Electro Optic Systems Holdings Ltd

ASX:EOS

Q2-2025 Earnings Call

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Electro Optic Systems 2025 Half Year Results. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Clive Cuthell, CFO and COO. Please go ahead.

[Clive Cuthell, executive]

Thank you, Drew. Good morning, everybody. This is the EOS half year results webinar. This morning, we will be talking to a presentation that was filed on the Australian Stock Exchange earlier today. In that presentation, we're on Page 2. And the agenda today will be an update from Andreas, our CEO, on the first half highlights and the business update. I will then go through the financial results for the first half, and then Andreas will go back through the strategic growth drivers and the summary and outlook for the business. At the end of that, we will open the call up for questions. And as Drew said, we'll -- if you want to ask questions please press star and one and that will go in the queue. So I'm going to hand this back to Andreas now, and we will talk to the presentation that was filed on the ASX earlier.

Andreas?

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

Thank you, Clive, for the introduction. My name is Andreas Schwer, CEO of EOS. I would like to start presenting you the summary and then the highlights of the first half of 2025. If you please swap to Page #4, the business summary. The key headline is that we could grow our contract backlog by $171 million since December 2024. We are standing now at $307 million at August 22, and we expect to further increase this number significantly before year-end.

Our revenue is heavily back-end loaded this year. We have reached $44 million in the first half. There's no worrying sign. Again, it's heavily backloaded. And as a consequence of this revenue figure, also the EBITDA was going down compared to last year, but also here, no worrying is needed. The gross margin went up by 32% from the first half of 2024 to now 76% and the cash balance, including the term deposits is $130 million at the end of June 2025. We will get a significant deeper level of financial insight and more background information on those figures by Clive in a few minutes, and it's then following from Slide 17 onwards.

If we have a quick look on the summary sheet on the lower side of the page, the market conditions are extremely strong. The geopolitical uncertainty is remaining very strong and the technological disruption on the fields in the conflict zones are evolving, asking for very agile adaptation of our technologies and [ DS EOS ], we are an agile company ready to adopt and bring in new innovation in order to cope with the upcoming requirements into changing requirements on the battlefield.

So we expect the tailwinds to continue on the long run. Long run means at least 5 to 10 years with a strong European rearmament and also with a significant increase in sales into the Middle Eastern region. We could prove over the last 6 months, once again, our ability to commercialize our IP base. We have introduced now new Counter-Drone RWS weapon stations. We have signed the first 100-kilowatt High Energy Laser Weapon contracts to an international client, and we have received contracts in Space Control, which is paving the way to also make here a commercial product line accessible to our clients within short to midterm. Overall, we could provide lots of evidence that U.S. has the capability to deliver growth while we are still exercising a significant capital discipline.

Let's move on to Slide #5. What are the year-to-date highlights? So during the first half of 2025, we could continue to diversify our order book and to significantly strengthen our balance sheet. In January, we received a receipt of $160 million proceeds from the divestment of EM Solutions. You might remember, we've decided to divest EM Solutions because there was no more strategic fit with the key company objectives, which are the Counter-Drone business and the Space Warfare business and the High Energy Laser Weapon business.

In January, we could by that also repay all of our remaining debt. Today, the company is debt free. In May, we signed a AUD 53 million deal on the Slinger Counter-Drone Order. In June, we received cash of about AUD 60 million from the finalization of a significant Middle Eastern contract. And in July, we have already announced that one. We got a couple of smaller contracts predominantly in the Space segment from -- predominantly from the Commonwealth, which allows us to further expand our product capability and our R&D base into Space Control.

In August, we got another type of -- another contract of this type, which is allowing us to do the next step, and we are optimistic to sign further orders also in this domain, allowing us to execute our Space Systems strategic plan. We also signed and that's, I think, the key highlight of this Space, we signed a couple of days ago, the worldwide first 100-kilowatt High Energy Laser Weapon contract to an export client with a contract value of about AUD 125 million. I will come back to this point in a few minutes from now.

Please go to Page #6. So the market conditions are exceptionally positive due to the geopolitical changes, due to the relationship between the United States of America and European countries, triggering much more demand on the European side than ever expected before and continuing regional tensions in the various regions. We see a rapid technology change in conflict areas, predominantly driven by new application of drones and artificial intelligence. Those kinds of changes are requesting new kind of answers, new kind of technologies, which EOS is placing at the forefront because we are well equipped in our IT base to offer those kind of new equipment and technologies to all of our clients.

So as we can talk about the kind of growth super cycle that's also underlined by the budgets. You can see that in 2024, the United States have spent about 3.4% of the GDP into Defense. The rest of NATO, obviously, all the European countries on average about 2%. And based on the latest commitments of all the NATO member states, this will grow to 5% over GDP within the next 10 years. So a huge growth perspective.

