Satellite IoT Company Astrocast Goes Public
25 Aug 2021
Astrocast lists on Euronext Growth Oslo LAUSANNE, Switzerland, August 25, 2021 – Astrocast SA, the leading Swiss I...
Imagine the following problem. A company owns machinery equipped with sensors in very remote locations. The machines measure data every day but transmitting it back to the headquarter is a problem because there is no mobile data network covering that area. Manual inspections are possible but costly. There are satellites in space that could connect to these industrial assets, but they are too expensive for the use case at hand. If you live in a city and have difficulty imagining places without cell phone coverage, keep in mind that only 15% of Earth’s surface has range.
Astrocast provides such coverage via satellites but does so in a very cost-efficient way. This is possible because Astrocast manufactures nanosatellites weighing just 5 kilograms in-house. As a result, these satellites are much cheaper to produce than standard satellites that can weigh more than a ton and are much cheaper to launch into orbit, too.
Astrocast has a fully operational satellite network in orbit. Whit more satellites scheduled to launch in 2022. The company has launched its cost-effective, bidirectional satellite IoT offering. Because of the low price for connecting satellites to machinery in faraway places, even on the sea, Astrocast is developing a whole new market segment of customers who shy away from using satellite IoT at the moment because of the expense.
With the growing number of satellites in its constellation, Astrocast will increase the availability of the signal for communication. With the current status of the constellation, it is possible to connect four to six times per day. Once the entire constellation is built, there will be a signal every 15 minutes. This means that the number of applications that can be envisioned with Astrocast’s satellite IoT offering will rise over the next years.
Astrocast has begun shipping the communication modules (a small unit used to communicate with satellites) to customers who have started to integrate them into the industrial assets need want to connect. This provides Astrocast with revenue from hardware sales. But the company wants to keep the price of modules low to allow for quick adoption by players in the maritime, oil and gas, and mining industries.
The main revenue driver is subscription revenue for connectivity. The data plans to connect a single device to Astrocast’s network are based on a monthly charge per data consumption.
The larger the installed base of communication modules, the higher the subscription revenue. In 2022, Astrocast targets to ship up to 80’000 modules, a figure that will rise substantially in the future, as will revenue. The total market of satellite IoT is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 52% until 2024. By 2025, the number of connected devices could exceed 30 million. Astrocast has a leading competitive position and is confident that it can capture a large portion of this market.
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For more information on satellite IoT investment opportunities visit Astrocast’s Investor Relations page.