[Foreign language] Kia ora, and welcome everybody to Rakon's 2024 Annual Shareholders Meeting. My name is Nick Byron. I am the Investor and Corporate Communications Manager here at Rakon. Before we begin, just a few points of housekeeping, so bear with me, please. Firstly, for everyone in the room, you might have seen the bathrooms were just on the left as you exit here. In the event of an emergency, please don't use the elevators. The fire exits are the entrance you came through, and there's an exit behind the stage. Follow the instructions of the event center staff, and they will get you together in the grass area out front of the building. For any other health and safety concerns, please raise the attention of the event center staff or any of our Rakon team members here today.
You'll be able to see them by their name badges. Please also make sure your phones are switched to silent. This is a hybrid meeting, with attendees joining in person and online, and the meeting is being recorded for transcription purposes. We ask anyone who online is recording this meeting is doing so for note-taking purposes and not for publication of the video or audio, and video recording in the room is not permitted. I'm sure you're all familiar with hybrid meetings, but for a quick reminder for those online, you can submit questions using the Q&A tab at the right half of your screen at any time throughout the meeting, and we will address the questions after the Chair's and CEO's address. Please note that questions may be moderated or aggregated if we receive multiple questions on a similar topic.
We also reserve the right not to address questions that, in the opinion of the chair of the annual meeting, are not reasonable in the context of an annual meeting of shareholders, and if we run short of time during the Q&A, unanswered questions will be addressed via email after the meeting, and you can also email investors@rakon.com with any questions after the meeting as well, and voting today will be conducted by way of a poll. For shareholders online, you can cast your vote under the Vote tab. Should you require any assistance, you can type your query into the chat function on screen, and one of the Computershare team will assist you, and finally, a reminder that during today's presentation, we will make forward-looking statements about Rakon Limited and the environment in which it operates. Because these statements are forward-looking, Rakon Limited's actual results could differ materially.
I encourage you to read the disclaimer slide in our presentation for more detail. Thank you for your patience. I'll now hand over to Rakon Chair, Lorraine Witten, to formally begin the meeting. Lorraine?
[Foreign language] Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Welcome everyone, both here in Auckland and joining us virtually to Rakon's twenty twenty-four Annual Shareholders Meeting. I'm Lorraine Witten, as Nick mentioned, and Chair of the Board. Thank you for joining us here today to spend time focusing on the Rakon business, and thank you for your continued support of Rakon. I'm pleased to confirm that we have a quorum of shareholders, and therefore, I declare the 2024 Annual Shareholders Meeting open. I also advise that online voting is also now open. I'm joined today by members of our senior management team and our board of directors. I'd like to introduce you first to the board. I'm joined by Independent Director Keith Oliver, by Executive Director Brent Robinson, who is also our Chief Technology Officer, and Director Jung Meng Tseng, who is also called JM.
It's an easy way to speak with him from Siward, and also Roger Yao, who attends a lot of our meetings as well. Independent Director Keith Watson, who also leads the Board Committee of People and Culture, is an apology and could not join us here today. At full strength, our board comprises five independent directors, plus representatives each from our two largest shareholders, who hold just under 35% of the shares in Rakon. That's the founding Robinson family and Siward Crystal Technology Company of Taiwan. There are no directors standing for election or re-election today, but we are underway with a board process to find suitable candidates for two of the vacancies that we have. One of these will be a director with financial skills to chair the Audit and Risk Committee.
I will temporarily chair the board committee until we appoint a new director. The vacancies have come about through the retirements of both Steve Tucker in March and Sinead Horgan in August. I and the board wish to thank both Steve and Sinead and acknowledge their very valuable contribution to the company. During her time on the board, Sinead chaired our Audit and Risk Committee and also chaired the Independent Directors' Committee, which considered the takeover offer. Also on the podium is our Chief Executive, Sinan Altug, and our recently appointed interim CFO, Mark Dunwoodie. Finally, I'd like to welcome representatives of our auditor, PwC, and our solicitors, Bell Gully and HHL. Today, you will hear from myself and Sinan Altug, our Chief Executive, before we open the meeting for shareholders' questions, followed by resolutions.
There will then be the opportunity for any general business shareholders would like to discuss before we close the meeting. Shareholders invited after the meeting to join us for a refreshment, and a number of our team are here too, so it'll be an opportunity for us to mix and mingle. Rakon is a global technology innovator and market leader in our field. Our products and solutions are critical to managing the flows of data that allow people to connect, explore, and innovate. They're the heartbeat of electronic systems, delivering fast, precise, and stable connectivity for everything from mobile networks and autonomous vehicles to satellite constellations and AI data centers. Our strategy is focused on continuing our lead in our traditional telecoms and core markets and to grow other industry verticals, specifically space and artificial intelligence....
We believe that over time, these segments can be as substantial as our telecoms business is today. Sinan will provide more detail on the addressable market for space and AI. It's a question that shareholders have been asking for some time, so we'll spend a bit of time talking about that today, and he'll also explain why and how our products are relevant in the space and AI segments. In previous years, we've laid out our growth strategy in some detail, but I think it's worth reiterating the key areas of focus. Firstly, we're continuing to grow our core business, that's the telecoms, Space and Defence, and positioning businesses. Our goal is to deliver 15% compound annual growth in revenue in that core business.
