Portfolio manager Margaret Samuel picks Gatekeeper Systems (TSXV—GSI)
Another aspect of the travel industry is a nascent part of the business and may be of interest to investors seeking exposure to companies that are developing technologies to make travel seem safer, thereby helping promote recovery of the travel industry.
Gatekeeper Systems Inc., incorporated in 2010, engineers, manufactures and distributes industry-leading, high-definition mobile video surveillance and safety solutions for a range of markets, including school districts, law enforcement, public transit authorities, as well as the US military and Coast Guard.
Over the past seven years, Gatekeeper has equipped approximately 28,000 school buses, transit buses and trains with 97,000 video devices and intelligent mobile data collectors, which forms the foundation of the company’s Platform-as-a-Service (“PaaS”) business model. The intelligent devices collect vehicle data such as video, audio, GPS, time, door open/close, and serve as the ‘black box’ to aid in transit accident investigations. Gatekeeper also provides artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to support video-evidence collection. Interest in the company’s platform has expanded beyond its core markets of school and transit buses to multiple mobile markets including city and military vehicles, special law enforcement vehicles, courier vehicles, first responder and ambulances.
An opportunity arose for Gatekeeper on March 11, 2020 when the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic, severely disrupting all modes of global passenger travel including school buses and public transportation vehicles. The company immediately began to research, design and configure passenger health check- and contact tracing-solutions that could be deployed by school and transit authorities to provide a safer transportation environment for their passengers.
On August 4, 2020, Gatekeeper launched Intelligent Temperature Sensing System (ITSS), an infrared body temperature sensor system that incorporates a smart panel, thermal imaging and artificial intelligence to quickly and accurately measure the body temperature of passengers who board school buses and public transportation vehicles. ITSS allows transit and school bus agencies to deploy health screening tools similar to those being put in place at airports. ITSS is a contactless system that can determine body temperature within 20 milliseconds using thermal cameras, artificial intelligence and video analytics. Visual and audible alarms are triggered when temperature thresholds are exceeded. When passengers board a bus, the ITSS panel records body temperature with an accuracy of +/- 0.5 degree Celsius. The 7-inch ITSS panel is equipped with facial recognition capabilities to improve accuracy and allows customers to pursue future applications such as intelligent passenger routing, contact tracing, passenger counting or payment verification. The panel records images within 40 milliseconds and has storage capacity of 50,000 facial images.
During November 2020, the company commenced a national marketing campaign to raise awareness of how ITSS can help organizations with health monitoring and contact tracing. The marketing campaign has been designed to reach over 50,000 influencers and decision makers in school districts, universities, transit authorities and more. The company believes passenger health monitoring in public transportation is an emerging North American growth trend that will continue even after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. The company intends to integrate ITSS into its PaaS platform business model as a new additional data layer.
Unlike the other companies reviewed here, COVID has not resulted in a decline in revenue. Indeed, overall revenue for the year ended August 31, 2020 was $20,316,576, compared to $13,726,313 for the year ended August 31, 2019, representing an increase of 48%.
While a small part of the business of Gatekeeper is directed at mitigating the impact of COVID, investors can participate in this development while benefiting from the company’s other expanding businesses.