Welcome to the Rakon Annual Shareholders Meeting for 2022. I'm Lorraine Witten, the chair of your board of directors, and I'll chair today's meeting. Before we get underway with the business of the meeting, there are a few preliminary matters I just need to cover. We're conducting our meeting this year, both here in person at the Ellerslie Event Center and also online with a Computershare online meetings platform, MeetNow. All our online attendees can watch the live webcast and read the documents associated with the meeting. In addition, those shareholders and proxies who have the ability to ask questions and submit votes online. For those of you in the room, please note, in the event of a fire alarm, please exit through the lighted exits and follow the instructions of the event center staff.
In the event of any other health and safety concern, please raise the attention of one of the staff helping here today. For the bathrooms, please note these are located just outside the doors. Now please make sure your cellphone is turned on silent. There'll be an opportunity later in the meeting to ask questions at a couple of spots after the chief executive and I have completed our addresses during the consideration of the resolutions and then under general business at the end of the meeting. For those of you attending virtually, if you have a question, just you can submit it during the live meeting and select the Q&A tab on the right half of the screen any time. Type your question and press Send. Your question will be immediately submitted.
If you're requiring any assistance, you can type your query and ask one of the Computershare staff. There's a chat function with that, where they can reply to your query. Alternatively, you can phone. While you can submit questions from now on, I'll not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. Please also note that your questions may be moderated or if we receive multiple questions on the same topic, they could be amalgamated with others. Finally, due to time constraints, we may run out of time to answer the question, and we may find we need to answer one or two via email. You can also vote today online by way of a poll at either here or also online. I'll open the online voting shortly for all resolutions. I'm joined today by both board members and senior members of our Rakon team.
I'd like now to introduce you to our board members. We're very pleased to welcome two new independent board members this year. On my left, I've got Steven Tucker, who was appointed through the year and is an Independent Director. He's standing for election at this meeting. Then have Keith Watson, who is an existing independent director, and he's standing for re-election this year. Joining online today is Independent Director Sinead Horgan. She also was appointed through the year and is standing for re-election today. Unfortunately, her flight was canceled this morning by Air New Zealand, so she hasn't been able to join us, but you will be able to hear from her a little later in the meeting online.
On my right is Brent Robinson, who is been a long-term member of our board, and he also is standing for re-election today. Unable to join us is Keith Oliver, unfortunately, who is unwell, and Tony Tseng from Siward, who is in Taiwan and for whom travel remains restricted by COVID. They both send their best regards and are observing the meeting online. Also on the podium is Sinan Altug, our Chief Executive Officer, and at the far end, Anand Rambhai, who's our Chief Financial Officer. Finally, I'd like to welcome our representatives from our auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers. We've got Indy Sena, who's our actual main auditor who's here today. If you wanna just wave out, Indy. Thank you. Representatives from our solicitors, Bell Gully, and bankers, ASB.
I'm very pleased to be leading us through the presentation of our performance for the 2022 financial year, then our plans for the future of the business and resolutions for shareholders. It's been our best year ever, and Rakon is stronger than ever and has again driven shareholder value and growth and returns. Rakon is today a global innovator and market leader in technology. Our frequency control products and timing solutions are critical to enabling connectivity between people, networks, and machines, and at the heart of hundreds of applications around the world. To understand what this means, think making sure a satellite arrives in the exact location in space, that it communicates information to exactly where it needs to be sent, continues to work in extreme hot or extreme cold, under extreme pressure with critical accuracy and stability of performance in those environments.
Crucial that NASA used two of our frequency control products on their Perseverance robot on Mars. I realize a lot of you know that, but I'm just so proud of that achievement, I can't help but reiterate it. We've been on a journey to get here, and I'd like to acknowledge both our people globally and you, our shareholders, for supporting us to become the company we are today.
There've been a number of deliberate changes that Rakon has made over recent years in our strategy and market focus and in our people, both board and management. Part of our journey has been changing our strategy away from a focus of supplying components for consumer applications, where the specifications are simple, market power is low, and it's difficult to maintain margin, to realizing our strength is to be a global technology leader in demanding industrial applications that require precision under difficult environmental conditions. We have now completed that pivot in strategy. This year, we completed our board and management succession plans. A few years ago, there was a call for more independence on the board. This year, we appointed Sinead and Steve as independent directors, and I stepped into the chair role. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge our prior chairman, Bruce Irvine.
Bruce served on the board for almost 17 years, and since 2018, led the board through the change in direction and recent succession. His calm and experienced leadership was important to achieving the results we have before us today. I believe we now have a wide range of relevant skills and experience on the board, diversity of thought, and five independent board members. We were very pleased to appoint Dr. Sinan Altug as Chief Executive Officer in April this year, completing an 18-month transition from former CEO, Brent Robinson. Sinan has been with Rakon for over 20 years and has successfully undertaken senior leadership roles for us internationally, covering all aspects of the business. Most recently, he was the head of our European business, then our Chief Operating Officer here in New Zealand. He has a PhD in electrical engineering as well as an MBA.
His deep understanding of our business and his scientific expertise combined with business acumen made him the best choice for the role. We're also very happy that Brent Robinson has continued in our Chief Technology Officer role, where he's now able to focus all his attention on maintaining global leadership in product development and our future growth opportunities. I'd like to acknowledge the considerable contribution Brent has made over his 42 years' service with Rakon, including 36 years as Managing Director and CEO. Brent is a global expert in our industry and continues to add significant value to the company. Alongside these changes, we surveyed our shareholders and heard your request for the company to provide more information and insights into the business. We've been working to improve the clarity and frequency of our communication with you and the wider investment community.
We reached out into the investor community and met with many institutional investors and commentators to grow their understanding of Rakon and listen to the feedback on our business. We continue to develop our communications program, so you can expect to see more openness, insights, and information about how the business is being run and performance. We're paying Forsyth Barr for research analysis as part of our ongoing program to build investor understanding. Last year was another difficult operating environment because of the continued disruptions to global supply chains, the threat of illness of our people with the global COVID pandemic, and the lack of freedom for people to move countries for work.
It was very challenging to ensure we could continue to operate our factories at capacity, whether we would have raw materials on time to make our products, and whether we have the skilled people to run our business. It's due to careful and thoughtful management by all our team that we overcame these risks and have delivered an exceptional result for 2022. I acknowledge and thank all of our people. We recognize the importance of sustainability and resilience to all Rakon stakeholders. In our annual report this year, we introduced you to the steps we are taking towards the adoption of our framework for environmental, social, and governance reporting.
We engaged with a range of internal and external stakeholders, including investors and their representatives, to identify the ESG topics most important to them and to inform our assessment of the key topics we'll focus on to improve our sustainability and risk management. We will build on existing work in key areas of the business with a view to reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen our supply chain management and visibility, protect the health, safety, and well-being of our people, and encouraging high levels of employee engagement. We've also undertaken a maturity assessment to support our readiness for climate-related disclosures in line with the TCFD, Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures. We've identified a roadmap for the next three years. These things are all detailed in our annual report. Now to the past financial year, 2022.
