Boresight (ASX: BST) IPO: Inside the Counter-Drone Float
- Ephrem Joseph
- Jun 9
- 11 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
An Australian drone-target maker scaling into a global counter-drone wave — already in the field with allied militaries.
01 / The 60-Second Pitch
Boresight Ltd (proposed ASX: BST) is a Canberra-based defence-tech company listing on the ASX on 10 June 2026, having raised $8m at $0.20 per share. What makes it stand apart from the usual micro-cap float is simple: it already sells things to real customers. This is not a concept or a drill target — it’s an operating manufacturer with revenue, a product range, and a foothold inside allied militaries.
The product is deceptively mundane and rather clever. Modern warfare has been reshaped by cheap drones — for surveillance, and increasingly as weapons. Militaries now have to buy and operate counter-drone systems, and then train against the threat. Training against real, expensive ISR drones is wasteful; you don’t want to shoot down a $50,000 aircraft to test a jammer. Boresight’s answer is a range of low-cost “attritable” target drones — built to be cheap enough to be shot out of the sky repeatedly, but capable enough to mimic the threats soldiers will actually face. More targets, less money, more repetitions, better-trained operators.
The flagship is the BQ400 quadcopter target, backed by mission-planning software and a “swarming” ground-control system that lets one operator fly many targets at once — exactly the kind of complex, many-against-one scenario that C-sUAS crews need to rehearse. A fixed-wing target (the BF150) and a general-purpose quadcopter (ASCA) are in the pipeline.
The company said its military customers include 11 Western armed forces, listing the Australian Defence Force, British Army, Canadian Armed Forces, New Zealand Defence Force, the United States Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force, and the Dutch, Italian and Finnish armies.
The pitch to investors is a scaling story: take a proven, in-demand product and a thin manufacturing base, add public-market capital, and build capacity — expand the Fyshwick (Canberra) operation and stand up a US plant in Alabama to chase the world’s largest defence market. The tailwind is real and politically durable: Australia’s updated Integrated Investment Program commits an estimated $12–15bn to drone and autonomous systems through 2036, with counter-drone explicitly in scope.
What you’re buying, then, is early-stage exposure to a genuine business in a hot sector — with all the execution and concentration risk that “early-stage” implies.
02 / Boresight (ASX: BST) IPO Snapshot
Table 1 — IPO Snapshot
Item | Detail |
Company | Boresight Ltd (ACN 642 501 228) |
Proposed ASX Code | BST |
Offer Price | $0.20 per share |
Raise | $8.0m (40,000,000 shares, before costs) |
Indicative Market Cap | ~$41.8m (at offer price) |
Pro-forma Cash on Listing | ~$8.94m |
FY25 Revenue | $4.36m (FY24: $2.77m) |
FY25 Result | Net loss of ~$0.60m |
Lead Manager | CPS Capital |
Corporate Adviser | ARQ Capital |
Share Registry | Xcend |
Lodgement / Offer close / Quotation | 23 Apr / ~19 May / 10 June 2026 |
Sector | Defence technology — counter-drone (C-sUAS) training systems |
HQ / Operations | Fyshwick, ACT (Canberra); US facility in Madison/Huntsville, Alabama |
03 / Capital Structure & Dilution
Here the contrast with a typical explorer float is stark — and in Boresight’s favour. The $41.8m indicative market cap at a $0.20 offer price implies roughly 209 million shares on issue after listing. The 40 million new shares sold in the IPO therefore represent only about 19% of the company. Existing holders aren’t being washed out; they’re bringing the public in for a minority slice and keeping the lion’s share.
Table 2 — Capital Structure
Security | Shares | % of company |
Existing shares (pre-IPO) | 169,022,782 | 81% |
New IPO shares | 40,000,000 | 19% |
Total on listing | 209,022,782 | 100% |
That low dilution cuts both ways. It signals founders and early backers believe in the upside and want to keep it — good alignment. But combined with a heavily insider-held register (see Section 7), it also means the free float is small, which tends to mean thin liquidity and sharper price swings once trading begins. There’s also a meaningful options stack — the directors collectively hold well over 15 million options — which will sit over the stock as future dilution if exercised. Expect a chunk of insider stock to be escrowed for the usual 12–24 months; the prospectus has the detail.