Secondly, we want to maintain our product leadership by engaging in the design phase with our customers, investing in smart R&D people, and to collaborate with top-tier customers and entities. By leading with being designed into future solutions, we ensure the longevity of the business and are more effectively able to hold our market pricing. In 2024, we have maintained our market share and achieved a near 100% design win of the targeted projects that we've submitted to. Thirdly, is the expanding into new markets. Over the long term, we want to have a really strong telecoms business, but also grow into these other industries. Diversifying revenue will provide increased protection through the business cycles, such as the down cycle we're experiencing in telecoms at the moment.
We're seeing the validation of this strategy in the space market in particular, where we have leveraged our decades of experience to both expand into new geographies and move up the value chain with products, including into more complex subsystems as compared to components. Pleasingly, during 2024, we received our largest-ever space contract win, and since then have received a second contract for another large satellite constellation. These are a direct result of this strategic focus and recent R&D investments, and show that our confidence for securing future high-level contracts in this sector is really well-placed. We also continue to see significant potential for our AI computing hardware products, and we expect the revenue stream to increase really significantly over the next five years. The fourth pillar in our strategy is delivering world-class manufacturing.
With the inauguration of our manufacturing center of excellence in Bengaluru, India, last year, we now have the facility to manufacture at scale and at the highest standard. Delivering on this initiative is key to maintaining our market position and profitability, especially at gross margin. This year, we've added a fifth pillar to our plan, and you'll see that in the schematic you have. As we continue to grow and evolve, our organizational design also needs to adapt so we can focus on these new verticals. Sinan will provide more detail on that shortly. Importantly, we've made good progress in ensuring ESG is considered throughout our strategic focus, including in the key area of climate change mitigation. You will have seen maybe that our climate-related disclosure statement is now available on our website.
This area is a journey of improvement that we will be on for a number of years. Let's move to the business highlights for FY 2024. Despite the demanding challenges of the global recession and the down cycle in telecoms, Rakon has made some significant progress in its growth strategy in 2024. A major highlight was the 27% revenue growth in the space segment. This momentum is expected to continue, backed by a strong order book and key contract wins, such as the three-year, $17 million satellite subsystem contract that I mentioned earlier. We've achieved our goal of being one of the top three suppliers in this new space subsystems and expect to secure more subsystems contracts this year. We also grew and diversified our products for the global space industry, including the recent launch of Mercury-R, which Sinan will cover in more detail.
Another important highlight in 2024 was the launching of our AI computing hardware product portfolio, including our Niku and Mercury-X chips. Our technology and products are now uniquely positioned to tackle the timing and synchronization challenges that data centers face with AI workloads. We're making significant strides in the emerging markets of AI computing hardware, and over the past 12 months, we have continued to work with the leading players in the AI hardware ecosystem. Finally, cutting costs and driving efficiencies was a major focus to mitigate the current cycle and optimize our business. Part of this was starting the transfer of some manufacturing processes from both New Zealand and France to our India factory, where costs are significantly lower. This does require cost expenditure this year to transfer the hardware and processes, but the investment is important for our future and will continue in this current year.
Our 2024 results reflect a very challenging market. Continuing our investments in space and AI. AI are fundamental to future results, so we kept up this expenditure. Our net profit after tax was down as a result of top-line revenue decline, primarily, as I said, due to the lower telco and positioning sales. This result includes the takeover proposal costs and an annual loss of NZD 2.3 million from our Timemaker crystal manufacturing affiliate in China, where we have an investment. In response to the lower sales demand, we focused on cost efficiencies and inventory optimization and made some good results there. Your board previously anticipated that during the investment and execution of our three-year business plan, that a dividend of NZD 0.015 per share would be sustainable.
However, given the lower financial performance this year and the unexpected costs related to the takeover proposal, we did not declare a dividend in relation to FY 2024 . This decision was made with an eye on maximizing shareholder value, and we continue to strive to balance the distribution of profits to shareholders with retaining enough reserves for investment, as well as managing through this longer and deeper recession. A return to dividends will be considered at the next annual result. The Rakon share price rose 7% over the year, compared to NZX 50, which rose 4% in the same period. We recently entered a three-year banking facility with HSBC for our global business. I've spoken before about the difficulty of getting support for our business from our local bank.
You'll recall that our local bank would not give us debt financing to build the India factory, whereas HSBC has a significant presence in that market and is sophisticated enough to understand our global business and operations. We can now use just one global platform for our business. The overall facility size is up to approximately NZD 47 million and gives Rakon additional flexibility to invest in support, capital investment, and other strategic activity if that opportunity emerges. Finally, I wish to thank and acknowledge all our people for their dedication and hard work through the last year. I especially want to thank and acknowledge Maureen Shaddick, Michael McElroy, and Sinan Altug. Maureen is our Head of Global and is actually sitting over on my right. Michael is our Head of Advanced Technology, and Sinan, our CEO.
All of these executives were asked to expend a significant amount of personal time and effort on the takeover process, as well as keeping up their day jobs. Sinan showed exceptional leadership, navigating the company through this process of uncertainty for our people and still inspiring the team to strive for the future. Thank you. A major event in FY 2024 was the receipt of the confidential takeover proposal on the seventh of December, 2023 , for an indicative price of NZD 1.70 per share. I'd like to take some time to talk you through our experiences in the process. When a board receives a non-binding indicative takeover proposal, it is usually kept confidential from the market, and both parties can privately evaluate the proposal. From a board's perspective, this involves evaluating whether the proposal is in the best interests of shareholders and sufficiently compelling to put to shareholders.