Sinan will speak in more detail about the performance, but some points of note are that FY 2022 is the fifth year in a row that we've grown revenue and net profit from core business. We've developed a very solid core business in telecommunications. Revenue growth was driven by strong demand in 5G telecommunications networks, and we see the runway for 5G continuing for the rest of the decade. Our core telecommunications business delivered a pleasing 21% compound annual growth rate over the last four years. Through our agility to quickly expand our production in New Zealand, we were able to take advantage of the global chip shortage. This was created by greater demand and a shortage of supply as a result of a fire in the Japanese manufacturer's factory. Our response boosted our revenue and gross margin results for the year.
Overall, gross margin grew from 46% - 52%. Sinan will show you both how our core business has continued to grow and the impact of the short-term business that we captured. We achieved a strong operating cash flow of NZD 30.2 million, a NZD 10 million increase on the prior year. The chip shortages and global supply chain disruptions meant we needed to proactively mitigate our risks by holding higher stocks of raw materials inventory. Our inventory investment increased by NZD 20 million over the year. Our manufacturing capabilities are nearing their capacity. In FY 2022, we increased the manufacturing volume in New Zealand by 60%. By the end of 2023, we will complete the expansion of our manufacturing footprint in Bengaluru, India, effectively doubling our capacity when we complete building our factory.
During the last financial year, we purchased the land, which is in a high-tech aerospace park in Bengaluru. The foundations are complete, and we are on track. The new factory will deliver an immediate capacity increase and an improvement in overall gross margin when in line with our strategic plan, we're able to transfer the manufacture of some products from New Zealand and France. The startup and transfer of the factory is also one of the business risks of this coming year. With the increase in the cost of building materials and equipment, the usual construction risks and the risks involved in transitioning production to new premises. Our new factory in India will be good for our business and our people. It will ensure we provide modern, high-quality working conditions which align with our fair and just employment policies.
Finally, our NZD 13.1 million invested in R&D, including in the development of our XMEMS nanotechnology and ASICs products, has progressed well this year and investment will continue. Looking forward to the end of FY 2023, and as announced earlier today, we expect to maintain the growth in Rakon's core business and to achieve underlying EBITDA in the range of NZD 36 million-NZD 44 million. The wide guidance range reflects the ongoing risks of shortages of raw materials and market disruption that we will need to overcome this through this next year. As signaled, EBITDA will be below FY 2022 due to the short-term nature of the chip shortage business we captured last year. Core business will continue to grow. We continue to take a prudent approach to debt. In FY 2023, we will pay back the debt we arranged to build the new facility in India.
With the additional profit and cash we generated in the last financial year, this will utilize NZD 10 million of our cash balance. To be prudent, we will arrange a new undrawn debt facility with our banker, ASB. We have a strong balance sheet and are comfortable with this position given the significant change in interest rates and inflation globally and the challenge in the equity markets. This time last year, our chairman stated that Rakon would most likely pay a dividend in the coming year if the forecast results were achieved and there's no significant capital requirement. I appreciate that this created an expectation that we would pay a dividend. Also, we've been operating under a dividend policy that said we would pay out to 50% of our profit, and Rakon has never paid a dividend. These are confusing signals to shareholders.
In May, we announced that the board had decided not to pay a dividend in relation to FY 2022. The reason for doing that is because we believe that we have excellent growth and investment opportunities within the business that will provide good return on investment to shareholders. In addition, there have been significant changes in the global economy where prudence is the best course. The board carefully weighed the options, and we appreciate that we need to fully explain our rationale. Sinan will detail our investment plans in his discussion. Acknowledging that our dividend policy wasn't clear, the board has reviewed and reissued the policy. We don't want to give the wrong signal to investors who are looking for a regular annual dividend.
With the speed of growth in our opportunities in telecommunications, new space and autonomous vehicles, we don't see a runway for consistently paying dividends in the near future. Rather, we propose to invest in this growth to capture these market opportunities while they are here. Looking ahead, we have a very solid telecommunications business, which we will continue to grow as we develop our technology for 5G, 6G, and data centers. However, our view is that we also need to strengthen our long-term business by developing other key markets. Our goal is to have over time, two other strong markets that are as significant and robust as our telecommunications business. We're now ready for the new phase of development and growth. We're going to share with you today our plan for the next three years.
We have four strategic objectives of growing our core business, maintaining product and technology leadership, expanding into new markets, and delivering world-class manufacturing. These objectives inform the areas where we'll be investing our market focus and our expansion targets. Sinan will walk us through each of these strategies during his presentation. During our strategy development, we have broken down the elements of these strategic objectives to the skills and resources that we need to execute effectively. There are of course some gaps, and over the next few years, we need to invest in developing capabilities and acquiring market access, particularly in North America, and to continue to develop new technologies, products, and manufacturing skills. Needless to say, the investments will be disciplined and targeted.
Both board and management believe that Rakon has significant growth prospects before us, and that the timing is right to pursue these long-term opportunities in industries that will develop over the decade. We have a strong company. We're in an industry that's expanding. Globally, we have great people, and we lead the world in our technology field. There's every reason to have confidence in our future. I'll now pass the meeting over to our CEO to expand on the financial performance from last year and our business strategies for the future. Thank you, Sinan.
Thank you, Lorraine. [Foreign language] Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, everyone online and in the room, welcome. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. I am proud and honored to address you as Rakon's Chief Executive at our annual shareholder meeting for the first time. It's great to be here. Today is an important date in Rakon's calendar. It's the day that you hear directly from us, but more importantly, it's the day that we hear directly from you and answer your questions to the best that we can. This is your company, and we never forget that. As you know, I have formally taken over from Brent Robinson, my predecessor, on April first. It was a very smooth transition thanks to Brent's strong and ever-present support. My journey with Rakon, however, has started many years ago.
I met Warren Robinson, our founder, over 25 years ago in a frequency control symposium event, a technology symposium in Pasadena, California. When we met with Brent and Darren, I grew an immense respect for the company, not only for the products and technology, but for its people, its values, and the path in front of it. When the opportunity presented itself to join Rakon, to establish our U.S. office as the first employee outside of New Zealand 20 years ago, that was 2002, I didn't hesitate. Since that day, I have been a proud employee of Rakon through all of our ups and downs. Currently, we still work very closely with Brent and Darren in their vital roles as a part of our executive team.
I'd like to introduce some of the members of our senior team who are here today. Team, if you could maybe stand up as I call your names. Anand Rambhai, our Chief Financial Officer. Brent Robinson, our Chief Technology Officer. Maureen Shaddick, our Company Secretary. Darren Robinson, our Chief Marketing Officer. Margo Thomas, our General Manager of People and Capability. Adam Robinson, our Global Sales Manager. Mark Burgess, all the way back there, our New Zealand Manufacturing Manager. Next to him is Vijay Chandra, our Production Manager in New Zealand. Prasad Talati is back there. He is our Global Sales Administration Manager. Anil Singh, he is the head of our product R&D here in New Zealand. We have a few more people in the room, but this is what we could fit in the slide.
I'm sure you have seen the details of our numbers, but I would like to walk you through still the highlights of FY 2022. What a great year fiscal year 2022 has been for Rakon. We had major challenges that the pandemic brought, supply chain challenges, resource challenges, capacity challenges. Nonetheless, we were able to print this record performance, our best ever. We had NZD 54.4 million EBITDA. That was up 132% from the previous year and a record for Rakon. Also, we have increased our revenue by 34%. We increased our net profit. We more than tripled our net profit actually, and more than quadrupled our net cash position.
