Morning everyone, and welcome to DroneShield's first quarter of 2026 4C results. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you this morning. My name is Angus Bean. I'm the CEO and Managing Director for DroneShield. I've got with me Josh Bolot, who's our Head of Strategy and Investor Relations. We're pleased to present our results to you this morning. Firstly, many of you have seen the news. DroneShield completed a leadership transition in the last couple of weeks of both our CEO, Oleg Vornik, and our chair. We announced to the market that our chair after 10 years, Peter James, would be not standing for reelection, and we have had the appointment for election, our incoming chair, Hamish McLennan.
The news of this leadership transition has been received very well, and I'd like to thank obviously the whole 500 staff of DroneShield for their support during the last two weeks, as well as our investors, various stakeholders and our partners around the world in the support of this transition. We'd also like to invite you to attend or join online our AGM at the end of May, and we look forward to having another update of the business at that time. I'd like to also touch on what I've been up to in the first two weeks as CEO of DroneShield. Many of you have seen me in the past, over the last 10 years in previous roles of chief technology officer and chief product officer. It's a pleasure and an honor to step into the CEO role. In my first two weeks, it's been about listening.
It's been about speaking with our team, understanding what they need, what their challenges are, and making sure that we're all working together. DroneShield is now a sizable global entity, and making sure that the team are moving together is a core part of my role. We've also been speaking to shareholders, understanding their views on the business, learning how we can improve, and really listening to where they believe the business can be taken in the future. We thank you for all the input from all our various shareholders around the world. Lastly, we've been speaking with our partners who more and more we rely on to provide great commercial and technical opportunities for us around the world. Thank you for all of our partners. Let's move into the presentation.
As many of you would've seen by now, we released our numbers yesterday, and these are outstanding results. This is the second highest quarter in terms of revenue on record for the business, and it demonstrates the continued momentum and leadership that DroneShield has in the counter-drone market. Already, by this early stage in 2026, we have $155 million of committed revenue, which is an outstanding result for a business that only a few years ago was doing sub $50 million on an annualized basis. To be here in April with 155 million revenue committed for the year is an outstanding result.
Interestingly enough, we are seeing, in our opinion, a better ratio between the larger military contracts that we at DroneShield have become known for, but also, an increase in repeat and recurring smaller orders, which is lending itself, to allow the business to be much more predictable, and allow us to make better decisions in the future. We are just as comfortable executing on these large military contracts as we are with the more sustained revenue streams from both military and the emerging non-military market, which by dollar value individually are less, but certainly at a much significant higher volume. That's really good to see. It allows us to make better decisions as a business. You'll also note an increase in our software as a service revenue stream for the quarter.
One of our objectives, and we'll speak more about this later in the presentation, is to get to the point where we have above 30% recurring revenue as part of our business strategy. This is a great first step in moving in that right direction. In terms of financial discipline, you'll also recognize this is our fourth consecutive quarter of positive net operating cash flow. Again, an important milestone for the business as we are proving operating leverage is increasing and our ability to operate the business is improving. In terms of momentum, I'd like to give a bit more of a history analysis of the numbers. What you can see from the years of 2021 and 2022 is the early adopters as some small trial and test evaluations of our technology.
Through 2023 and 2024, we had a significant increase in those revenues that was primarily through first-time buyers and customers rolling out our products in a minor way. In 2025, we had an outstanding year, and this really represented the first time that militaries were buying as part of defense programs of record and part of much larger military programs that take a number of years to come to fruition, 2025 really recognized that for us. As you can see in 2026, the results so far are very positive as both militaries are continuing to buy as part of much larger planned procurement activities. This is where DroneShield really sees a lot of our business coming through in the future. We've spoken to some of the company highlights and the financials, but it's important to understand the future and also the company's position.
Our sales pipeline remains strong at AUD 2.2 billion. This is the same update we provided just over two weeks ago in March. Sorry, at the end of March. We have 312 deals in the pipeline, 15 of which have a value over AUD 30 million. The pipeline remains strong. We do have a number of deals that are outside of these 312, but these are yet to be fully qualified. These are unweighted and at various stages of development in terms of the sales maturation cycle. AUD 2.2 billion pipeline remains a strong pipeline for the next couple of years. Operationally, we're in a great place.
We have over 500 staff now in seven different countries, with a large portion of our capital being invested into research and development, which is becoming the norm in the defense and military industry, where companies are being asked to self-fund programs, and then the output of those programs is being procured at scale by militaries around the world. Our cash balance remains strong, again, above AUD 200 million cash balance, which really gives us the ability to be flexible and jump on opportunities when we see them. Globally, we are increasingly seeing a very turbulent and perhaps a chaotic environment where the world is moving to a multipolar order, and that is causing large tensions around the world. Our two primary markets remain the United States and Europe. The U.S., for example, we're seeing the confluence of two really significant trends.
