Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted anytime via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself.
However, the company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. I'd also like to remind you this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Paul McGlone, CEO, Naomi Rule, CFO, and Kate Hill, Non-Executive Chair of Seeing Machines. Good morning, Kate.
Good morning. Good morning to all of our investors who are joining us in the U.K. Good evening to those joining us in Australia. If you're joining us from anywhere else, like North America, it's some hideous time of the night. Thank you very much if you've joined from North America. To everybody, welcome to this presentation of our first half results for Seeing Machines. It continues to be a challenging business environment, as I'm sure you're all aware. Against this backdrop and despite, in fact, the backdrop, we're very pleased with our results for the first half.
In fact, we're extremely pleased for the momentum that we're seeing in our business across all of our target sectors. As you'd be aware, DMS has become central to safety outcomes across a range of industries. What we're also seeing is a broadening community of stakeholders who are interested in this technology. That includes, of course, more investors. It includes media, includes government, and of course, regulators. It's interesting to reflect on the history of Seeing Machines. Our founders, some 20 years ago, had the foresight to think about investing in this area and in this technology.
It's that foresight that was shown all those years ago that's led us to the position we're in today, when really we're just seeing opportunities arising from all sorts of areas. It's a very exciting period to be involved in the company. We have to keep our feet on the ground, and we are keeping our feet on the ground by being focused on delivery. We've been doing this for some time now, and we continue to focus on delivery. It's terribly important.
By that I mean we're delivering to our customers, we're delivering to our people and our team, and of course to our investors. Before I finish my opening remarks, I would like to give congratulations to Paul and to the whole team who have been focusing on delivery, keeping their feet on the ground. Really, the position we're in now is down to an awful lot of hard work by all of those guys. Thank you. We're now going to play a short video which really speaks to the purpose of Seeing Machines. If you could play the video please, Paul.
Thanks, Paul. Welcome to everybody. You've heard from Kate in the opening remarks. We have Naomi here with us as well. We thought it very important to share that purpose video with you. It's something that we've been working on here for some time now, and I have to say, it's central to what motivates our people to work as hard as they do across multiple time zones in order to achieve extraordinary results, frankly, in very testing environments with very demanding customers. I hope you enjoyed that short presentation.
I'll just walk us through some of the highlights before I hand off to Naomi, who will take us through the numbers in a little bit more detail. As Kate mentioned, we're quite pleased with revenue in the first half. A backdrop of difficult global trading conditions. I think everybody's well and truly aware of that. We've mentioned before that we did get a recovery in the Southern Hemisphere, which has compensated for what is still a very sluggish set of operating conditions in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in our fleet business.
Automotive, not impacted in the same way. Of course, the revenues from auto are a little longer tail. The recurring revenue, which is very important to us, has also grown more than 17% on the same period last year. Our cash position is very strong. A big contributor to that was the placement that we did last year to Federated. We're very pleased to have a very significant U.S. investor want to invest in our company alongside all of you. Just a few weeks ago, we made an investment for $10 million or almost AUD 13 million to another specialist U.S. fund manager called Toronado.
The position today is that we have a very strong balance sheet. A balance sheet that can see us deliver our previously announced business plan and also afford us the opportunity to pursue incremental growth as it's presented over the course of the next several quarters and few years. We're quite pleased with that headline result. Microscopic in there. Just give me one minute. In terms of our operational highlights here. Sorry, the screen is microscopic, and I wear glasses for a different reason. Just on the operational highlights.
Much of this you've heard before, and this presentation is really somewhat of a repeat of what we did at our interims. We are really pleased with where our OEM business is going. The revenue is set to expand there. What we're seeing now as our customers' vehicles hit start of production is we're seeing underlying growth in the license revenues. In time, that growth rate and those revenues will overtake what has been our historical OEM revenue of NRE.
