At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over the session to Rob Capps, CEO at MIND Technology, who will lead this presentation. Sir, the floor is yours.
Jenny, thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, or good morning for those of you on the West Coast. Thanks for joining us today. I'm happy to visit with you and tell you a bit about MIND Technology. I'll go through a bit of a presentation here, try to give you some general background about the company, and then give you guys a chance to ask a few questions as we go forward. Once again, my name is Rob Capps. I'm the President and CEO of MIND, and we'll get started. First, I won't belabor this. We all know about the forward-looking statement, so we'll just move on from that. Generally speaking, MIND Technology provides equipment to the marine industry. We provide marine technology that we design, manufacture, and sell.
We address three broad markets: what we call exploration, which includes traditional oil and gas exploration; what we call survey, which includes ocean bottom survey work for construction and things of that nature; and also maritime security, which is a new area for us, one that's not produced revenue today, but one which could be very interesting going forward. We'll talk more about that here in just a moment. We operate through our Seamap unit, which is our subsidiary in Singapore. That is the operating unit for MIND. You hear us talk about Seamap. That's what we're talking about. That's where all the revenue comes from. It is a leading supplier in the seismic exploration and survey industries, very well known within that space. We have four primary product lines or revenue sources. First are seismic source controllers. Second is GNSS or GPS positioning systems.
We also produce solid towed seismic arrays, so sensor systems used in these applications, as well as a great deal of repair service, both for our own equipment as well as for third-party equipment as well in some cases. That also is a growing area for us. The company's been through a bit of a transformation in the past 24 months, really. Going back 24 months, the company was not profitable. We were concerned we weren't going in the right direction. We made a decision to refocus the company. We wanted to focus on the things that we did best, primarily our Seamap operations. We wanted to focus on making this company profitable in the near term. One of the steps we took, we had bought a unit from L3 Technologies back in 2016 called Klein. It was a sonar manufacturing company.
Quite frankly, the acquisition did not go well for us. It became a distraction to us and was not making money. We made the decision, again, about 24 months ago, to exit that business. We were able to effect a sale of the Klein unit in August of 2023, which was a big, big step for us in that it removed that overhang from those operations. Probably more importantly, it provided us with some important working capital from which to execute the growing Seamap business. The second thing we did during this timeframe is we, again, wanted to focus on what we did best. We really streamlined the management and corporate operations. We had been pursuing a number of initiatives that we thought were very promising, but frankly, were not going to produce revenue in the short term and were costing money. Excuse me.
We made the decision to either exit or mothball, in one case, both initiatives, and really focus on risk-returning this company to profitability in the near term. The third thing that we did, which was accomplished this past fall, is enhancing the balance sheet. We had issued a series of perpetual preferred stock over a several-year period, included through an ATM, and came to the point where we were no longer able to service the dividend requirements and did not see that we were going to be able to grow the company out of that. We saw that as an overhang to the company, an impediment to our chances to grow.
We went to the preferred holders, who are primarily retail, and convinced them to amend the terms of the agreement of the preferred stock that allowed us to convert all of that preferred stock, including accumulated dividends, into common stock. That was effected, again, last fall in October of last year, September, October of last year. Huge impact on the ability of the company to then go forward, give us flexibility. The other big, big step, I think, was enhancing the balance sheet and making that conversion, which gives us today a pristine balance sheet, totally debt-free, only common stock outstanding, no derivatives, no funny stuff. Very, very clean balance sheet. Let's talk a bit about the Seamap business and the business that's growing or driving our growth. Seamap is a name brand in this industry, so very well known.
Our four primary product lines is what we call GunLink, which is an energy source controller. In seismic exploration, the energy source is compressed air through things called air guns. The source controller is a device which monitors and controls the air guns. We are the dominant; we are the provider of source controllers to the industry. There is no alternative. We have essentially a monopoly there. Granted, it's a bit of a niche market, not selling millions of iPhones, but it gives us a very strong market position from which to work. Second product line is what we call SeaLink. You'll see a trend here. Those are reconfigurable towed streamer systems. The sensor systems receive the signals from the energy source and enable the geoscientists to configure or to analyze the subsurface and create a picture of the subsurface.