One is the regulatory environment, and the second is the unlocking of significant revenue. Excuse me, of significant budgets for defense and non-defense spending. In terms of the regulatory environment, we recently saw the SAFER SKIES Act, which unlocks 17,500 state and local law enforcement to actually start going through the process to procure counter-drone equipment, which was previously unavailable to them. The programs of record such as JIATF 401 now are really starting to take place. We have Department of Homeland Security also allocating significant budgets to counter-UAS. A headline for us for this update is the recent receipt of a FIFA World Cup associated order, which is critically important as DroneShield has done a number of headline, both executive protection and sporting events around the world in the past.
The FIFA World Cup is an important one because it demonstrates, again, this idea that local law enforcement, who is the end customer, are also starting to adopt counter-drone technologies, specifically those that DroneShield offer. This is a very positive sign. Europe and the U.K. remain a core part of DroneShield's strategy. Many of you are aware we've moved our Chief Commercial Officer, Louis Gamarra, and his family to Europe, and so our center of sales gravity is now in Amsterdam, where we've recently opened our new headquarters. We've also opened up production in Europe as well, and we'll continue to expand that. That allows us to be compliant with the Readiness 2030 or ReArm Europe plan, where we need to be at 65% European industry content to be a part of that program.
We are now compliant and we have already started receiving orders through that umbrella. Outside of those two major markets, we still see strong growth in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. We are continuing to grow our sales and commercial operations in these areas. Australia remains our home and we are really proud as an Australian business. We are a part of the flagship LAND 156 program on both line of effort two and line of effort three, and we anticipate to see additional orders from Australia in the months and years to come. In terms of our competitive differentiators, we have both technical and commercial differentiators. Our technical team, which I'm incredibly proud of, we have over 350 world-class engineers, developers, and designers. We are able to take this technology from the ground up, from the chip, all the way through to the end product manufacturing.
We have full in-house capability to provide these world-leading technologies, and we are in full control of that manufacturing cycle. Additionally, over the last 10 years, DroneShield has developed significant amounts of data on various types of drones, whether that be radio frequency recordings through to radar data through to acoustic recordings. DroneShield holds one of the largest counter-UAS appropriate datasets in the world, which is a core tool and a core differentiator for us. This is something that is incredibly hard to replicate in a short space of time. Commercially, we are a truly global company now. You've seen that we've bolstered both our U.S. and our European presence, as well as our presence here in Australia. Fundamentally, our 70 partners around the world remain a core part of the business, and that DroneShield's hub and spoke model continues to prove to be effective.
In terms of the vision for 2030, this is something that Josh and I will be speaking more and more about over the next few months. It's exciting. We're seeing continued growth of our military market. In addition, we are seeing now the green shoots of this commercial or non-military market, which we have anticipated for almost a decade. DroneShield is incredibly well-positioned, as our technologies can be utilized in both military and non-military markets, particularly with the regulatory change we discussed. DroneShield, we remain a flexible organization in terms of how we approach the market, and so we have a multi-channel market approach where we can either be the prime, the subprime, the partner, or go through a regional distributor, or go direct to end users. DroneShield, we take a multi-channel approach there, and it really depends on the environment and the requirements of that location.
In terms of the revenue target, our big goal is to hit $1 billion annualized revenue with 30% of that as recurring revenue in the next few years. This is a substantial uplift on numbers that were already a 4x increase on previous years. To fuel that, we are seeing strong diversification across our end users, our geographies, and our products, both hardware and software. We feel that the DroneShield business is in a very strong position in terms of its diversification across all those metrics. You'll also see, and you'll hear from us again in the next few months, around DroneShield beginning to monetize our whole of lifecycle solutions. Today, we do some of the hard parts, which is new sales and new product development.
DroneShield will be getting into additional services, both software and recurring services, to continue to strive towards that AUD 1 billion annualized revenue and that 30% recurring revenue number. Our global presence, as I mentioned, remains strong with headquarters now in Australia, the United States, and Europe. You'll also see us continue to expand on our regional hubs in Asia, Middle East, and Latin America. Finally, regional manufacturing in core markets will be a core part of the strategy over the next few years. I think this slide does a lot of work in terms of explaining how we see the Counter-UAS ecosystem. DroneShield is very well-positioned, providing layers one and two of the Counter-UAS industry. In most cases, for most customers, the first technology they will look to employ is a radio frequency detection, and if they're able to, defeat solution.