What that means, we're going to see significant margin expansion over time, because as I think everyone knows, and I've mentioned before, the margins for licenses are in the 90+ range versus NRE, which is single-digit margin and pretty hard work. That's a very important pivot point for us in the shape of earnings and the shape of revenue that we produce. Over 26,000 connected units driving that annual recurring revenue of AUD 15+ million for the half that I discussed. The automotive business has been working very hard delivering new proof of concepts to Tier 1s and OEMs.
We've successfully developed what is proving to be a highly sought-after piece of technology that expands our driver monitoring capability at the same level of fidelity as we provide for the driver across the passenger. This breakthrough that we've developed is in high demand, we see that this is one of several milestones that we think will increase the rate of penetration of DMS and combined DMS/OMS. We're pretty pleased with that.
Our fleet business continues to rack up the kilometers, as you know, those kilometers contribute to our truthing, enabling us to continue to develop algorithms that perform at the highest levels. This is a very important part of our business going forward. It's the reason why we remain focused on operating in OEM and aftermarket together. It's a very important ingredient in the overall mix. Last year during COVID, as most other businesses did, we reduced our costs, both discretionary and permanent. We're very pleased to say that those cost reduction areas have stuck and are flowing through to the P&L.
You can see that in the numbers. Naomi will highlight that to you in a moment. That was a very difficult period, and you do what you have to do as the circumstances present themselves. Of course, now as our business is beginning to grow and we're seeing more and more RFQs come through and more and more demand for our technology, we have a different challenge.
That challenge is to double down on capacity, rebuild some specialization in our business that we think will be very necessary, not just to win in this competitive environment, but to deliver against what are, quite frankly, quite onerous requirements from our customers. The mood has changed, the times have changed, and we're very much focused on winning and delivering. I'll talk about the U.S. just very quickly. As I've mentioned several times over the last year at least, we've been very focused on trying to attract interest from new U.S. investors.
We've successfully done that through two raises. I think those two raises combined have continued to support our price to the levels where they are today, which is 3 x where they were not so long ago. Not only that, we've also had new U.S. investors buy our company on market, and that's really the main game, to get on-market support from investors that understand technology and in particular, our technology in the industries that we support. We feel that that work is paying off.
Of course, we're also in an environment where the recognition of the role of DMS and the market in general's perception of this technology has changed, and I think that's a permanent change, and it will support the growth in shareholder value as we continue to deliver over coming months and years. In aviation, this is one of the areas of our business that is always on the agenda. Yes, it's taken longer and it continues to be a long tail opportunity, but we are making progress. I want to make that point. I'm not going to be drawn into any questions on how imminent.
There were one or two funny ones around that. What I can say is we are making very real and very solid progress, both in RFQs, in project work, in development work, in getting our tech into simulators and control environments. It's a low investment, long-term development with very high returns. We're going to stick with that, and there'll be more to report shortly. I'll hand over now to Naomi, and she can take you through more financial highlights.
Thanks, Paul. To dive straight into it, our top-line revenue for the group has improved 15%, AUD 18.1 million on the previous period. This is a great result, especially under the business conditions that we're all facing globally. If we look to the results using constant currency, which isn't on this slide, and by that I mean applying the same exchange rates for both sets of results to compare year-over-year growth, we have an even better outcome. Our first half will show an underlying revenue improvement of 19%, which we are very pleased with.
Aftermarket grew 17% to AUD 15 million and now boasts annual recurring revenues of AUD 15.5 million, representing growth rate of 17.4% on the prior period. This is an important metric for obvious reasons, because annual recurring revenues indicates the annual committed revenue from existing customers. Meaning we've locked in a minimum of $15.5 million in revenue for the next year before the year has started. Connected unit growth of over 3,000 units during the half is a major contributing factor to the growth, in addition to an increase in our hardware sales.
Some may say it's incredible that all geographies grew to some extent, and it is, given the extreme conditions in the northern hemisphere right now and over the past 12 months. However, the majority of our growth occurred across Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia Pacific region, as the impact of COVID-19 has been significantly less in the southern hemisphere, as we know, and it's made it easier to access trucks for installation, but also importantly, to progress the sales cycle with less business disruptions.