If you please swap to Page #7, which is labeled the rise of Drone Warfare. And you see some interesting picture on the left side. You can see some pictures of drones having a small box hanging below them. Those boxes are canisters having more than 50 kilometers of very thin fiber optical cables inside. With those fiber optical cables, operators can operate drones over distance of 50 kilometers, sending the commands through those cables, making those drones un-vulnerable by jamming and by spoofing. That means that those drones can only be intercepted and killed by taking it out by hard kill by shooting them down from the sky. That is new as jamming and spoofing was very easy to use and very cheap mechanism to hold them off. That's gone that's history.

On the right side, you can see the number of drone attacks compared to the number of missile attacks. And you can see that there's a strong trend towards drones simply by the fact of cost. It keeps the cost and the investment of the [indiscernible] are low, and it offers us as EOS as the anti-drone company, huge opportunity from now on.

I go to Page #8. The Drone business, the drone threat is not characterized by Group IV and V drones like it's shown here in the middle of this page. Predominantly, the drones being in operation are Group I, II and Group III drones. Those kind of drones, we can shoot down with all our effectors, whether it's a kinetic kill effector with our worldwide benchmark R400, for example, whether it's our High Energy Laser Weapon system or whether it's rocket systems, which we also can formally integrate in our remote weapon system platforms.

Those kinds of drones are attacking not only military assets, but also civilian assets. Assets not only being at the front line, but assets being far in the backyard in your country, 500,000 kilometers away from the front line. That's causing now the need to protect even those kind of backyard enterprises and infrastructures, which is causing much more of demand than we have thought before.

So drone defense becomes extremely critical and drone defense needs to be highly accurate because the window of opportunity to shoot down a drone is very limited, just a few seconds. It has to be very economical because there's a limited amount of budget and there's an equation to be fulfilled to shoot down a drone, which only costs you about $100 to $1,000. It must be layered because there are still attacks coming from missiles and hypersonic vehicles in the future. It must be well coordinated. It needs to be controlled by the C2 system, clearly allocating the best kind of weapon system to defeat the various kinds of threats.

If we swap please to Page #9. Here, you can see that the key EOS products are complementary within a very comprehensive and layered counter-drone defense system. We are at the core of what is needed to have a layered air defense system against drones composed mainly by remote weapon systems. And again, those weapon systems are not only carrying cans, they can also carry Laser Dazzlers, and we have those products in our range that can carry rockets, air defense missiles and other kinds of equipment. Secondly, the High Energy Laser Weapon where we have developed a range between 50 and 150 kilowatts that is unique in the world. With our High Energy Laser Weapon, we are in a position to shoot on up to 20 drones per minute, and we can shoot them down over complete hemisphere.

The laser weapon is the only weapon which can shoot in the vertical, avoiding threats like kamikaze type of drones, routering ammunition, which fall down in a quite vertical way. Only the laser weapon can engage against those kind of vertical threats. And as I was mentioning before, we can also integrate rocket systems on our weapon stations. All those kind of systems, except for the laser weapon has been deployed in Ukraine warfare. We have more than 200 systems successfully in operation. And you will find hundreds of videos testing their successful operation spread around social media channels such as Telegram. Again, we are predominantly going against Group I, II and Group III drones. Those are the drones which are predominantly attacking the Ukrainian grounds and the same in other conflict areas. It's all about range, accuracy and our systems are known to be at least 30% more accurate than the next best-in-class.

By that, they are highly effective. It's about acquisition costs to keep them low and affordable and tenant-based air defense is very affordable. It comes in with very low operating costs. And if you look to the cost per drone kill, we talk here about $50 to $100 for a drone kill by kinetic bullet. We talk about $1 to $10 only for a kinetic kill by a High Energy Laser Weapon. It's just the cost of the energy and about $10,000 to $15,000 of $20,000 if you shoot the drone down by a rocket.

Page #10, please. It shows our worldwide bestseller and worldwide benchmark in the anti-drone tenant-based business, which is called Slinger. Our Slinger product, which has its origin in the R400 platform has been baselined meanwhile by more and more NATO countries. Among them is the United States of America. The British government has more or less decided to go ahead with a Slinger as a baseline for their troops. The French government has asked us to provide weapon systems for testing. We have sold it to the Germans to other Western NATO countries to the Middle East and also to the Far East. So it's becoming the kind of baseline and the kind of standard on the market of which we are extremely proud of.