This, as many of you know, is DroneShield's bread and butter and has been a core technology that we continue to build on today. This is the most cost-effective and most reliable way to down the most amount of drones or deal with the most amount of drones that we see on the market today. Radio frequency continues to be a core technology being deployed by tier one militaries and security operators around the world. Once the customer buys enough, and they're starting to scale up their usage of those RF detection devices, often the next thing they need is a way to orchestrate them together, and that's where our DroneSentry-C2 comes in. DroneSentry-C2 allows an operator to have multiple devices deployed on a Google Maps-style interface, and they can then operate those devices fully remotely.
We also released DroneSentry-C2 Enterprise at the end of, excuse me, last year that allows customers to also manage multiple sites themselves. Another layer above that DroneSentry-C2. From there, often our customers ask us for additional layers of protection, and that's where we rely on our partner network of radar, optical, and various other technologies, where DroneShield provides layer three, four, and five solutions as part of that C2 solution. This is a constantly evolving technology field where new technologies or various adaptations of existing technologies is constantly changing. DroneShield can remain relevant in all of these areas by partnering, and through our extremely good test and evaluation team, we can find the best sensors and effective technologies around the world, integrate them into our C2, and offer them to our end users.
You would have seen recently. This included the recent signing of an MOU with Origin Robotics and Interceptor Drone company out of Latvia. Over the last 10 years, DroneShield has developed comprehensive suite of solutions across the three core operational scenarios that we see in counter-drone, and these are dismounted, on the move, and fixed site. DroneShield now offers solutions for all of these categories, and in addition, in 2025, we offered our first SentryCiv product, a product that was specifically designed for the non-military market. This is something that you'll continue to see from us in the future as we refine our approach to the emerging non-military market. We've talked a little bit about the software as a service, and we'd like to unpack exactly how that works. We have three layers of software at DroneShield. At the device layer, the site layer, and at the enterprise layer.
DroneShield now, again, over the last few years have developed all these solutions from the ground up ourselves, and we can now successfully apply a software as a service subscription to each of these layers. Meaning that customers that are utilizing all three layers have a multi-software SaaS applied to their solution. If you think this as a close to antivirus analogy, this is something that our customers are really fond of in terms of they need ways to keep their software updated to the latest software as similar, again, to antivirus. The longer you go without updating the software, the more likely that the drone technology may have changed, and you may miss some significant change. DroneShield has a strong pull to its software-as-a-service revenue streams through the need to keep those software up to date on each level of those devices.
I'd like to acknowledge our senior leadership team. Again, over the last few years, we've strengthened our leadership team, and we now feel very well-positioned to continue to refine that and continue to build out the organization to achieve our significant revenue targets in the future. Lastly, as we mentioned at the top of this presentation, we have announced changes to our board, and our Chairman of 10 years, Peter James, has decided to retire from the board and not seek re-election at our next AGM. Hamish McLennan will be appointed as the Chairman following our AGM in May. All right. Last point on the board. As we have previously announced, we are reviewing and we have an ongoing process to seek additional board members to continue to grow the experience and also the skill sets that our board can offer the business to support that growth.
Thank you for listening to the presentation this morning. I think one of the most important parts of these presentations is to dive into some Q&A, and I'll hand over to Josh to start that process. We'll also start taking some questions from the Q&A posted in the Zoom link. Josh.
Thanks, Angus. Thank you to those investors and interested parties who have submitted questions in advance. That's been very useful. I'll also combine those with some that we've received online, and please continue to submit those. One question which has come through has been regarding the global conflict, and the escalation of global conflict, and the widespread commitments in higher defense spending in the counter-drone space, and how that's feeding into our potential revenue pipeline. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about that and also the commercial fields that we're now moving towards.
Thanks, Josh. That's right. Well, firstly, the global situation, as we mentioned, does seem to continue to deteriorate and that puts DroneShield in a very important position as drone technology is one of the core disruptors and is essentially revolutionizing the military and security environment. DroneShield, we find ourselves as an Australian business in a strong position to create these solutions and provide them to our end users, our Western allies around the world. Even in the last week, we've seen significant budget allocations from Australia, from the Philippines, and from the United States, specifically calling out Counter-UAS as a core part of their expanded defense budgets. Our view is that this is driving the exceptional result that we've announced this morning with $155 million of committed revenue for 2026 at this very early stage.
We'll continue to execute well, keeping our heads down and focus on both our product development strategies as well as our commercial strategies to take full advantage of these additional budgets being allocated at a rapid clip.