We did this while also significantly improving our gross margins. We have had to very actively manage our costs and, our people, our overheads, but I think we did an excellent job. I'm extremely proud of how our people actually adapted to the changing environment, took on these challenges, aligned around our purpose and our objectives, and delivered this result. We did all of this while taking care of our customers, supporting them, as well as the communities in which we operate. Next few slides will provide an update on our key markets. I'll go quite quickly on these few slides because you have seen these before. We have published them. I'll focus on the three main markets, starting with telecommunications. This market represents 50% of our business. It's our bread and butter.
It's growing at a compound annual growth rate of 21%, with steadily improving margins. This outstanding picture is due to a number of factors. A big one is the continuing ongoing deployments for 5G globally. Also we're able to achieve progressively better margins with our advanced products that are using our own semiconductor chipsets. I think that's an important point to also emphasize. We expect the telecom demand from 5G to 6G continuing for the good part of this decade. We are expecting quite a lot of further growth because there's substantial chance of expansion for our serviceable market due to the market convergence of 5G with cloud computing and data centers, and also we are keeping our leadership position in designs going into 6G as well. We're already working on 6G architectures with our customers.
Moving on to space and defense. This is our most demanding market in terms of performance and innovation, where we have had relatively stable revenue and our highest percentage margins. Moving forward, however, this market represents a significant growth opportunity as space market transitions into new space. The new space market requires space reliability at telecom pricing, hence, that combination plays right into Rakon's strengths. Also, the innovative new solutions that we develop for space and defense market find their way into our products gradually in other market segments, including telecom and positioning. This market is a key source of innovation for Rakon. It works the other way around as well. For instance, our MercuryX chip, a semiconductor chip that Rakon developed for the telecommunications market, we have recently developed a space version of it.
That is an innovation, a unique innovation that will allow us to have the reliability, flexibility, and the cost competitiveness, what we have done in telecom, this time in space. In positioning, I'm very happy to present this slide. It demonstrates clearly that our pivot from commodity end of the market in positioning into higher performance, higher margin end of the market is now complete. This transformation has paid off significantly for Rakon, as you can see from our numbers. To note, we are able to now achieve consistent high margins in this market as well. Onwards, we see significant growth opportunities moving forward in high-precision industrial machines, in emergency locator beacons, and a bit further down the road in autonomous vehicles as well.
Rakon has been a world-renowned leader in positioning, so the future in this market segment is quite bright for Rakon as well. Quickly going through a recap of our competitive strengths. These continue to be the main drivers of our strategy in every market we choose to play. We enjoy long and strong customer partnerships. Not only that, the list of our customers is the who's who of the tech world globally, but two, with two-thirds of our customers, we actually have more than 10 years of relationship. Also, this rapport, by the way, helps us tremendously, especially when market is volatile. The customers stick with Rakon. Our investment in technology innovation is another competitive strength for Rakon. We're actually planning to increase our R&D investment moving forward, and I'll touch on that a bit further down.
This is the way that we keep ahead of our competition. If we stop, if we don't invest in our technology, we would quickly fall behind our competition. In every market that we play, we focus on our technology, put it into products quickly, and get it into the hands of the customers to deliver the revenue for the company. Our world-class operations is a significant strength for Rakon. Our proactive supply chain management and the vast 60% increase in our manufacturing capacity here in New Zealand were the two primary factors of our ability to deliver the record earnings that we had last year. In the next couple of slides, I'll go over our strategy, strategic objectives, corresponding investment plans, and our three-year growth roadmap. Starting with the strategic pillars, I think you have seen this slide before. We have presented this before.
These are the four strategic pillars that you will see are essentially built on our competitive strengths that I mentioned. We position ourselves in high growth, high-tech markets, and we build leadership through technology and product innovation. We form solid and enduring relationships with our customers. We work with them for their current and next generation requirements very closely. We deliver the right products at scale and at the right price points. Stemming from these strategic pillars, we have four key strategic objectives. These are four sets of objectives. The first is to grow our core business. This means we sustain our telco leadership via enhanced customer relationships as well as advanced product development. We improve our space and defense market access, especially in North America, as Lorraine pointed, and we continue with new product launches in space and defense.
We continue to concentrate on new technology and getting designed into our customers' next generation designs. These are key for us to grow our core business. Another key objective is to maintain our product and technology leadership. With this, we have to accelerate our time to market for our semiconductor chip design. I'll touch on this a bit further down as well, but that reduction in design times and getting a chip into the market will be a big driver on when we start making money. We also need to deliver our next generation products and performance using our proprietary XMEMS nanotechnology, which is developed right here in New Zealand and also in space and defense. We will continue moving up the food chain through our higher value add product offerings in terms of equipment and subsystems.
Our third key objective is to expand into new markets. We would like to develop one or more markets over time that would have a serviceable size as big as telco for Rakon. At this point, we have some high potential new markets in front of us that we need to take bold steps in to be able to achieve this objective. These include new space, cloud computing and data centers, as well as autonomous vehicles a bit further down in the future. Our fourth crucial objective stemming from our strategy is to deliver world-class manufacturing. For this, we have created a global manufacturing strategy that allows us to methodically evolve our manufacturing operations. That means where and how we expand our capacity as well as capabilities globally.
In accordance, we'll launch next year our new facility in India, which I'll talk about in a moment. We will also continue to increase our capacity here in New Zealand. If you look at our business, New Zealand is still where we have our highest revenue, highest profit, and we have still demand above our current ability to supply. In New Zealand also, we will accelerate time to market for our XMEMS nanotechnology to be able to manufacture it in high volume and achieve economies of scale as quickly as possible. Finally, we will continue to put energy into our advanced supply chain management processes that we have globally instated this past year. With this clear strategy and objectives and actions in place, we are intending to drive organic growth.
In addition, we will also look at accretive investments that may fit with our strategy and that may also accelerate our growth ambitions moving forward. For instance, these may be steps that would improve our access to markets, customers, technologies, or talents. Any step we take and any potential external investment, we will ensure that it's strategically sound, value creating, and resilient as well. Moving into the key investment areas, as Lorraine said, we are using our capital to invest in key areas that aligns with our strategic objectives that were on the previous slide. That means that we're allocating our capital and our resources and our energy in line with the growth objectives that we have. In other words, we are putting the company's money into where our strategy calls for. With this said, we are focusing on four key areas of investments.
In the next slides, I will talk about the areas, the opportunity, the investment, our targets, milestones, and deliverables. Starting with our new facility in India. This facility is located in the prestigious Aerospace Park in Bengaluru, India, which is the Silicon Valley of India. It's about 20 kilometers from our current factory, which is composed of two small sites. This facility is going to deliver significant value by increasing our capacity, but also allowing us to have extended product life cycles through lower cost, higher quality manufacturing.
Very importantly, I want to make this clear, this is not meant only for products that we currently manufacture in India, but we envision this to be our global manufacturing center of excellence, where, as Lorraine said, we are going to look at transferring products from France and from New Zealand, where we need big volume, big economies of scale. We'll look at transferring select products from France and New Zealand to India as well, to be able to capture the demand and achieve those economies. It will be a crucial part of our global manufacturing strategy. We have chosen to buy the land and build. That was because it was cost neutral. We are going to end up with a valuable real estate asset in hand as well.