Please go to Page #11. We signed this month the worldwide first export contract of a 100-kilowatt laser weapon. I cannot emphasize this enough. It is a breakthrough for Electro Optic Systems and it's a breakthrough for the entire laser weapon industry. It's the first time that 100-kilowatt laser weapon will go into an operational scenario. It is more than a demonstrator. It is no more kind of prototype. It's not for testing. It's for operation for the first time worldwide. Since we have signed this contract with a customer, which is a Western European NATO member, which we are not suppose to disclose, since we have received this contract, we received many inquiries from other countries, not only NATO countries, all being very much interested in this type of product, and we are very optimistic to realize further sales in the future and to become a worldwide leader in this kind of upcoming new market and business segment.

We've signed this contract at a price of EUR 71 million, which is more than the typical sales price of a recurring unit as this contract comes with lots of additional tasks and duties such as the integration into multilayered air defense system, including complicated testing and other assets, which are typically not within the framework of a recurring procurement program. So we expect that the recurring price of such a system is around USD 40 million to USD 50 million. And if you go into mass production, and that's what we plan to do over the next 3 years, the prices can go down significantly. We will produce those systems in our Singaporean Innovation Center and the company is ready to transfer IPs and to localize this technology at customer wish within the territory.

The project we have signed is extremely profitable, and it is cash flow positive as all of our other projects are cash flow positive. You can see the laser comes in a container. The container is put on the backside of a truck. It can stay on the truck, but it can be dismounted from the truck depending on customer requirements. It is usually used to protect critical infrastructure, which could be military air bases, civil airports, could be nuclear power stations, other kind of high-end power infrastructure, harbors, cities, capital cities, could be palaces, religious places, sportive activities and so on.

The customers have declared to us that they have done a kind of estimate and they believe that they need for each in any country, more than 100 to 300 systems to just protect the most essential critical infrastructure within the territories. That can give you a kind of flavor on the market volume, the market potential. And I can tell you that today, there's only one competitor outside the U.S., which is competing against us in the 100 kilowatts domain. It is only one competitor. And if you just use normal arithmetics, so we should assume a market share of around 50% in the non-U.S. market, which is giving us an extremely positive and promising outlook.

We swap to Page #12. I would like to talk a little bit about space and our space capabilities. If you remember our previous calls, we always were saying that we are going to develop our future space capabilities in relation to space control. And we have delivered on this commitment as you could secure customer funding to develop this kind of road map and to go into this range. We've received a couple of contracts for up to today, and we expect some further contracts to come to get a fully funded development pipeline and to be able to offer our clients a full range of space control activities by 2027, 2028.

Please go to Page #13. You might remember this kind of slide. We always bring it up in order to show you where we are and to show you our progress and to provide evidence. So the market are extremely positive. So we can give a tick. It is extremely promising. The products are there. We have launched this year the R500. We have the R800, the R400 and the R150 in the market. All of those families will have a counter U.S. version. All of those family members will have a naval version. So we have overall by far the broadest product portfolio on the market.

We've increased our sales and marketing activities, not only by having invested heavily in demonstrations in live hiring shooting campaigns, but also we've increased our focus on Europe by setting up an office in the Netherlands. Further offices and footprints will come and by having hired a significant number of salespeople or sales experts. Just to give some more words on the demonstrations, we have recently succeeded in, I would say, the world's most renowned comparative drone shooting campaign, which is -- which was happening in the U.S. During that event, which was happening in April, we were competing against all the other remote demonstration providers worldwide.

This kind of contest was organized by the U.S. Army and Northrop Grumman, the famous cannon provider. So it was really a head-to-head competition, and we again succeeded. We have won this contest shooting down by far more drones than anybody else. And the feedback which we received from more than 50 delegations, which we are coming from around the world was extremely promising. And a consequence of that, several NATO countries have announced and have prepared decisions to go ahead with a Slinger kind of consideration and to make Slinger the baseline for the future Counter-Drone cannon-based warfare. So a big tick to that box.

And on the right side, we can also give now a first tick onto that box because we could increase our contract backlog to $307 million, which is $136 million up compared to December '24. This was predominantly done by or achieved by 2 significant order intakes. It was the $53 million Slinger order intake in May and the laser intake I was just mentioning in August 2025.

We are very optimistic to sign further contracts over the next few weeks and months, and we are optimistic to have a much better contract backlog by end of this year, better than the $307 million shown here.

This is also reflected on Page #14. You can see the growth in contract backlog. And again, it's just a starting point. We are very optimistic to further increase this before end of this year by various other contracts, which are close to signature. I will come to some more details on the next slide.

Slide #15, the market development update. So we are very optimistic to be invited pretty soon for negotiations on the Australian LAND 156 counter-drone capability project. That is the contract for Australia, which will form the standard solution for counter U.S. business, and we are very optimistic to be selected within the team of winners to provide this capability to the Australian forces over the next years.

