Location Based Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB:LBAS)
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Location Based Technologies, Inc. (LBAS) is an innovative technologies company setting out to apply and integrate its location and tracking products and services. It is currently in the early market entry stage of manufacturing a number of PocketFinder®personal location devices. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Anaheim, California.
Their PocketFinder®technology can be used to locate children; elderly, disabled and special needs persons, pets, and personal and commercial property. Using the United States Department of Defense’s multi-billion dollar Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites and existing wireless technology, Location Based Technologies, Inc. plans to introduce their range of location products and services to a number of consumer and commercial markets.
The company's main products include the PocketFinder®, PetFinder®, VehicleFleetFinder™, and a specialty tracking device designed for LoadRack.com.
Net sales increased 675% for the quarter ending May 31, 2009. This growth has been attributed to consulting revenue generated from the LoadRack Professional Services Agreement as well as sales from mobile and laptop application downloads. Future revenues will be based on new purchase orders, including a $3,000,024 purchase order from LoadRack tracking and the company’s first order of $3,700,000 for their PetFinder®product. Gross margins were 68.5 percent, up from 28.5 percent during the previous quarter.
Company Overview
Location Based Technologies, Inc. (LBAS) plans to continue to design and develop personal locator devices and services that incorporate patented, proprietary technologies designed to enhance and enrich the way in which businesses, families, and friends interact globally. Moving forward, the company looks to make further progress in the trucking and freight monitoring related industries, in addition to other industries where the potential of their products and services are realized.
The company has also announced its newly developed user interface designed for the trucking and freight monitoring industry. Location Based Technologies (LBAS) noted that its associated vehicle/asset tracking application uses advanced technology to help businesses optimize their mobile resources by providing location information that enables enhanced coordination and leveraging of assets.
This company is also involved in technology licensing. Their plan is to expand productivity by working with potential customers, solution providers and distribution partners to enhance their products and services in the marketplace.
The Company is making its location based devices available throughout the major markets by distributing it through a number of large distributors. The Company’s sales team is in advanced talks with various telecommunication companies and other distributors to promote its patented brands. Recently, the Company has secured a distribution relationship with the marketing company TagWorks for its product, PetFinder. Moreover, after getting formal laboratory approval for GSM connectivity on the European wireless networks,the Company is aggressively negotiating with some large distributors there.
The Company has entered into an agreement with Jabil Circuit, a France-based electronics solutions company, to fulfill the Company’s production requirements. This agreement could have significant impact on the Company’s business model, as Jabil has proven experience in the electronics field. The Company intends to work with Jabil to offer their products at a cheaper rate than its competitors, and has completed the first round of production for the PocketFinder® product.
PocketFinder®
PocketFinder® is a small personal GPS locator device, which receives GPS signals and communicates its location wirelessly to a secured network. When consumers purchase the PocketFinder®, they activate the device and create an account, which can be accessed via the Internet, cell phone or landline to show its real time location. Another feature of the PocketFinder® is that it allows users to set boundaries and Alert zones, and the system will alert users if the device enters or exits one of these customized zones. This ability could also be useful for the elderly who want to remain independent but who may still need some form of indirect supervision. Individuals might also use the device to keep track of pets, luggage while traveling, and other valuable assets. The PocketFinder® charges by a small cradle station with an average battery life of five to seven days.
This device allows parents or caregivers a way of locating their children, especially those who are too young to carry around expensive, fragile cell phones. The PocketFinder®, which can be attached to a keychain, is waterproof and “virtually indestructible.” It is priced at $129.95 with an additional monthly fee of less than $15.
The PocketFinder® Family of Products includes the PocketFinder®, PetFinder® and PocketFinder Luggage®, in addition to laptop location software and downloadable location technology for mobile phones. The PocketFinder® products use advanced technology to help families and businesses stay connected. The smallest known single-board GSM/GPS device easily fits into a pocket, purse or backpack, and can be accessed via the Internet, cell phone or landline to show its location in real time. In addition, the applications include several advanced features, such as allowing users to designate customizable alert areas as electronic “fences” to notify them when a device or smartphone leaves or enters a specified area. The devices can even track vehicle speeds to encourage safe driving decisions.
The company has recently teamed up with u-blox to utilize and further develop their broad portfolio of GPS and A-GPS solutions. U-blox is a leading fabless semiconductor provider of embedded positioning and wireless communications solutions for the consumer, industrial and automotive markets.
Based on a standard mobile phone platform it is the first personal locator on the market that executes all Assisted-GPS processing entirely in software running on the standard mobile phone processor. In addition to the minimal GPS hardware requirements, u-blox’ A-GPS software-and-service solution allows the PocketFinder®to operate for up to 7 days on a single battery charge. This appears beneficial for the company because it translates into an array of locator products with the longest battery life on the market.
Since the successful completion of the PocketFinder®technology development, Location Based Technologies is engaged in sales and marketing of their products. The Company has received FCC, CE, and GSM-type laboratory approval for the PocketFinder® and PetFinder® products in the European market. This enables the Company to market its products anywhere where GSM wireless networks are available, with the goal of connecting family, friends and businesses in an increasingly fast-paced and technology driven world.