To give you the dimensions, the land and building cost, by the time we finish, by the end of the fiscal year, it's going to be NZD 12 million-NZD 14 million. That has gone through an increase of 15% from the time when we started the project, when we budgeted it 10 months ago. On the other hand, the value of the building, the cold shell building, which is rentable as is, without the bespoke construction that we're doing in it is NZD 14 million, and that number increased 20% over the last 10 months. By the way, we estimate the cost of buying land and building a similar factory here in New Zealand to be between NZD 45 million and NZD 55 million.
The expectations from this investment are that we will again achieve significant output increase within this coming next year, and that will come with revenue generation and associated cost savings. This investment is going to become cash positive in year four from when we launch it. The construction, the project is making really good progress. I wanted to share some of the photos. It's going in line with our initial plan, which is really key critical for us. We started construction in February this year, and this is the progress in six months. We have up to 250 people working on site actually on some days. It's extremely important, again, that we execute our plan and do this transfer as quickly as possible.
We also have a variety of environmental targets and initiatives, such as the use of green energy and reduction in the carbon footprint and zero water discharge policy. Now, moving on to our semiconductor chips. Designing our own semiconductor chips, I believe, is Rakon's biggest competitive advantage, if you wanted to highlight one. To quantify, you could look at the graph that is on the top right. About half of our FY 2022 core revenue has come from products that have our own semiconductor chips in them. Very importantly, we are able to achieve higher margin from our products that use our own chips to the tune of 15 percentage points. That's quite significant. There is a long development cycle and an upward investment need when you go into semiconductor chip design, but they allow us to achieve unmatched price, performance, and size combination.
That means that we're able to achieve unrivaled performance in really small sizes and lower cost. Naturally, this is a huge advantage for Rakon, but it is also a barrier for our competitors. We intend to keep the coal underneath this fire moving forward. The graph on the bottom right, actually, is an ROI case study and a testament as to why semiconductor chip design is so valuable for Rakon. That is referring to our MercuryX+ semiconductor chip and its investment cycle, where from inception to now, we have achieved already 100% return on our investment with substantially more revenue to come from this, from products that are based on MercuryX+. The average life cycle of our chips, by the way, is around 10 years. It is...
You put a lot of money up front, you spend time in it, R&D time, but then it carries forward for on average 10 years. We're increasing our investment into this area. We are going to invest NZD 7.5 million per annum for these three years. That represents a number that is 50% higher than what we have done in FY 2022. We have four new chips in the pipeline right now. It's critical for us to get them into the market and into products, into the hands of our customers as quickly as we can. Accelerating that, putting this investment in place helps us to accelerate that life cycle, but also it allows us to do multiple chips in parallel for different applications.
For instance, the chip that I'm talking about a moment ago, the space version of our telecom chip, we can do both of those in parallel. We have also established last year an R&D team for chip design right here in New Zealand. I would submit we probably have one of the few semiconductor chip design teams in New Zealand at this point. We still have the team in the UK, so we are expanding the team. XMEMS nanotechnology is similarly a game changer for us. We intend to continue with our bold investments into this area as well. It allows us, in short, to deliver superior products in highly miniaturized packages. This IP is also unique to New Zealand, also developed from scratch right here in New Zealand. The technology will start generating revenue for this fiscal year already.
We are planning to increase our investments to quickly get to volume manufacture in New Zealand and achieve economies of scale. In total, we are looking at investing approximately NZD 7 million over three years with an expected ROI of 130% over the six-year period that is shown on this graph. The revenue should continue with a similar growth onwards. We are also investing heavily into R&D in this area, and we have some quite exciting products based on our XMEMS nanotechnology that are in development. One last point about this, we have future-proofed our India factory to have the ability to transfer XMEMS manufacturing into India if we choose to in the coming years. This will depend on how the market evolves. Finally, another investment highlight is into our low-Earth orbit, LEO, satellite product portfolio.
LEO is alternatively called new space as well. This market has the potential to become a very significant market for Rakon because it does fit our sweet spot. It requires space-grade products at telecom pricing, as I mentioned before. Our investment into LEO new space subsystems, which are higher value add, effectively modules, are taking us up the food chain. It's moving Rakon from a component supplier into an equipment supplier, and that's a significant distinction. We are very well placed in the ecosystem. We have been developing this market for a number of years, and we're intending to place ourselves in a position to be able to bid in these mega constellation contracts that are in front of us. We are intending to continue with our investment into R&D and other OpEx and CapEx adding to NZD 6 million over the three years.
Our intention is to invest upfront to be a serious contender for those mega constellation contracts that I mentioned. Of course, like every new investment and every new market, this comes with risks, and we'll continue to watch the market and shape our investment profile in accordance to how the market evolves. An additional unique advantage for Rakon is going to come through manufacturing these new space price-sensitive products in our Indian manufacturing location, which are, as I said before, it's in the aerospace park in India. We already have new space oscillator revenue. What is depicted on the bottom right on the slide here is the revenue profile that will come from the subsystems.
This shows also that we are intending to be cash positive by FY 2026, and the six years that we are looking at actually points to a return on investment of 100%. As a summary, we have a clear three-year growth roadmap and milestones in place, and these four investment areas are a part of our growth strategy. In total, going through all the numbers, in total, we are looking at an allocation of approximately NZD 45 million-NZD 55 million over the course of the three years. This will fuel our organic growth. With formal oversight processes firmly in place and rigorous project governance, we will focus on execution, tracking progress towards these clear targets, milestones, and we have a criteria for progressive release of funds, and we are employing active risk management.
Actually, we have very clear decision rules and processes, and we have oversight from our board of directors. They are closely engaged with our investments as well. The table here gives milestones that you can expect to see as investors over the course of the three-year period. We'll continue to report on these projects moving forward. Circling back. Maybe next slide. Circling back to inorganic growth. All of that investment is for our organic growth. Circling back to inorganic growth, I wanted to have this view in this presentation as well. Rakon's business today has been shaped by strategic acquisitions and successful value equity investments as well. Over the last 15 years, we had multiple steps that actually shaped our business of today. Our acquisition in 2007 actually is the genesis of our telco business today.
That represents 50% of Rakon's global business, and also that is how we acquired the semiconductor chip IP, which is the primary driver of 5G development and other developments for Rakon right now. Our acquisition in 2010 brought us the space business. That is actually where the products like the ones on the Mars Perseverance rover was developed out of. Most recently in 2018, our investment into fully acquiring our joint venture in India and scaling it up for further volume has paid for itself already in the last four years to the extent that we are now having to increase our capacity because the factory has been completely full in the last year. Rakon does have a proven capability of acquiring, integrating, and driving value from external investments as well.
We foresee in our future doing the same thing, focusing on strong organic growth, but also looking at external investments, partnerships, and acquisitions as well. We're at a point where additional market access, infusion of technology, infusion of talent, or localization of operations elsewhere can substantially accelerate our growth strategy, fitting very well with our current strategy and strategic objectives. Notwithstanding, we will be exceedingly careful on any step that we take. Again, we will ensure that it's strategically sound, value-creating, and resilient. I also wanted to add that we are closely engaged with our board in all of this activity. They are bringing highly valuable insights, guidance, and additional perspective based on their diverse backgrounds. Finally, I'd like to provide some additional information on our FY 2023 Q1, as well as our guidance that we just released this morning that Lorraine touched on as well.