We're also very optimistic on the LAND 400 project. That's the project where we deliver weapon stations on Hanwha Redback vehicles that was pending for a very long time. This kind of pending period is coming to an end pretty soon, and we are very optimistic to sign here a contract to fill up our order pipeline even more. The Ukrainian opportunities are always or have been always a mix between a conditional direct sale to Ukrainians and donations from Western European countries. We can tell you that we are in very advanced negotiations with 2 Western countries to realize this kind of conditional direct sale and to make this really happen and ready for delivery.

We also expect further contracts in the High Energy Laser domain orders coming in between the range of 30 to 100 kilowatts, not over the next few months, but definitely in 2026. We have discussions ongoing and not only for low order quantities, we have 2 clients which have expressed a clear interest in purchasing up to 100 laser systems for their country. So there are huge opportunities. It takes some time. Those huge contracts are complicated negotiations. But I can tell you that we have received so many inquiries from countries across the globe that we are very optimistic for this product domain. I do not want to go into each and any line here, but you can see that our order pipeline is very healthy. It's very full. It is a multibillion-dollar pipeline, and we are very optimistic to increase our revenue by this kind of execution.

I would like to hand over now to Clive, our Chief Financial Officer, to go further into the details on our financials. Clive, please.

[Clive Cuthell, executive]

Thanks, Andreas. So turning to Page 17 of the deck we filed on the ASX this morning. So the revenue for the first half was previously announced towards the end of June. We announced at the end of June that we expected revenue of $40 million to $45 million for the first half. And today, we are announcing it was, in fact, $44 million. So this slide does have a little bit more detail on the result than we previously announced.

And notably, the gross margin on materials was 76%. That includes the benefit of the finalization of the large contract that we completed in the Middle East towards the end of last year. And as that was finalized and the final cash payments were received in June, we had a benefit to the income statement that flowed through the gross margin line. Also looking at the P&L, the finance cost line has finance costs of $16 million in it, which includes 13 million, which is the final make-whole payment on the retirement of all of the debt that occurred at the end of January.

I would like to highlight down on the bottom right of this Page 17 is the revenue chart, which shows the split of our revenue by geography. And the result for the first half, as the chart shows, is more diverse than ever. So this is evidence that we are continuing to execute on our strategy of widening the customer base of the business across the globe and by commercializing our IP. I would also highlight that the results on this page are for our continuing operations.

As many people will know, in January 2025, we divested of a noncore business called EMS for proceeds of $160 million. The net gain on that disposal was AUD 90 million, and that benefit flowed through to the net assets recorded for the business.

Turning to Page 18, which shows the segment results for our 2 different business segments. I'm taking the Space Systems segment result first. The revenue in the half of $5 million is again an increase on the previous year, and this reflects the activities that Andreas mentioned earlier, where we continue to secure contracts from government customers which are funding the product development work that we are doing in the space business as we develop capabilities in the area of Space Control. It's very important to us that we use customer and third-party funding rather than shareholders' money for product development in this area, and we're pleased to see that success coming through these results.

The Defense Systems result shown at the top of the page. So as Andrea said, the numbers here reflect the completion of a very large order towards the end of last year. So the lower revenue reflects that. As you can see, the business was a bit subscale in the first half, and our focus has been on growing the order book. So with an order book now of over AUD 300 million, that we expect that to help return the business to a much stronger result in the second half of '25 and going on into 2026.

Cash flow is on Page 19. Our cash flow for the first half was previously disclosed at the end of July in our standard ASX filing. So the data on this page is not new. But just to recaps the first half cash flow, Cash receipts from customers was much stronger than revenue with $100 million receipts from customers, including the final payment that we mentioned earlier from the customer in the Middle East.

It is -- when you get a big final payment from a customer like that one in the Middle East, it's very strong evidence of a positive relationship and it's promising for some of the follow-on orders that we are working on in the pipeline. The cash flow also shows the investing cash flows. So the net investing cash flows was an inflow of just under $100 million, and that includes the proceeds of the sale of the EM Solutions business, which was $160 million inflow, offset by some cash investments that we made in term deposits of $40 million and offset by CapEx of $10 million. The financing cash flows during the first half of $50 million includes debt repayments of $48 million during the period, which is the principal that was repaid as well as the make whole I mentioned earlier.

So the net result of this cash flow is that at the end of June, we had cash balances, including term deposits of AUD 130 million. This -- and on top of that, we have some cash security deposits of $50 million as well. So this cash position, I would emphasize, is a very big turnaround from 2 to 3 years ago when the company had debt of $130 million. And that turnaround has only been achieved because of strategic discipline and operational discipline in the way that we run the business.

