Siyata Mobile has lots of opportunity, Robert McWhirter says

Cellular communications company Siyata Mobile (Siyata Mobile Stock Quote, Chart TSXV:SIM) could have a nice runway ahead of it, says Robert McWhirter of Selective Asset Management, who sees opportunity for Siyata in the transition to 5G technology.

“The company’s specialty is push-to-talk radio communications, typically used for delivery vehicles. They also have a very large presence in the kind of emergency services which are working on a network to try and get an ambulance to talk to a fire truck, to talk to the police,” said McWhirter, president and portfolio manager at Selective, to BNN Bloomberg Monday.

“Overall, they now have approvals from a lot of the US carriers, which is a significant piece that they have been working on for the longest while,” he says.

Montreal-based Siyata announced its 2018 year end on Monday with the conference call scheduled for Tuesday morning. For the year, the company generated revenue of $14.2 million, which was a 19.9-per-cent slip from 2017’s top line, and reported a net operating loss of $8.125 million, with one-time expenses totalling $3.55 million, including a write-off of $2.45 million related to its 3G technology and $1.1 million in sale and marketing related to the launch of its UV350 product.

Management has said Siyata currently has a backlog of $1 million and a sales funnel of “millions of dollars,” while CEO Marc Seelenfreund acknowledged the company’s slow transition from 3G to 4G tech.

“We recognize that device approval in the US took longer than expected, which has led to a slower transition into our 4G portfolio,” says Seelenfreund in a press release. “However, we are now on the cusp of breaking into an enormous untapped market with two highly motivated US cellular carriers as partners. The UV350 is a one-of-a kind device, that meets the needs of First Responder and commercial fleets and vehicles to consolidate to single purpose hardware, combining voice, PTT, navigation, fleet management, data applications and other valuable analytics.”

McWhirter says the opportunity is there for Siyata to take advantage of.

“They have 4G technology and they’re working towards 5G at the moment. The market seems to be happy enough to end up saying, ‘Okay this is going to be amazing,’” he says. “We think that there’s good opportunity over the next couple of years for the company.”

Siyata hit a high of $0.76 per share back in mid 2017 but fell to $0.33 per share a year later in July of 2018. The stock climbed over the second half of 2018, however, and currently sits up 16 per cent year-to-date at $0.50 per share.

Disclosure: Siyata Mobile is an annual sponsor of Cantech Letter.