As Lorraine said, we have had so far a very strong first quarter. It has made it a very healthy start into the new fiscal year. A very important point is that we're achieving solid growth in our core business. The demand is still holding up, still higher than our ability to supply in all of our business units. That's valid for Q1 and Q2 at minimum. Our order book is very strong as well. However, there continue to be many risks at play. These include the global macroeconomic picture and its impact on the demand that we see, ongoing raw material and other supply chain challenges, as well as the live transition that we're going to do within this fiscal year into our new India factory. Those all constitute risks for us.
These major risks are the reason that we are giving a wide guidance range. We are investing heavily into our future, as I walked you through, and we need to hit our strategic targets and maintain the growth momentum. In our business, if we fall behind, it will go from big business, big growth, to failure. We need to stay ahead of our competition at every front that we choose to play. We will, of course, having said all of that, we'll monitor all market variables and we'll allocate capital dynamically. This NZD 36 million-NZD 44 million representing the most likely view at this moment, we will of course keep everyone, yourselves and the markets abreast as we navigate through the risks we have in front of us.
To reiterate that even at the bottom end of this guidance, this will hopefully represent Rakon's best second year ever, FY 2023. Finally going on to a summary. We are well positioned to drive growth in our core markets with a three-year growth plan. We are investing heavily in our organic growth. We'll also explore synergistic acquisition and external investment opportunities in parallel. We have had a very strong start to FY 2023, although risks are still in play. Our success has been the result of a well-thought-out strategy that we have been executing for the last five years that I'm proud to be a part of. We are a company deeply rooted in our past, but with our eyes firmly on the future. It has always been the case, and it will always be the case.
We are taking decisive but careful steps investing into the future to take Rakon to a new level moving forward. On behalf of everyone at Rakon, I would like to thank our shareholders. Your trust and your support actually allowed us to deliver record earnings last year. Finally, I'm proud personally to be the CEO of a great Kiwi company with a bright future, and I promise I will keep my focus on delivering long-term value to all of our shareholders. Thank you. It has been a pleasure. I'll pass it back on to Lorraine.
Thank you, Sinan. I think you can see why we've chosen him as our new Chief Executive. Passionate. Now is an opportunity for you to raise any questions that you have, either of myself or Sinan or our team on the annual report and the business update. You can either do this, those that are online can put through a question. I've got a little monitor here that tells us what the questions are. Or alternatively, those here today, if you could raise your hand, and we'll get a microphone to you. If you could just state your name and state your question so that everyone online can hear clearly, please. Do we have any questions from the floor? Thank you. Do you want to stand up?
As a shareholder who bought Rakon at NZD 5 a share, I'm deeply disappointed in the return that I have had in my investment. I'm looking forward to the time when the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will be found.
I really appreciate your support and hanging in there with us. We're pleased to say that we have been growing the value of the company over the last four or five years, and we certainly have our sights on that pot of gold, and I hope you have a bit more insight today. I know that it's disappointing to some shareholders who did want a dividend this year, and I hope I have successfully explained to you the thinking of the board and the management, and we have some great opportunities before us that we're going hard after. Thank you very much for your support. Bruce.
Thanks. I'm Bruce Parkes for the Shareholders' Association. You've identified global economic political risk as a major risk. How are you mitigating that?
There are a multitude of risks in the world at the moment. The impact, although it's a really bad event, the impact of the Russia-Ukraine situation on us has been quite minimal. In terms of our sales, we stopped our sales as the conflict ensued into Russia. We had very small sales, nothing defense related at all. Overall, we are not connected into Russia in any shape or form in that. The risks are mitigated at the moment.
India is quite politically unstable at the moment, and that's where your major plant is going.
India?
It is.
India's political climate is quite stable, and it has been for quite a number of years, I think. There is always volatility there. It's a bit different than what we're used to here. There are many parties, a lot of interaction, but the overall political climate at this point is no different than where it was a year ago. You're absolutely right, it could change tomorrow. From our side, what we are doing is to ensure that the way that we have established our business and kept it going in the past years will directly apply to our new business as well. As you know, we have been in India for 14 years. We established that joint venture back in 2008.
I think the other thing there, Bruce, is that we've got a lot of diversity where we are located, so we can manufacture elsewhere. We've got pockets of both R&D in multiple locations around the world. We're quite diverse. All our eggs aren't only in one basket. This gentleman here.
Interesting you said that, New Zealand is their biggest sales of your chips. Can you give an example of which company is buying your chips in New Zealand and what they're using them for?
Right.
I think that's manufacturing.
Yeah. Maybe I should correct that. It is not our sales. It is actually our design work that is happening here, and our products that we manufacture here use our chips. That's what I was referring to. If I said our sales, then it's my mistake. I apologize.
Another question: Are you donating to any university in New Zealand or technology departments of any universities and hopefully for some payback later on? I think it's a good. That's what American businesses do.
Mm.
They do donate and there's often a lot of payback for them.
It's a good question. We actually do, and we are going to further enhance our relationship moving forward in the sense that the team that I was referring to, the semiconductor design team here in New Zealand, it was PhDs actually out of university. We are going to put, like you said, our business model depends so much on talent and so much on people and specialized people, so we're going to put more coal under that fire.
At the moment, you're still doing that then?
No, Margot, you're most welcome to take this question.
Maybe Brent.
We have sponsorships with the University of Auckland engineering department, and we generally take the cream of the crop. We've actually got some guys at the back here we've been lucky enough to acquire their top talent to come and work for us either in graduate positions or as part of fulfilling their hours that they need to do to get their engineering degree. Then, of course, because we make cool tech, they want to stay on with us. You know Anil Singh, who you may have seen up on earlier.
He is in the back right there.
Right. That was one of those students that we poached before he did his master and grew his career with us. We have a number of people like that across our business, and we continue to do it.
It's probably more to answer your question, we're not handing over dollars. We're actually part of the ecosystem of helping students come through, engaging with us, part of the aerospace, you know, New Zealand aerospace group that has put together as well. Brent, did you wanna add anything to that? No?
Yeah. I would say we've had. To be honest, we've had a bit of difficulty engaging with University of Auckland to co-develop products. We have attempted it many times over the years. There's always a bit of a tug of war. It ends up about who owns the IP and we haven't really engaged in the way that the American companies do engage. It's not something that we haven't tried.
Maybe just make a straight donation to the university. You don't have to have any strings attached to it.
Mm.
They'll get the message.
Mm.
Got it.
Good point.
Maybe I'll just ask our moderator. Maureen, do we have any questions for online?
We still have questions here.
Yeah, I'll come back. We'll come back.
Okay.
Yes, we do have a question online. A question from Margaret Lindsay, shareholder. It's in relation to foreign currency. Her question is, what are our foreign currency hedging policies? Her view was that they are fairly conservative considering we sell and buy in foreign currency and asks if the foreign currency policy is regularly reviewed for appropriateness.
Thank you. Actually, good timing because we are undertaking independent review right now.
Mm-hmm.
I'll get Anand to maybe just outline what the situation of covering our currencies are.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, most of our revenue is in foreign currency. Probably 99% of our revenue is not in New Zealand dollars, and most of it is in US dollars. Our biggest exposure in terms of ongoing business with foreign currency is the New Zealand dollar.
Oh, that's okay.