What does that look like? On Page 20, there's an update on the balance sheet. And we've highlighted on Page 20, the work we've done over the last 2 to 3 years to manage working capital. The net amount invested in contract assets, so that's work done not paid for with customers. Back in 2022, we had $140 million of shareholders' money tied up in working capital and contracts. So we have been very disciplined in our approach to driving that down over the last 2 to 3 years. And we're very pleased to flag today that today, we are in a net cash positive position on contracts. So as at 30 June, adding up the total picture across all of our contracts, customers have paid us $15 million ahead of time for work that we have to do. So we will continue to run the business with a focus on securing cash flow positive contracts and then executing on time.

We are also, as many people know, continuing to make targeted investments in long lead supply risks, and that has included cannons last year and small amounts invested in germanium-related supplies over the first half. This has given us a significant competitive advantage during the half. One of the Slinger contracts that we signed for $53 million was underpinned by the fact that we could deliver very quickly, and that's because of some of the investments we've made in supply chain in the past. Going from operational balance sheet management to the strategic side, as mentioned, we disposed the noncore business earlier in the year.

Our approach to capital rationing will remain disciplined. We will focus on customer-funded product development. And during the last month, we've signed the high-energy laser contract, which is customer-funded expansion. And it is paying that contract that we've signed for the High Energy Laser Weapon includes the setup of a low-volume manufacturing facility in Singapore. And as Andreas mentioned, in the area of Space Systems, we've secured significant customer funding more for product development in that area. So the result of all of that is the reduction in debt that we mentioned earlier, and that disciplined approach is going to continue.

On Page 21, we do have a number of investment opportunities that we continue to review and develop. These include opportunities in the areas of remote weapon systems and counter drone. So we are intent on maintaining our market leadership position in Counter-Drone technology, and that will include looking at opportunities to continue improving, particularly the software side of our Counter-Drone products, whether it's Remote Weapon Systems or the targeting and software support that sits behind our High Energy Laser Weapon.

High Energy Laser Weapons are an emerging market. And as we've communicated, EOS is in a very strong position with this world first export contract for 100-kilowatt system. We intend to invest in market development and growth and establish market leadership in this high-growth emerging market. And finally, we will be continuing to review any opportunities to accelerate growth in our core strategic areas, provided they meet the criteria that we assess as a management team and a Board. Any acquisitions need to fit strategically with our business and be financially attractive and have manageable execution risks. So the company has got to the financial position it's in today with a disciplined approach, as we've mentioned, that will continue to apply as we allocate capital.

I'm now going to hand back to Andreas, who will talk about the strategic growth update. Over to you, Andreas.

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

Thanks, Clive. Gentlemen, ladies, please switch to Page #23. We are executing on our strategic goals. We are delivering on our key strategic goals by commercializing our IP in our Remote Weapon Systems business, in the Counter-Drone business and in Space Control, we can tick the boxes on what we have done on RWS because we have launched lots of new products. We are seen as the most innovative RWS company worldwide.

We are extremely aggressive in the market going into key markets, in particular, in Europe and the Middle East, which we consider being the biggest growth markets for U.S. in the short and midterm. We have now launched after 2 years of intense testing and development, the first contract of 100-kilowatt laser weapon system, which is just a starting point into a new area of and a new kind of, I would say, time for High Energy Laser Weapons, which will be acquired by lots of countries. Everybody is considering the High Energy Laser Weapon domain as being a key enabling technology, not only for the anti-drone warfare, but also for other applications in the future. So we will focus on that one, and we do our very best to become a key leading global player in this Laser Weapon business.

And we can also put a tick after our Space Control box here, a tick which was not that obvious because we were a little bit skeptical and how quickly we can achieve the first steps in our long-lasting product development plan and plan going over 3 years to produce the full product range of capabilities to serve our customer needs in the areas of being able to dazzle satellites, being able to destroy sensors and being able to disable even complete satellites in space from ground. That is also a groundbreaking achievement once we have done and executed this kind of development plan. We are now in the kind of the middle of it and we are very optimistic to get this job done.

Some words on the market, the Space Control market is also coming quicker than we have expected, quicker than we have anticipated. That's happening because of a major event in the United States where the President Donald Trump has announced to launch $175 billion program called Golden Dome, which is more or less doing the same thing to engage against missiles and satellites from ground and also from space. And we are a player in this kind of domain, and we are most likely the only player outside the U.S. being able to deliver similar kind of competencies and products to key clients.

