ikeGPS Group Limited (IKE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

My name is Josh Davis, President of The Will Group and Founder of TWiG Technologies. Really over the last 5 years, I've really seen the development of 5G and the need for more pole loading analyses. We really saw that we would need additional technology and our team was going out and collecting information. And we saw some of the things that IKE was doing and it really seemed like a win, to really pair our team boosting it around with IKE's patented technology. IKE has done a great job in helping building value for our organization. Our voyage to work with IKE has really presented it, so that, we now have the solution for our clientele and that's the big thing as we can build up a great field team, but without the proper technology, then it's hard to get the customers the information they need in the format that they need. So really working with IKE has built not only our knowledge, but also our ability as well to provide information in a timely and formidable matter to our utilities and cities that we're working with. And working with IKE gets going from we collect data to we collect data to allow you to engineer from a desktop. And that value add has really gone a long way because with the cost and time savings that come with that, it really makes us, so that the utilities and the cities we're working with are allowed save time and really have a solution right in our hand. You all have enabled us to offer opportunities for more and more people and for me, that's what gives me a thought about it every day, to see it, our growing organization, more opportunities for folks, is really what keeps me growing. So thank you for that. It means a lot.

Hello, everybody and good afternoon. On behalf of the Board, management and staff of ikeGPS, thank you for attending our 2021 Annual Meeting and our second fully virtual meeting. My name is Rick Christie, and I'm the Chair of the Board of ikeGPS. We welcome you all as online participants through our virtual meeting platform provided by our share registrar, Link Market Services. A special welcome also to the many new shareholders who've joined IKE since our last AGM. Most of you are probably fairly familiar with virtual meetings, but you note that you can vote and ask questions online and I encourage you to do so. I'll provide you with further instructions as we progress through the meeting. If you encounter any issues, please refer to the Virtual Annual Meeting Online Portal guide or you can find the helpline on, 0800-200-220. I'd encourage you to send through your questions as soon as you're able to do so. This will allow us to answer these questions at the appropriate time of the meeting. Now, a few introductions. On the meeting today, we have Alex Knowles, from the U.S.A, and he's a Non-executive Director and Deputy Chair. Then, next we have Fred Lax, an Independent Director, he's also based in U.S.; Mark Ratcliffe is an Independent Director, and he's in New Zealand; Glenn Milnes, Managing Director and CEO; and he's based in U.S.A.; and Eileen Healy, an Independent Director, who's recently joined the Board. Right. Also present today is Stephen Fairbrother, our Chief Financial Officer; and also representative of our fiscal -- or financial year '21 auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers's [Chris Ashall]. Ladies and gentlemen, with the introductions out of the way, let's now move on to the formal part of the meeting. Now, I intend to make a few opening remarks and add a few further comments, then our Managing Director and CEO, Glenn Milnes, will present and outline some of the performance highlights of the year. After that, the resolutions that are before you today will be put forward, accompanied by some information about each of the Directors standing for reelection and election at this meeting. You will also hear from each of them in person. Now the formalities of the meeting. The company secretary has confirmed to me that the notice of meeting has been sent to shareholders and all other persons entitled to receive it. The company's constitution prescribes a quorum requirement of 3 shareholders. I can confirm that this requirement has been met. Regarding proxies, that been appointed to the purposes of this meeting in respect of 17.9 million shares, representing 11.34% of the total number of shares. And I'd like to thank shareholders for their level of participation in today's meeting. My follow Directors and I intend vote all discretionary proxies we had received in favor of resolutions 1 through 4 as set out in the notice of the meeting, subject to the voting restrictions that apply to resolution 4. Voting on all resolutions in today's meeting will be conducted by way of a poll. Those participating online through the virtual meeting website will have the opportunity to ask questions. And to ask a question, you need to click -- ask a question within the online meeting platform, select what items regarding in the drop-down window, type-in your question and then submit. And I encourage shareholders who are attending online to send their questions through as soon as they can. The annual financial statements for the 12-months period to March 31st, 2021, together with the auditor's report is set out in the company's annual report. The annual report was made available on the ikeGPS website on the 29th of June of this year. Now again, a formal good afternoon to shareholders. In keeping with our respective roles in the company, Glenn and I will share the AGM