Reinforced Smart City leadership position through new market expansion and new business areas
Expanded Smart City capabilities and moved up the Smart Mobility value chain
Focused on satellite ground technology innovations
Sharpen Smart City go-to-market strategies to accelerate global growth
Strengthen technology leadership and build new capabilities in digitalisation and sustainability
Develop next-generation software-defined, cloud and 5G-enabled satellite communications platforms
2022 marked a year of uneven post-pandemic recovery with geopolitical tensions, supply chain bottlenecks and global inflation that continued to pose challenges for our Smart City business. Ongoing chip supply challenges continued to impact revenue opportunities for our Internet of Things (IoT) and Satellite Communications (Satcom) businesses, with the latter facing additional pressures due to the lingering effects of COVID-19 on travel-related segments.
Despite the headwinds, the impetus to build more resilient and sustainable cities in the wake of the pandemic unlocked opportunities. We saw encouraging business resumption in the areas of Smart Mobility, IoT and Smart Security in Asia, the Middle East and the Americas, enabling us to track well against our Smart City revenue target of $3.5b by 2026.
We maintained a steady contract win momentum, contributing to our Smart City track record of over 800 projects in more than 150 global cities. To maintain technology leadership, we kept our focus on capability building and R&D, introducing innovations that help cities address their urban challenges.
In March, we completed our TransCore acquisition and welcomed over 3,000 new members to our global ST Engineering family. TransCore’s integration into our business progressed well and its steadfast focus on customer excellence ensured continuity in project executions and healthy contract wins.
With cities looking to a technology-enabled future, our suite of Smart City solutions, laser focus on technology leadership and customer excellence, uniquely position us to help them build long-term resilience, achieve greater sustainability, enhance connectivity and most of all, ensure liveability for their communities.
A key pillar in our Smart City growth strategy, our Smart Mobility business continued to help mobility operators achieve greater efficiency, operational reliability and sustainability outcomes through advanced technology.
Our Mobility Rail business continued to make strides by winning contracts for landmark projects around the world. These underscore our competitive differentiation and demonstrate our ability to move up the value chain. Headlining our wins this year was our $1.4b contract for the new Kaohsiung MRT Yellow Line in Taiwan where we will provide turnkey rail services and serve as overall project management and systems integration lead as part of a consortium with Siemens Mobility and Stadler Rail.
Other rail contract highlights include securing our first Passenger Information System contract in Canada for the Valley Line West in Edmonton, supplying our AGIL® Enterprise Asset Management System to Wuxi Metro in China, as well as various rail electronics solutions for the Taoyuan International Airport MRT extension in Taiwan and rail networks in Singapore such as the new Cross Island Line.
Our Mobility Road business continued to register growth with various wins including our first Integrated Traffic Management Platform in Thailand for the Bang Pa-In and Bang Yai intercity highways. In the U.S., TransCore secured turnkey tolling system contracts worth over $1b to modernise tolling infrastructure in New Jersey, as well as various projects in states such as Florida, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and in Dubai. At the same time, TransCore continued to work closely with its customer on the recommencement of the New York congestion pricing project. These demonstrate our strong customer relationships and TransCore’s best-in-class solutions.
To extend our global reach, we inked partnerships across the mobility ecosystem, including with Strides to jointly pursue global Smart Mobility opportunities, and with traffic technology group SWARCO to provide end-to-end traffic and junction management solutions in global markets.
In parallel, we maintained our innovation focus and continued to develop solutions that help cities tackle their mobility challenges. Our latest release of the AGIL Smart Digital Junction Suite optimises traffic signal timings based on realtime traffic conditions, improving road network efficiencies while reducing carbon emissions. Other innovations include the new AGIL Smart Station Management System, enhanced AGIL Automatic Fare Collection System and AGIL PSD with Motorised Gap Filler for more inclusive mobility.
Our AGIL Smart Street Lighting control solutions continued to gain traction in Singapore and various parts of the world, reinforcing our credentials in quality solutions that deliver superior lighting performance, reduce energy consumption and ease maintenance regimes.
We continued to grow our footprint in Brazil, securing new contracts to supply over 30,000 Light Control Units to the cities of Aracaju and Feira de Santana. In the U.S. city of Birmingham, we installed our Galaxy base station and street lighting solution for Alabama Power, going beyond lighting to provide city-wide network connectivity during the World Games 2022. To help cities and facility managers gain actionable insights for optimised and enhanced facility performance management, we introduced our new AGIL Smart City Operating System, a centralised asset and data management platform that enables the digitalisation and automation of processes in buildings and across cities.