From a bidder's perspective, this involves assessing whether it wants to proceed with the proposal after having completed due diligence. This did not happen in Rakon's case, because someone with knowledge leaked the proposal, and this was then known to the stock exchange regulator only days after the proposal was received by the company. So we were thrust into the market arena immediately. We established a board committee of the independent directors, and as is normal practice, appointed expert legal and investment banking advisors. Given the size and location of the bidder, we needed advice from other jurisdictions as well as New Zealand. Although our non-independent directors, and I'm speaking of Brent and Siward, weren't involved in the board committee or work streams such as the valuation, which would be inappropriate, they were engaged in the technical DD as well as the ultimate decision to conclude the process.
Due diligence was undertaken for five months, which was subject to strict confidentiality. Because the proposal was leaked to the market early, the bidder became very nervous about confidentiality, and we needed to show good faith by agreeing to the bidder's requirement for strict confidentiality restrictions. Those restrictions limited our ability to provide shareholders with updates, except we were legally required to do so under our disclosure obligations. I know this caused angst among some of you, and some of you I've already spoken to subsequently about it. But given the price and the terms the bidder's takeover proposal were offering, we formed the view that it was in the best interest of shareholders to agree to the bidder's confidentiality restrictions to keep the bidder engaged and willing to progress the proposal.
As a global business, Rakon exports to and operates in many countries and has vast technical IP, so the range of due diligence inquiry by the bidder was very broad and very deep. At times, our team was meeting with over a dozen representatives from the bidder. We could not attend these meetings without appropriate advice and expertise, and our small team could not answer the hundreds of questions without assistance. From our company's perspective, as well as the DD content, the evaluation process required an updated five-year financial forecast to confirm our strategy and our updated company valuation. The board considered various scenarios and different transaction options. The transaction costs to the end of June twenty twenty-four are just under NZD 3 million. It's a huge amount of money. This includes NZD 1 million on staff retention payments.
These were put in place to retain our key staff, who are the core of our business. The question of value and why did they make this offer price, has been raised by several shareholders, and I completely understand the question, given the significant premium the bidder offered to the undisturbed share price. We have no knowledge of how the bidder came to their price. The price was made by them with access to only public information. They do, however, deeply understand the industry, so they will have their own view of what is going to be valuable to them in the future. They also understands Rakon's technology, how it's used today and its potential uses, which we endeavor to cover in our regular market reporting and sessions like we are having today.
The process ended on the 19th of June 2024, due to potential complexities that we encountered during due diligence, about which the parties were unable to reach a suitable resolution. We both spent significant time and effort trying to do so. This incompatibility only emerged at the latter part of the DD process. Thousands of hours of board and management time was involved in the process. I can assure you that we all worked very hard to bring this proposal to you, but ultimately, we were not able to do so. You may have read recently that NZ RegCo had a complaint about our disclosures relating to ending the process. They have confirmed... I don't know whether you will have seen them, just the media. It was just yesterday, which is why I'm mentioning it.
They've confirmed that they've dismissed the complaint and will not be opening an investigation. We obviously responded to them with how we came to our disclosures. Looking for silver linings, we do have validation of the global competitiveness of our technology and the value of our business. Now that NBIO is off the table, our focus is on continuing to unlock Rakon's future potential with the exciting market and product pipeline in front of us. Our long-term strategy is clear. A continued focus on growing multiple, strong, balanced verticals, creating diversity and resilience for the business long term, and diversifying revenue to provide increased protection through the cycles. As we enter the third year of our business plan, we are continuing to navigate through market uncertainty, which will suppress revenue again this year, particularly in telecoms and positioning.
FY25 will be particularly challenging as to when the mobile operators will recommence investment in 5G. It's a matter of when, not if. Like the recession, this has been longer and deeper than first expected. However, the AI and space segments are expected to continue to grow with a solid pipeline of orders in place. We have work to do to build the manufacturing for these new contracts and deliver them, the ones we've recently won. Rakon will also continue to focus on efficiency initiatives and cost savings, including moving more manufacturing to India to improve profitability. We continue to have confidence in the fundamental growth drivers supporting our core markets. We're holding our market share and achieving design wins. The opportunities across our target segments remain significant and growing.
These include the evolution of 5G, cloud and edge computing, AI hardware, autonomous vehicles, aerospace, and the global space ecosystem. I'll now pass the meeting over to Sinan, our Chief Executive. Thank you.
Thank you, Lorraine. [Foreign language] Tēnā koutou katoa. Shareholders, both here and joining us virtually, welcome. This is always an exciting date on Rakon's calendar to be able to directly interact with you, engage with you, talk about the company's progress and the exciting path we have in front of us. I would like to also use this opportunity to mention that this has been quite a challenging and a disruptive year for Rakon. FY 2024 has been, but our team has done remarkably well. I just want to put it on the table. So I'm really proud to be really leading a global team of such dedicated individuals, some of which are here. And I would like to also introduce, as Lorraine said, our Interim CFO, Mark Dunwoodie. It's a pleasure to have him on board.
Mark's experience and track record speaks for itself, but for us, more important than that, I think he has a distinct understanding of the passion that we possess for this company, as well as the entrepreneurial spirit that has been the centerpiece of every Rakon success. Welcome to the team, Mark. We have some of our senior members here, in addition to the individuals that Lorraine mentioned. I can see Margot here, our Head of HR, Chloé, our MD for France, and in the back, behind the spotlights, as usual, I see Ian, Mark, Avilash . Please feel free to connect with any one of us after the presentation. We are all here to listen, to engage, and answer your questions, and talk about the exciting path Rakon has in front of us. Let's dive into the FY 2024 performance highlights.
