agreements with the iconic Las Vegas property, Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino to install concealed weapons detection system. On March 29 2017, Patriot One signed a reseller licensing agreement and purchase order deal with the South African Mutual Safe and Security Group for an initial sale in the amount of $500,000.
Patriot One’s agreement streak was followed by the Canadian Research Partnership Grant it secured from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s (NSERC) Idea to Innovation Phase II Grant on April 23, 2017 to advance and further its Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio. On April 26, 2017, it entered into a relationship with a “strategic industry partner” to significantly broaden its product commercialisation activities. On May 10, 2017, it initiated a reseller agreement with the information technology communications contracting firm JJB Federal LLC and its specialty sales division UnitedEye Inc., based in Washington DC.
On the 25th of the same month, the company signed another reseller agreement with the Systems integration experts, SENGEX of McLean, Virginia with the aim to collaborate in accelerating the delivery of PATSCAN to U.S government agencies. This was followed by the signing of one more reseller agreement with the accredited national systems integration experts, Aotea Security Ltd of New Zealand. On September 6, the company gained the approval to initiate the installations of weapons detection system to law enforcement customers and its deployment at covert urban locations in Canada. Finally, on October 2, in a major milestone achievement within a year, Patriot One received Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Declaration of Conformity certification for its award-winning PATSCAN CMR concealed weapons detection system.
As part of its further expansion plans and dedication to quality and efficiency drive, Patriot One had since entered into calculated partnerships with Cisco and Singleware Software. The PATSCAN suite of three threat detection products can now be integrated with Singleware Software’s InformaCast emergency notification software to send mass communications throughout an organisation when potential threats are identified. In March 2017, the company also declared it had entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of North Dalkota for a real world pilot study aimed at evaluating the efficacy of its products in a typical public environment.
Revenue & Share Structure
Patriot One Technologies Inc. has been active in the capital markets, too. On October 4, 2017, it made the announcement that the TSX Venture Exchange (“TSX”) had accepted to list 3,322,375 common share purchase warrants of the company, with each share warrant entitling each holder thereof to acquire a common share of the company at a unit price of $1.25 until July 13, 2020. In late February 2018, with the help of both Canaccord Genuity and GMP Securities, it closed a bought-deal equity financing of $25.3 million which was meant to be used to accelerate the company’s expansion plans and technology development, and for capital market purposes. In November same year, the company declared that a total of 18,400,000 Units (each Unit comprised one common share of the company and one common share purchase warrant) of the company had been purchased for aggregate gross proceeds of $46 million. Patriot One currently has almost 140 million shares outstanding and a market capitalisation of approximately $300 million.
The company has been caught in activities since the beginning of 2019 too. On January 1, it completed the acquisition of EhEye Inc. of New Brunswick, Canada. EhEye Inc. then became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Patriot One and its video recognition software was rebranded as PATSCAN VRS. Patriot One also made a presentation at the Canaccord Genuity’s 2019 Growth Investor Day on January 22. Then on January 24, it proclaimed it had been named to the 2019 OTCQX Best 50, a ranking of the 50 top performing U.S and international companies traded on the OTCQX Best Market in 2018. By the end of January, it had entered into a binding operating agreement with the U.S based Nano-Bio Detection Systems LLC to commercialize a technology for the stand-off detection of explosives and other threats such as chemical and biological agents as well as illicit narcotics, which has been branded as PATSCAN MCS (multi-chemical sensor). Also, it ranked as the 2nd best performing technology stock on the 2019 TSX-Venture 50 for its 2018 performance.
In conclusion, Patriot One Technologies Inc.’s stock is undervalued. It is a shimmering gem. For instance, by May 2017, just after five months into the year, the company had reached its yearly sales target by selling out to a small number of handpicked early adopters and customers. This shows one thing: the marketing is ramped up, and the demand for its products is unimaginably high. The company’s revenue projected for 2020 is more than $100 million. Besides, the company is always on the lookout for new partnerships and agreements in the areas of resale, distribution, production, and installation to expand its capacities and customer base. Also, the company opens itself to opportunities to expand beyond its current base, North America. With the unique and disruptive nature of its products, its efforts to consistently increase its production capacity and a proven knack of easily attracting targeted customers, the future for Patriot One is growth. Therefore, anyone who is in the least bit interested in investing in stocks should take a look at it.