04 / Use of Funds
Boresight IPO has been refreshingly plain about what the $8m is for: making more drones, faster, in more places. The proceeds are earmarked to expand the engineering and production teams, ramp up production in the United States, increase additive manufacturing (3D printing) capacity, and further vertically integrate the operation — alongside expanding the existing Canberra facility and leasing the larger Alabama site.
Table 3 — Use of Funds (as described)
Use | Purpose |
Manufacturing capacity | Expand Fyshwick (Canberra); increase additive-manufacturing capacity |
US expansion | Stand up / lease a larger facility in Madison–Huntsville, Alabama |
People | Grow engineering and production teams |
Vertical integration | Bring more of the supply chain in-house |
Working capital | General corporate purposes |
The prospectus does not publish a precise dollar split across these line items; the above reflects the categories management has disclosed.
The logic is sound: the binding constraint on a business like this isn’t demand, it’s the ability to build units at volume and at cost. The US footprint is the strategically interesting bit — Alabama (Huntsville is a major US defence-and-space hub) puts Boresight next to the world’s biggest defence buyer. It’s also where execution risk is concentrated and where export control and dual-use compliance become more complicated.
05 / The Business — What Boresight Actually Sells
This is the section an explorer can’t write, because there’s a real product line to describe.
Table 4 — Product & Service Range
Offering | What it is | Status |
BQ400 Quadcopter | The flagship — a cost-effective quadcopter target for C-sUAS training and testing (Figure 1) | In production / in field |
Swarming GCS | Ground-control + flight-management software letting one operator fly many targets at once | In use |
Mission Planning Software | Pre-defined flight profiles and escalating scenarios for repeatable training | In use |
ASCA GP-UAS Quadcopter | A general-purpose quadcopter platform | “Coming soon” |
BF150 | A fixed-wing target to replicate faster, fixed-wing threats | “Coming soon” |
The thesis hangs on the attritable idea: targets cheap enough to be destroyed routinely, but realistic enough to train against the evolving threat. That combination — low unit cost plus credible threat emulation plus software to orchestrate complex scenarios — is the moat Boresight is claiming, and it’s why it frames itself as the only ASX-listed pure-play in counter-drone training systems.
Figure 1: Boresight's BQ400. The flagship — a cost-effective quadcopter target (Source: Company Website)
The pipeline matters too. A fixed-wing target and a general-purpose platform would broaden the addressable training scenarios beyond quadcopters, but both are still “coming soon” — i.e. not yet revenue. For now, the BQ400 and the software around it are the engine.
06 / Traction & Financials
The reason to take Boresight seriously is the numbers it already has on the board.
Table 5 — Financial & Commercial Snapshot
Metric | Figure |
FY25 revenue | $4.36m |
FY24 revenue | $2.77m |
Revenue growth | ~+57% year-on-year |
FY25 net result | Loss of ~$0.60m |
Pro-forma cash on listing | ~$8.94m |
Units sold (since 2020) | 6,000+ target drones |
Customer base | 15 militaries across 12 countries |
Incorporated | 2020 (spun out of Criterion Solutions) |
Two things stand out. First, the revenue is real and growing fast — a ~57% jump in a year, off a base that’s already meaningful for a company of this size. Second, the loss is small (~$0.60m), which says this isn’t a cash-incinerating moonshot; it’s a near-breakeven business that needs capital to grow, not to survive. Pro-forma cash of ~$8.94m post-raise gives it a comfortable runway to fund the expansion.
The honest caveat is the shape of defence revenue. Government and military orders are lumpy and slow — they arrive as episodic contracts, not smooth subscription curves, and procurement timelines can stretch. A 57% growth rate is impressive but won’t necessarily repeat in a straight line; one delayed program can swing a half-year. Investors should watch the cadence of new orders post-listing more than any single revenue figure.
07 / The Board & Ownership
A company this early is a bet on the people and the relationships behind it — and Boresight’s register is tightly held by its founders and the company it was born from.
Table 6 — Board & Key Holders
Name | Role | Background/holding (at prospectus) |
Justin Olde | Managing Director & CEO | Joined 2022; previously 4+ years as an executive at Electro Optic Systems (ASX: EOS). Held no shares but 8m+ options. |
Michael Sinkowitsch | Co-founder, Executive Director | Former Australian Army officer. Held ~23.5%; 3.2m options. |
Dr Andrew Windsor | Non-Executive Chair (UK-based) | Held ~21.7%; 3.2m options. |
Blake Burton | Non-Executive Director (Perth) | Held ~0.36%; 1.2m options. |
Criterion Solutions | Substantial holder (related party) | Canberra defence & intelligence company that Boresight was spun out of in 2020; held ~25%. Sinkowitsch and Windsor are directors/shareholders. |
The strength is domain pedigree: a co-founder with Army experience, a CEO out of a listed defence company (EOS), and a parent (Criterion) embedded in the Canberra defence-and-intelligence ecosystem. These are people who know the customer and the procurement world.
