Antenna and telecommunications specialist Poynting is considering a listing in the US, probably on the technology-heavy Nasdaq, within the next two years, its CEO, Andre Fourie, said on Thursday.
This comes as the Johannesburg-listed company gears up to grow its revenue to R1bn within the “next three to five years”, driven by an aggressive acquisition strategy. That would represent a more than 10-fold increase from its current turnover.
For the year ended 30 June 2013, Poynting notched up revenue of R93,7m, an increase from R81m in 2012. Fourie said this figure will increase substantially once it has completed a planned acquisition of privately held digital terrestrial television specialist Aucom.
Profit for the year was R9,8m, up from R7,2m in 2012.
Fourie says Poynting’s planned rapid growth will come from acquisitions, including ones that expand business divisions in terms of product and distribution and investing in completely new business areas. “Our recent binding heads of agreement to acquire Aucom will considerably enlarge the company and gives us further diversification in terms of products markets.”
In a statement, the company said “joint business endeavours” with Aucom, focused on digital terrestrial television in Africa. “Poynting has developed the first new digital TV antenna in 50 years for domestic use, the DigiAnt, which Poynting will both manufacture and license for manufacturing internationally.”
Poynting specialises in providing communications to the defence and telecoms industries, as well as antenna equipment for end users for use in telecoms and broadcasting applications. Defence clients include Armscor, Denel and Thales, while commercial clients include Cell C, MultiChoice, Neotel, MTN and Econet Wireless.
Fourie said the company’s exports are still relatively low and growth in this area is “possible given the size of the international market for both commercial and defence products”.
In cellular, the company is entering the cellular micro base stations market, which mobile operators need to satisfy the ever-growing demand for data. “Our subterranean base stations and new LTE billboard micro base stations are generating considerable interest,” Fourie said.
Poynting’s share price has climbed by 19% over the past year, but in the past three months it has leapt higher by more than 150%. It has a market value of R163m. – (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media