I will go quick, as Lorraine mentioned, quite a number of these, but I want to emphasize some of the exceptional progress that we have achieved and some of the challenges that we had due to the cyclical slowdown of telecommunications and positioning. Our Space and Defence segment revenue increased by 27%, and that was a year-on-year revenue growth. That was quite remarkable. The new contract wins that we have mentioned set us as a top three player for space subsystems, which we feel is a substantial achievement moving forward. Both of these contracts have longevity. The second one that we haven't been able to talk too much publicly about also is a start of an exciting direct-to-device constellation. It's a pilot for that, so both are very exciting. We have quite a lot more in the pipeline that is coming.
Very excited about space and where we are going. Also equally exciting are our AI products, our AI portfolio, and our presence in the AI market right now and where it's going. You will have seen we have released two semiconductor chips. Niku is one, the other one is Mercury-X. These have been in play in design for a number of years, and these were specifically designed for the AI hardware market. As always, we are actually targeting the upper echelon of this market segment in a way to get more margin, ultimately, for the performance that we will offer. We are solving several very important issues for AI hardware, especially when it comes to parallel processing and energy consumption, so we believe we have an excellent position in this market moving forward.
Also, I wanted to mention, while we are, we have gone through this cyclical slowdown in telecom, in positioning, our market share has been quite stable. And when we talk about close to 100% design win, I had received questions from individuals like, "Well, isn't that a bit too high?" What that means is that every design opportunity that we specifically target at a tier one customer, we have almost 100% design win rate for that targeted opportunity, and this is a real number. I also wanted to mention that we have continued our focus on operational expenditure, reduction, and optimization across the company. We have been putting a lot of importance on cost control over the course of this past year, and we will continue to do so.
We have quite a lot of opportunities in front of us. We need to balance the cost controls with execution of our forward strategy. We have to keep in the lead of the markets that we address. That is how Rakon wins, and we will continue to do that. And, we have continued to deliver our three-year plan, and I'll speak to that in a bit more detail in just a few moments. This is a slide that I think you have seen. I still want to quickly dive into the individual market segments. Again, Space and Defence, that was a great outcome. It's our highest revenue ever. It actually contributed more margin dollars than telecom for the first time for us as well, at a very healthy margin.
And, telecom, it was down substantially this past year, but we haven't lost any market position, as I mentioned. But we are expecting for this year, as I make some forward-looking statements, I'm going to mention, how we're seeing this year and next for telecom as well. Positioning, it was a lukewarm year for positioning as well. It was substantially down for us. But for both of these markets, I think one important thing is the fact that we have maintained our market position, and actually, we have designed ourselves into next-generation platforms. Maybe something that I want to make clear is the fact that there's always ongoing design work. New architectures are being developed by the world's top-tier tech companies. So our engagement in these next-generation designs-...
is and must be continuous, and that's why we feel really comfortable with the path forward, because of the fact that our ability to increase our socket positions have actually not reduced at all. It has enhanced in this past year. Financial performance snapshot. Again, Lorraine spoke to most of it, but I just want to touch a few points again. I think one thing that I want to mention is that it has been quite a tough year in terms of revenue going down. We tried to keep our operating expenses under control. We have had some success in reducing our operating expenses. One thing that is important is that the substantial increase in operating cash flow as well.
I just wanted to point to the fact that we have applied very strict working capital rules and discipline in this past year, so we have kept and reserved our cash. But still, this comes with the fact that we have actually continued to invest in Rakon's future, which we have to. So I think that's all I'd like to say because you have seen this before. You have and you have heard from Lorraine as well. Also, another point that I'd like to touch on is our efficiency measures for our global operations. As I mentioned, we have an ongoing focus on optimizing our business at every step of the way. I think this is really important for us, more important now than ever.
Every expense that we have across the globe, we have been matching that to our strategy. So that, that's really important. I'm not saying that we have cut off all our expenses for strategy because we continue to invest into our future, but what we have done is to map and make sure that our expenses are serving our forward-looking strategy and our the growth path that we have in front of us. We have also again, I mentioned that we have reduced our operating expenses, but another aspect was that we have streamlined our global workforce by 13% year- on- year. Again, this, we have to bring our workforce to optimal levels, but optimal level is not minimum. We need to be able to capture the growth opportunities as they come our way.
So for that, we need to keep a very careful balance, but still, throughout this year, we have taken a very careful and thoughtful approach to make sure that we have an optimum staff count across the world and on the right things also for the company. And another point is, like Lorraine mentioned, we have optimized inventory. We have reduced inventory by 12% year- on- year to the tune of NZD 7.7 million. Now, let's carry on to our strategy again. You have seen this. Lorraine spoke to it as well. This slide has more detail, but I'm not going to go into the individual details of every aspect of it. But our strategy, and this is. This has been Rakon's winning recipe in every market that we choose to play in.
We are still on the same path. We are actually growing our core business. We are maintaining leadership in our products and technology. We expand into new markets. Again, space and AI are actually very exciting for us. I'm going to speak more about them also further, but this is a part of... This has been a part of our deliberate strategy for the last number of years, and delivering world-class manufacturing and scaling our operations according to what the global competitive market requires, these have been all in our strategy. One additional pillar that is new on this is organizational transformation. This year and moving onward, we are putting quite a lot of energy into also making sure that we reconfigure our global organization to match our global strategy.