The flip side is concentration and related-party exposure. Founders plus Criterion control a large majority of the register, and Criterion is both a major shareholder and the entity Boresight emerged from — a related-party relationship that warrants reading the prospectus’s disclosures on any ongoing arrangements. It also reinforces the thin-free-float point: with so much stock held by insiders (and likely escrowed), the freely traded portion is small.
08 / The Market — Why Now
The macro case is the easiest part of the story, and it’s genuinely strong.
Drones have changed warfare and public safety permanently. Cheap uncrewed systems are now used by sophisticated and unsophisticated adversaries alike, for surveillance and as weapons. That has forced militaries worldwide to acquire counter-drone systems — and, crucially, to train against the threat continuously. Counter-drone training is a structural, recurring need, not a one-off purchase, and that’s the slice Boresight occupies.
The funding backdrop is concrete. Australia’s updated Integrated Investment Program earmarks an estimated $12–15bn for drone and autonomous systems through 2036, with counter-drone capability explicitly named. Globally, the lessons of recent drone-heavy conflicts have pushed C-sUAS up every allied military’s priority list. And Boresight’s planned US footprint in Alabama points it at the largest defence market in the world.
A sober note: defence spending is politically driven and program timelines are long, so “the budget exists” doesn’t automatically convert to “Boresight wins the order.” But the direction of travel — more drones, therefore more counter-drone systems, therefore more training against targets — is about as durable a thematic as you’ll find in defence right now.
09 / The Risks / Points of Friction
▸ Lumpy, slow revenue. Defence procurement is episodic and politically timed; growth won’t be linear, and a delayed program can dent a reporting period.
▸ Still loss-making. Small, but the path to sustained profitability at scale is unproven.
▸ Concentration & related party. Insider- and Criterion-dominated register; small free float means thin liquidity and volatility, plus related-party considerations to read closely.
▸ Execution risk on US expansion. Standing up the Alabama facility, hiring, and scaling additive manufacturing are real operational challenges — and bring US export-control / dual-use compliance.
▸ Competition. The target-drone and C-sUAS space is busy; Boresight’s “attritable + realistic + swarming” niche is a claim that competitors will contest.
▸ Pipeline not yet revenue. The BF150 and ASCA are “coming soon”; today’s revenue leans on the BQ400 and its software.
▸ Valuation. ~$41.8m for ~$4m of revenue is a growth multiple — it prices in the scaling, so execution has to deliver.
Samso Concluding Comments
Boresight is the most “real” company in this run of listings — this is also the kind of Samso coverage that makes us different from the rest of the reviews online. This is something that makes money and revenue is the key to the discussion. There’s no resource to define, no drill program to wait for: there’s a product in the field, paying customers across a dozen countries, and revenue growing at a clip. For a $42m ASX float, that combination is genuinely uncommon.
The things to like are tangible. The product solves a real and growing problem cheaply. The revenue is up ~57% and the loss is small, so the capital is for growth rather than survival. The sector tailwind — counter-drone training as a structural, recurring defence need — is strong and politically durable, and the US expansion points the company at the biggest market going. Founders are keeping most of the equity, which aligns them with new shareholders.
The frictions are just as real, and they cluster around concentration and conversion. The register is tightly held by insiders and a related party, so liquidity will be thin and the free float small. Revenue is lumpy and procurement is slow, so patience is required. US expansion is where the money goes and where the execution risk lives. And the price already assumes the scaling works — at ~$41.8m on ~$4m of revenue, you’re paying for the next few years, not the last one.
The natural thing to watch, as with any growth-stage listing, is the order flow after listing — new contracts, the ramp of the US facility, and whether the “coming soon” pipeline (BF150, ASCA) converts into revenue. If the orders keep landing and the Alabama plant comes online on plan, the thematic does the rest. If procurement stalls or the scale-up slips, this is a small, thinly traded defence stock priced for a growth that hasn’t yet been proven at volume. Real business, real tailwind, real execution risk — and the contracts will tell the story.
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