narrative today. I will make some comments about IKE's business and corporate environment, and a few personnel issues, noting of course that whilst your company had its origins in New Zealand as a private company, it is now a Publicly Listed company in both New Zealand and Australia, with its target market and operations almost exclusively in the USA. That's a fairly complicated arrangement, but it's what we've had for some time now, and it operates very well. Firstly, on product development and acquisition, a key focus in the second half of financial year '21 was the acquisition and integration of certain assets of a company called Visual Globe LLC, a US-based Artificial Intelligence and low code/no code software company that specializes in the automated analysis of power poles from very large data sets. And during this presentation, Glenn will refer to the importance of AI and our mix of capabilities. This strategic acquisition complements IKE's existing offering and aligns with the Company's vision to be the Pole OS company and the standard for collecting, analyzing and managing power pole information. Visual Globe's AI platform provides the potential for IKE to grow its addressable market within the electric utility and communications industries and to significantly increase the number of transactions it can process efficiently on its platform. New market applications specific to pole projects include NESC Violation assessment, Right of Way encroachment assessment, As-builts for future change detection, Joint Use assessment, and others. So as you can imagine, it's a very valuable tool in our tool box for the future. The addition of Visual Globe's technology and team has already enabled IKE to process and analyze large volumes of pole data that can be collected from new additional sources including drones and smartphones, making the Company's platform even more attractive to electric utilities and communications groups in the North American market. I'll now make a couple of comments on our team and talent and brand and the customer experience that we have for our clients. In calendar year 2021, I explained several important appointments, including, firstly, Eileen Healy as non-executive director. Eileen is based in San Francisco, she is a communications industry leader and serial entrepreneur who has founded 2 high-tech startups addressing the U.S. communications market: Healy & Co, is an innovative company providing outsourced engineering to the U.S. utility market. Customers included AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Verizon Wireless, Frontier Communications, and FirstNet, quite an impressive list. She also founded and sold Telecompetition Inc., a data analytics company. We also appointed Tom DuBois as Vice President, Product Management. Tom brings product leadership experience from several silicon-valley based growth companies and has also held executive roles at Electronic Arts, Google, and most recently Intel, from where he joined IKE. Jareth Hosskings as Head of Engineering. Jareth has been appointed to lead all of IKE's engineering teams across the IKE Office, IKE Structural, which is a PoleForeman company we acquired, and IKE Insight, which is the Visual Globe company I referred to before. Most recently Jareth was Head of Engineering at Agility CIS, where he led an engineering team of 75 developers operating across a number of countries specializing in software products for the utility sector. In September 2020, looking back, Bruce Harker retired as a non-executive director. The Board, and all of the IKE team want to thank Bruce for the considerable contribution he's made to the business, and Bruce, of course, remains a shareholder. I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank Chris Birkett for his contribution to IKE. Chris' last day as Chief Operating Officer is today. However, he will continue to support IKE on an ad hoc basis over a transitional period. Now just a couple of comments on customer experience, which is a major focus for IKE's business. Meaningful brand and customer experience milestones achieved through 2021 included the launch of a scalable online training and education deployment platform called IKE University. The U.S.-based IKE team shifted to 100% remote working at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company has worked constantly on implementing and improving remote working best practices and performance. Although IKE intends to return aspects -- and indeed is, returning aspects of its operations to the office, it is believed remote working excellence can be a source of competitive advantage for attracting and retaining talent and moving forward. This is particularly important for IKE, with a very, very wide geographical spread of operations throughout the U.S. Finally, a report on capital raising which we've recently participated in. Then I'll hand over to Glenn. During the current quarter we concluded an oversubscribed capital raising of AUD24.7 million, which will support recent customer wins, accelerate a growing sales pipeline and flexibility to pursue acquisition opportunities. Along with the increase in capital, we increased the reach and numbers of our shareholder base, and I am pleased to welcome a number of you here today. Glenn, can I now hand over to you for more detail of our performance for financial year 2021 and a more in-depth view of our markets and operations. Glenn is based in U.S., where he is best placed to drive our global sales, marketing and development activities. Glenn, over to you.