Our growth strategy requires an ability to scale our organization in some parts and compress it in others. That does require an agile global organization that is market-focused, and we are reconfiguring our global business along these lines. This also comes with a benefit at steady state of additional efficiency measures, but our main focus is to scale the company for growth moving forward. Matching our strategy, we have shared this with you before as well. This is our growth roadmap. Actually, it is referring to the main investment areas that we have on our strategy, and the milestones that we have shared with you about three years ago on our three-year plan. This is the last year of the three-year plan that we have shared back in twenty twenty-two. We have achieved substantial progress.
We have achieved tangible outcomes on the milestones that we have put here. What was not evident on this before, but now, it is the AI computing products and our deliberate effort to bring it to the limelight. Again, we have been on that path for quite a long time. You can understand that by the fact that we have not one, but two semiconductor chips, which each take years to develop, that we have released in FY 20 23 and FY 20 24, and that we are also putting more coal under that fire in terms of our investments as well. And for FY 20 25, we are registering very good progress to the milestones that we have highlighted in this growth roadmap as well. This is an exciting slide.
I think, I'd like to spend some time on this one. This is a new one that you haven't seen. We are at an exciting inflection point when it comes to space and AI for Rakon. And we have been talking about these markets, and we, you know, we refer to them as a really exciting growth. We want to quantify that a little bit in terms of total available markets and serviceable markets for Rakon right now. This is quite an up-to-date slide that refers to the total available market as TAM, and the subset of that market that is serviceable by Rakon. You will see underneath, on the left, you can see capture for Space and Defence and AI computing infrastructure.
These are these substantial growth markets, and coming to the right for telecommunications and positioning are traditional core markets. So, if you start from, Space and Defence, you can see that the calendar year 2024 TAM is about $1 billion. By the way, all of these are in USD. I apologize. It's a bit confusing, perhaps, but, they're all in USD. So we are talking about $1 billion of TAM for space segment that is available, and our ability to address this is to the tune of 80%. So $800 million is the market serviceable by our product portfolio in this market. That's why we are so excited, because if you look at that number, that is higher than the three other, markets here combined. So that's one.
AI computing infrastructure, in this market, which is representing a TAM of $500 million at the moment, we are addressing, as I said, the high performance part of this. So this is adding up to close to $200 million of serviceable market for Rakon at the moment. If you look at those numbers in comparison, telecom market with a $1 billion TAM, it has a serviceable market that is on par with AI for us at this point. And also, the difference is that for telecom, due to our presence in that, we have substantial reach into that business. So we, we actually... I, I wouldn't say we own that market, but we have a great market position.
So compared to that, AI represents a substantial growth opportunity for us, and if you add the serviceable market for AI and space together, it's three times the size of telecom infrastructure and positioning. Now, don't get me wrong, because on the core markets of telecom infrastructure and positioning, we are not giving up at all. We will continue to command those markets and maintain our market position and definitely move on to the next generation architectures, as we have always done. So that work is still ongoing. But in short, the reason that we see space and AI as new growth drivers for Rakon is exactly what you see on the slide. I want to also speak a little bit more about space, and an AI slide will follow as well.
As Lorraine said, we have been awarded a substantial contract in May 2024, followed by a second contract. And as I mentioned, we haven't been able to tell too much about that second contract, but that has a lot of importance for Rakon as well. These do make us, for the subsystems, a top three player in the world for space. This is a big achievement, I think, in a short period of time for the company. When we talk about subsystems, once again, to recap, we are talking about bigger, higher value add modules that do quite a lot of timing of the satellites. So it's not only an oscillator, but effectively a module that does generation of timing and distribution of timing of the satellite. So these are higher value-add products, and we have set ourselves really well as a major player in that.
We have released several new products also in FY 2024, as we have mentioned before. And the two new, the, well, the one chip that I want to specifically refer to is Mercury-R. This is also one that we have recently done a market release for, but for those of you who who haven't seen it, it is a radiation-hardened semiconductor chip for space. It's first of its kind. It puts quite a number of different disciplines for Rakon together, and we expect quite a lot out of this. It is getting quite excited feedback from the market at the moment. And we expect substantial growth in this market, not only because of our position in the market, but also the way that the market is projected to grow as well. So that's space. Moving on to AI.
For AI hardware and computing infrastructure, in general, our technology is ideally suited for this. Again, we have talked about why, when we talk, I'll just quickly recap. The part of this market that requires tight timing and synchronization is the part where they are actually aiming for moving more data parallel, in a parallel and distributed manner. Meaning they want to push more data through from the same pipe at the same time. That helps with computing infrastructure requirements, but that also is much more efficient power-wise. So power efficiency is quite an important factor for AI. It's getting increasingly important for AI hardware and AI firms that they are forming, they are going to be establishing quite soon. And our products are a great match for that.
So we have a position for the top end of the AI hardware market that is going to treat Rakon really well. The two chips that I mentioned before, Niku and Mercury-X, again, these, combined with our XMEMS technology that many of you also know, that's our quartz technology. We are combining for AI market, our own chips, along with our XMEMS technology. These are resulting in unrivaled products in the market. So there is a basis for our excitement. I know everyone talks about AI, but there is a reason that we are really excited about the AI hardware market moving forward. So we have already revenue generation. It's very small, so we haven't really this year, we chose not to separate it. It's still in our telecom market segment.
