Tackling illegal fishing. Marine collision avoidance. Preventing human and drug trafficking. Reducing the carbon footprint of remote ocean research.
These are just a few of the ways Ocean Power Technologies Inc (NYSE-A:OPTT) suite of maritime solutions for ocean intelligence can be leveraged across various industries, including defense, oil and gas, offshore wind, and scientific research.
CEO and president Philipp Stratmann told Proactive the company’s primary focus was innovation around data, power, and engineering from the shore to beyond the horizon.
READ: Ocean Power Technologies wins maritime surveillance sub-contract for Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate
After starting his career as a naval architect before transitioning to work in the renewables field around alternative fuels, Stratmann joined OPT in 2019 as vice president of global business development. After being appointed CEO last summer, his focus has been on transitioning OPT from a product platform into an ocean data and ocean power service provider.
Founded in New Jersey in 1984, OPT initially focused on the research and development of technology to harness wave power to supply mainland electrical grids.
The company has since executed a strategic pivot from relying on product sales for revenue generation to instead focusing on its data-as-a-service and power-as-a-service offerings: removing the requirement for customers to purchase OPT’s technology by enabling subscriptions and, in turn, recurring revenue opportunities.
“This has a lower barrier to entry for our customers to go and utilize our products and platforms to solve their needs,” Stratmann said. “We can install a system and maintain it and our customers can operate it for however many months they need.”
A deep dive into Ocean Power Technologies solutions
OPT’s flagship technology is its PowerBuoy which the company commercialized in 2015 to provide autonomous, zero-carbon power and data solutions for industries requiring consistent power, round-the-clock data capabilities, and real-time communications.
Today, the company’s PB3 PowerBuoy has been complemented by OPT’s introduction of a hybrid PowerBuoy and Subsea Battery.
Further, through its recently acquired, wholly-owned company Marine Advanced Robotics, a San Francisco-based developer and producer of autonomous surface vehicles, OPT offers multiple models of autonomous service vehicles called Wave Adaptive Modular Vessels (WAM-Vs) which use unique suspension technology to radically improve seagoing capabilities.
As Stratmann explained, OPT’s power-as-a-service effort enables the company to bring in and manage power platforms for topside or subsea power applications in smaller, non-grid-connected fields. “On top of that sits our ocean data-as-a-service that uses our proprietary software and hardware platform to drive data collection efforts for customers, particularly around maritime domain awareness,” he said.
Since its acquisition of Marine Advanced Robotics in late 2021, OPT has also been focused on integrating autonomous vehicles into its solution offering. “This provides a roaming capability which we did not have in our portfolio of maritime domain awareness solutions,” Stratmann said.
“We utilize self-powering, zero carbon emission power platforms together with our roaming platforms to deploy the solutions that our customers are looking for.”
Additionally, in early 2021 the company acquired 3Dent Technology, a Houston, Texas-based offshore energy engineering and design services company. This has formed the core of OPT’s Strategic Consulting Services which provide offshore engineering services for a range of industries including oil and gas, and offshore wind.
Ocean intelligence demand to surge
Demand for autonomous ocean intelligence solutions is increasing materially, Stratmann told Proactive. On the commercial side, with ever-increasing margin pressures, he highlighted the fact that companies want to do more with less.
“The ability to utilize autonomous ocean intelligence without utilizing carbon fuels is one that we see materially increasing as is certainly evidenced by some of the study work we’ve recently done supporting some of the larger energy companies in the US on how future systems can help in the energy transition and maintain energy independence,” he said.
One such example of this was OPT’s partnership with UK firm Premier Oil in the North Sea around collision avoidance which saw the company deploy its buoys to replace what otherwise would have been a guard vessel to monitor assets left on the seabed in a decommissioned oil and gas field.
“This enables the operator to materially lower their carbon footprint while still keeping other ocean users safe as they are transiting through that space,” Stratmann said.
He also highlighted the growing appetite on the government side to integrate autonomous systems, specifically autonomous systems that have no carbon emissions, into their solution portfolio.
OPT was recently awarded a subcontract through Amentum Services to provide the Department of Defense Information Analysis Center with land, air, space, port and coastal surveillance services in support of the US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. Using its PB3 PowerBuoy, OPT will deploy its proprietary Maritime Domain Awareness Solution in support of security efforts to detect illegal fishing, dark vessels, and human and drug trafficking.
“A lot of illegal fishing takes place in remote parts of the ocean and our systems enable autonomous monitoring of these far-removed parts of the ocean and provide real-time actionable intelligence about what is going on in that area,” Stratmann explained.
“Then you can form a picture about how you might need to deal with what you're seeing out there so you can respond much more appropriately to the issue that you're faced with.”
Opportunity to take market share
Growing appetite for ocean intelligence solutions is certainly helping OPT’s top line gain traction, with the company reporting increased demand for its WAM-V-based solutions from both new and recurring customers and continued traction within its Strategic Consulting Services during fiscal 1Q 2023.
The company believes it is entering a growth phase as evidenced by its most recent quarterly results and the $9 million order target for FY2023.
“We feel good about the management transition that we have gone through and the execution of our strategic pivot that has been evidenced by the increase in our bookings and our performance over the past two quarters,” Stratmann said.
“Our expanded revenue drivers are letting us tap into a significant opportunity to take market share in what we see as a multi-billion-dollar total available market for maritime domain awareness and ocean intelligence.”
Contact the author at emily.jarvie@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter @emilyjjarvie