Thanks. The next question relates to revenue and profit guidance assessments. I'll address that one. DroneShield does not provide revenue or profit or earnings guidance. We share information about our progress, which includes obviously, periodic financial reporting, the presentations to investor groups, including these and those which we lodge with the ASX, and material contracts, and that threshold for material contracts is over AUD 20 million now, and as well as other trading updates. We feel this is the right approach given the nature of the industry we operate in. As the company moves towards a more predictable style of revenue, for example, the recurring revenue, the SaaS lines, over the next few years, that will help provide a greater granularity around that. In regards to the material contracts of AUD 20 million, and this may cover off a few other questions.
There was a question about the frequency with which we announce those. I think what's important right now is that three weeks ago, just under three weeks ago, we announced that the committed revenue for the year was at $140 million. Today, it's sitting at $155 million, and we have not announced any material contracts over that period. That provides an indication of a number of smaller sub-$20 million orders that are constantly being received from existing end users as well as new end users. That's a very important sign of just a general maturity of the business as it's growing. That kind of addresses that one. The other part which we'll talk about is that the revenue in the trading update that was provided in the early days of April was prepared just as April was beginning.
There was a slight variation between the Q1 revenue change on the eighth of April and what we've ultimately reported yesterday. That should be taken in context that a comprehensive month end takes longer than a few days. An order delivery, which was made in the closing days of March, was only notified to DroneShield during that month-end process. We recognize revenue when customers confirm the receipt the day that they receive it. The suggestion that this might lead to bringing forward revenues is incorrect, and it still remains our second highest revenue quarter and the highest cash receipts quarter. Angus, the next one which I might put to you is, we're on government panels both in Australia and other jurisdictions. What's the commentary around the Australian panels?
That's right. Australia's flagship defense Counter-UAS program is called LAND 156, and it's run by the Australian Army, and we are on two of the three, and we hope to be on the third, when the time is right. We are on two of the three of those lines of effort. We've already received orders under the second line of effort. We are on the panel, as you mentioned, Josh, for line of effort three, and things are starting to move quickly, where we're involved in a lot of good discussions with the Australian Department of Defense around LAND 156.
Great. The other discussion has been, and it's come through a few times. I'll address it because it will take a few questions off the register. The question is regarding dividends and the intention to pay or offer a dividend reinvestment scheme. DroneShield is a high growth focused company, and it has not paid dividends to date. There is no current intention to do so, as it is maintaining cash balances for reinvestment in product, potential acquisitions and other such opportunities. The board does assess the situation from time to time and will advise the market when there are updates to the dividend policy. A broader question here, Angus, is regarding the movement of technology towards other drone and robotic technologies seen in the market. There's been a question received online regarding non-aerial counter-drone defeat. Maybe that expands the conversation towards our product development pipeline as well.
Thanks, Josh. DroneShield, absolutely, we've updated our approach and if you look at a lot of our documentation, we now refer to, instead of just counter UAS, which is counter uncrewed aerial vehicle, we often say UXS. The X means multi-domain. Okay. Over the next few years we are going to see an increase in ground UGVs, the surface of the water, USVs, and even underwater autonomous vehicles emerging. DroneShield and DroneShield's technologies, we believe, are very applicable as these new types of threats emerge. We have some of the core building blocks, whether it be the radio frequency, the radar, and obviously our C2 as the core orchestration layer to counter these emerging multi-domain assets.
DroneShield, yes, we are opening our aperture as the technologies change and as we see, essentially, the super cycle and the trend go towards replacing human infantry and humans on the battle space with a more robotic and autonomous vehicle selection. DroneShield, we are one of a handful of companies around the world that has the proven expertise to execute the technology stack that will be utilized against these types of technologies in the future, as well as the vision to counter these types of technologies in the future.
Thanks. The next question we've received is in relation to the staff costs and administration and corporate costs, and that we've received this offline as well as online. I'll address that. This refers to a comment in 1.2F of the 4C, where there were some additional wordings regarding the salaries of the engineering team. This is an inadvertent error from a version control in the preparation of the 4C only. It has never appeared in prior 4Cs, and it does not impact the underlying numbers or methodology. The engineering team has always been in the staff costs of line 1.2E and as they are in this 4C. The commentary there is an inadvertent comment. On the matter of staff costs more generally, during the fourth quarter of 2025, there were some exceptional one-off items in the staff cost number.
This led to it being higher in that quarter compared to those of the current Q1 2026. Without these one-off costs, Q4 staff costs, which were higher, would've sat somewhere between those of this current quarter and those in Q3. That addresses those matters. The next question we've received online is regarding the transition changes. I think it's fair to say we've addressed those quite thoroughly in early April. Importantly, there has been a considered plan with Angus joining and with Oleg's decision to step back. He still remains an advisor to the company and provides regular support where required, including in discussions with staff, with end users, and with partners around the world. We obviously understand that that news would have been a surprise to some, particularly after so many years and developing the company from its really embryonic stage.