...against the US dollar. What we do from a foreign currency perspective is we hedge out two years to basically give us time to adjust to market changes and exchange rates, particularly in that cross rate. That effectively hedges out our risk, and we take a view of hedging more in the next 12 months and then less in the subsequent 12 months. That gives us certainty to be able to adjust our business over time if we need to, if there's a significant step up or step down in foreign currency exchange rates. The way that we do that and how that works out is through our foreign currency treasury policy, and that policy is written for us and regularly reviewed.
We're just gonna go through a peer review process to make sure that's still fit for purpose. That determines what we should be hedging and when we should be hedging it and the bands we should be attaining in terms of if we are 75% covered in the exposures or whether we should be 50%. You know, how do we operate and what are we aiming for? Where we go outside those bands, we need to get board approval. There's a reasonable level of rigor, so someone can't just take a view and you know, try and game that I can make a lot of money here because that's a really risky position to be in. Yes, that is conservative in that sense, but ultimately we're trying to protect our currency risk and give the company time to adjust if needed.
Thank you, Anand. We had a further question from the chair, from the floor? Two.
I used to.
Yep, I can hear you.
Hello?
Yes.
Tony Morgan. Thank you very much, Sinan, for the extraordinary presentation. It was very, very good for us all. The question I've got is, how we should be thinking as shareholders the next few years, from a capital raise perspective. You've got some big growth aspirations which might include mergers and acquisitions. How is the board thinking about how you're gonna communicate to us if you need to go into our pockets, you know? Are we needing to be sitting back saying, "Hey, you might ask us for some money or not." How are you going to communicate and what are you thinking at the moment regarding M&A in that regard?
Okay, maybe I'll answer that one. At the moment, we see that the one thing we need is market access into North America. Some of our largest business opportunities in space, there's a Buy America trend, as you've heard. Our most important thing is we can either organically establish a business there or we can buy a moderately small-sized business that already has maybe contracts within America, is established as an American business. That we're at the very beginning of considering what of those two we might do. We do not see at this stage that we would undertake a large acquisition of any business. It is not about trying to grow what we have by adding on a completely different type of business. We're wanting to add to what we currently have.
We don't anticipate at this stage that would be through any sort of capital raise. We want to be able to use our balance sheet, use the money that we have, we've retained back from you, not dilute shareholding. If we were going to do that, there'd be a lot more dialogue. That isn't within our scope at the moment. We will have to give consideration and careful consideration as to whether we take the slower step of establishing an organic business that is, and looks and feels like it's American. You probably also know there's a lot of talk about America making semiconductor chips in their market, and we're really well-placed to be an American-based company to take advantage of that movement back. That's one of those global trends that we're seeing.
I hope that answers your question, Tony.
Thank you very much.
Richard Burton. My question was, or two. One, how much extra capacity does India give you? Does it give you the ability to double present sales and over the next five years? And B, if you could have met all demand this year and next, how much higher would have your sales been?
Let me take those two separately, Richard. In terms of the Indian capacity, the short answer is yes, we have the potential to double our capacity in five years, no problem. It will very much depend on the configuration of the product mix that we'll choose to manufacture there. As I said, our subsystems, new space subsystems, we have intention to manufacture them in India rather than in France. It makes a huge difference. That type of a product is very different than what we manufacture now in hundreds of thousands or millions of pieces per month. It would have Compared to that, it would have small volume of hundreds of pieces, but it will be significantly higher in value. In terms of the sheer number of products out, it will depend on how we configure the product mix there.
Based on our current long-range plan for the coming years, it will indeed be double the capacity from where we are in year four, actually. You want to add to that, Brent? Go ahead.
Yeah. The other point I'd like to add is that we've made the foundations and the building so we can actually add floors on top of it. We can add further expansion on the current footprint as well. We've future-proofed it by putting really big foundations and pillars so we can actually add further manufacturing R&D in the future as we grow the business.
I don't think we answered your revenue question. At this stage, I don't think we're giving revenue forecasts out for three to five years.
I think we can add that our core business revenue is growing for telecom, for instance. It is growing at a rate that we have seen in the past, moving into the future as well.
Thank you. Just looking at the time, I think we probably have time for one more question if there is one. I think there's one on the line from the moderator. Maureen, what is the next question?
I have a question here from John O'Brien asking, "Does Rakon have any working relationship with Rocket Lab?
Right. It's an interesting question because, I mean, we had a discussion with Peter Beck just a few weeks ago, actually. When we talk about a working relation, we are definitely engaged, but it is not reflected on our numbers in any shape or form. We're at the start of a future potential fruitful relationship, let me put it that way.
Okay, thank you. I'll draw the questions to a close. If there's anyone online who's asked questions that hasn't been answered, we will get back to you by email. Please feel free to ask any of us after this if you're here. I'd like to now turn to address the formal resolutions of the meeting. You can vote in person or by proxy, and if you're here in person, please use your voting paper, which will be collected after all the resolutions have been addressed. Please ensure you sign your voting paper. If you don't have a voting paper or pen, please let one of the Computershare people know. For those attending virtually, the online voting facility is open, and you can cast your vote using the Vote tab on the screen and select from the options.
Your vote is cast when there is a tick that appears. You may change your voting right up until I declare the voting closed. We have five ordinary resolutions today, as noted in the notice of meeting. They require a simple majority of the votes of those voting here in person or in proxy or online. We shall address each resolution individually in the order that they're set out in the notice of meeting. The board intends to vote any discretionary proxies it has been given in favor of the relevant resolutions. You'll be able to see the outcome of the proxy votes that have already been lodged with the registrar once we have closed the voting. I'll just put that up on the screen so you can see.
With regard to resolutions one to four relating to the re-election and election of directors, please note that NZX Listing Rule 2.7.1 provides that a director must not hold office without re-election past the third annual meeting following the director's election or three years, whichever is longer. Accordingly, Brent Robinson and Keith Watson, who were both last elected in 2019, are standing for re-election today. In addition, the same listing rule requires that a director who is appointed by the board must not hold office without election past the next annual meeting following the director's appointment. Accordingly, Steven Tucker and Sinead Horgan, who are both appointed by the board after the last annual meeting, are standing for election today. We are going to change our timing of their re-election, so we don't have four board members coming up in the future.
In the survey feedback that we received from shareholders that I mentioned earlier in the meeting, we were asked to provide a little bit more information about our board of directors. I've asked each of the directors to tell you a little bit about themselves, their skills, and how they can contribute to Rakon. Move now to resolution one. The first is that we re-elect Brent Robinson. Before we vote, I'll invite Brent to speak with you.
Good afternoon, everyone. Yeah, I'm Brent Robinson, one of the founders really of Rakon. The company was founded in the early 1970s, late 1960s by our father, Warren. I was appointed managing director in 1986, where the business was a small New Zealand business. We were turning over less than NZD 1 million, and it was 12 people. It's been quite a journey for myself, really driving the business from a technology point of view and a business point of view for more than 35 years. Not long after I started running the business, my brother Darren, who's here today, joined me on the sales side.
Between Darren and I, we really grew the business through the nineties, quite rapidly through the growth in GPS. Decided that with the GPS going into the smartphone, we really need to grow the business further and decided that we would do an IPO. I led the business through an IPO in 2006. We built a big factory in China, which a lot of you don't wanna hear about, but it was part of our Rakon growth journey, our story. In those days, we had the tiger by the tail, and we really didn't have much option but to do something like that. It was a great learning experience for the whole company.