OEM, which covers our automotive and aviation businesses, grew 5% to $3.1 million during the half. Non-recurring engineering was slightly up on prior years as three OEMs inched ever so closer towards production and program milestones are met. It's actually quite exciting that this half saw the start of production for three OEMs which generated production royalties, and we saw over 31,500 vehicles come off the production line with our technology embedded in them.
This actually marks the beginning of a transformation for our automotive revenue, we'll see a transition from non-recurring engineering to high margin, high volume royalty revenue as OEM start of production vehicles hit the road. This will increase significantly over the next few years, where we expect to see 30 distinct car models hit dealerships with Seeing Machines DMS over the next two years.
Our group gross margins are in line with the prior year and is anticipated to improve as we continue to realize our lower hardware costs within the aftermarket segment and increase OEM royalties, which attract very high margins. With a significant focus on cost management over the past 12 months, I'm very pleased to confirm that our operating expenses have reduced across all areas. Some of these measures have been temporary to deal with the COVID-19 situation, but we also have a range of permanent savings that will further improve the net position of the company.
The normalized numbers to the right of the slide add back the AUD 3.5 million cost savings, for half 1 2021 and also increase H1 2020 cost in line with the change in recognition of short and long-term incentives. This normalized perspective highlights the improved performance on a like for like basis between periods. As I said previously, it's a result of enhanced cost management and focus on delivering outcomes for all of our stakeholders.
Our statement of financial position does remain heavily influenced by our cash and working capital movements, largely because we are expensing rather than capitalizing development costs associated with the development of our core technology. Importantly, we do not hold any debt. The liabilities are reflective of the requirement under the leasing accounting standard, that recognizes both leases as an asset and a liability on our balance sheet. Our inventory is at a healthy level and structured and managed to meet our near-term sales pipeline and commitments.
Whilst our overall inventory in number has increased in line with sales, the actual cost and value has decreased due to the previously announced reduction in hardware costs of around 21%. Our working capital balances are very healthy and will enable us to move forward to profitability. Customer receipts are lower for this period comparative to the prior year, and that's primarily due to timing between invoicing and cash receipts. This is in line with the FY 2019 fourth quarter invoicing for OEM program milestones, about AUD 1.5 million and AUD 2 million for our aftermarket sales.
The timing delta that you see here between revenue recognition and receipt of cash will be a continuing trend over the coming years as our revenue from OEM royalties become a higher contributor to our top-line growth. The monthly cash burn without grants is approximately $2.3 million, which is trending 8% lower than the prior year and improving in line with top-line revenue growth and continued cost management strategies on a monthly basis.
As Paul pointed to just earlier, in October, we received $28 million in cash with the issue of 372 million shares to Federated Hermes. This month, in fact, we welcomed an additional investor, Toronado Fund, with 68 million shares, further improving our cash position by an extra $13 million.
Thank you. I'll take you now through some highlights in each of the areas of our business. Again, look, some of these I've mentioned before. Hopefully, I can provide some additional color. 30 distinct car models will hit production in the next two years. Of the couple that we've announced, as Naomi said, we've got more than 31,000 vehicles have been produced with our technology in them. That rate is set to increase in a linear fashion between now and 2025. It's a very important number to us, obviously, both in terms of top-line growth, but in terms of margin contribution and cash.
The large proportion of that license revenue flows to cash. It's very, very important. I'll just add that when we talk about model here, and I know there's all kinds of different definitions in the marketplace, but we talk about a model class. We're not talking about model trim levels or anything like that. It's just the model class, the highest level of definition for the model. As we sign up with an OEM to do work, the specific allocation of the technology across the fleet is typically not known to us until much later in the piece. We quote on a gross volume.
