Q&A with the CEO

Q: What excites you most about BATM?

What excites me most is BATM’s potential – and that we are now on the cusp of truly realising that potential. We have strong products that are ready to be marketed and we have built up a significant amount of IP, while continuing to innovate. It is now the time to take this unique technology and make it a commercial success, capturing market share.
And it is amazing to see how big the markets are that we are dealing with. The global diagnostics market is worth $104bn; cyber security and encryption is $10bn; and the market for carrier ethernet and Edgility is over $70bn. What’s more, these are some of the most dynamic industries that exist today – constantly innovating to provide real solutions to real problems. We have an opportunity to really make our mark here, so this is a very exciting time for us.
Having become CEO at the start of this year and spending time visiting our business units, I am also excited by the enthusiasm and motivation of our people. They are a core strength of BATM and our success would not be possible without their drive and commitment. It is great to see that they share the Board’s ambition.

Q: What were the highlights of 2022 for you?

The most important aspect of 2022 was that we moved beyond COVID-19 and returned to our regular activities as a much stronger business. Our diagnostics business had, of course, benefited from the pandemic and in 2022 went back to normality, but it was normality in a completely different world. At BATM, we have been talking about infectious disease and molecular diagnostics for many years – and during the pandemic, the world caught up.
Now every lab has a PCR system and health authorities understand the threat of infectious disease. The market for our solutions is much larger.
But it’s not just our diagnostics business. In the Networking & Cyber division, the pandemic was challenging, but also educational: we learnt a lot and so emerged stronger here too. It was a real testament to our strength that in 2022, our revenue in the Networking & Cyber division was essentially the same as the previous year despite having sold our NGSoft subsidiary in 2021.
This return to normality in a stronger position was a key highlight for the year.
A very important milestone in 2022 was the winning of our first major contract for Edgility. Over the last five years we invested over $35m to create a product from scratch that was ahead of anything that the market had seen before.
Winning a contract from CityFibre, a leading network provider in the UK – and which followed the award of a contract from CEMEX, a multi-billion-dollar organisation, in late 2021 – demonstrated that we have built the right product and that the market is ready to adopt it. These are significant endorsements.
Another key highlight is the $26m, multi-year cyber security order, which was signed just after year end. This award, which makes us the sole supplier of this government’s encryption platform, followed several years of extremely thorough testing by this customer and reflects the highly advanced nature and superiority of our solution. This is another very important milestone.
And of course, to be chosen as CEO of BATM was also a personal and professional highlight of 2022 for me!