We came out of that with a lot of knowledge on the industry about mass production and manufacturing in Asia. Moving on from that, we did the pivot into telecommunications, did the acquisitions in Europe and really set the core of the business for what it was today. Darren and I have both been heavily involved in the strategy of the company, the sales growth, the relationships globally with our key suppliers, our key customers, and we're still very much involved today.
Darren and I are looking forward to getting more back involved or myself. Darren's been heavily involved in it, in the business development side and also diversifying into these new markets, as you've been hearing from Sinan as well. We've also been involved in the change in management. I note that one of the gentlemen here today from the Shareholders' Association said, "When am I gonna step down and retire?" Well, I'll let you know. Ever since we did the float, I didn't expect to be sticking around in the CEO role as long as I did, and I've been working with Sinan and grooming him along for many years to try and come into the role. I was very pleased when he finally did.
He had a hiccup coming through with COVID, which delayed him in Turkey for nearly a year. I think he was stuck there nine months. We finally got him down here. I think you can see today what a fine CEO that he will make and is. I've been involved in all those moves over the years, and I still intend to be involved with the company as well as CTO. That's the passion for me. I've always liked the technical aspect, driving our products and our technology. That is what really gets me out of bed in the morning. I'm looking forward to doing more of that.
As a family, we certainly wanna be involved at a board level. I continue to represent the family in that respect, and appreciate the support that we have from the shareholders there as well. Thank you very much. That's a little bit about me. Trust that the results that we've finally put down has showed that our strategies and our direction have been correct. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Brent. The board values Brent's deep understanding of the Rakon business and industry, and believes his extensive business and world-leading technology and knowledge are important for the governance of Rakon. Before I put the resolution, are there any questions for Brent? Okay. In that case, I will now put the resolution. If you could take a moment to cast your vote, please. Moving to resolution two, which is the re-election of Keith Watson. Again, before we vote, I would ask Keith to speak with you.
Thank you, Lorraine, and good afternoon, everyone. It's absolutely fantastic to be here. Thank you for considering me for reappointment as independent director of the Rakon board. I have been on the board now for three years, and I have been a member of the Audit and Risk Committee during that time, and have recently been appointed to the Remuneration Committee. I'm a business person, have over 18 years of governance experience in a variety of both listed and private companies. My business experience is primarily as a senior executive at board level in large multinational growth companies in the U.S., Asia, Pacific, and Europe, including Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics.
Here in New Zealand, I have served on boards of diverse range of companies, including Opus International Consultants, which is a civil engineering company, as their chair, Counties Energy as an independent director, Acumen Republic as an independent director, and the chair of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, which is an economic consultancy and public good organization. I have strong experience in computing, from supercomputing to PCs, software development and telecommunications engineering and testing, which is where I started with Hewlett-Packard. I have also got deep experience in international markets, particularly in the U.S. and in Asia, where high growth opportunities exist for telecommunications companies and timing companies like Rakon. Over my career, I have played a key role in driving both organic growth and acquisition-led growth for those companies. Today, I consider myself a governance professional with a focused portfolio of boards.
I work to drive strategy and operational performance to effectively create and capitalize on the opportunities for the business. I'm proud of Rakon's success and contribution we have made as a board. Rakon's people, including the board, have really worked hard over the past few years to build a solid strategy and culture. The company has taken on risk and has done very well to capitalize on both long-term and short-term opportunities that were available to it. This has resulted, as you've heard, in the best performance the company has had since listing in this past financial year. The results are due to the capabilities that we have in our people throughout Rakon's global operations and operating structure. Today, the company has a much stronger balance sheet and is looking to accelerate momentum with additional investments in R&D and manufacturing to pursue existing and new growth opportunities.
As both Lorraine and Sinan have mentioned, Rakon is focusing on developing and implementing strategy that builds on the strengths and capitalize on the technology leadership position in precision timing. I am very clear as directors that we are responsible to you, the shareholders, and our job is to deliver a solid, sustainable business and a good return for your investment. Two key areas of focus for me as a director are working with the board to ensure that we have strong talent and succession plans in place for both the board and the executive, ensuring that shareholder value that the company is creating is recognized. We have made good in both areas with the twin appointments of Lorraine and Sinan. We have transitioned to new leadership, and we have brought new directors to the board table. We have also worked to improve the communications with you and the market.
I hope that you have seen these improvements as we have engaged with you, our shareholders, the media, and with the investment community. I am confident about Rakon's future and excited by the opportunities that the company has ahead of it. I'm also confident in my experience and skills on the board can assist the company towards its goals. Thank you again for considering me for re-election.
Thank you, Keith. The board believes that Keith's extensive governance experience and his management leadership roles in technology and engineering businesses in New Zealand and internationally are important to the governance of Rakon's global business. The board supports Keith's re-election as a director and recommends you vote in favor of his re-election. Are there any questions for Keith before we go to a vote? In that case, I'll give you a minute, please, to cast your vote. Maureen, were there any questions from online? Thank you. Okay, we'll move now to resolution three, which is to elect Steven Tucker. Again, before we vote, I'll invite Steven to speak to you.
Well, thank you, Lorraine, and to the board for your recommendation and support. Kia ora koutou, and good afternoon, everyone. It's with pleasure that I address you today. I've been on the Rakon board for only a short period of time, since October 2021 last year, and today I'm seeking your support to be appointed for my first term. I wanna share with you today a little bit about my background and my experience, and also my passion for working with New Zealand global manufacturing technology companies like Rakon. Prior to becoming a full-time professional director, I had a 25-year career with the Gallagher Group, in Hamilton, where I was the deputy chief executive and a director there, for more than 15 years of this term.
That's probably the most recent and most correlatable experience that I wanna share a little bit with you about. During my time at Gallagher, I played a key role and was witness to a great international growth company. When I started at Gallagher, it was a company of about NZD 40 million and about 200 staff. Today, the group turns over NZD 400 million, has around 1,300 staff globally, exports to about 100 countries and has a very large R&D team of over 150. In 2019, I wound down my executive responsibilities at Gallagher, and I took up the position as board chair, which is a position I hold there today, so that I could pursue further governance opportunities.
My current board roles, in addition to being chair at Gallagher and being a director at Rakon, include chair at Goodnature and a director at TASKA Prosthetics. Another couple of great New Zealand exciting technology companies in the business of making autonomous self-resetting traps and the other business involved in making myoelectric multi-articulating prosthetic hands. In addition, I'm also on the board of Asmuss, a steel and flow control company here in Auckland, and Purpose Capital, an impact investment fund. In terms of the skills that I believe I bring to the role, I'm also a fellow chartered accountant and a chartered director.
While I've got a strong background in finance, risk management, and operations, the latter part of my career, I've had experience developing strong brands and culture, building strong channels to market, and a focus on innovation as a key ingredient to success. On a personal note, I'm based in Cambridge, married to my wife, Sarah, and we have four children and two grandchildren. When I was approached about joining the board of Rakon last year, I was excited about the following four attributes that I'll share with you that Rakon has, and how these, I believe, fit with my beliefs, my skill sets, and my direct experience. Number one, Rakon having a strong manufacturing focus and still a strong New Zealand manufacturing base.
