Australian computer vision technology company Seeing Machines Ltd said sales growth of its driver attention and fatigue monitoring system Driver State Sensor (DSS) has been slower than anticipated, but added it is seeing substantial market interest in its face-tracking product faceAPI, and it is looking forward with confidence.
In a trading updated ahead of its report for the six months to October 31 2008, the company said the DSS product is in different stages of the evaluation/purchasing cycle with a number of customers.
Although it is experiencing strong interest from large transport operators, the current global economic climate has increased the level of uncertainty regarding capital investment by potential customers, and this in turn may see the company achieve slower sales growth than was expected.
Seeing Machines is in ongoing business development discussions with a number of interested parties regarding faceAPI. The introduction in November 2008 of a new feature- reduced, evaluation version of the product has substantially increased product awareness and enabled widespread evaluation of the product through pilot implementation within the target markets, it said, adding it is already seeing the benefits of this approach in improved trading and anticipates this will continue.
Trading in faceLAB has been in line with management expectations though lower than the record sales level set last year. “The company put in a tremendous effort in 2008 to develop relationships with existing and potential customers and along with major new product improvements anticipated in the first half of 2009 the Company expects to see positive faceLAB sales in the second half of 2009.”
Overall, although trading in the first half of the year was subdued with turnover growth being below management expectations the directors believe that the company is well positioned given the strength of its products and business development pipeline and its strong balance sheet.
Chief executive Nick Cerneaz said “Our product offering remains strong and with both existing contracts in place and a healthy pipeline ahead, this allows us to look forward with confidence.”