Nearmap (ASX: NEA) has announced a US acquisition, so its share price is on watch this morning.
Nearmap is a leader of aerial imagery technology and location data, providing frequently-updated, high-resolution aerial imagery. It currently operates in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and is one of the ten largest aerial survey companies in the world by annual data collection volume.
What Is Nearmap Acquiring?
Nearmap is acquiring technology and intellectual property from Primitive LLC (Pushpin), which Nearmap called a deep learning and analytics technology company that extracts data to provide roof geometry insights.
The acquisition will cost US$3.5 million. Management said this is consistent with its commitment to accelerate growth with “targeted and selective” acquisitions using the $70 million of capital it raised just over a year ago.
The technology allows Nearmap to rapidly extract and disseminate roof geometry from its widescale 3D content and offer a new type of location intelligence to customers.
The company will be able to provide a semi-automated calculation and extracted representation of any roof geometry within an hour, which is a significant reduction of the turnaround time.
Nearmap said that the combination of 3D content from Nearmap and geometry extraction technology from Pushpin opens up a number of uses allowing businesses to fast-track quoting and fulfillment of roofing projects, determine solar irradiance, plan drone delivery routes and model 5G propagation.
Nearmap Executive Vice President, Technology and Engineering Dr Tom Celinski said: “The addition of geometry extraction technology into our large-scale 3D reality models will enable us to further evolve our offering and produce at scale roofing geometry.
“With the added ability to provide roof geometry data, we will be able to provide even deeper insights into what’s happening in urban environments and help businesses and government organisations profoundly change the way they work.”
In early trading the Nearmap share price is down around 1% with the ASX 200 down 0.2%.