After over a decade, after nearly 12 years, a decision for someone to step back and have personal reasons why they'd like to do that, I think should be respected. The next question, which I'll bring to you from the floor. Let me just bring that up there a second. Perhaps you just want to talk a bit about the headcount and where you see the main areas of our headcount moving.
Sure. As we've mentioned, we have about 500 staff across the world at the moment. Over the last couple of years, many of you know, we've substantially increased our headcount, and we will continue to do so in a controlled way throughout 2026 and 2027. You'll see a lot of that headcount growth will be in our critical regional hubs of our new headquarters for Europe in Amsterdam and our headquarters for the U.S. outside of Washington, D.C.
Controlled growth will continue into the future in terms of the headcount, and obviously that is in response to the dramatically increasing demand that we're seeing for our products, our demand on our commercial and sales teams, but also as we are rolling out larger and larger amounts of our multi-site, multi-sensor solutions, our field service engineering, training staff to provide those full programs into those end customers around the world.
Thanks. There's been a question regarding the sales pipeline. I know we've addressed that, and a little bit about the frequency with which that's going to be reported. At the moment, it has been reported at the end of March, and was there a decision to update it again now?
Thanks, Josh. Look, we felt that it wasn't appropriate to update the pipeline again so quickly after updating it only just two weeks ago. The pipeline we've published for this update is the one that is relevant for this allocation of reporting, and so we felt that was the appropriate way and we'll continue to update the pipeline and obviously our progress towards that pipeline throughout the year.
Great. A question regarding local and international competitors and how we differentiate ourselves in the global marketplace.
Thanks, Josh. DroneShield has a number of critical differentiators, both technical and commercial, as we mentioned. We are one of the most experienced, if not the most experienced, Counter-UAS company globally. Although DroneShield is a core part of this massive groundswell towards Counter-UAS, there are competitors around the world, but very little have the scale of operations, the experience to roll out their solutions now at the quality level, but also at the scale that many of our end users now demand. DroneShield, we're in a very strong position. Additionally, being an Australian business, and as we mentioned around defense, we are only regulated in most cases by our Australian Defence Export Controls Office, which is a really good thing, because we have no U.S. defense export controls on most of our core product line items.
We are bound by EAR out of the U.S. government for some of the radar technology that we integrate and we import from the U.S. Our core product lines are only controlled by the Australian Defence Export Controls, which we have a great relationship with.
Thanks. There's been a few questions online and also in advance regarding governance and remuneration. I'll take those ones on. In terms of your remuneration, the question is about remuneration structures and incentives that align with shareholder value. I think there's been a clear move in making sure that there are alignment and structures that work with both the shareholder expectations of value creation and growth, and retention of staff.
This includes the setting of performance metrics, which involve strong revenue growth targets of AUD 300 million, AUD 400 million, and AUD 500 million in 12-month periods over the next three years. It also includes staggered vesting periods, 50% on achievements of that target and 50% after 12 months of continued service, as well as minimum shareholding policies for key management personnel. The remuneration committee of the board receives advice, benchmarking, and feedback from consultants, as well as shareholder advisory groups.
There'll be further discussion of this in the notice of meeting for the annual general meeting, and we encourage everyone to read through that, as well as attend and ask at the AGM. In terms of the remuneration and incentive structure of Angus, of the newly appointed CEO and Managing Director, these were shared in the leadership transition announcement. In relation to that, more generally, there have been questions regarding the governance steps which have been initiated as a result of entering the S&P/ASX 200. As indicated, we did initiate a search for additional non-exec director, and in that process, Hamish McLennan was identified.
In speaking and identifying Hamish, and his engagement with the company, we found a global leader who had worked across many industries, both in Australia and international markets, bringing a range of skills, both of a business nature and of a governance nature, which are highly useful in our business. We look forward to welcoming him on the board. The search for additional directors has not ended, and we will continue to do so and update the market along the way. We believe that the board will evolve as the company matures, and that's consistent with any other company of this nature. The next question, which I'll address to you, Angus, is regarding the interplay of third-party products, the interoperability, and how those conversations are sold to end users in the context and trends of our product versus the interoperable third-party products.
Sure. That's a great question. DroneShield has those really core technology building blocks of radio frequency, RF, detection and defeat. We have our C2 and our sensor fusion layer. As we mentioned, in layers three, four, and five, which we offer to end users, that is a conversation mostly that happens with the end user. We have deep relationships now, as we are on some really important programs around the world, with what are they seeing in terms of the needs of the operators in the field. What are they seeing in terms of the need to secure low-altitude airspace, to secure airbases. We understand, we have a very strong funnel of information in terms of the future needs and requirements of those operators.
