SEB kommentoi Safranin MoU:ta.
Odotukset ennemmin laimeat, ja odotukset ennemmin muualla kuin SDR-puolella
We see this collaboration as an interesting opportunity, given the size and position of France’s armed forces. However, we are somewhat (positively) surprised about the country of next (potential) published activity for Bittium being in France, given that Bittium’s French competitor Thales has a strong position in the country, and Thales is currently delivering SDR radios to France as prime contractor, including ground, navy and air forces. The MoU does not provide any sizeable orders at this point, but opens interesting future opportunities. We did not list France as one of the ten most likely new collaboration countries in our 1 June report and we still see it as unlikely that Bittium would get a meaningful role as SDR radio supplier for French green army; however, we see interesting solutions around drones and air defence, given Safran’s position as local supplier and expertise in drone and anti-drone systems, C4ISR Systems and optronics. A combination of capabilities of the two companies could directly boost sales of Bittium’s SDR Unmanned products, while also extending Bittium’s addressable expansion potential secure data transfer in ground-based air defence and counter-UAS systems. In these applications, we believe Bittium’s role would be to provide resilient tactical connectivity between sensors, unmanned platforms and command posts. However, these fields include competition as well, with some parts relatively recently renewed in France (see table below). We think it is challenging to estimate the precise potential for Bittium at this point of time without further information on collaboration, but we think that the potential at this point in France for Bittium is clearly smaller than its potential for operating as primary communication system supplier in some of the other countries in which Bittium operates given the tough competitive situation, despite the French market being large.
SEB Research SEB Research