From next year onward, we are going to treat it as an individual market segment. FY 2025 guidance and quick market outlook. We have just released our guidance for FY 2025, and our underlying EBITDA is expected to be in the range of NZD 5 million-NZD 15 million for the financial year ending 31st of March 2025. So this reflects both of these elements that I spoke of, the ongoing challenges that we have for telecom and positioning, but also the exciting ramp-up that we are seeing for our space business, and AI ramp-up that we are expecting later toward the end of the year. And very quickly going into an outlook by market. Again, Space and Defence, we have very strong order book. It is a matter of us executing.
We have significantly more opportunities still in more satellite constellations, so our order book goes into FY 2025 and beyond, FY 2026 and beyond, actually. AI computing hardware, rapidly growing. Some of the next generation platforms that I mentioned are expected to ramp up toward the end of the fiscal year. We expect quite a lot of from that ramp-up. We will see what the timeframe is going to be for these architectures, but again, it is not a question of if, but a question of when. I repeat what you said in a different context, but, but it's the reality.
Telecom, market weakness, as you would have seen from the prevailing industry reports and some of our customers' results, the weakness is continuing, but some of our customers are actually talking about a stabilization and a turnaround second half of this fiscal year. We are seeing some of this, but I don't want to overplay it. I think until we see a real robust comeback, I think I'll leave it there. Positioning, the inventory correction is still continuing. We have strong position, as I mentioned, in positioning, but it's a really lukewarm market and we are seeing it to be flat for the rest of the fiscal year. So in conclusion, a summary, we are at an inflection point for space and AI hardware.
We believe that these are going to be major growth drivers in Rakon's future, starting from this year onward. The short-term outlook remains suppressed for, especially for telecom and for positioning. Space and Defence is continuing to grow. We have a solid order book. We have very high design win rate on those sockets that we target, we win it. We have continuous focus on efficiency initiatives that will continue for us as a major initiative, but we are going to balance that with strategy execution and the requirements of our strategy as well. Our three-year growth plan, this is the last year. Next time you see me or you hear from me, you will have a new actually extension of our plan and our strategy that we will share with you.
It will still continue on the path of diversification of, and expansion of our revenue streams. As the last point, again, I mentioned this, but for telecom and positioning, we are not giving up on these markets. We own these markets. As they come back, we are going to have substantial benefit from that because we are positioned very well in those two markets as well. I'd like to thank you once again for all your support. We have quite a lot of support from quite a lot of shareholders. I really appreciate that. We will keep you abreast, but our journey is really exciting, and thank you for being a part of it. I'll pass it back on to Lorraine.
Thank you. Actually, you might wanna stay up with me for questions, maybe?
No, I'll leave.
Thanks, Sinan. I'll now invite questions from our shareholders on the business. I've had an opportunity to meet with a few of you over the last few days, so thank you for that opportunity. I really appreciate it. I know there has been a period when we haven't been as communicative as we would have liked to have been, but we continue to be open and available for shareholders. Just a reminder that only shareholders and their proxies or corporate representatives have the right to speak or ask questions. If you're here in the room, could you please raise your hand so we can bring you a microphone? Just pause a minute. Ideally, please say your names. We'd like to meet.
And we're also gonna take questions from those who are attending virtually, and you can use the Q&A tab on your screen to ask questions. All right, are there any- is there anybody who has questions? Anything, Nick, from online?
We do have one question currently online.
Yes.
It's from Mark Evans of Kerrycrest Properties. Mark asks: Are you able to share the market size and potential upside effect on EBITDA of your new products?
Can I answer that?
Yeah.
This may have come from Mark before, I shared that slide. We have shared this, Mark, in the form of market from a market segment standpoint. We haven't really separated it into new products within that market segment. I will be happy to share that with you as well. I'm guessing that Mark is listening, but, I'm happy to share that with you, but I don't have that information right here. But from a market segment standpoint, that information is in our presentation.
Anything further, Nick?
Not currently, no.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yes, we have a gentleman. Yeah, just a moment. We'll get a-
Yeah. Hi, my name's Neil Scott.
Hi, Neil.
I have a question that I emailed, and sorry, I thought it was gonna be read out.
Oh.
I emailed it yesterday. And the question is: Has the Rakon board and its senior management team factored in the potential damage to Rakon as a company for supplying components, munitions used by the Israeli military to commit genocide in Gaza? There's a downside to us providing munitions that are involved in genocide.
Look, thank you for your question, and we're very sensitive to the issue that you're raising. And we've prepared a statement that is on our, on our website regarding that, and I understand that that was, was sent to you as well. Thank you. Does anybody else have any further questions?
Just, just to follow up on that?
Yes, sure.
It says... Sorry, I was trying to find the statement.
Yeah.
It spoke about not being aware. You don't, you don't manufacture weapons. You don't send components to Israel, but you do send components to United States. On the slides, it says your defense budget is quite high. You say you are unaware that these components are used in smart bombs, artillery, missiles, but you're not sure. You don't say you are absolutely sure. I asked investor relations to confirm that he was absolutely sure that no chip has been used in any sense and dropped into Gaza. So I, my understanding from what I've read on your statement, is you're unaware of it, but I'm sure that if you looked, really looked into it, you may find a bit more information. Cheers.