Number two, Rakon realizes the importance of innovation in differentiating their offering and a focus on the premium, high quality, high reliability end of the market. Number three, building on a brand with more than 50 years of history. Lastly, but not least, taking this innovation to the global stage from New Zealand. Since joining the board, I've become more excited about the potential in Rakon. I'd really welcome the opportunity to draw on my experience and to work with the board and the CEO to unlock further growth on behalf of all of you as shareholders. I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you.
[audio distortion] I don't know. I don't think so. Thanks, Steven. Just that pause, were there any questions for Steven? Anything from online? Thank you. The board believes that Steve's extensive experience, including the management and governance of leading export company operating in New Zealand and globally, is highly relevant to the governance, risk management, and strategic development of Rakon. The board supports his election as a director and recommends that you vote in favor of Steven. I'll now take a minute for you to cast your vote. Now we move to resolution four, which is to elect Sinead Horgan. Sinead is online with us today, and so we're going to hope the technology works and invite her to speak with us. Hi, Sinead. I can see you.
Thanks, Lorraine. Can you guys hear me okay?
Yep.
Great. I'm sorry I'm not there with you all in person today. Thank you, Air New Zealand, for the continued joys that we're having with COVID, et cetera. My name is Sinead Horgan. I'm based in Christchurch. You've heard a lot today about the exciting future ahead for Rakon and the main business segments that we're focused on. With that in mind, and with the movement in both the chair and the CEO, some new and updated skills were sought for the board. I was the most recent recruit to the board, and I have been here since February, and I was recruited for my financial background. Today, I seek your election as the chair of the Audit and Risk Committee.
I trained as a chartered accountant in PwC in Ireland in manufacturing business, so do have a background in manufacturing along with the others, and then worked across Ireland, Europe and the Caribbean with PwC. I then joined a deal team for Accenture in Asia, where I specialized in deal structuring both debt and equity, particularly with technology businesses through the early 2000s before joining ANZ. In ANZ, I became part of the group strategy team globally, where we undertook strategy and mergers and acquisitions for the bank. Following that, I undertook a whole series of banking roles, including relationship banking and risk. I began my governance career in 2015 in New Zealand, and I'm currently a director and the head of Audit and Risk Committee for FMG, which is an insurance business, Leighs Construction and EcoCentral, which is a recycling business.
I'm also the head of the Risk Committee for Bank of China. I also advise some smaller businesses that are technology-related, and I'm a trustee of two charities. I'm a chartered member of the Institute of Directors, as well as a fellow of the Chartered Accountants Ireland. I seek your reelection to replace Lorraine as the head of Audit and Risk. We have very strong audit and risk systems in place already, but this is an area where you really need to focus on continual improvement and refinement because that keeps you at the top of your game and ahead of what may be coming at you. For the next 12-18 months, we will be focusing on the risk side of the audit and risk equation and reviewing our risk management framework, our three lines of defense and readiness for the unexpected.
I think we've all had some good lessons in the past two years, managing the unexpected with both the pandemic and the supply chain crisis, both of which continue, but continue to be well managed. I'm very confident in Rakon's ability to navigate both of those situations. I'm a believer in looking to other industries for examples of best practice. For example, oil and gas for best practice for health and safety. For risk management, the industries with the best insights are banking and insurance, and I have a strong background here. I will bring these insights to bear when we review our risk management framework. Auditing standards and reporting requirements continue to evolve and improve over time. We have a strong working relationship with our auditor, PwC. We thank them for their continued support, and we will continue to work closely together.
We're currently working on our ESG framework and statement, as Lorraine and Sinan have mentioned earlier, and we are also beginning to optimize our balance sheet structure. Beginning with the work that we're undertaking to refine our banking relationships, as Lorraine and Sinan have discussed earlier, we have a new relationship with ASB. We'll be continuing to refine and improve our structure to make sure we're as efficient as possible. You've heard a lot of talk today of global growth and expansion, some of it possibly inorganic. I have extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, equity investments and alliances globally, involved in the due diligence of them, the structuring, negotiation and integration of those.
That will come to bear for Rakon in terms of assisting with developing frameworks, implementing best practice, learning from the experiences, you know, that I have had through those years and everyone else around the table has had too, and also facilitating connections in this area, given my global reach in the corporate finance space. I have experience in integration, which we can add to the skill set we have internally for making good acquisitions. Sinan has already discussed this earlier. Having lived and worked all over the world, I have a global mindset, which means I understand our issues our teams face on the ground, the cultural hurdles we have come to overcome, and the challenges and opportunities of being a truly global business. I'm honored to be considered for your election. Thank you.
Thank you, Sinead. Are there any questions for Sinead? Any online, Lorraine? No. Thank you. The board values Sinead's experience at a board and executive level as, and as an advisor in financial analysis, strategy development, risk management, and mergers and acquisitions. Her skills and broad commercial experience are an important addition to Rakon's governance team. She was appointed in January 2022 and now retires and is eligible for election. The board supports and recommends that you vote in favor of Sinead. I'll pause a moment for you to vote. Finally, resolution five. This resolution is proposed to authorize directors to fix the remuneration of the auditor pursuant to Section 207S of the Companies Act 1993. Rakon's auditor is PricewaterhouseCoopers. Our audit partner is Indy Sena, who's here today. The board recommends that you vote in favor of the resolution.
Are there any questions on the resolution? Anything from online? Thank you. Okay, I'll now put the resolution and give you a moment to vote. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. That concludes the business of the meeting. In a minute, I'll close the voting. Please ensure that you've cast your vote on all resolutions. I now pause for a moment, and if you could pass your voting papers in, please, to the end of the row, and the Computershare staff will pick them up. Those who are online, we'll just give you another few minutes, and then I'll close the voting. Okay, thank you. Now, the voting is now formally closed. The outcome of the proxy votes that have already been lodged for the registrar in respect of each of the resolutions can now be seen on the screens.
Voting papers are being collated here, and the registrar will complete the counting of the votes and scrutineering, and the results will be released to the stock exchange later today. There's now an opportunity for any further general questions before I close the meeting. Again, raise your hand if you have anything further finally you'd like to ask. Nothing from online, Maureen.
Oh. There is one question I was just about to push through if you
Okay.
Don't mind.
Would you like please to read us the question?
Right. This is from Kristen Lee. Given the success and value of the company and its IP, its product development and connection with customers, has the board strategically considered whether it will realistically can achieve a world-class manufacturing capability? Whether it's considered alternative options such as outsourced manufacturing to you know to further those ambitions?
Yeah, we already do outsource, but I will let Sinan, if you want to speak to the.
Be on my mic. Yeah, I think. Is this working?
Yeah.
Yeah, just to answer that question, we already have outsourced manufacturing with our partner, Siward. Actually, the products that we use to manufacture in New Zealand that went into the consumer end of our positioning business are currently manufactured in Siward through such an outsourced partnership.
Great, thank you. Okay, I now draw the meeting to a close. Thank you for bearing with us. It was quite a long meeting. We had a lot to cover in terms of wanting to share with you what the view of the next three years, which we haven't done before, and for you to meet and get to have a little bit more flavor of who the directors are that are running the company. Thank you very much for that. We appreciate your attendance, both here and online, and we're happy to have any ongoing discussions with you, those people that are here. Copies of the presentation and the addresses will be released to the NZX and are on our website if you wanted to look at any of those details on some of those slides.
For those who can, please now join us for a refreshment. Best wishes and go well. [Foreign language]