That is a big tick, and this is having us a lot, if you go to Page #24, to execute on our 2 key strategic growth initiatives. Number one is obviously our High Energy Laser Weapon, which is boosting U.S. into another layer of revenue generation and earnings. And then as a second step, the kind of Space Control or Space Warfare business, which will push us again into another leap. Those kind of systems have great potential for U.S. because each system sells for a much higher price than the remote station. Those systems are of huge importance for U.S. because the kind of competitive landscape is not as wide as it is for remote systems. We are quite alone there with very few competitors. And that is giving us lots of confidence that if we deliver on those domains, we will become the global market leader, and we have a great future ahead of us.

If you please go to Page #26 to summarize, the markets are extremely supportive and promising. We have divested our noncore business, and we are concentrating now on our core strategic focus areas, which are the anti-drone business which are the High Energy Laser Weapon business and the Space Control business. We've strengthened our balance sheet to support this kind of growth. We are ready for some kind of M&A transactions. And we have delivered as promised, we have done what we said, we will continue being extremely disciplined on the allocation of capital. We will not invest heavy money into own developments, but instead we use customer-funded initiatives and customer funding for those kind of research and development programs.

We have announced already and that is underlining once again, we expect that the 2025 revenue will be extremely biased towards the second half of this year, but we remain very confident in that and we continue to build up our contract backlog with some very promising contracts, which we hope to be able to sign before end of this year. This is concluding the presentation part of our today's call.

I would like now to go into the Q&A session. So it's open for questions now.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Owen Humphries from Canaccord.

[Owen Humphries, analyst]

It looks like opportunities there are plenty here. Let's just go straight to the elephant here around the High Energy Laser. So it's signed in 2025 for completion in 2028. So it's going to take 4 years to build to have a live product in the market. Can you just talk us through how other nations or governments or defense departments are looking at this? Do they want to see a live product in market in 2028? Like how will you layer the signings and contracts? Will they say, wait for the product in market before they actually start paying you money? Or do you think that will be part of the product development process?

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

So let me answer the question. So first of all, the build on delivery time is not 4 years, it's about 2.5 years. So revenue generation is predominantly happening in 2026, 2027. We also aim to deliver the product earlier than contractually required. So we are very optimistic from that respect. We have in-house -- an in-house laser demonstrator, which is our 36-kilowatt demonstrator, which we use to showcase the base technology to our clients. Our laser technology is a modular technology.

So if you show them a 30, 40, 50, 60-kilowatt version here understands how the system is working. And you can understand if you scale up the system by adding more modules and by clustering more modules, you can easily understand what the resulting effect on range and power would be. So he does not need to see 100 to 150-kilowatt version to be convinced about the maturity of the product.

Nevertheless, we are trying to build our own 100-kilowatt laser weapon demonstrator, which we own and with which we can do demonstrations across the globe. That is what we have mentioned under the M&A and investment opportunities. We want to build our own demonstrator because we believe we can trigger more sales. And you're right to that respect, we can trigger more sales if we have a high-end laser demonstration -- demonstrator. And then if we have 2 models at hand that we can do even parallel demonstrations at the same time in different countries. That's our objective.

So the market wants to see some tests, most of the clients, but not all. Some clients, they are simply happy to see that a NATO client has signed a contract that is more than enough in terms of an evidence plus the client with whom we have signed this contract is a very well-established organization, very stringent and very demanding in terms of quality, maturity of the product. So this kind of quality [indiscernible] coming with this contract is for many clients enough to just say we hook on this contract and we also click in and order to the same terms and conditions, our systems from within this contract. And the contract is structured in such a way that other NATO clients can easily click in and more or less say, we want to have another 1 or 2 following the same kind of contract scheme. It is a kind of NATO best practice to structure contracts like that, and we will benefit from that.

[Owen Humphries, analyst]

So I'm just trying to understand like how the contracting and ordering process work while there's many opportunities countries talking to you will they take a wait-and-see approach? I'm just trying to like they may sign up that the heavy lifting is done by this partner right now in 2.5 years of your product in the field. I'm trying to work out how the timing kind of plays out here, like everyone is kind of watching or do you expect FY '26, there will be -- people get comfortable that this is live and then there'll just be an ordering process in 2026, '27 to deliver in '27, '28.

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

So multiple countries have ongoing procurement programs in plan, tenders coming up, sometimes even tenders being released to the market for laser weapon systems between 30 and 150 kilowatts. So we can immediately apply with partners or without partners to those kind of tenders. Those kind of tenders usually come with a kind of request for demonstration, which we can fulfill because we have those demonstrators at hand, whereas our competitors, most of them don't have demonstrators at hand because they have to go through real development programs. We do not need to go through a development program because our system is ready. It might be customized for specific needs, but the base product and the base technology is there, and that's the convincing argument.