Thank you. Any further questions? Yes. Thank you. Is it?
Thank you. My question relates to India and the shift in manufacturing capability to India. What proportion of your sales, if that's the correct term, in all of those markets are through firms that operate in India? And do you expect, as a result of shifting your manufacturing to India, that that market share will increase?
Do you want to-
I can, sure. So the products that we manufacture in India right now, and we will manufacture based on our transfer, is not necessarily. It's for the world, actually. Most of our base station OCXOs, discrete base station OCXOs, for instance, right now, that we ship to the world, is manufactured in India. The local Indian market for space, for instance, that is quite active, and we had participation in this moon lander, for instance, that Indian Space Agency sent over.
In terms of the transfer, rather than looking at it for the Indian market, again, for us, we are looking at a map of the globe, where the customers are, who we ship to in the world, and where we manufacture, and what percentage of our products is a function of quite a complex framework that we have built to make sure that we optimize, we balance flexibility and fast prototyping with high volume, lower cost manufacturing. So it's a matter of what product we supply and the market that we supply it to.
I've got two gentlemen just here. Do you want to either? No? Yeah. Thank you.
Alex Bull, New Zealand Shareholders Association.
Hi, Alex.
Just a quick question, first up, on disclosure. So, you know, you're a tech company. You're entering into new markets constantly. You're also innovating to stay relevant in the markets that you're in. What I didn't see today, and it may be something that you do disclose elsewhere, is an indicator of the levels of R&D that you incur each year. 'Cause I, I think from a shareholder point of view, that's quite helpful to see-
Mm-hmm.
-how much you're investing on an ongoing basis. So that's my first question is whether you're planning to do that? A lot of companies do that. The second is, this is a two-part, sorry. It's just on the AI computing infrastructure market. Thanks for the TAM and SAMs information. It's, it's really helpful. On the AI computing hardware, obviously, the world and his mother are piling into that market. And as much as you can be confident on, why you're going to be successful in that market, I'm just interested as, as to why you believe Rakon has, a unique, selling proposition, if you like, into that market. Why you're gonna win, what you think you're gonna win.
'Cause you've talked about the size of the market, and you've talked about chips and various other things, but there are other players out there, obviously. Thanks.
Thanks, Alex. I'll maybe take the first one, you take the second.
Sure. Please, go on.
We do normally disclose our R&D, and I think it's in our annual report, but good call-out that we could speak to that at the ASM and probably give you a return on investment also, which is key metrics we keep our eyes on. Yeah.
Yeah, and it has been increasing year- on- year as well.
It's 9 .6m in the accounts.
Yeah.
There you go.
There you go. Thank you, Chris. Yeah.
The second part of your question, I have articulated to some level, but maybe not fully. Yes, everyone is talking about AI, as I mentioned. From our side, we have distinct performance-based advantages that also. So if you were to look at the next generation AI farms, they are going for parallel processing. I'm very happy to explain this in further technical detail as well, after this also. They're going for parallel processing, trying to maximize the computing power. In the size that they require and the timing accuracy that they need to be able to sync these data centers, we are almost unmatched in terms of what we offer. So it's a size and performance-based, distinct advantage that we have that puts us ahead of everyone else.
This is the same winning recipe that we have always had for any market that we enter. It's not some price game or anything else. It's rather addressing that performance-sensitive part of the market, understanding the application well, and their next generation architecture, and going after that. We started this about three, maybe four years ago, actually, where even ChatGPT wasn't out there. No one was speaking about AI, but it was definitely on our radar.
Just, hi, Eden Bradfield, BlackBull Research. Just a follow-up question to that, actually. Maybe you or Brent could speak to the importance of timing in terms of AI and provide some color on that.
Yeah, yeah, sure. With, as Sinan alluded to, parallel processing offers tremendous power savings and efficiencies for AI in the future. So currently, AI, this computer here is working, this computer mainframes here, even in the cloud, they've all got a different time of day. So when they communicate with data, they have to do a lot of error checking, make sure that that data is correct, and it goes backwards and forwards. If you think about the traffic in Bangalore, it's all banging into each other, horns beeping. Well, if it's in a sequenced event, so everything can follow very closely in a sequence, in synchronous, they can communicate between mainframes faster and faster. So that's one aspect to it.
Then there's the parallel processing, where they can distribute the ChatGPT request, so it can go to even multiple countries, all in the same sequence. We're able to synchronize these computers down to a few nanoseconds, which is way beyond what anyone else can do. The more accurately we can synchronize, the faster they can come back with their responses at lower power. Some of these power savings I've heard are up to a quarter of the power can be achieved if it's all synchronous.
So it's quite a big thing, and it's not happening yet, but next generation of equipment will be able to do this, and we're quite excited to be able to lead that into next generation AI.
Thanks, Brent. Follow-up question, probably for Sinan, I think. In terms of... You talk a lot about incorporating the chips into leading players in the space, especially with the latest AI and low-orbit chips. Can you provide some color on who those contract wins are with and who's incorporating those chips? I mean, just wink if it's NVIDIA.
Which eye would you like me to wink with?
Whichever is fine.
But, no, I as you know the answer, I won't be able to. But, hey, maybe we can talk about that on TikTok. How about that?
I'll see you on TikTok.