Location Based Technologies developed their line of PocketFinder® products after conducting thorough research on the needs of their customer base. The Company’s location devices provide a live display with the location of the targeted device. PocketFinder® products support various commonly used technologies such as GPS, GPRS and GSM wireless technology. These services are currently available on any wireless network on smartphones like the Google Android, Apple iPhone, blackberry and Windows Mobile operating systems..
The Company is looking to find their place in the wireless technology market and have offered their PocketFinder® smartphone services for a one-time fee of $9.95 available through certain retailers. The Company’s executives are said to be working on continuously promoting their patented products and actively seek opportunities for additional methods of promotion.
Technology
Location Based Technologies (LBAS) builds and develops a wide range of innovative and cutting-edge technologies for use in its locator products and support services. The company holds several intellectual property patents, which are said to form the core technological advantage they have within the industry. Their continued research and growing expertise in GPS and location technologies enables them to innovate and improve their products and services.
Their internal research and development team builds technological innovation with a primary goal of integration with their GPS based products and services for retail. They ensure that their many innovations are available to their direct partners through their technology licensing programs. This allows them to work directly with potential customers, solution providers, or distribution partners to help enhance and support their product offerings. They intend to work with vendors to negotiate fair value for technology that will improve their affiliates’ core product and/or services.
Their computer service offerings acting as an application service provider gives access to critical custom web pages consisting of user-defined information, personal profiles and information. This hosted computer application allows collecting, editing, organizing, modifying, transmission, storage and sharing of the data and information among its users.
Investment Opportunity
Location Based Technologies, Inc (LBAS) has a large opportunity moving forward. Aside from potential within the overall GPS market, the Company seeks to target the “locator device” industry, which is expected to have a market size of $13.8 billion by 2013 from $500 million today. Given the rising concern among the parents for their children and other family members, technological development, and increased usage of GPS enabled devices, Location Based Technologies will find immense opportunity for its high-tech devices.
The Company has the capability to operate on the networks of 400 wireless providers in over 220 countries, and to work on any GSM network in the world. The Personal Tracker Application is expected to be the highest revenue generating service in the industry at $4.3 billion by 2013. With its experienced team, cost effective devices and attractive feature based products, the Company is positioned to exploit this market opportunity. Given the current market condition, this is a good time to launch the high-tech locater in the market, when the growth is estimated to be almost double every year for the next 5 years.
The Company offers GPS enabled personal locators, PocketFinder® and PetFinder® devices, targeting 109 million direct potential customers. Both these products have their own customized unique features, compared to various existing locater products. With PocketFinder, one can not only locate their children or friends, but it also contains various unique features, like setting Alert zones, and tracking the speed of vehicles in motion. Unlike existing products, PocketFinder® gives various options of using voice call, SMS, and email to know about the current location of the device. At only two ounces, the product is manageably small, rugged and reliable.
Smartphone Market
Location Based Technologies' PocketFinder®supports Apple's iPhone, BlackBerry, and Google Android-based Smartphones worldwide. The Company’s GPS technology is targeted to users of GPS enabled Smartphones, which has a total expected market size of 304 million Smartphone users worldwide by 2011. These services are now available on any wireless network (GSM or CDMA). Now all these Smartphone users can use the PocketFinder® services in their phones for a small service fee. In the coming months, the Company is expected to offer such services on various other platforms.
Industry Analysis
Although in the past the Location-Based Industry has not shown spectacular results, this is likely due to inferior devices. With significant improvements in the devices, such as the single board solution from Location Based Technologies, in the coming five years there is a strong expectation that this market will grow rapidly. As per recent research done by ABI Research, revenue from Location-Based Services is expected to grow to $13.30 billion in 2013 from $515 million now. Some of the key factors that will justify this massive growth are Growth of Wireless CDMA and GSM handsets usage. This would enhance consumer interest in personal navigation functionality and overall increased technological awareness.
The other opportunity which will support this industry significantly is expected growth of sale of GPS enabled handsets. As per ABI Research, more than 550 million units of GPS-Enabled are expected to ship worldwide by 2012 from 50 million in 2007. With this strong expectation, Location Based Technologies has a huge opportunity to target their end-users through this mode.
Location Based Technologies competes in the field of personal location based products and services. The Company’s product is intended to be targeted to more than 154 million targeted demographics potential customers. Demand for Location based devices and services have recently started picking up due to increased necessity of regular connection between friends and family members, growing desire for security, and a growing awareness about the uses of GPS technology.
Though currently there are few players in the location based services market, but with an advancement of the industry growth, I expect to see getting into this industry. As an initial entrant, PocketFinder®has the potential to reach the mass population, to give them peace of mind.
