In the years since the Google Glass was first unveiled and Pokémon Go became a worldwide hit on mobile devices, the augmented reality (AR) industry has undergone a series of increasingly important incremental evolutions. While slowly adopted during the early to mid 2010’s, extraordinary progress was made throughout the pandemic years as visiting physical locations, and interacting with various physical items became non-viable for extended periods of time across the globe.
In addition to its pandemic successes, many have heralded AR shopping as the green method to combat mass amounts of returned items from e-commerce stores clogging up landfills worldwide. These factors forced many to realize the wide-reaching strengths that augmented reality bears across a vast majority of industries, one company that is fueling this innovation is our most recent partner; Nextech AR Solutions. Tri-listed on the CSE ($NTAR), OTCQX ($NEXCF) and the FRA ($EP2), Nextech currently has a market cap of $76.6M CAD and alongside their spun-off subsidiary, ARway, boasts that they are the first publicly-traded AR solutions provider!
Nextech is helmed by CEO Evan Gappelberg, who’s extensive history within the technology and M&A spaces drew him towards founding Nextech. Prior to starting Nextech in 2018, Evan was the founder and managing director of Atlas Advisors, an independent investment bank based in NYC. He then started Nextech with what he describes as “a back of the napkin idea” and a funding round of $3M. Nextech, and its vast portfolio of subsidiary companies are setting out to create a shared AR technology ecosystem that can provide users a full suite of solutions to bring their AR dreams to life! While this may seem like a daunting task, the journey will be championed and guided by the extensive experience that CTO Nima Sarshar brings to the table.
To start, Nima is a born innovator who holds patents across a variety of machine learning, SEO, and multimedia learning platform applications. Nima’s background is highlighted by his time as the principal data scientist at Intuit, his work with Apple’s machine learning team, along with his experience as the co-founder of Threedy.ai, which was acquired and absorbed by Nextech in June of 2021. Nima has a history of spearheading revolutionary technological movements while turning grand designs into reality.
Speaking of the Nextech ecosystem, it’s pertinent that we discuss Toggle 3D - Nextech’s no-code 3D design studio that aims to capitalize on the forecasted $11B CAD design file market in 2023. This revolutionary program has been in use for multiple quarters, and luckily for investors, Nextech’s structure and mission permit those who hold Nextech to receive a stock dividend of Toggle3D within the next few months. This arrangement is nearly identical to the spinoff of ARway, which occurred on October 26 of last year and created immense shareholder value.
For some context, ARway operates as a no-code mapping and spatial navigation platform that can be fitted to any size of space. Through the stock dividend of ARway issued to holders of Nextech, investors were able to enjoy what was initially a 4% yield on their Nextech shares - however, those who held onto their ARway shares would have seen a 10x return in a matter of weeks!
Panning to Nextech’s financial health, the company has been growing at breakneck speeds on both a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis. In annual terms, between Q3 ’21 and Q3 ‘22 the company’s operating income, and net income grew by 45.6%, and 46.4% respectively. Over the same timeline, they drove earnings per share (EPS) up by a whopping 53.3% while cutting total liabilities by 41.8%.
Furthermore, this growth doesn’t appear to be slowing anytime soon as Nextech has recently closed customizable CAD model hosting deals with some of the world’s largest retailers; Amazon, Target, and Walmart just to name a few. We’ll be diving into more detail on these exciting deals, and even get a chance to sit down with CEO Evan Gappelberg within our further coverage of this fantastic company so stay tuned!