I think a bit more color on that, though, Eden. You know, like, that's one reason that we are with NASA, with the European Space Agency, you know, that actually really engaging with those that are at the very leading edge of technology, even though we may be doing a few small projects with them, that feeds the leading thinking and design work that's going on in the world. And, and although there's not significant amount of money, there's a huge amount of importance engaging with them that leads into then the quality of the products we can put in elsewhere. So you're right on the point that it's really important to engage with those all those leading players. Yes, Mike, yes.
Mike Daniel. I'm just going back to that question, Sinan. Can you give us just sort of a... Because we don't know. Could you give us an example of the sort of players that are in the markets that you are in, and that you could possibly be a designer? So just some examples.
Sure. I mean, I can't talk about the market in general, how, you know, who is in there. So there are several different types of players. NVIDIA, as Eden was saying, they are quite big. They have created - many of you know, they evolved their business to actually make use of... They were in gaming, but they have seen that, "Okay, hey, this, what we need for gaming in terms of processing matches AI quite well." So they have evolved their business into creating AI platforms. They are quite big. The other big guys, like Dell, Intel, and such, are following because they want to be right in the middle of all this action. So all of the big names that you know for computing in general are in the mix. That's one.
The other aspect of it is that the, let's say, the telecom infrastructure guys, again, this is all public info, the likes of Juniper and Cisco, they have felt, "Hey, hold on one sec. There is a lot of action here." They have evolved also the way that their next-generation platforms are to take some of the functionality. So in short, bringing that platform design into their own products in terms of how they process communication. So that's a good play for us because of the fact that I'm talking about companies that are in telecom infrastructure. We are doing business with a few in that space as well. So that brings another set of customers to us. So those are the two big sets of players. Well, there is a third set.
Those are startups, some that we are quite close to from our past. Startups that have been established just for the sake of doing a new AI platform, looking at it differently, looking at this very complex computation problem in a different way to address it differently. Now, that is also an interesting angle for us, because we have seen in other markets that we played, sometimes these startups that are. They, they're, you know, they have, they are a no-name, then they become the biggest player in that market. So we are doing work with the startups as well in terms of reference designs into their potential platforms out there. So those are the three sets of customers.
What about-
So leading on from that, sorry, leading on from there, the big guys like Cisco, why can't they come along and cut your lunch?
What we do, Mike, is the frequency control product, the oscillator that has the crystal in it, like our XMEMS technology. It has its application-specific IC in it. They are not in the business of frequency control products, so it's our business that actually they don't have. They would need to build it from scratch, and that would be a really costly premise for any one of them.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks. I'll just take... We've also got a question, online, which is, would you like to read it, Nick, please?
Sure. This question comes from Michael Peter Johnston. He asks: "Given Rakon's revenue is not in NZD, can you please explain Rakon's FX hedging policy and the percentage of expected revenue that is currently hedged?
I'll be struggling to give you exact numbers that is currently hedged, but a lot of our revenue is actually made in U.S. dollars, so it's a very good question. And we have a hedging policy that allows us to within a range cover for those known revenue streams that are coming in. And as the exchange rate goes in... Well, I guess, in favor of a strong U.S. dollar, then we will take some hedging. The range for the current year, we can go up to, I think the range is 40%-80%, and next year it will be up to 50%. So we are looking forward, and we do take specialist advice that we take into account, too, with that hedge. Thank you.
Maybe I'll close the questions there. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the engagement from you. We'll now move to the formal resolutions before the meeting. Shareholders can vote either in proxy or in person, and also can be voting online. Please ensure you sign the voting paper, and we will collect the votes at the end of the voting. If you're attending virtually, the online voting facility is still open, and I'll keep it open for a short while. We only have one resolution at this meeting, and it's an ordinary resolution, so it just takes a simple majority to pass. So, the board intends to vote all its discretionary proxies in favor of the resolution. The resolution is to authorize the directors to fix the remuneration of the auditor.
Rakon's auditors' team is here today. We've got Indy Sena, who's our partner, and the board recommends that you vote in favor. Are there any questions regarding the resolution? Mike Daniel? Yes. Thanks, Mike.
Unfortunately, the immediate past chairman has departed of the audit committee. Last year, she undertook to consider and to change the way in which you appoint the auditor by putting it out to tender. There's no reference to it in the annual report, and I just wondered what happened.
Yeah, good question, Mike, and we did commit to doing that. And the reason we didn't... We haven't done it, you're right. And the reason we didn't is because our CFO and our Head of RAC were really busy with the takeover proposal. There just wasn't the bandwidth to do that as well. So we will be continuing to look at that in the current year. Thank you. Any other questions? Anything online, Nick?
No.
Thank you. In that case, I'll just give you a moment to please cast your vote. The voting boxes will be coming to the end of your row, so just please pass your vote along. Thank you. It's a bit short on pens these days, isn't it? Not everyone carries a pen anymore. So thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes the business of the meeting, and in a minute, I will close the voting system. I know we've still got a few votes coming in. Just check that you've cast your vote. The results of the voting will be loaded up onto the stock exchanges. We'll always do, as will the presentations and the notes, the slides that you've seen today. So if you want to refer back, those will be available under Rakon on the stock exchange.
Just a final opportunity for any final comments and questions before I close the meeting. Okay, thank you very much. We really appreciate your attendance today. We had a great Q&A session. Really appreciate your questions and your continued support for Rakon. We're working really hard, and we really appreciate your support through what hasn't been an easy year. But I think you've heard today that there is a very solid plan ahead of us, and we look forward to standing in front of you next year as well, being able to report on how we've done. So thank you very much for your engagement.