That's a relatively new area for us, one which really started to produce significant revenue in this past year, the fiscal year that we just ended. We see that as a growing area for us. We'll talk a bit more about that in a minute. Third area is what we call BuoyLink. That is a GNSS or GPS positioning system that's used in connection with these other devices. As you might think, in seismic exploration, any sort of acoustic energy exploration, where and when is everything. Knowing exactly where these devices are in relation to the back deck of the vessel is absolutely critical. That's what BuoyLink helps us do. Fourthly, there's a really fairly significant, what I call, aftermarket business related to or associated with our products. These are operating in very harsh environments. Things break.
We do a great deal of business for spare parts, repairs, things of that nature. I think if you look at our most recently reported quarter, the third quarter, ended in October, I think about 40% of our revenue came from this, what I call, aftermarket business. Our customers are the seismic exploration contractors around the world, the people who actually conduct the seismic surveys on behalf of oil companies and others. There are marine survey companies who are doing ocean bottom surveys for installation of facilities offshore, for pipelines, wind farms, carbon capture facilities, things like that. Those type companies, Fugro is a name that comes to mind that you may be aware of, use our type of equipment. We're also seeing some of our traditional seismic contractors move into this marine survey space as well, which is an interesting area for us.
Finally, we do have customers that are governmental or quasi-governmental organizations that do research of various types for offshore minerals, for tectonic activity, things of that nature. Especially in Asia and in Europe, we see demand from these governmental organizations. Systems typically aren't quite as large, but good customers nonetheless. One thing that's been helping fuel our growth recently is we've started to move into some new areas. We talked about the SeaLink streamer system being a reconfigurable towed streamer system. We really focus this on what we call ultra-high-resolution marine surveys. These are really used for this survey activity, such as alternative energy projects.
Our kit, if you will, is specifically configured to allow a very precise picture of the ocean bottom and down to maybe 100 meters below that, which is the horizon that people who are looking to put in these sort of facilities are interested in. That is a very interesting area for us, one which started to produce significant revenue this past year and one that we think really has real promise for us. We also, as I mentioned earlier, have started to expand our aftermarket and repair activities. That is one that I think is going to continue to grow for us. We have a strong backlog, as you will see. It gives us good visibility. I think that has really helped us to be efficient in our production operations this past year and will continue, I think, to give us some advantages going forward.
This slide here, which I won't spend as much time on, which might be kind of interesting for you to look at at your leisure, kind of tries to give you some idea of how our equipment is utilized and what areas it's utilized. It's deepwater exploration. It's nearshore exploration. It's towed streamer activity. It's nodal surveys. Rather than use a towed streamer, you use an ocean bottom node as a sensor source. A variety of applications are used or do use our equipment. Where do we go from here? We're obviously a small company, so we need to be bigger. How do we do this and how do we take advantage of what's going on? We are seeing good tailwinds within our industry space. The marine energy exploration space has been revitalized.
Our customers there are seeing improving backlogs, improving margins, and really have a pretty optimistic outlook for the coming years. I think we believe that we're in the early phases of general uptick. I think things that are happening geopolitically bode well for that. Energy exploration has been a big part of our business historically. It continues to be a big contributor and is not the only contributor. These alternative energy projects, such as wind farms and carbon capture and other offshore installations, are driving the demand for our three-dimensional high-resolution applications or products. That is, again, a growing area for us and one that is not necessarily tied to energy exploration, but one where we think we have some pretty unique technical capabilities. We see opportunities to, again, continue to expand these applications, continue to do more in the ultra-high-resolution survey space.
We think we continue to expand our repair operations. Again, not going to be a huge number, but if you think about it as being incremental and a good margin business, little incremental cost for us, it's an important addition for us in that it doesn't take a lot to move our needle. We also see opportunities to expand the applications available for our SeaLink streamer system. Historically, we've been relatively limited into the size of projects that we can approach effectively. We see opportunities to make a few minor design changes and some production operation changes, which would allow us to address much larger systems. A large system for us today for SeaLink is a $5 million or $6 million order. There are opportunities out there from time to time for several times that.
It's not something you'll do every year, but again, it doesn't take a lot to move our needle and something that we think is pretty interesting for us. We also look to add additional products, other things that we can sell to the same customers, so things that we understand. We're always looking for ways to either internally develop things or perhaps we go buy a product line from someone else. Those are areas where we're looking to expand our offerings and therefore grow the top line. Again, I mentioned earlier, the install base that we have is very large and increasing, which is good for the aftermarket business. The stuff breaks, it wears out, we get a chance to get spare parts, repairs, things of that nature. As far as other expansion opportunities, there's two things I want to talk about.