Again, so some clients will ask for demonstration as being part of this overall tender process. Some other clients are happy with what they have seen with the signature of this NATO country contract and some other clients first want to see the laser weapon in operation with our demonstrator. We can do that before they give us in a sole source procurement mode of contract without going through a tender. That is typically happening in the Middle East.

But I can tell you that the contract which we have signed last week or 2 weeks ago was also a sole source procurement. The client said, there is no alternative on the market other than U.S. There's nobody who can deliver on those terms, 100-kilowatt solution. So there's no reason to go through a tender process. That's also a testimony of our unique market positioning. That's how we signed the first contract. And in those cases, usually, you have to undergo a financial audit to justify your price. That was the reason why this first contract was delayed by about half year. That's the price you have to pay if you are not going through a tender, but we were very happy to do that because it underlines our leadership position in the market.

So coming back to the time line, yes, we expect to be able to sign contracts in 2026, simply by the fact that we are now participating to tenders and that we have inquiries from countries which are ready to sign contracts without even going through a kind of demonstration process. But we are planning to do those demonstrations. We are planning to do a demonstration in Australia before end of this year, and we are planning to do a demonstration end of the first quarter next year in the Middle East, plus potentially some further tests. It depends on the time line of the other 2 campaigns. I hope that answers your question.

[Owen Humphries, analyst]

That's good. That's great. And just on Slide #31 there, just on the market development update. Just there's a large contract there with the Middle East R500, you talked about this for a little bit now. That's obviously a major opportunity as an existing customer. Can you just talk through any progress there in the last kind of 6 months or last little while? And the reason why I ask that is because it seems like a major catalyst or major opportunity in 2026.

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

This contract was planned to be a kind of successor contract of our R400 product to the Middle East or to the United Arab Emirates. The R400 to the UAE, the Finnish contract was not a counter U.S. kind of product. It was a kind of traditional Counter-Drone Warfare type of R400 product. And that was the baseline also for our R500 discussions. In the meantime, the customer -- the UAE customer has participated to various demonstrations to our live firing shootings, one we have done in Australia. And he also participated to this one campaign in the U.S., which I was mentioning some minutes ago, which was a big success for U.S. And he said that some of his internal clients want to have another R500 in the counter U.S. configuration because the market needs are changing. That is causing some more complexity in the contract negotiation. The contract is not a single client.

So we signed with the UAE armed forces, but behind that are the LAND forces, the Navy, the National Guard, the Royal Guard. So different clients are asking for different versions. So it's a complex overall setup and needs more care in the negotiation than it was originally planned, but we are optimistic, very optimistic to get this contract awarded in the first half of next year. And it will be, I would assume, the largest contract the company will have signed by that point in time.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Baxter Kirk from Bell Potter.

[Baxter Kirk, analyst]

I just wanted to touch on Clive's comment about investing in software capabilities. Can you maybe flesh that out a bit more? What does that look like from a headcount point of view? And how do you think about weighing up near-term profitability versus investing in growth?

[Clive Cuthell, executive]

Yes. Just a couple of comments, and I'll pass to Andreas. We have a world-leading Counter-Drone system that is very, very good at shooting down with a kinetic system of drones. The future challenge that is coming towards the market is when drones continue to get smaller, cheaper and they turn into swarms of 20 or 100 drones. And nobody has technology on the market at the moment that has the software capability to shoot down 100 drones in a short space of time.

So EOS is looking at different ways of developing software capability that could be organic in-house or it could be acquisition, and we are looking at both. Typically, we would want to do that in a way that is not a big cost drain on the organization. So we would want to do that in a way that is funded and supported by customers in some way rather than being a large cost strain. But we need to look at whether if we do it ourselves, it takes a couple of years, whereas if we do an acquisition, there will obviously be a way to accelerate growth. But maybe, Andreas, do you want to comment on the technology side and the...

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

I will do, before I do that, just a few more words. So yes, we have increased the team size in Australia on the software side. So I think it's almost a double -- we've almost doubled the number of software engineers over the last few months, at least the number of positions which we have opened and which we're trying to fit up with qualified software engineers. We've recruited software engineers into our Singaporean center, and we will also recruit software engineers into our U.S.-based Huntsville-based facility. So it's growing also in-house.

If you look to the technology in the past or up to today, the kind of fighting scenario was always a weapon station, a manned weapon station fighting a single drone or a single kind of threat. That was a kind of classical engagement mode that's changing now.

And if you look further into the future, the future is characterized by large quantities of swarm attacking a certain quantity of vehicles or weapon stations on ground. Those swarms are controlled by AI, by movement patterns, which you need to understand and which you need to be able to predict. It's impossible that the human being is able to do that. So we need to orchestrate our weapon stations on ground in a way that they can also be cooperating in a way that we have to have embedded command and control systems on each and any weapon station.

