Pointerra shares surge on Slattery investment

Technology entrepreneur Bevan Slattery will invest $2.5 million into Subiaco-based Pointerra, which will use the funds to employ workers in Australia and the US.

Pointerra is seeking to commercialise its 3D geospatial data technology, which is designed to help customers manage and analyse large 3D point clouds and datasets.

Mr Slattery, who is the founding chair of Queensland company Megaport, said Pointerra had the potential to be a world leader in geospatial systems.

The news sent Pointerra shares up by 104 per cent at 2pm AEST to trade at 11 cents.

Mr Slattery said the industry had undergone exponential growth, with geospatial data being captured by third-party systems that, in turn, created large ‘data lakes’ worldwide.

“[When] combined with the enormous growth of cloud compute and machine learning, you realise that the geospatial analytics platforms that have been built from the ground up in the ‘new world’ will quickly surpass traditional methods of 3D geospatial analytics,” he said.

“I am tremendously excited that an Australian team is building this global capability.”

Pointerra will issue 50 million shares to Mr Slattery priced at 5 cents each to raise $2.5 million.

The proceeds raised will be used to employ cloud platform development and sales personnel in key Australian and US marketplaces, Pointerra said.

The company had requested a trading halt yesterday ahead of the raising.

Its shares dropped back to 9.4 cents at 3:45pm AEST today, but were still up by 74 per cent on Friday's close.