Gross delivered volumes are often higher than what we quote, but what lies underneath in terms of all of the different model variants is often not known until later. We're seeing that today as we ever so slowly announce these vehicles hitting production. Of course, I think as everybody knows, one of our great frustrations is that we can't announce them immediately, and that's essentially because of the type of commercial contracts that we have that prevent that from happening.
In due course, all of these 30 models will be announced, and the market will be able to determine the volumes on those models in actual production rather than our quoted bid. I think the end result of that will be largely positive. We've got the picture of the Escalade there, a well-known car in the U.S. We're able to talk about it, so that's fantastic. It's getting quite a bit of publicity, which is good. On the partnership side, this is really important to us, and we announced our three-pillar strategy some time ago. As you know, the end of the day, we're delivering software.
The only question is, how is that software delivered? Do we deliver it bespoke, integrated on a silicon platform, or do we enable others to access the intellectual property in an accelerated fashion that they can deliver in parallel with us? We cover all of those conditions. The relationships that we have, starting with Xilinx, very, very important. The early work and the early investment in developing that chip strategy has really paved the way for what we've been able to do with OmniVision and Qualcomm. Both of those arrangements are quite different, but they are very, very real.
Both companies are investing very heavily to get our technology integrated or embedded in their silicon and in their systems. If you look at the scale of each of them, without trying to list all of the different OEMs that they work with, it's pretty evident that those relationships will facilitate a better sales outcome for us, and that's what this is all about. Occupant monitoring, I've mentioned, that's launched, and we will see some traction in this aviation business. The work continues, the interest continues, and I think as the world returns to normality, we'll see an increase in the rate of exposure to aviation customers.
In aftermarket, we've appointed a new GM to take over the business. Mike Lenné is taking on a new role as Chief Scientist, Safety and Human Factors, he's playing a much more focused role on the external regulatory environment. He's deeply involved in the work that we're doing directly with Euro NCAP, regulators in the U.S., and forming new relationships to influence the regulatory framework in Japan as well. Of course, they are very important because it's data that underpins the velocity in our technical roadmap or our feature development. He's doubling down in that area.
Max Verberne has joined us. A very strong background in telematics, so he's hit the ground running and he's really getting into the detail, and I'm very pleased with where we are so far. I'll talk a little about channels. The rest of those dot points I've already covered. Northern Hemisphere, we have 15 channel partners or distributors. I've mentioned already that the Northern Hemisphere remains a pretty difficult environment, and all of you would know better than I, given that you're living it day by day. We are seeing some green shoots. We are seeing interest return in both the U.K., Europe, and the U.S.
Our distributors in Latin America are continuing to grow. Really the powerhouse in this last period has been the Southern Hemisphere, primarily Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. We're very fortunate that's been the case. I guess here in particular, in New Zealand in particular, small economies on the global scale, but given we're an island, we've had very clearly the fastest recovery from COVID, and it's fair to say that we're back in full swing down here, which is, I think, very good for us, but also very good for our shareholders.
On insurance, again, we've spoken about insurance and the importance of insurance. This is an area of interest that's increasing. We've mentioned NTI in the past. We are now running a formal program with NTI to support a more rapid uptake of our technology for their customers. That means new customers for us. We're running several waves of new campaigns to drive our technology into the market. The regulators here, and for that matter, in most of the markets that we operate in, are upping the ante on the specific risk areas that our technology mitigates, and that's fatigue and distraction.
We've mentioned before that those two risks are the single highest contributors to fleet insurance claims costs globally, and our technology reduces the incidence of those risks by up to 90%. Insurers and regulators are building their confidence in the technology, and they're being more assertive in encouraging customers to adopt it. That, I think, all goes well for us going forward. Just to wrap up the formal piece here. The DMS market, and I'll focus specifically on automotive here. We had a period during COVID we didn't really know which way it was going to go.
From November last year, we've seen a dramatic uptick in both the number of RFQs and the quantum of those RFQs. This is a very major turning point. As I said earlier, we're increasing our capacity to make sure that we can win our fair share. The market holistically has accepted that DMS is a permanent feature of the automotive landscape. This is strong for all participants in this sector, and there aren't many, as I think most of our shareholders know. Each day we compete on our own strengths and we here are very pleased and very confident with the strategy that we're deploying.
