Good Morning.
Please enjoy my chat with Andrew Roughan.
We started with a broad overview of the business and investment case.
Then on the commercial side, I pushed on where Project Ixian actually stands after more than a year of commercial conversations, what real data has come out of the Gloucestershire Police pilot, and what revenue looks like over the next 12 months.
A significant portion of the conversation focused on capital structure and, more pointedly, governance around the Defence Fund.
I asked directly about dilution risk following the June placing at 1p and the cash runway ahead of the next contract.
The sharper questions concerned potential conflicts of interest - the company’s Finance Director’s dual role as CEO of First Sentinel and the Fund’s fee-earning adviser; the fact that three of four Founding Principals are Defence Holdings executives who hold personal carry on Fund investments while Defence Holdings itself is excluded from that carry; and who decides whether a Meridian-sourced opportunity gets developed in-house (benefiting public shareholders) versus routed into the Fund (benefiting the Principals).
On product delivery, I moved past broad categories and got some specifics: whether the naval platform work referenced last year can now be characterised, whether the NVIDIA relationship is formalised and — given four product lines are in the ‘hopper’ — which one now looks most likely to convert.
Finally, I asked about team and positioning relative to the Palantir comparison Roughan has drawn himself, progress on Meridian’s first cohort against its original target of 10 companies, and whether recent political tailwinds might translate into anything commercial.
I closed by putting it straight to him on behalf of the investor base - asking him for evidence the business is stronger today than when shares traded at 4p, how he’d want to be judged against in 12 months, and what success means to ALRT going forward.
It’s a cracker.
Tune in!