Thank you, Rick. Thank you, everyone, for joining the meeting today. I appreciate your time to join us. My name is Glenn Milnes. I'm the CEO and Managing Director of IKE. I'm really excited to provide an update on the business. IKE is today, I think, in the strongest position it's ever been in terms of customers, in terms of talent, product and pipeline, and we're very optimistic about the future for the IKE business. I think I've always just been massively impressed with the depth of knowledge that shareholders have around our business and these AGMs, the insights and questions we get. I think for this update, what we'd really like to focus on the future for IKE, and we've looked in the review mirror in terms of the FY '21 performance to some extent, but we'll really focus on the outlook for our company. And I think if we -- just before we shift to the slides in the presentation, FY '21 was a challenging year, not just for IKE, for everyone across the globe from a COVID '19 impact's perspective, we've tried to take a view even when our markets were completely locked down that we tried to get on the front foot and to think as aggressively as possible so that we could spring forward with our markets as the COVID impacts eased. And that's what we've experienced pleasingly since January of this year, our markets have bounced forward strongly, and we've been able to bounce forward strongly alongside those factors. So Chris, if you're able to pull up the slide presentation, thanks. So there's a lot of slides here. I'll try to pass-through things fairly quickly in terms of content, next slide, thank you. If everyone can just take a note of the important notice on Slide 2. We will run next slide. Thanks, Chris. Just in terms of focus, we'll spend some time on FY '21 performance, FY '22 momentum, I'd really like us to spend time talking about where we're going from a solutions and market expansion perspective, which is Slide 20 onwards. Chris, if you're able to go forward to Slide 6, please. Next slide. So the key thing for us, and keep in mind that calendar 2020 had COVID impacts, but from a -- looking at the chart on the left, this reflects closed contracts over the past 5 quarters. And there's a pleasing growth in terms of run rate. And for us, our customers use our platform on a subscription basis. And then we derive additive revenue from transactions. So the more poles and the more assets they process through our platform is what brings the cash through just for the IKE business. The chart on the left just shows the confidence we have in terms of overall growth momentum and expected use of the platform over time. So Q1 FY '22 for us was more than AUD6 million of closed contracts. And Q2 FY '22 has been another strong period for us. We expect Q3 to be strong as well. So some good momentum from that perspective. The chart on the right, I think from a shareholder perspective, is equally important. So the green and the blue bars on this chart represent recurring subscription revenue and transaction revenues, so a much higher-quality revenue rate for us. And that's been growing in absolute terms and percentage terms quarter-over-quarter. And quite dramatically, if we look back one to 2 years previously. Next slide, thanks. I think these other 2 charts, again, we released at the end of Q1, but they show some other very important leading metrics for the business. So the chart on the left, the green bars show transaction revenue and also the number of transactions, so the usage of the platform that we're seeing across the IKE business. So Q1, more than 60,000 transactions and growing transaction revenue. And that's where we see the real revenue growth and economic driver for the IKE business that will come from transaction revenue. The chart on the right is platform subscription revenue. Again, that's important. that the backbone of our revenue model. More than 300 subscription customers today paying to use the IKE platform with the transaction revenue flowing over-the-top of that. Next slide. This chart details the graphics that we've just looked at. But again, these are the key metrics that we'll be tracking on a quarterly basis moving forward in terms of transactions, subscriptions and also the other revenue that's generated from hardware sales and other revenue. Thanks, Chris. And lastly, the -- in terms of general momentum across the business, we've had more than 60% CAGR growth in terms of recurring subscription transaction revenue since FY '18. Our goal is very much to continue to grow that component of our revenue and feel like we're tracking positively in that regard. And the chart on the right looks at our revenue, gross margin and operating cash flows. Next slide, please. Next slide, so just looking at the -- what we do really matter is we're a pole company. We're a collective of pole people operating out of this industry, where we're targeting 2 very important markets, in our view. The first is electric utilities that help to keep the lights on, provide public safety. And our platform allows electric utilities to assist their network in a much faster way and to design their assets in a much higher quality way. So this photograph here, this is a distribution power pole that's failed. I think the interesting thing to note for those that aren't in the North American market is just to look at how much infrastructure sits on a particular distribution pole. So on the right-hand side, that's all the power assets, the insulators and the wires, the conductors, et cetera. And on the left, those otherwise relate to communications company, so that's -- it's fiber, it's cable TV, et cetera. You can just see the sheer number of folks that attached every power pole. And every one of these assets needs to be engineered to meet construction standards, regulatory standards, legal standards, et cetera. Next slide. And it's a big market. And if you take a 10-year view of IKE, we believe the electric utility space is -- will be the real revenue and growth engine for our business, more than 3,000 electric utilities. They've all got the same problems that we can help solve more than 1,000 engineering companies that help these network owners do their engineering work. And we materially improved the engineering design and maintenance process for these groups. So this is the real core of the U.S. market. Next slide, thanks, Chris. And the second market opportunity where we've got real tailwinds is around the communications market. So the United States or the -- or North America is tracking substantially behind other parts of the world in terms of deployment of fiber networks and also 5G networks. And next slide, thanks. We help communications companies dramatically speed up aspects of their network deployment process with our tools and with our software. And over the next 5 years plus, there's just an enormous amount of infrastructure investment -- or -- these companies, more than 200 communications companies and more than 1,000 engineering companies are in their race to deploy their networks as fast as they can. So this is about speed, and we help speed up that network deployment process. Next slide. We've been focused on this market as a pure poles company for quite some time. Again, headquartered in Colorado, with all of our front office sales support solutions engineering based here in North America. And we're now winning or have won the -- some of the largest names in the industry across communications and the electric utility markets. We have 5 of the largest investor-owned utilities as customers, 12 -- the 15 largest communications companies. And the opportunity is to really expand inside of these groups. I think it's one thing to go and execute a proof of concept, that the next step is to win real recurring revenue business. And for us, then it's about embedding and expanding inside of the existing customer base that we have as well as listing or winning new accounts. Next slide, thanks, Chris. A lot of words on this slide. I won't