As the market is now building up a head of steam, which I would call a race to Euro NCAP 2024, I believe we're going to see a raft of additional RFQs over the next six to nine months. We're seeing these RFQs across multiple jurisdictions, by the way. We're seeing them in Europe, the U.S., and Asia, Japan in particular. That gives us even more confidence that this is a permanent fixture and that we're well-positioned to win our fair share.
On the chip side of things, look, we're delighted with the relationships, the long-term relationship with Xilinx, the new relationships with Qualcomm and OmniVision. We have, frankly, a very strong dance card of other semiconductor companies that are wanting to work with us, wanting to figure out how to deploy our intellectual property, seeing how they can get ahead of the market in terms of the combination of software-hardware pricing, which is mission-critical as OEM are looking to mass market adoption. These conversations we think are very, very positive.
They all go well for our mid and long-term strategy. They make for different conversations, differentiating conversations, with our customers. We're really pleased with where that's going. I think you can see through the results, we are focused on performance, profitable growth. We no longer do a negative margin contract.
We no longer have negative margin hardware sales. We are very pleased with the fleet business' trajectory. It is very close to profitability in its own right. To sum it up, pretty pleased with the outcome. I'm going to turn to another video, which some of you, perhaps not all of you, have seen. I'll just ask to run that now, Paul, if we could.
Seeing Machines and Qualcomm are working together to develop next-generation technology that enables human-centric, intelligent vehicle interiors. These are powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon family to meet challenging future requirements in both ADAS and cockpit solutions across the global auto market, and to meet next-generation Euro NCAP safety standards. Seeing Machines is an industry pioneer in occupant and driver monitoring systems, known as DMS. We exist to get people home safely.
Underpinned by human factors science and with access to more than five billion kilometers of unrivaled naturalistic driving data. Our DMS was a key enabling technology which debuted in General Motors Super Cruise, the world's first hands-free driving system, showcasing our deep expertise in DMS technology, backed by over 20 years of R&D. Automotive grade DMS requires so much more than just eye-tracking algorithms.
Delivering driver monitoring functionality into real-world production vehicles requires a science-driven understanding of driver behaviors, combined with systems expertise in three core technology areas. Superior and efficient algorithms technology, deep edge embedded processing, and automotive interior system optics. Every vehicle interior is different, and the placement of a camera in the vehicle cabin is a difficult yet crucial design decision for the car maker, with many performance and cost trade-offs.
Location options for the optics hardware are usually space-constrained, packed with existing electronics while also having high temperature demands. Tackling these challenges is our expertise. Today, together, we bring to you the Seeing Machines Embedded Development Kit with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Cockpit platform. Leveraging Qualcomm's Snapdragon Automotive Compute reference design, this kit delivers a full stack DMS targeting cockpit solutions and/or centralized ADAS systems, and fully supportive of Euro NCAP safety requirements. Welcome back, Zoe.
The kit includes our latest automotive production-grade reference optical system, interfacing hardware, and Seeing Machines' world-leading driver monitoring software and tools. The Seeing Machines eDME software libraries have been deeply embedded and pre-validated into the Qualcomm software framework, allowing rapid product development cycles.
This includes optional use of Qualcomm's extensive acceleration resources available in the Snapdragon platform. The Seeing Machines EDK for Qualcomm Snapdragon Cockpit Platform development is available now. The Seeing Machines EDK for Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride will be available soon.
Thanks, Paul.
That's great. Look, thank you very much.
Okay.
Thank you very much indeed for the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, do please continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand side of the screen. Just while the company take a moment to review those questions submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed on the Investor Meet Company platform.