Industry Outlook
GPS technology has made significant contributions to the global economy over the past decade. Applications of GPS products appear to be growing from stand-alone applications, such as surveying, navigation and locating persons and property. GPS is not unlike the Internet in that it’s an information technology that is part of the global information infrastructure. GPS-based precision time signals help synchronize global information networks of fiber optics, coaxial cable, copper wire, radio and communication satellites. Location Based Technologies’ applications are generating both commercial products and information services, which increase productivity in diverse public service applications and seek to enhance national and personal security and peace of mind.
Based on the trends and technological assessment of the GPS and wireless phone application markets, experts predict that this unique industry will see significant growth in the next few years followed by a steady increase expected to last 15 to 20 years. Some market projections show a strong annual growth and an expected market size of $757 billion (US).
The global market has seen significant growth of interest in GPS applications for fields such as vehicle tracking, surveying, mapping, navigation, railway management, marine, aeronautical, land vehicle and electric power systems. The world GPS market size amounted to $24.9 billion (US) in 2008, and the market composite stood at 14%. As a result, the GPS market is anticipated to reach $240 billion (US) by 2013.
With unique platforms and standard processors for mobile phones, Location Based Technologies intends to become known as a leader in the segmented GPS-enabled wireless market, which includes mobile handsets and personal digital assistants (PDAs) and laptops.
Management
Development of high-tech devices involves significant research effort, investment and the expertise of skilled employees. A deep knowledge about the infrastructure and development of technology is key to successful product development. Location Based Technologies’ research team boasts some of the industry’s most highly regarded technologists and consultants, including David M. Morse, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer.
The Company’s senior management team has a thorough understanding of the technology and development process, and has proven expertise in marketing high tech products. These executives have advanced the Company’s leading products from early development to commercialization, and are positioning Location Based Technologies as an emerging player in providing locater products and services.
David Morse
As of October 8, 2007, David Morse, Ph.D. has served as the Co-President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors. Dr. Morse has 20 years of executive-level experience and, for the majority of his career, has been integrated in the consumer market.
He has served as the VP of Consumer Billing Services from 2000 to 2001 and Chief Customer Officer for Pacific Bell from 1997 to 2000, thereafter. During his stay at Pacific Bell, he was committed to aligning corporate strategy and process management objectives by working with the Chairman and Executive Committee. Prior to this experience, Morse was the VP of Sales and Service for SBC, now AT&T, from 1991 to 1997. While at SBC, he oversaw more than 4,000 employees in 23 locations, which served 7,000,000 households.
Dr. Morse holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Columbia Pacific University, a Master of Arts in Psychology from the University of Northern Colorado, and a BS from Bingham Young University. He has given keynote addresses on business management and education to several organizations and has lectured at UCLA Berkley, University of California at Davis, and MIT. Dr. Morse also serves as Chair of the University of California Board, focusing on Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement (MESA).
Joseph F. Scalisi
Since October 2007, Joseph F. Scalisi has been Co-President, Chief Development Officer and Director of Location Based Technologies, Inc.. Mr. Scalisi is credited with the initial design of the first-generation PocketFinder®device. With thorough knowledge of and experience in the communications industry, including patents and trademarks expertise, Mr. Scalisi files intellectual property applications, and architects the product design team, which oversees areas such as integrated voice recognition (IVR), mapping interfaces, man-machine user interfaces and hardware design. He is also responsible for the negotiation of contracts.
Prior to working at Location Based Technologies, Inc., Mr. Scalisi was employed by ESP Networks from 2000 to 2004, where he was involved with development for restricted-use cellular phones with automated pager systems. In total, he has acquired 14 domestic issued patents and 4 international patents. He is currently working with his team to acquire 12 additional patents over the next few years. Mr. Scalisi attended Fullerton College in California.
Desiree Mejia
Desiree Mejia also joined the Location Based Technologies, Inc. team in October 2007. Ms. Mejia functions as Chief Operating Officer, Secretary and Director. She is credited as the co-founder of the company and is responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations, directly working with the Accounting and Marketing departments. Upon realizing that a true need exists in the ability to locate your children even when you cannot be right by their side, Ms. Mejia developed the concept of the PocketFinder. With co-founder, Joseph Scalisi, she brought the concept to life, using a GSM/GPRS tracking platform, combining it with a mapping service and created a revolutionary tracking system.
Prior to working with the PocketFinder®concept and technologies, Ms. Mejia worked for ESP Networks for five years. She has also worked with several venture capital firms to raise funds for the technology sector. To assist the launch of a new wireless device, Ms. Mejia worked as a consultant for a wireless manufacturing company.
Ms. Mejia specializes in the technology and telecommunications fields and has previously worked with Deloitte and Touche, LLP. While acting as assistant to the Chairman at MESA Research, Mejia functioned as head researcher for clients such as AT&T, Motorola, Nortel, 3Com and Philips. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University.
References
http://www.locationbasedtech.com/
http://pinksheets.com/pink/quote/quote.jsp?symbol=LBAS
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/location-based-technologies-inc/index.html
http://people.forbes.com/profile/david-m-morse/49893