We take that into account, and then we essentially do global searches around the world for best-of-breed types of sensor and effector technologies. As we've announced three almost consecutive partnerships over the last few months, Origin Robotics, OpenWorks, and Robin Radar. We believe these are three absolutely exceptional organizations providing a great product, and also opens up new markets and new regions for us. You'll continue to see us do that. DroneShield, we are very focused on our C2 and our core technologies, but we acknowledge that we will need additional layers to be able to be that full turnkey Counter-UAS provider. But that doesn't mean that DroneShield needs to develop all these technologies in-house ourselves, and specialization is really important. You will see us continue to partner with the best of the best around the world.
There is a question regarding, and we receive this question outside of reporting periods as well, regarding the large contract, or large possible contract, which is sitting in the pipeline. I think we've previously talked about a number of $750 million, the status on that at the moment.
Yes, that's right. That's a significant goal for us, and it's a contract that, as we previously discussed, is a follow-on contract from some of the larger contracts that DroneShield received in previous financial years. We are essentially the incumbent in terms of the technology provider for that contract. We feel in a strong position, and I myself have recently, in the last couple of months, met with the end user and decision-makers around that contract. We will continue to update the market with any confirmed information around that contract. We won't be advising anything further at this stage outside of the contract remains in the pipeline, and we have great relationships with the end user.
Thank you. There are a few questions regarding manufacturing, and I think those have largely been dealt with. Just to reiterate, at the moment, the vast majority of our product is manufactured in Australia, and that's very important because that allows us to service the markets that we do, and with relative ease. We have recently announced the manufacturing capability in Europe, and that is a very important facilitator for us to work towards the ReArm Defense Readiness Program in Europe. We're very pleased to have that in effect now. The U.S. will have a similar arrangement in place later in the year, and we'll update the market regarding that through a press release. I think more generally, a discussion regarding our approach to manufacturing might be worthwhile chain .
Sure. DroneShield, we generally take a light CapEx approach to manufacturing, where we are not involved in the fabrication of most of the parts, and we outsource that to a great supply chain of partners, as Josh mentioned, most of which are here in Australia. We can be very light on CapEx in terms of manufacturing. We don't require to essentially buy and maintain large mechanical equipment to do that. We utilize our supply chain for that. What we do are the really important high IP and high value add components of that manufacturing process, and that often is the electronic sub-assembly process, the quality assurance and checking process, and the final field testing of the solution prior to it being deployed into the field. That's how we do our manufacturing process.
As you've seen recently in Europe, we've successfully now transplanted our manufacturing set up to a completely external manufacturer, the contract manufacturing arrangement in Europe. That, again, shows that the way we design and develop our solutions, this model is very possible. While there is a lot of IP and knowhow in terms of the manufacturing of these goods, the core really difficult part of what we do is actually the software and the encryption of that software that gets loaded onto the devices. We successfully transplanted that production into Europe, which we're really happy with now. As Josh mentioned, we are also looking at production options for the United States. Again, the core technology and the core software platform will be distributed from our team here in Australia.
One of the questions which has come through is regarding our views around profitability versus growth. I think the company's worked exceptionally hard to reach the pivot point that it has in the last 12-18 months, where, particularly over the last four quarters, it is operational net cash flow positive. In 2025, announced underlying EBITDA of close to AUD 37 million, which is a 17% margin. I think what we've indicated to the market regarding our operating cost base provides an indication that we are looking at profitable growth within the business as we bring additional product lines and solutions online, matched with the growth in the recurring revenue stream. In essence, when we are looking at opportunities, we look at the payback period of new product investment.
We do look at that from a number of angles, both in terms of the return on investment that it will generate from delivering it into the market. The other thing that we've thought about is, when we are looking at acquisitions, is the speed with which we may be able to do a similar thing or the same thing versus acquiring that. To date, the company has not made any acquisitions. It constantly has put different ideas and different opportunities. We balance that off with our own internal investment and the payback period for those. I think that's quite a useful thing to think about because we do have a useful level of cash available for growth, be it organic or acquisition-based. There's been a few questions, particularly around the commercial market.
One question is regarding the progress on SentryCiv today , and the types of customer scenarios that that's been used, and the growth that we expect there. I think we both know of some really good and interesting case studies around that, and also how that will play out over time with things like SAFER SKIES, and the split between commercial and military. That's a broad question, but I think they go together.