go through it, but it's a really interesting ecosystem and some network effects. So just if you cast your mind back to the photograph of that electric utility pole that had failed, the electric utilities tend to own the pole, some communications company own poles as well. The electric utilities have to share their infrastructure with other folks that wish to attach, and there are various FCC mandates that require that. And there are engineering companies that are doing a lot of the work on behalf of both of these parties. And so winning one of these segments or one of these customers can have very interesting ecosystem and knock on sales impacts around the market, and I'll talk to that a bit further when we look at our solutions. Next slide, please. And we have a direct sales and delivery model. We're wholly focused on seeking to deliver the best customer experience in our industry, and customer experience isn't a fluffy term. We take a very disciplined approach about trying to bring some of the best practices from other industries into the electric utility and the communications market. And we think that's a way to build a very strong brand presence. And with brand presence, it brings things like pricing, pricing power, et cetera. So we focus very hard on delivering pole experts to our customers. And CX is the item that is the first thing that everyone thinks about when they get out of bed in the morning and come into the IKE office. Next slide. And we've got a -- we're fortunate to have a great Board with very deep industry experience. So the Board are all on the call here today. We are really pleased this year to welcome Eileen Healy onto our Board, Rick covered Eileen's background, but having engaged with Eileen over a period of time, we're obviously delighted to add Eileen's skills and industry experience onto the Board. Next slide. Next slide, I just wanted to touch a little on our solutions and where we're going from a strategy perspective and how it ties back to what we were doing in terms of our products and market offerings. So this is probably the key slide in the presentation. We're building The Pole OS company for North America. And what that means is we're building an end-to-end platform where our customers can pick and choose pole specific software applications to help them with business decisions and with their workflow. And there are 3 swim lanes for our strategy and everything we do ties back to these 3 swim lanes. And the first is around excellence in field data collection technology. It's not to build all of the technology, it's to be able to apply the very best field data collection technology to poles and pole projects to support our customers. The second is around a software platform for the analysis management and to provide business insights for distribution asset projects. So that's the real core engine for us. That's what drives transaction revenue. It's providing those -- that business intelligence. And then the third swim lane is around providing the best customer experience in the industry. And we tie everything that we do back to these 3 specific signs. Next slide, please, Chris. And the question we get so often around the industry that we serve, so there's 220 million power poles in North America. It's -- well, how many poles have we got in our system, and we've processed 20-something million poles across the IKE platform. The really interesting thing about this market is one, we're solving a really important problem in terms of keeping lights on, keeping communications infrastructure going. But the second is that these assets need to be constantly assisted for a whole range of different purposes. It's not a case of having assessed one distribution asset and moving on to the next. There's just a constant requirement to engineer power poles that might be for joint use assessments, for vegetation assessments, for pole loading analysis, a regulatory requirement to assess your assets as a utility every 5 years. So that's 20% of your assets every 5 years needs to be assessed. And we help all of these processes. So it's very much a recurring market requirement, which makes us a really attractive space to be in from a straight business perspective. Next slide. And we're building The Pole OS platform, and so we started with field tools and field software. We built the IKE office solution to measure and manage pole projects. We now have an IKE structural solution, PoleForeman, so it does pole loading analysis. For poles, 5 of the largest investor and utilities use our PoleForeman solution. We've recently introduced IKE Insight, which is an AI platform to process bulk data, so data that's coming from drones, from LIDAR, from smartphones, from existing databases. And we have our IKE Analyze Solution, which is a platform that allows us to take capacity off any of our customers and do a lot more of the analysis work. And we intend to continue to extend the platform. Next slide. And just an example of why it matters to be building a Pole OS to show the way that a customer can transition from one product or one solution to others. We've announced through the last 12 months, a really interesting customer development, we think. So this is a Fortune 100 energy company. They were a PoleForeman customer, paying us around AUD30,000 per annum for structural analysis. They moved into our IKE Office platform in October of 2020, that grew them to around AUD700,000 account. And we recently expanded that into an IKE Analyze customer, adding another AUD1.2 million in terms of that account. And we see opportunities now to also layer on IKE Insight on the back of the trust and delivery that we've put in place. So it's really, I think interesting in the way that we can build customers and build customer value over time with The Pole OS offering. Next slide. And so just to focus, Rick commented on our acquisition of Visual Globe earlier this year. We think this is a really interesting addition in terms of what IKE can do for our customers. And I can say, it gives us the ability to open up a whole range of new applications for customers that are already on the IKE platform. Some examples here, everything from vegetation assessment to NESC, so the North American safety code violation assessments through to joint use assessments, it's all about automating processes, looking at massive amounts of data and removing people and engineers from the process. Next slide, there's a couple of examples. Again, the ability to -- for machines to look at assets and identify attachments or whatever the particular problem or insight might be required from our customers. Next slide, please. And just some examples here of -- in this case, a view of some automatic asset detection processes that we're delivering for a lead customer at the moment through to standardized ways of measuring and dimensioning poles, in this case, using RGB data or imagery from drones to get insights at scale. So we're particularly excited about IKE Insight and having integrated that team into IKE through the first half of the year, where we think there are some really great opportunities in front of us for the second half of FY '22. Next slide, please. And next slide there. And just touching on the capital raise that was completed in August. We were grateful for the extensive support that we received from existing shareholders also from -- for some new important investors. We had flagged in the capital raise process that up to AUD4 million was to be applied to increasing our sales and implementation teams. We do feel we're very well positioned now to accelerate certain parts of our customer acquisition plan. So the focus is extensively around delivery capability around IKE Insight, our AI tool, based on some initial customer wins and market proof points. So we'll be providing more updates as we move through the year in terms of those investment initiatives. And with that, next slide, thank you, I'll pause there and would welcome questions. But over to you, Rick.

