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Having secured $22 million in purchase orders over the last two months, ASX listed counterdrone technology company DroneShield (ASX: DRO) has today announced the completion of a $10.9 million placement.
Backed by 10 institutional investors from Australia and overseas, the raise will result in the placement of approximately 36.3 million fully paid shares issued at a price of 30 cents per share - an 18.9 per cent discount to the closing price on 1 February.
It comes as DRO shares have been on a bull run in recent weeks, having nearly doubled from 18 cents in late-December to around 35 cents at the time of writing, with investors clamouring to back the company that develops anti-drone solutions for military, government and law enforcement customers.
DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornik said the capital injection would enable the company to capture the myriad opportunities in front of it by increasing its inventory on hand and scaling up its workforce.
“This capital raise enables DroneShield to take full advantage of opportunities for rapid growth, following our two record $11 million sales announced in December 2022 and January 2023, as the market demand for counterdrone equipment is rapidly heating up around the world,” Vornik said.
“This is underpinned by rising defence and security budgets and an increasing role of drone technology in armed conflicts, terrorism and other nefarious applications.
“DroneShield welcomes the new domestic and international institutional investors to the company.”
In addition to the private placement, which DRO said was issued to investors to whom disclosure was not required, the company is providing eligible shareholders to participate in a share purchase plan (SPP) to raise up to $3 million.
Like the $10.9 million placement, the SPP shares will be issued at 30 cents each, while shareholders will be entitled to apply for up to $30,000 worth of shares. DroneShield’s chairman Peter James and CEO Vornik will be fully participating in the SPP to the maximum amount on offer.
For DroneShield, the raise follows a bumper December and January, during which it announced record sales deals to independent government defence departments worth $11 million each.
It also comes after $19 million worth of contracts were secured in CY23, leading to DRO posting $16.9 million in revenue for 2022 - up 60 per cent on the previous year.
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