I'd also like to remind you, your feedback is important to the company, and immediately after the presentation has ended, you'll be redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations. Paul, we had a number of pre-submitted questions from investors, and perhaps I could hand back to you, just to run through those first of all, and then once we've done that, we can just move on and click on that Q&A tab and read out the question where appropriate to do so and just run through the live Q&A, if that's okay?
Yeah, sure. Look, we had, I don't know, 40 or 50 questions before the meeting. Many of them crossed over. I say I. We, definitely not me. We've categorized them into four areas, and I'll answer them accordingly without referencing the specific question. Otherwise, I think we might be here for a very long time. The categories are automotive, significant partnerships, fleet and the roadmap, and company future. Some of these I've answered in my commentary as well, I'll just whip through these categories and answer the questions, and then we can go through those that have come through this morning.
I think we've covered the RFQ increase. We don't and are unable to talk about the volumes. There's no real point talking about the volumes until we're awarded. We don't do that, and we haven't done that in the past. My statement is true and clear. We have received more RFQ of what we believe to be a greater quantum than at least a year or two prior. It's a really good indication of where the market is at. The next thing is about naming cars that are coming into production. Again, we get this question all the time, and it must be repetitive to hear the same answer.
We are restricted, each OEM has a slightly different take on the level of restriction, the time of the restriction. Typically, it's some time period after vehicles move into the distribution network, not when they start production. We put in a lot of effort in order to try and get this communication released, and it's a very difficult thing for us to do outside of the rules that we're predetermined. I know it's frustrating. I can assure you, profoundly more frustrating for me than it is for most other people. With regard to awards and when we announce them, we announce all awards when they are formally won.
Now, we often work with Tier 1s and OEMs for long periods of time as we negotiate agreements, whether they be interim agreements, letters of intent, interim purchase orders, purchase orders or contracts. All of these things happen, and they are all happening. We're unable to make an announcement on a win until we have a contract that is signed, despite the fact that we continue to operate on all of those other mechanisms that I've mentioned. When we execute, we announce. Someone mentioned Japan. I think I covered that in my remarks.
Japan is moving, and we're pretty pleased with movement there. Engineers. There's a question about giving cars into production, what are you doing with all your engineers? Look, we've been running our engineering team at maximum capacity for quite some time. Our challenge is not what to do with the engineers. Our challenge is to increase capacity fast enough to win the business that's ahead of us. If another question is, what's my single biggest consideration or the thing that keeps me awake at night?
It's being able to build appropriately skilled capacity fast enough to win at the rate we think we should win, and then deliver in accordance with those programs that we've signed up for. On the partnership side, look, I think I covered that in my remarks. We have a long list of companies in SoC, semiconductor companies and sensing companies and others that now want to work with us. We are very open-minded on third-party working relationships. We think it's a permanent fixture in our strategy going forward, and we'll continue to do so.
Yes, it is difficult to quantify what opportunities come out of those, and we frankly haven't attempted to do so. As I said earlier, if a company like Qualcomm is investing their own money to embed or to pre-integrate our software into their software stack on their platform, and they have a 50% or 60% share of a given area like infotainment in the industry, well, you'd have to have a view that that would be incremental and positive. The same applies for OmniVision. In terms of fleet, had several questions about OEM fitment in trucks. Look, it's a really interesting question. We do have dialogue from time to time.
We're very focused on auto because that's the primary volume market that's driven by the regulators at this point. Aftermarket can cover the fleet business quite adequately where it can't cover the passenger vehicle business. I think there will be a market for OEM fitment in heavy vehicles. I do think that that's some time off. We keep a watching eye or a watching brief on that. Yeah, roadmap. Yes, look, we are committed to providing the service here. There's a question as to whether we should do that or whether we should just move more hardware.
I don't see any point in getting into a hardware-only business. I think that's the surest way to be commoditized. We've seen that across the market with players much larger than us that are in telematics. What's important here is that being able to offer the service dramatically improves the safety outcome. Having in-cabin alerts is one thing, but providing the 24/7 service improves the outcome by an additional 30+%. That's a very important part of the buying consideration of the company when you consider the significance of this particular risk that they're running.