Thanks, Josh. That's right. The commercial market, as we mentioned, we believe is now, after almost a decade of talking about and monitoring the situation, is coming online. Let's say the non-military market. In DroneShield, as I mentioned, we are in a strong position with already our first product that's really specifically designed for that non-military market, our SentryCiv product. The SentryCiv product is a high SaaS, almost entirely SaaS-based product. Again, feeding another strategy that we developed to feed into that 30% recurring revenue base over the next few years. We've made now a number of sales around the world of the Sentry Civ product. These sales, obviously, we don't publish as they are below the AUD 20 million revenue number. I'm really encouraged and excited to see the quality of the customers who are procuring this.
We are talking about really major law enforcement and major, let's say, commercial operators around the world. Our relationships are deepening with those commercial operators and those law enforcement markets that were previously unavailable to us, either through regulatory or through their lack of finances to actually go out and procure counter-drone equipment. We are monitoring the commercial space very closely. We are starting to move the business more in that direction, bringing on a product team specifically designed for that growing segment. Similarly to the way we have successfully penetrated the military market over the last decade, we don't want to go too hard, too early. We want to mature that approach with the market and make sure every step along the way we take to capture that market is the correct one.
You'll continue to see a steady stream of movement in that direction. Continuing our core short-term revenue driver of the military market is self-sustained as well. Yes, we're really excited about the potential emergence of this commercial sector and the green shoots we saw in the first quarter of this year.
Thank you. There's a few questions regarding how we interact with the primes of the industry.
Mm-hmm.
Both as customers, competitors, and partnership arrangements with them. I think that's a broader question, particularly, some of the companies that people have talked about in the U.S. and Europe.
Sure. I think one of the most common misconceptions about DroneShield, and we get the question a lot, which is, are you concerned about these really significant defense primes who have traditionally been very dominant players in the defense space for many years? Do you see them as a threat to the business? Our honest answer is, in almost all cases, these defense primes are our customers much more than they are our competitors. Whether it be in the U.S. or even now across Europe, we are actively selling to defense primes who are taking our technologies and our products and integrating them into their existing defense programs or into their larger defense rollouts as they capture them. Often the defense primes are a partner of DroneShield.
As I mentioned previously, DroneShield, we remain very flexible with our approach to market, where we can go direct, we can be the prime, subprime contractor, or even engage the market through an authorized distributor in country. We're really flexible with that, and it'll really depend on the region and on how we approach each of those markets.
Thanks. There's a couple of short ones which I'll just quickly rattle off. Do we deal with the Ukraine? I think we've previously identified that we have less than 5% of our revenues currently based on sales to the Ukraine market. It's a market, obviously, that we've been very supportive of in the earlier stages of the conflict there. It is still a presence in our revenue, but it is not more than 5% at the moment. A question regarding our security and processes to ensure that we are, I guess, commercially and militarily cautious in our approach, both in terms of making sure that our intellectual property is protected and our employees are appropriately vetted. I don't know if you want to talk about that.
Yeah, sure. No, it's a great question. DroneShield, we are a DISP-certified organization, so DISP, Defense Industry Security Program, and that is the major defense and security program that's rolled out here in Australia. We essentially govern the business via the rules of DISP. That sets out very clearly what we need to do from an employee vetting perspective through to a cybersecurity and physical security controls perspectives, as well as provides a lot of insight in terms of the governance, policies, and procedures that we need to have as part of an organization. It's great actually to work with the DISP team as they provide for you the frameworks that you need to implement. Our significant security team then essentially rolls that out across the business.
We are continuing to uplift that DISP certification, but also our general security posture across the organization and globally. As DroneShield becomes a supplier of [mainstage], as we mentioned, larger programs of record, our security needs to mature and continue to mature to make sure we meet the market where it is and make sure we protect the business.
Thanks. Interesting question, actually, and it's inventory related. I think I'll start off with the answer and then we'll work towards the forward-looking part of the answer. It's regarding inventory obsolescence and what's happened in the past. I mean, we announced a one-off inventory impairment, a significant item of AUD 8.5 million in the FY 2025 results. That product is still in our warehouses and available for sale. It is still an effective product and there are still sales of those, albeit at a slower rate. I think more generally, though, the question which has come through, which is how we deal with inventory obsolescence in the release of new hardware as we move into that expanded product set.
That's a great question, Josh. Yeah, certainly that is something that we are considering deeply, and one of the things we're going to talk about, particularly in the second half of this year, is as we bring on our next generation platforms, which I am dying to speak about, but we'll hold off for now, is obsolescence. The good news here is the products that initially we'll bring onto the market do not directly replace any product lines that we see today. The product lines that you see on the website currently, we will continue to provide to end users for the next few years to come. This is not an immediate impact, and much of the next generation platforms will be slight variation in terms of product positioning or a completely different technology itself.
