Striding down a London street towards his next meeting with institutional investors, Simon Tucker regales a time when, as a newly-quoted AIM company, the strategy behind Software Radio Technology (LON:SRT) was literally laughed out of the board room. “For the first three years a lot of people thought it was a waste of time, a complete joke,” he says. The problem was that the Bath-based radio communications company was embarking on developing a low-cost product for a market need that no-one was really sure even existed. Nevertheless, after five years spent working on product and sales development Tucker’s team have just delivered a maiden post-tax profit and City analysts and investors are starting to pay attention. However, there is no let up in SRT’s ruthless focus on R&D and Tucker is keen to capitalise on what is emerging as a huge opportunity as well as look for potentially lucrative additional projects further afield.
SRT’s advanced radio communications technologies are designed for use in the homeland security and safety markets. Its major focus is in the maritime sector where governments around the world are increasingly moving towards the issue of country-wide mandates for standardised communications networks. These mandates oblige vessel owners to install communications equipment based on what is known as AIS, or Automatic Identification System which, among other things, tracks the vessel’s position in real time. It is SRT’s technology that frequently powers that equipment, earning it a market share of around 90 percent. The company distributes its products in three ways, either by licensing the IP, selling the modules or “engines” of the technology for customers to fit into their own plastic boxes or simply supplying white-label finished products for customers to badge as their own. 
Worldwide there are believed to be mandates in effect that require approximately one million vessels to be fitted with an AIS device within the next four years and more mandates expected in the future. Last year the company added the Class A AIS device to its range in order to capture market share in areas where regulatory requirements demand even tighter standards than those covered by its existing Class B product. This year the entire range has been refreshed and SRT is now looking at ways to use the technology in new…
Very impressed as with other Simon Tucker webcasts etc. Invested early last year for the long term
seriously looking at significant increase shortly.