Thanks, Glenn. And hopefully, that's given you some idea of the increase in-depth and breadth of activities in the utility and comp sector year-on-year. It just gets even more interesting and detailed and more opportunities for revenue at the same time. So the floor is now open for questions after Glenn's presentation.

Our Chief Financial Officer going to aggregate the questions online, so they can be advised to the meeting. We will also seek to address the questions which may have been submitted online prior to the meeting. If we run short of time and aren't able to answer your question today, we're going to respond to you after the meeting. Stephen, are there any questions received from shareholders in relation to the presentation and update?

Yes, we have a couple of questions here. The first one is for Glenn. What is IKE's competition advantage and how sustainable is it? Why would a utility purchase hardware and services from you rather than one of your competitors?

Good question. I think we are a wholly dedicated technology company focused on the poles market. And so what we do is very specific. And we are unique in terms of our absolute focus on collection, analysis and management of power poles and power pole information. And that is what separates us from the competitive environment at the moment. So we see a lot of competitive activity happening around things like drones and sensors. We position ourselves as a platform to process any data coming from any source. We also see activity in the market. There's a huge amount of capital chasing the communications infrastructure boom here in North America. We see a lot of private equity money coming into engineering service providers, and they're investing in some technology to sell more of their services. Again, we're building a platform the whole industry can utilize. So at this stage, I think our specificity in our expertise in pole projects is what separates us.

Thanks, Glenn. There's another one here from [Ana]. How long does it take to close a new contract on average?

Thanks, Ana. The -- it varies depending on the customer type. So at one end of the spectrum, engineering service providers, they will close very quickly for us within days, often because they will follow the specified practice of an infrastructure owner. So if a utility requires that their engineering companies use a particular technology or tools, they'll use IKE. So that's a very fast sales cycle in many cases. When it comes to a Crown Castle or an a AT&T, both companies that have standardized on the IKE platform, it takes more time. It requires proof of concepts, top down selling, and that can be months or quarters.

Are there any further questions from shareholders, Stephen?

Yes, I've got a couple more here. The next one for Glenn again. Are there any plans to use a mix of debt and equity to fund future acquisitions or the company solely be using capital raising to fund future growth?

I think to date, the view of the Board has been that we would use equity to fund acquisitions, given the nature of the companies that we were looking to acquire. So at this stage, debt hasn't been considered. Obviously, that could -- is under review and could change relative to the nature of the company that we may wish to acquire given the scale and profitability, et cetera.

Any further questions, Stephen?

Final question here. This is from John. How are you growing marketing and selling capability to address the available market?

Good question, John. Thanks. It's been a real focus. We're fortunate, first of all to have a very strong Head of Sales in the business. And we've had very strong retention in terms of the sales executive team also. So we've continued to add both sales resources, marketing resources and also solution engineers. So they're the technical folks that deal with presales and are the most valuable aspect of the sale process and the eyes of our customers. So that team has continued to build. And again, if we look at use of funds for the recent capital raise, it's really around expanding solution engineering, delivery capability and also some marketing capacity.

Any more Stephen?

