Star Navigation continues to make gains with its proprietary navigational technology, tracking performance trends and predicting incident occurrences.
The Toronto-based company continues to attract clients in the public and private sector, looking to increase safety and reliability while at the same time reducing costs.
To find out more about the company’s continued growth, I’m pleased to welcome back to the Top Line, Star Director and Interim CEO, Anoop Brar. Thanks for dropping in.
TMH: To start, let’s talk about the share lockup. You now have over 25% of the company’s shares under lock up. Give us the specifics. How did that come about and why should that give investors confidence?
AB: We realize there’s a lot of shares outstanding and the Directors and the team really believe that we are really undervalued here in this case. When you look at a lot of the stock appreciation usually with small caps, investors tend to get a little weary. They start to think that there is going to be a little bit of a spike and then the Directors are going to come out, nothing of that sort. So as Directors, we locked up our shares to show confidence, to show the value of our technology and what we’re doing. Simon, you also got to realize that we IPO’ed 20 years ago, there’s nowhere to go but up and we are looking to take Star to the next level. Once we had done that, there’s a lot of investors, officers of the team, shareholders who came to us and said, we also believe in the long-term strategy of the company and we also would be willing to lock up our shares. At the end of it, we had about more than a 25 percent of the outstanding shares locked up. So phenomenal news and a lot of huge vote of confidence that we have received.
TMH: You just signed a reseller agreement with APS Aerospace, and its Flight Data Analysis Suite. Why is that so important and why should investors be excited?
AB: Well, APS is a company that we’ve partnered with. They’ve been working very closely with tier one, tier two companies such as the West Jet, Ethiopian Airlines and other big airlines. So, as we had spoken about in the last interview, Star Navigation is able to capture and analyze real-time data from an aircraft. Once we send that down to the ground, we can send it automatically to APS that can do the post-flight analysis. So now STAR is able to have a complete ecosystem of in-flight analysis and post-flight analysis. And by partnering with APS, we are able to now go towards the tier one, tier two companies and the airlines to showcase that we have a full suite of services.
TMH: And that brings your capabilities even more inline with tier 1 and 2 airlines, correct?
AB: Absolutely. In fact, we can actually enhance their services. So everything that you see that APS can do for tier one, tier two is all post flight. Data’s been extracted either manually or automatically after each flight, but we can give that in real time while the aircraft is flying.
TMH: You have been spending a lot of time with potential clients in both the public and private sectors in Africa, which you’ve categorized as a huge market. Bring us up to speed with what’s happening there.
AB: Absolutely. We’re not announcing it yet but we got invited by the military for one of the biggest countries in Africa to look into their aircraft. So they have a wide range of fleets. So our engineers are headed there currently. They made a little pit stop in Egypt and as you probably know, Egypt is a big hub for aviation as well. We had done a partnership with AlMasria a couple of years ago. AlMasria went through a lot of tough times with Covid. We are reinitiating our conversations with them. Our system is already installed on the Airbus 320. They’re back to restart that program. They’re actually looking at installing it on the rest of the fleet as well. So that’s very positive news. With AlAtheer, which is the king of Saudi Arabia currently flying, now we have AlMasria, we have installations going on with Astral, which is cargo. Now you’re looking at everything from private airlines to cargo. So, we’re just covering that. Hopefully in the summertime we’ll be able to give you good news with the military. I really hope that the investors and the shareholders start to understand the true value of the STAR product.
TMH: You’ve added several consultants, names like Dave Curran and Nancy Massicotte. What kind of value do they bring?
AB: Very excited because Dave has been pivotal in actually making sure this technology worked back in 1999-2001 era with the original founder. He came back and actually forced the relationship with Astrium back in the day. Now he’s back at Star Navigation to take STAR to the next level in terms of corporate development. He’s helping me work with an OEM that we’re currently negotiating with playing a pivotal role in terms of what the market wants. What are some of the needs of these OEMs and how can STAR enhance their system. Nancy is a critical aspect of our company. She is the new investor relations, corporate development officer. Everything that you see, the new announcement trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the new partnerships that we’ve done with market awareness, market researchers, are all because of Nancy and she’s actually put us in a new awareness that STAR truly deserves to be at.
TMH: You are also recently mentioned publicly, you’re negotiating with an Original Equipment Manufacturer. What can you tell us about that? Why should inventors be excited about that?
AB: The second time we’re actually talking to an OEM; the first as everybody knew was Astrium. So, the second time now they actually see the value of our product. It’s a very critical point where in the past our product was too advanced for the market. We’re currently, with the advent of AI, machine learning, big data analysis, some of the unfortunate accidents that had happened in the aviation industry, OEM’s are starting to realize that they want a more connected aircraft, they want a smart aircraft. Gone are the times when data could be extracted manually post-flight. They want to be able to find a technology company that can analyze it in real time, take all of their older aircrafts and modernize that to the current fleet. So that is one of the biggest things that we are talking to them about and most importantly, these OEMs that we’re talking to already have maintenance programs in place to improve the longevity of their current aircraft. With the STAR system, giving them a real data feed and building a continuous stream of connected aircraft, they are very excited to partner with STAR and STAR is very excited to give this good news to the investors. Hopefully when we get together in closing this agreement.
TMH: I mean, it’s a lot like you said before, so they don’t have to rely on the so-called black boxes of voice, concrete voice recorders and data recorders anymore.
AB: That’s right. We’re a very proactive system. Hopefully we are able to replace the black box in the near future. We look forward to that.
Thanks for coming by The Market Herald today Anoop and spending a few minutes with us.
We’ve been speaking with Star Navigation Director and Interim CEO, Anoop Brar, here in studio.
The company trades on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the ticker symbol SNA. You can visit them at https://www.star-navigation.com/ for more information.
Thanks for watching Top Line. In Vancouver, I’m Simon Druker. We’ll see you next time.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is sponsored content issued on behalf of Star Navigation, please see full disclaimer here.