subject: Battery Technology Gives Panacis A Boost [print this page] A small Nepean company is chasing a big business opportunity for advanced battery technology that helps launch military jets from ocean carriers.
Panacis Inc., according to chief executive officer Steve Carkner, is "looking at a $100-million opportunity with no competitors in sight."
The U.S. military is buying the lithium technology as part of a $34-billion Joint Strike Fighter upgrade because it provides 10 times the charge at less than one-third of the weight of traditional lead batteries.
But Panacis also has an eye on a much smaller aviation target: providing the power to the first generation of an all-electric Cessna 172 four-passenger aircraft.
Deloitte, the big consulting company, has just recognized Panacis in the latest Green 15 list of promising new Canadian environmentally smart companies.
Panacis has made several big changes of directions in just nine years. It started as a medical devices consulting company in 2002 with customers like WorldHeart, the one-time Ottawa heart pump maker, and then segued into the lithium power technology with the help of a U.S. acquisition. "I was completely wrong," Carkner said in an interview. "I discovered we could make a much more profitable business in batteries than in medical devices."
For Carkner, the big U.S. military customer is proof that another change is working. Just a year ago Panacis made the jump into product development, shedding all but 10 employees of a workforce of 30 primarily engaged in consulting services.
It was a tough business to leave.
Panacis's revenues had jumped in five years from less than $200,000 to peak at $4.5 million for 2009, the kind of sales performance that put the company at 22nd place on Profit magazine's ranking of top 100 new Canadian companies.
With the change of direction, sales tumbled to $3.35 million in 2010 and kept heading south to about $1.5 million this year.
Carkner expects that with the product strategy in full swing, revenues will pass $4 million in the fiscal year that just started. He is confident that the profits that financed the first phase of the company will also return, but is looking for investors to help drive the growth.
Carkner, 42, said the same strategy worked at his first company, Research in Motion.
He was one of the first dozen employees at RIM in its early days as a consulting company without a product. As an engineer and head of intellectual property, he learned the importance of deep consulting to find new market niches and the supporting technology.
A key part of the Panacis offering is plug-and-play battery systems that can be quickly tailored to needs ranging from tiny medical devices to giant systems for industrial customers. The technology can remotely monitor and manage the batteries on ocean rigs, cellular towers and farms.
Born in Arnprior, Carkner was raised abroad as part of a banking family in England and Saudi Arabia. He launched his first business at 15 and used the proceeds to buy an investment property. An engineer with patents to his credit, he is also a knowledgeable investor from his early days at RIM.
In the Deloitte Green 15, Panacis was the only Ottawa company to make the annual list. Energate, a smart grid play, had appeared in two previous lists.
In the broader Deloitte Fast 50 rating, driven by sales growth over five years, only three Ottawa companies made the cut this year: Wi-LAN at 11th, Solace Systems at 25th and BTI Systems at 42nd. In previous years four to seven Ottawa companies made the rating.
Level Platforms, a strong performer for three years, did not appear in this year's ratings. Other notable no-shows include EION, In-Touch Survey Systems, DragonWave, BelAir, March, Bridgewater, N-Able, Workstream, C-COM and Espial. However, one former Ottawa company, now called Route1 and based in Toronto, made this year's list at 26th.
The Fast 50 has limitations as a measure of the health of the Ottawa tech sector: companies have to enter to win and many choose not to.
Others are still healthy but the inevitable victims of the rule of growing numbers: it's hard to sustain explosive growth past the first few years.
But Ottawa has lost many promising winners to acquisitions, market reversals, management mistakes and the shift to social media and other fast growth segments. In the broader North American market, Ottawa's weak position is bluntly exposed: Only Wi-LAN made it into the top 100 (at 52nd) in the Deloitte Fast 500 North American rankings.
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