Yes. We have a final one that's just come through. This is for Glenn again. You briefly mentioned in your presentation that you're doing some work with a large customer on the IKE Insight solution. Can you give us some more detail on the Visual Globe acquisition integration and how that's selling into the customer base?

Yes, look, we've been just delighted with the Visual Globe acquisition and the progress that's been made through these past 6 or 7 months. So the -- we introduced IKE Insight into some existing IKE customers, and the reception has been strong. So we've signed up proof of concepts with 2 national communications companies in terms of looking at joint use audits, both these companies are quite substantial pole owners across North America. We've also recently signed up a large national engineering service provider that does a very large number of joint use and inspection audits across North America that are looking to use IKE Analyze. And a number of others that are progressing very positively. So I think most importantly is how the team is integrated into IKE, the Head of Engineering, Trevor Chandler, just an exceptionally talented AI software engineer and leader, and he's driving a, we think, a really important program for us. We've already integrated some of the AI capability into IKE's existing products to drive productivity and gross margin growth. So yes, a lot of positive proof points, it's still an early stage company, but we just see AI will become such an important part of our industry, and we see an opportunity to really embed ourselves and customers, is using true artificial intelligence to drive some good customer outcomes. So we're very, very optimistic about where the Visual Globe IKE Insight Group is set at the moment.

Thanks, Glenn. Is that all the question, Stephen?

Yes, there are no further questions.

Thanks very much. Okay. Well, thanks, Glenn for that presentation and for the questions. I know how important it is not to just make acquisitions happen, but then to make them work once you've got them. And it sounds that we're well down the track on that. Now we come to the formal part of the meeting, and matters requiring resolution. And there are 4 resolutions before you today. Again, you can ask questions on each matter, put the shareholders through the virtual meeting website. Please note you'll only be able to ask a question after you've registered as a shareholder. So if you aren't a shareholder, no questions. After moving to the resolutions, I propose to call a poll on each of them. And as I mentioned, shareholders can cast their vote using the electronic voting card you received when your online registration was validated. To vote, you need to click get voting card with the online meeting platform, you'll then be asked to enter your shareholder or proxy number to validate. Please then mark your voting card in the way you wish go by clicking for, against or abstain on the voting card. Once you've made a selection, please click submit vote on the bottom of the card, you lodge -- to lodge your vote. Please refer to the virtual meeting online portal guide to use the helpline specified if you need assistance. Voting is going to remain open until 5 minutes after the conclusion of the meeting. And the results of the vote on each resolution will be announced on NZX and ASX after the meeting. Now each resolution is set out in the notice of meeting to be considered as an ordinary resolution, and as such, must be approved by a simple majority of the votes cast by shareholders entitled to vote and voting on the resolution. Now resolution one is the auditor appointment and remuneration. Usually, this is a fairly routine boring issue, but return to matters relating to the company's auditors. As you are aware, the Companies Act 1993 requires the company to appoint an auditor and provides that the fees and expenses on auditor appointed and an AGM can be fixed in the matter determined at that meeting. Now in December 2021, following a formal request for a proposal process, an RFP process for external audit services, the company has kind of announced that Grant Thornton was a successful party in that process. Directors recommend Grant Thornton to be appointed as auditor for the financial year ending March 31, 2022. The appointment of Grant Thornton brings a better firm with a broad experience dealing with complex listed clients. And the Grant Thornton audit team for the year ending March 31, 2022 will be led by Brayden Smith. Now the motion concerns the fixing of the auditor's remuneration and seek shareholder approval that the directors be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration. And the Board, I have to say unanimously supports the appointment of Grant Thornton and fixing the fees and expenses of the auditor. Now at this point, I'd like to acknowledge the great work done by auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers, they have been our auditors for the last few years, I think, since day one and helped us through the formative aspect of the small but fast growing company. Now present at the meeting today to answer any questions arising from the annual accounts for the past year, so I'd like to publicly thank them for their support, Chris and hopefully, you won't get too any questions, but if you do, I'm sure you can address them. It proposed that Grant Thornton is appointed as auditor of the company and the directors be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration. Are there any questions for the Board concerning this motion, Stephen?

There are no questions from shareholders.

Thank you. Okay. Now can you now select either for, against or abstain for resolution one on the voting card? And I'll give you a bit of time to do that. [Voting]

Resolution 2 is the election of Eileen Healy, who you've heard from already, that the resolution is that Eileen Healy appointed by the Board as a Director effective the 1st of April 2021 this year and who retires and is eligible for election is hereby elected as a Director of ikeGPS Group Limited. The Board recommends Eileen Healy to you as an ikeGPS Director and unanimously supports her election. Eileen's credentials, as I set out in more detail in the notice of meeting, but I now invite Eileen Healy to address the meeting on per proposed appointment. Eileen Healy, over to you.