There were also a few comments around Caterpillar and BMS. BMS is interesting. It's only now starting to pick up in interest. It's very good business for us. Small volume, high margin. We don't see BMS as an environment where we're going to sell tens and tens of thousands of units. That's not really what it's about for us. It's an important element in our overall business for both sales margin and cash. We'll continue to develop in that area and we will continue to support the customers that we have.
Just on the company side, the investor side, we're well-funded, and I think that's evident, and you can all see that through the numbers. The interest from U.S. investors has been a strategy, and it's a strategy that I would argue has worked. It's early days, and I do expect that interest will continue. Put it this way, if the inquiry rate that I have for meetings in the U.S. continues, I've no doubt that we'll be successful. We frankly turn down more meetings than we accept just because there's only a certain amount of time in a day to do that kind of work outside of running the operations of the business.
We're really encouraged and really pleased with where that's going. The next group of questions, there were several around a Nasdaq listing. Look, my answer to that is, again, we keep an open mind. We do talk about other markets to list, Nasdaq in particular, amongst the management and the board. My view on this is that in the next short period, let's say for the next year or thereabout, what's more important than entering into a new listing is to ensure that we win our fair share of business and that we're on track to deliver those programs.
If we move to Nasdaq too soon, and to be frank, lots of bankers would argue it's a good thing to do. The rules change dramatically. The rules from AIM to Nasdaq are very different. They're considerably more onerous. I'd like to be in a position where we have a level of confidence and a level of revenue visibility, particularly in Auto out beyond 2025, before we contemplate it. It is on our mind. It is a subject that we talk about, and at the right time, we'll make a decision one way or another. That's a summary of the three questions. Shall I read these out?
Yeah. If you could just click on that Q&A tab and just go through and pick out those questions you're happy to respond to. I know obviously some that you've covered off during the presentation and that Q&A session as well. Back to you, if you wouldn't mind, that'd be great.
There's a question for Kate on the split of shareholders between private and institutional.
Yes. I'd say about 65% of our register is institutional and about 35% is retail. Of course, our top two shareholders hold nearly 30% of our shares, so they obviously form a big part of the institutional component.
Naomi, there's a question for you. Has the cash started flowing from the Ford contract? The F-150 and the Mach-E. Look, this is one of those things, and I've read it out. It's not a mistake. I've read it out because it's in the public domain, and it's one of those things that we are yet unable to speak about specifically. I think the official answer to that is no. Another question on RFQ. What's the total value of the pipeline? We don't communicate the value of the pipeline, and I won't be drawing to doing that today.
What I've said, and what I'll continue to say is that the RFQ that we've received since November are very significant when measured against the total one business to date. There are a few very technical questions here. I'll put this one to Naomi. What are the withholding tax implications for your income from overseas countries? Will they add up to the effective tax rate of the company or be fully creditable? This is an area that we talk about frequently, so over to you, Naomi.
We have a range of measures in respect to withholding tax. Once we're profitable, and we've burnt down all of our tax losses from prior years, they'll be fully creditable. Another avenue that we're taking whilst we're working through that process is to gross up for withholding taxes. At the end of the day, there's no loss to shareholders and investors.
Fast enough to win our fair share, and that's closely followed by us being able to deliver that fair share. I've not got any lay awake moments on competitors. The market, this is DMS alone, if we just park fleet for a second, is a billion-dollar-a-year market. There are a few competitors in it, and as I've said many times, I don't think it matters that much whether you're going to win 35% or 40%. We've got a strategy that differentiates, and we'll continue to prosecute that strategy. It's skills and capacity that I'm focused on. Question about profitability, income exceeding expenses.
