Seeing Machines secures premium German car manufacturer

Seeing Machines (AIM: SEE) has today announced that it has won a contract with a premium German auto manufacturer in conjunction with a major Tier 1 auto manufacturer.

This is a further striking endorsement of its Fovio Driver Monitoring technology, which is already in the new Cadillac CT6’s Supercruise feature – the car was launched by General Motors this autumn in the US.

The awarded models are scheduled for mass production in 2020. My own guess is the manufacture is probably Mercedes. If it is, the tech is likely to debut in its top of the range S series, which is scheduled for a relaunch in 2020.

Motoroids wrote an interesting article about the Mercedes S Class 2020/21 a few months back.

However, it could equally well be Volkswagen with whom Seeing Machines have been working — they exhibited together at CES in 2017,  or even BMW as there is some evidence to suggest Seeing Machines have been working with them.

What is more important than the actual name of the manufacturer is how much money it is likely to bring into this very undervalued small cap tech play in one of technologies hottest sectors; semi and fully autonomous driving.

This is what Seeing Machines had to say: “According to previously given guidelines, this may be considered a Medium value program (from A$10M-A$25M revenue) based on the initial included models and lifetime volume projections, with the potential to become a Large value program in time (>A$25M revenue).  It is worth noting that volume projections can change materially, up or down, and as is typical in automotive industry contracts, there are no guarantees beyond engineering milestone payments.”

For me, this contract from another of the world’s leading car companies establishes that the Fovio Driving Monitoring system is best in class. Moreover, given the contract could be worth as much as 50% of Seeing Machines current market cap, it looks very undervalued.

Certainly, Seeing Machines seems very confident, as  Nick DiFiore, General Manager of Automotive at Seeing Machines, commented: “We are proud to be awarded this benchmark DMS program from both an OEM and Tier 1 with state-of-the art requirements.  Their confidence in us is a testament to the leading-edge nature of our FOVIO DMS technology, which is the culmination of years of innovative development and hard-earned Automotive application expertise by our team.  We look forward to delivering this leading-edge DMS program and further delivering our new FOVIO platform products to our growing Automotive customer base worldwide.”

Lorne Daniels, analyst with house broker FinnCap, believes that Seeing Machines is now the “go-to supplier for DMS in automotive”.

In a note published today, Daniels wrote: “Euro NCAP’s recent announcement mandating DMS as a key criterion for vehicle safety has sharpened the timeline and focus for OEMs; it takes years to design a model and if they want a 5-star rating after 2020 they will need to integrate a good DMS. Fovio is proven, reliable and quite literally, already on the road; a natural choice for the global automotive industry.”

The writer holds stock in Seeing Machines.