Thank you, Rick, and good day to everyone. I'm speaking to you from the San Francisco Bay Area where I live and work. Rick has already described some of my background. So in addition to running a company of similar revenue and head count, IKE as well as chairing that Board, I think part of the value I can bring to IKE a deep bench of context within the U.S. North American communications market as well as an understanding of how telcos and network operators, how they operate, what keeps them up at night. So by way of example, I'll just give you a couple of recent projects, one specifically in poles, doing some consulting work and advice to the California Public Utilities Commission, on pole regulation and safety. Also building out a public safety network for the county of Los Angeles and then subsequently selling that to AT&T. And finally, involvement in 12,000 cell sites that are being built now in the U.S. to support a new cloud-native 5G network for DISH Wireless. So given that background and other Board positions, I bring what I believe is a passion for good governance, and I look forward to bring that experience to [bear for] and using my skills to grow shareholder value. So I very much appreciate the opportunity, and thank you.

Thanks very much, Eileen. Now your voting as before, please select either for, against or abstain for Resolution 2 on the election of Eileen Healy. I'll give you time to do that. [Voting]

Resolution -- are there any questions at all, Stephen? No?

No questions.

No. Resolution 3 is the reelection of Alex Knowles, well-known to us all. The resolution is that Alex Knowles has reelected as non-Executive Director of ikeGPS in accordance with NZX Listing Rule 271. Being that a director must not hold office without re-election past the third annual meeting following that director's appointment. The Board recommends Alex Knowles to you as an ikeGPS Director and unanimously supports his reelection. Alex's credentials are outlined in more detail in the notice of meeting, and I now invite Alex to address the meeting on his proposed reappointment. Alex?

Thank you, Rick. My name is Alex Knowles. I've enjoyed being part of the IKE Board to date. IKE is truly an exciting and evolving company with a lot of opportunities ahead of us. I am looking forward to continuing to contribute as a Board member, capturing my experience to date and my knowledge of the sector that IKE is gaining ground, and hopefully, shareholders share my desire to be reelected. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Alex. Are there any questions concerning Alex's reappointment?

No questions, Rick.

Thank you. Now again, as before, please select for, against or abstain for resolution 3 on the voting card. [Voting]

Thank you. Resolution 4 has been set out in the papers, but it concerns the ratification of placement capacity for IKE. And as you know, part of IKE's stated growth objectives is the completion of acquisitions, and we've had 2 quite significant ones to date. The latest one being the assets of Visual Globe LLC. Onto the 19th of August '21 placement, IKE issued 19.3 million fully paid ordinary shares in IKE to new and existing institutional investors. We were invited to participate in the placement at a price of AUD0.95 or NZD1, that's Australian or NZD1 per share. The placement raised gross proceeds of approximately AUD18.3 million or NZD19.2 million to support recent wins to help accelerate growing sales pipelines and provided flexibility to pursue potential acquisition opportunities. In addition to this, I propose it to refresh the company's placement capacity to execute quickly on potential future acquisitions if they arise. And it's pretty important we do that. We missed out on one acquisition this year as a result of not being in a position to finance it immediately. So having the flexibility to raise capital quickly strengthens our ability to enter into tender processes and not be constrained by IKE's placement capacity. Now I'd point out that the additional capacity is only going to be used if a substantial opportunity arises that requires additional funds to be raised. There's no guarantee that any such further issue will be undertaken or as to the terms of and timing for any such issue. So the Board recommends the shareholders they vote in favor of this resolution as it will provide IKE with the flexibility it needs to raise money through the issue of further equity securities as required. So the Board proposes that by way of a single ordinary resolution, that the shareholders of ikeGPS Group Limited, approve and ratify for all purposes, including NZX listing Rule 4.5.1 C, the previous issue under NZX's listing of 4.1.5.1 of 19.3 million fully paid ordinary shares and ikeGPS Group Limited to investors at an issue price of AUD0.95 or NZ1, on the 19th of August 2021. Now are there any questions Stephen for -- from shareholders concerning this motion?

No questions on this resolution.

Thank you. Okay. Well, I'll now pause for you to vote as before for, against or abstain for resolution 4 on the voting card. [Voting]

The final matter is general business. And I'd just like to provide the opportunity for shareholders to raise any further questions that they may have. As noted before, you can continue to provide questions online, and we'll also address questions already submitted online before. If we run short of time and can't answer your question today, we will endeavor to respond to you after the meeting. Stephen, are there any questions from shareholders?