I mentioned this earlier or touched on it, and that's expanded SeaLink streamer opportunities. Again, as we enhance our ability to provide larger systems, which will include some design changes and some production changes, that enables us, again, to address these larger projects, which could be very interesting to us. The other thing which is interesting, and this is something I touched on very early, is that we had mothballed certain projects as we kind of embarked on this refocus. One of those is taking the SeaLink technology, our streamer technology, and repurposing that for offshore or maritime security applications.
We think there's a real demand, a real need for taking commercially developed technology such as SeaLink and then reconfiguring it slightly and then addressing that for, again, the offshore security market, be it fixed ocean bottom installations, listening for intrusion, be it something towed by an unmanned vehicle for anti-submarine warfare applications. We think there are some interesting areas there. We're going to go about that in a bit different way. We want to partner with others, with some of the maybe second-tier defense contractors who have those contacts with the ultimate customers and therefore allow us to approach that in a very efficient manner. Just a couple of points. Again, I mentioned this earlier, there's good tailwinds within the industry. We think where we stand in the cycle is good. I think that bodes well for us going forward.
I think our backlog activity and growth and revenue really demonstrates that. We're a global company. We do business globally. Essentially, all of our business is to customers outside the U.S. We operate primarily out of our Singapore facility. Our sales are out of Singapore. Most of our production is in Singapore and Malaysia, which are 25 mi apart. In today's political climate with tariffs and whatnot, that's an important thing in that we believe we're somewhat isolated from the current tariff activity and that we don't import and export out of the U.S., or at least not very much. That's something important to keep in mind. We have primary facility, largest facility is in Singapore, followed by Malaysia, where we do most of our manufacturing operation.
We have an operation or facility in the U.K., which is primarily our engineering base, as well as some field service and training. Finally, we have a facility in Huntsville, Texas, which is north of Houston. I'm in The Woodlands, Texas, just north of Houston. Huntsville is on north from here. Here we do some streamer repair, some manufacturing support. This is an area where we've actually expanded this facility as we start to enhance our repair activity. In summary, we think that we've created a pretty compelling investment opportunity here. We're profitable. We're growing. We see good momentum in our order flow. We have a pristine capital structure and balance sheet, a good backlog with a pipeline even more than that. When we say backlog, we mean firm purchase order in hand for our pipeline or other identified opportunities. Good hit rate there.
We feel good about how things look in the coming months and years. As we expand these repair and service operations and spare part operations, that allows us to expand our margin, we think. We think, as I mentioned, we see new applications for this technology, which will give us some chance to maybe significantly grow the company at the right time. Finally, Seamap, again, is a recognized market leader in this space, so known as best-in-class service. It really gives us a good platform from which to grow. Actually, I think with that, I'm going to quit talking and kind of let you guys ask a few questions if you'd like. Please be happy to answer any questions you may have. Okay. I've got a question here. This is a good question, actually.
Talking about the things we see in the paper about someone's vessels, the Russian or Chinese or someone's damaged industry cables and things of that nature, and how might our products be used to help with that problem. The ultra-high-resolution products, again, can be used to survey and see what's under the bottom of the ocean down to 50-100 meters. I think this technology can be, and I think is in some cases, used for this sort of survey space as well as survey activity as well as similar things. Ask also about the use of drones and the use of undersea mining. The use of drones is very interesting. We see that more and more in these nodal surveys, which has been good for us as the activity has increased. Certainly, from a maritime security standpoint, the use of drones continues to increase.
That's where the repurposing of our streamer systems for those applications could have an interesting impact. Finally, ask about undersea mining. When I mentioned earlier the governmental research organizations that buy our equipment, many times that's what they're doing. They're doing preliminary or exploratory work concerning non-oil and gas mining operations. That's an interesting point right there. Do we have any more questions? Let me refresh again here. Jenny, I'm not seeing any of the questions at this point.
Okay. No problem. Thank you very much. That does conclude MIND Technology's presentation. You may now disconnect. For details on upcoming presentations, please refer to the.