There won't be any necessary disruption in terms of obsolescence. It's certainly something we need to manage. As we grow our product lines, we are trying to be very strategic about the use of our core components and, for example, using the same chipsets, if we can, across multiple product lines, allowing us to then order at much higher volumes of an individual item, therefore getting a better price per item, that product or that chipset that is being utilized in multiple different DroneShield product lines. We've already started to roll this out, and a lot of the core technology platforms that you'll see from us over the next two years, essentially will use a lot of the same family of chips and same core componentry. Again, reducing the chance of either component obsolescence or product obsolescence.
There are actually a number of questions which are very interesting in relation to different trends and different things which people see in social media, and whether they're kamikaze drones, whether they're fiber optic, whether they're real, whether they're AI. Maybe you just want to talk about how we assess each one of those developments, and where it leads into our product roadmap.
Thanks, Josh. It's a broad question, but I will do my best. Look, essentially, counter-drone, this is, as we've discussed, one of the most disruptive elements to the defense and security apparatus around the world as we speak. Drone technology itself is one of the most disruptive elements to the defense and security apparatus around the world as we speak. DroneShield is one of a handful of companies that are incredibly well-positioned with the experience, but also the operation and funds to execute on that emerging trend. There is a lot of noise. There is a lot of diverging technologies being developed.
There's no question we need to make really good decisions around the technologies we invest in the future, whether that be technologies we choose to develop ourselves, the potential use of an M&A activity to acquire technology new to the business, or, as you've seen from us recently, just choose to partner and create really good agreements that are beneficial to DroneShield with tier one technology providers around the world. We're going to take a balanced approach to that, and we'll assess each of those technologies based on its own merit as to which one of those three avenues we want to go down to attain that technology for our end users.
The great hedge, I guess we have from a technology perspective is our DroneSentry-C2 platform that essentially allows us to roll with the technology and integrate various different types of technologies, sensor or effector, and provide that as a fully consolidated solution, full turn-key for our operators. If technologies evolve and our customers more, increasingly so, already have our technology in country in operation, we can augment their existing solutions with this new technology over time. It is one of the reasons I believe that when Oleg decided to step down as CEO and the board ran their process, that they did end up selecting the previous Chief Technology Officer to essentially run the business as I believe that personally, one of the best positioned people in the organization to make some of those hard calls.
I think we'll use this as the last closing question, and it might tie nicely to some closing remarks as well. In relation, I think we've answered the vast majority of questions. There are some questions which unfortunately we're just not able to answer in a public forum or generally, because of operational security reasons or for other reasons, it's just not appropriate for us to provide commentary on those matters. I think, the one which might encourage towards a broader answer and a closing statement is regarding the things that you see happening in the next two-five years in the business which will help get us towards that 2030 vision.
Sure. Thanks, Josh. Look, in terms of what do we need to do. The position that the DroneShield company finds itself in is very strong. Yeah. That is again, to highlight it and demonstrate it by this first quarter of 2026 update. Both financially, operationally and technically, we are in a good position. Many of you have mentioned in the comments these are lofty ambitions. The AUD 1 billion annualized revenue and 30% of that being recurring revenue. These are significant uplifts on where we are today. We do believe these are achievable and certainly we are redesigning and reshaping the organization, gearing up to really go after these ambitious goals. I certainly wouldn't have stepped into the role and wouldn't have the excitement that I do have if I didn't feel these were achievable.
In terms of what we need to do, it's a continuation of our current existing R&D strategy. We currently hold a two-year product and technology roadmap that we believe will set the business up really well for the growth that's required to hit those numbers from a product and technology perspective. You'll see us, as I mentioned, continue to grow our regional hubs in both the U.S. and Europe. Both of these footprints now are generating good revenue for the business. You've seen a number of those larger deals, most recently out of Europe, but I think there were some comments before about, not announcing any U.S. contracts, and I'd like to highlight what Josh was mentioning is that we have received a number of U.S. contracts, but many of them, if not all of them, have fallen under the $20 million.
The volume of those contracts has increased, and that's perfectly fine for us as a business as well. If anything, it allows us more predictability and more certainty in the organization. Outside of growing the regional hubs, we'll continue to grow our partner base both commercially and technical in the future. This is something that DroneShield, as an Australian business, one that is highly trusted and respected in this sector, we are in a great position to utilize that goodwill and utilize the trust that we do have to partner with some of these great organizations and either enter new markets or augment existing solutions around the world.
Thank you very much, Angus. I think we're just on 10:00 A.M. We appreciate the time that many hundreds of people have used to listen to this update. As Angus mentioned, we have our annual general meeting with a notice of meeting coming out by the end of the month. The annual general meeting is on the 29th of May, and we encourage everybody to either attend in person or online. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.