Yes, we do. We have a question from John. Does IKE currently deal with transmission towers for things like high-voltage and microwave? If not, is this an area that can fit into IKE solutions? And does IKE have any Canadian customers?

I think, Glenn, you are the best placed to answer that question.

So we have a small number of customers that use the IKE platform for transmission infrastructure, less so for towers in terms -- particularly in terms of 4G antennas. We're really seeing application as in 5G antennas in fiber because that's all being attached to power poles as a much higher density network. So less of an application in terms of full distribution. And yes, we do have a number of Canadian customers, Bell Canada is the largest of those, which is the primary communications group in the Canadian market. And we have a number of the hydro electric utilities at early stages of adoption, but actually some interesting market opportunities in Canada. So we -- the Canadian market is obviously substantially smaller than United States, but [we've in Canada] some interesting large groups out there that we also serve.

Any other questions, Stephen?

Yes, we have 2 that are slightly linked. So we've got Peter, the current share price is around AUD1.04. One underpinning market analysis assesses IKE's fair value price at AUD0.53. Do you have any comment on this valuation? What is the Board and management doing to communicate with the market, analyst community? And also linked to this, we have a question from Barry, is the company planning to give revenue and/or earnings guidance for FY '22?

Glenn, I'll let you address that first, and I'll back you up as necessary.

Thanks. Look, I mean, for us, we're concentrating on performance and customer acquisition and growth, and particularly the quality of our revenue that underpins growth. So we're seeking to build decades-long relationships with the biggest infrastructure companies in North America. And we think we can create a really meaningful long-term business that will be also highly profitable over time. And so I guess the short-term view of share price, of course, we're mindful of creating shareholder value. I think the Bell Potter analyst's view of IKE is quite different. So they have a target price of a AUD1.35 plus. But we're really focused on building customer value, building a platform and building very long-term recurring revenue across our industry. And I think in the short term, our share price may fluctuate. But so long as we're winning customers and growing at least 30%, 40%, 50% per annum, then we're building something very meaningful, taking a 5-year, 10 year view. And Stephen, sorry, what was the second element of the question?

It's from Barry.

It was around giving revenue and earnings guidance for FY '22?

No. So we don't provide revenue guidance. We are very optimistic around the growth profile for this year. I hope that's clear in terms of the momentum in terms of contracts and the way all of our leading metrics are tracking, but we expect FY '22 to be a very strong growth year.

And I think, Glenn, just to back that up, I would say that we have a practice of advising the market and the disclosure rules, all major contracts, which we acquire and major milestones as they are acquired. So I think that probably is all we can do in the meantime. Anything else, Stephen?

Yes, we have a final question here. What is IKE's market share? What is market share like at the moment? And how do you see this changing down the track?

It's a difficult question, that one, Glenn, I'll let you try and answer it, but because -- finally, acquiring market share information in the market is complex as [indiscernible], not easy that to have a crack anyway.

Yes, look, from a revenue perspective, there's 2 parts to the market we address. The way to think about the business we're building is the communications market. If we look across the top 15 communications companies in North America, we see that as a AUD225 million market opportunity over the next 3 to 4 years. And we're making good progress with some of those Tier 1 communications groups, but we're still early in terms of developing accounts. But I think something that shareholders should be encouraged by is the development of the size of the accounts that we're now winning, and we outlined an example earlier in the presentation. The second market is the -- in this is the utility market, the 3,000 electric utilities. We assess from a top-down perspective, a AUD750 million per annum market opportunity for the products that we deliver into those customers. So we're -- again, we're scratching the surface at this stage. But again, we're winning a lot of these larger groups, which I think is the encouraging aspect. So we have 5 of the 10 largest investor-owned utilities in the U.S. using our products every day. So that's the opportunity. And we've -- our job now is to embed and expand inside the accounts that we have right now. And overall, the other metric, we have around 300 subscription customers across the universe of 3,000 -- sorry, 4,500, including the engineering service providers. So again, early in terms of market development.

Thanks, Glenn. I mean, I'd just reemphasize the point that we're a pole company that in the U.S. alone, there are 220 million poles, and we've only scratched the surface to date. So there's plenty of opportunity. Any more questions, Stephen?

No more questions, Rick.

Good. Thanks very much. Okay. Well, look, it's time to close the meeting as there are no further questions, and I'd just like to thank everybody for attendance at our 6th Annual Meeting as a listed company. And we're going to announce the results of the voting on the NZX and ASX this afternoon. It's great to have the opportunity to host you online. Although personally, I have a preference for meeting shareholders both formally and informally in real meetings, if I can put it that way. But I guess, virtual meetings are [head stayed]. So thanks again for participating, and we hope you found this informative. Thanks very much, everybody. Goodbye.