We've spoken about that several times before. It hasn't changed. It's in the FY 2023 year. I think we've spoken about funding. Is the Toronado investment reflected in the number that Naomi presented in terms of the cash? No, because that cash number was at the end of December, and the Toronado funds were received only recently. Bear with me. Qualcomm. I know our focus is transport and Qualcomm have commercial relationships with others. Given they're doing work to integrate our technology on the auto side, is there any chance that they would expand into VR or other verticals?
Look, that's a great question, and it's a question that I understand that whoever's asked this is talking about Qualcomm, but it's not specific to Qualcomm. To be frank, we get unsolicited proposals to explore eye-tracking in all kinds of new verticals on a semi-regular basis. If we take the OmniVision business, for example, they have a 30% share of auto, but they have a significantly higher share of security. Doorbells, for example. We think there's a fantastic application for eye-tracking in doorbells because the one place where people are very okay with you being monitored is at your front door.
The question there is how quickly can you get the economics of high-performing eye-tracking into a small enough device that you can sell in a doorbell that probably retails for $20. I think these things will come, but just to be straight on this, we are, at least for the next few years, very focused on transport. It's at least a $1 billion market opportunity per annum, US dollars, if we exclude fleet from it. That is by far and away our primary focus. There's a question about the raise. We did one to Federated, we've done one to Toronado. There are several questions that are similar. It's pretty simple.
The answer to the question directly is do we have an intention of raising again in the U.S.? At this point in time, we don't. If the other questions that were asked around Nasdaq, if that strategy comes to life, well, of course, that's a different set of characteristics that would cause us to reconsider. We took Federated because it was a landmark investor that changed sentiment in the U.S. Toronado is a little different, a specialist investor. We were able to do that at a premium, which we thought was a good thing to do, but they have a significantly higher book expectation than the $10 million.
We think another good investor, more on-market buying capacity, and further support. The reaction that we've received from both of these investments from the U.S. market is overwhelmingly positive. This is drawing new U.S. investors to us who have only the opportunity to acquire on market. The 31,000 units in OEMs, the question is over what period? That was in that half that we reported on. There's a couple of similar questions in here about BMS, about Colin Barnden and articles. We have contracts with customers, and we honor those contracts.
Occasionally, journalists write things that are incredibly insightful and accurate, and sometimes we can respond, and sometimes we can't. Occasionally, we ask permission whether we can or we can't. If we don't, you know what the answer is. Other articles that are written are miles off the truth, and we don't have a requirement to respond to those. Any contracts that are signed with any customers that have a confidentiality clause in them will be honored by us without information. Look, I am going to go to perhaps one final question here. I have answered some of those. Okay.
Here is the final question I will take. We are running out of time. Are we working on a Gen 3 product for fleet? Yes, we are. What would be different? Well, over the lifetime of hardware and systems development since the first inception of generation 1 and generation 2 to now, there has been remarkable improvements in form factor, size, processing capacity, communications. We are in the design phase of a generation 3 product, and I cannot really comment at the moment on what that looks like or when the timing is, but we are well advanced on those developments.
Look, I apologize if I have not got to every question. I think in aggregate, we've answered 50 or 60 one way or another. I really appreciate your comments. We will get back on specific questions that we haven't had a chance to cover off.
Thank you very much. Thank you to you, Paul, and Kate and Naomi as well. You have addressed, obviously, heck of a lot of those questions, and you will have the ability to review them later on the platform. Paul, before we redirect investors to give you some feedback, perhaps I could just ask you for a final few words just to wrap up, please.
Well, thank you. Well, look, I'd like to thank all of you for supporting our business or your business, I should say. I hope that everybody's quite pleased with the increase in the share price over the last year or so.
I'm actually quite pleased that we're consolidating at the levels that we're at. If I consider where we're at today within the context of the market that I've just described, the intake of new business opportunity that I've described, and the change in sentiment, particularly in the U.S. around our technology, I think this augurs well for a pretty bright future over the next few years. I'd encourage you all to stay with us, and I hope you do so. Thank you.
That's fantastic. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback. If you've accessed the meeting from our website, the feedback page will appear directly in front of you.
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