Strategic Elements well positioned to weather tech downturn

While current market conditions have placed strong pressure on the technology sector, Strategic Elements believes it is well positioned to ride out the storm.

Highlighting its focus on cash management, the company ended the June quarter with $4.82m in cash after incurring net expenditures of $358,000.

This low expenditure was due in part to the receipt of a $471,000 tax refund from the Australian Government’s R&D Tax Incentive scheme for research conducted by Strategic Elements’ (ASX:SOR) wholly-owned subsidiary Stealth Technologies and Australian Advanced Materials during the 2021 financial year.

It is also preparing applications to claim a similar amount for R&D conducted during FY2022, receipt of which will strengthen its financial position without requiring shareholder dilution through a capital raising.

Additionally, AAM previously applied to the Australian Research Council for funding under a $1.6m project to progress its potentially ground-breaking Energy Ink energy generating tech for use in wearable technologies.

It was informed during the second quarter that a new research and development agreement with The University of New South Wales was required for ARC grant funding to commence under the proposed project.

Should this be granted, the company plans to start the ARC project in the current quarter using $486,640 in cash to be provided by ARC and $554,178 in services and equipment (in-kind) to be provided by The University of New South Wales over three years.

AAM will provide $350,000 in-kind and $220,000 in cash while maintaining its ownership of the Energy Ink intellectual property.

Energy Ink progress

While previous work on Energy Ink, which has the potential to generate usable quantities of energy through the conversion of moisture in the air to electricity, had focused on 36cm2 cells targeted for electronic skin patches, recent work has focused on increasing the cell size area to determine its impact on power generation.

During this process, significant potential Intellectual Property was developed, and the team subsequently focused on acquiring data and conducting experiments to complete multiple new patent applications.

AAM’s materials science team has also worked to develop, implement and validate multiple technology breakthroughs into a world-first Energy Ink Pack, which will be produced using green, sustainable, safe materials to harvest ampere-hour range of electrical charge.

Based on existing results, the Company believes the technology profile has exceeded the power output requirements of most existing devices in the large USD 10 billion Electronic Skin Patch market. These products are used to provide sports and health information from devices attached to the human body and currently use rigid alkaline batteries or those with lithium materials.

The market for skin patches is forecast to grow to USD 30 billion by 2031.

Autonomous vehicles

Meanwhile, Stealth Technologies has continued discussions with global Fortune 100 software-industrial company Honeywell on an agreement to conduct multi-site pilot deployments of Autonomous Security Vehicles.

This included a live demonstration of the ASV at the Eastern Regional Goldfield Prison for Honeywell’s vice president and general manager of Global Services.

Since then, it has significantly upgraded, designed and built an ASV for inclusion in the APAC Honeywell User Group 2022 event that will be held in Sydney in August. This will bring a diverse array of Honeywell customers together to share information, ideas, and experiences with industry peers.

During the quarter, Stealth also completed a comparison and detailed analysis of mapping data captured over several weeks by the Stealth Sensor Pack from an underground mine in Western Australia as part of Phase 1 of a pilot investigation with a mining company.

This captured mapping data of a portion of a mine’s underground environment to validate the technology solution’s potential suitability for several potential product applications.

Stealth is also developing technology to automate the capture and integration of multiple data types and produce 3D location maps of agricultural weeds and is collaborating with Defence Science Technology Group and the University of Western Australia to build a world-first, autonomous drone-carrying vehicle that automates the detection and sensing of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) agents.

Technology materials exploration

During the June quarter, Maria Resources negotiated with traditional owners and reviewed further geological interpretation, geophysics, historical drilling and exploration in the wider Madura Province.

This led to its applying for the E69/4051 and E69/4059 tenements as well as the commencement of the new Red Rock project.

Maria owns the Leviathan and recently expanded Cyclops projects in the highly underexplored Madura Province on the Nullarbor, which is starting to see increased activity with exploration tenement applications by companies such as Rio Tinto, BHP, Chalice Gold Mines and Northern Mineral Resources.

This article was developed in collaboration with Strategic Elements, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.