Rollercoaster tech stock Panorama Synergy soared 54 per cent on Tuesday after announcing it would buy high tech device engineer Hydrix Group.

Panorama will pay $2 million cash (funded by debt) and issue 50 million new shares for the acquisition.

Panorama is a storied ASX tech stock that traded as high as $3.75 in 2006 (then as ST Synergy) — before collapsing to 5c.

ST Synergy then developed display technologies. “Unfortunately that didn’t work out and there were scientific issues so they moved on,” said chief Peter Lewis, who joined the company in May.

More recently in late 2014, Panorama rocketed all the way to 38c on the back of excitement about its miniature read-outs for “Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems” — tiny chips that measure things like temperature, pressure, chemistry or radiation.

By June this year shares had again dropped back to 5c.

In July, shares momentarily spiked to 12c (and then back to 8c) following news that Panorama had tested a technology to measure “the concentration of insecticide residue in commercial aircraft” — ensuring that mosquitoes were dead but humans were safe.

On Tuesday Panorama’s shares jumped 4.4c to 12.5c following the Hydrix acquisition announcement.

Melbourne-based Hydrix provides consulting services on Internet-connected smart devices for the medical and defence industries — sometimes referred to as “the Internet of Things” or IoT.

The IoT is a much-hyped concept that refers to machine-to-machine communication — devices talking to other devices.

In one recent project, Hydrix helped build smart meters for a sewerage system managed by South East Water in Melbourne, said Mr Lewis — who is an ex Hydrix director.

“All these sewer pumps are connected to each other wirelessly and back to the the water utility,” he said.

The system allowed the water authority to co-ordinate the pumping of remote septic tanks into sewers or flush them quickly ahead of a heavy storm.

Hydrix had also worked with an Ausralian IVF outfit, which wanted “to monitor all the eggs in the IVF machines as they’re being cooked.

“To maintain the right temperatures all these incubators are connected to each other and a master control panel where they are constantly analysing conditions and adjusting.”

Mr Lewis is determined to restore Panorama to its glory days.

“We are on the path to build Australia’s best new technology company, manufacturing stuff in Australia that people want to buy overseas,” he said.

“We are hoping to transform the Australian technology sector.”

Hydrix had averaged $13.5 million in revenue and $1.5 million in EBIT earnings over the past four years, Panorama said.

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