The weapon stations are connected in a mesh type of network, allowing them to be as intelligent as the swarm is and to be able to defeat those kinds of drones. All this is software. It's not hardware. It's all software, and that is combined with AI competence. And that's the reason why we want to invest our money in this domain to keep our advantage and our leading edge over our competitors. That is the reason why this is probably at the top end of our strategic focus in terms of technical disciplines.

[Baxter Kirk, analyst]

Andreas. So I guess the key there is shooting as many drones down as possible in a swarm, and that's kind of a key point that you'll touch base with clients on.

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

Absolutely. It's the key point because we will face innovations in the future that a certain quantity of drones will attack that there is no defense option left to shoot them all down because you have this oversaturation of airspace. And yes, in that case, it's all about shooting down as many as possible, and that needs a highly accurate, highly agile kind of engagement with no more man in the loop because it simply takes too much time. So it must be fully robotic and computer-driven for that, you need to have AI. That's the key.

[Baxter Kirk, analyst]

Okay. Fantastic. Just moving on, I can see that the 2 or more than $500 million High Energy Laser Weapon contracts with their initial discussions. Can you maybe just talk a bit more about those opportunities?

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

We have 2 clients having asked us to start negotiations to provide the pricing for 100-kilowatt laser weapon systems. I mean you can do your own math what that means in terms of order intake. Obviously, the prices here go down at those quantities, but it also underlines the need and the threat scenario some countries are experiencing today so much at a stage that they say we cannot wait to go through a kind of staggered acquisition process where we just buy 1 or 2, we test for 2 years and go then for 10 and then another 50 and 100, it takes them too much time.

And they say the maturity is good enough now and the threat is so high. We want to immediately equip our key infrastructure with protective measures by your weapon system, the laser weapons. That is happening now. And I mean, it's not a contract which we will sign tomorrow. It's complicated. It's a huge investment by our clients. And it's also for us a huge not only opportunity because we need to be sure that we can handle those kind of contracts. It requires a very, I would say, delicate negotiation, and we have to take care for all kind of aspects. But again, it underlines the level of confidence of the market in the U.S. and the level of opportunities which we have ahead of us.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from [ Giuliano Sala Tenna ] with Bell Potter.

[Unknown Analyst]

My question was actually just asking just about those 2 larger laser contracts?

[Clive Cuthell, executive]

Thanks Giuliano. Drew, can we move on to the next question please.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Ryan Kenny.

[Unknown Analyst]

My question is about the production capacity and time frame for the High Energy Laser Weapon. So we've heard that significant numbers could be coming through. So I'd like to know what the current annual production rate would be, how that can change over time, how that would be executed and what the capital requirements after that?

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

So we will produce our High Energy Laser Weapon systems in the beginning in our new innovation -- at our new innovation center in Singapore, where we move -- we are just about to move into new facilities. Those facilities have also expansion potential. In total, we can carry on about 5 contracts in parallel.

But if you talk about this kind of mass production you were referring to, that would require a different dimension of production capacity, but that will not happen in Singapore because most of our clients are insisting on having a localized production site within their territory. For the simple reason that everybody is considering laser weapons as being a key enabling technology.

Nobody wants to be dependent from another government. They all want to have the supply chain under their own control. And if you go into those kind of large quantities, even more they will insist on settling down in the country and doing it locally there. So that means Singaporean capacities will not be affected by that. We have to set up quite a significant center in the host country. As we typically go into partnership with local champions, that means usually that our local partners is providing the required capital, is providing the necessary facilities. So usually we can produce within the existing facilities. So the overall CapEx requirements are quite small.

[Unknown Analyst]

And even if that was to happen, how long would it take, for example, to deliver 100 systems?

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

So typically, customers are giving a time frame of 5 to 7 years to deliver quantities like that. So in the case of 100, I would say it's rather at the high end, so probably 7 years.

[Operator]

I'll now hand back to Dr. Schwer for closing remarks.

[Andreas Schwer, executive]

So ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for spending your time with us. Thanks for your loyalty with EOS and your trust in the EOS leadership team. I think we could demonstrate once again that we do what we say and we execute our plans. We are extremely focused. We don't follow any kind of adventure to the left and the right. We simply stick to our strategy, again, which is based on the 3 pillars of counter U.S., High Energy Laser Weapons and Space Warfare. And we will continue on that. As all the indicators are positive, we are extremely optimistic to be able to deliver to your benefit with an increasing share price and growth in the company overall. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being with us. I wish everybody a good day.

[Operator]

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.