We continued to win contracts for our integrated security management solutions in Singapore. To maintain technology leadership, we developed next-generation contactless Smart Security innovations that leverage AI, biometrics and automation. Our new AGIL Secure Biometric e-Gate solution is equipped with advanced multimodal biometric authentication technology that accurately verifies travellers’ identities for quick and seamless border clearance. In another deployment, we worked with customers to pilot the next-generation Automated Vehicle Clearance System, using advanced biometric technology to enable robust and accurate identity authentication of car travellers for a seamless clearance experience.
We have always served as a strategic partner to Singapore, especially in times of need. Our medical-grade surgical mask business was set up to help establish local manufacturing capabilities and strengthen Singapore’s supply chain resilience. We will continue to maintain these capabilities to ensure sufficient mask supply for our healthcare and frontline workers.
To green data centres, we launched the Airbitat DC Cooling System that delivers breakthrough cooling performance and reduces energy usage, enabling tropical data centres to reach a targeted Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of below 1.3.
While our Satcom business saw a gradual pick up in most of its market segments, global chip shortages continued to weigh down the business. Despite the mitigative measures to reduce business impact, Satcom is expected to take time to recover.
Looking beyond the near-term challenges, we increased investments in product development and capability expansion to advance our vision of shaping the future of how the world connects. As part of our strategy to virtualise our satcom solutions on the cloud, we successfully demonstrated the first milestone towards fully virtualising our remote satellite modem in partnership with Microsoft Azure Space. This augments our ongoing work with the Digital IF Interoperability Consortium (DIFI) to define open standards in satellite ground technology.
In addition, our Manufacturing Competence Center in Belgium received European Space Agency certification which allows it to manufacture components used in spacecraft flight systems that meet European Cooperation for Space Standardization standards. This will help open doors to new opportunities in the spaceflight sector.
We kept our focus on driving innovation and achieved breakthroughs that revolutionise satellite connectivity, reliability and service agility. Our new MCX8000 multi-carrier satellite gateway innovation is engineered to offer the highest availability, reliability and density to support present and future broadcasting needs. We also partnered with Eclipse Global Connectivity and Smiths Interconnect to deliver an integrated airborne Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance satellite communications capability for military aircraft, which is interoperable with current and future commercial and military satellites.
Meanwhile, our solutions continued to expand network connectivity around the world and improve lives, while helping customers capture growth opportunities. We secured a contract with Türksat to provide futureproofed ground systems for greater agility in service delivery across the Middle East and Africa. In addition, our award-winning Mx-DMA® MRC return technology is powering X2nSat and Dejero’s cloud media production and IP news-gathering services to ensure reliable bandwidth for live broadcasts and disaster recovery communications.
Additionally, MEASAT has selected our Evolution-based satellite network to enhance connectivity services across Malaysia, while our solutions are enabling ComClark, NiAT and InterSAT to deliver critical connectivity for essential community services and education in Asia and Africa.
As a strategic partner to Singapore’s space industry, we continued to contribute to its advancement by lending our expertise in satellite systems development and manufacturing to a consortium that is building and launching remote-sensing satellites. Our satellite imagery provided insights in maritime surveillance, forest hotspots detection and crop health analysis. Working with Brazilian plantation owners, our joint venture company ST Engineering Geo-Insights tapped on its AI-based GEOEARTH platform to accurately predict the optimal amounts of micronutrients required for precise areas over 5,000 hectares of land. This helped to optimise crop yield, improve efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Collaborating with Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions at the National University of Singapore, we launched the Carbon Prospecting Dashboard, an interactive mapping software that will support the prospecting, development and management of nature-based carbon credit projects worldwide. The first-of-its-kind dashboard supports the preservation of carbon-rich, natural ecosystems by helping policymakers and investors identify where nature-based projects can be developed as potential sources of high-quality carbon credits.
As the world heightens its sustainability focus, the transition to a low-carbon economy will shape policy-making and the cities of the future. With cities resuming economic and urbanisation activities, harnessing digitalisation to strengthen resilience against future disruptions is set to be front and centre of urban planning.
The global shift towards sustainability, digitalisation and resilience bodes well for our Smart City business. We believe that our extensive suite of Smart City solutions and deep domain expertise, combined with a laser focus on technology leadership and customer excellence, will place us in a strong position to help cities pave their way to a more connected, resilient and sustainable future, and accelerate our Smart City growth.
Around the world, growing urbanisation and the increasing demand for digitalisation and sustainability will continue to spur investments in new rail and road infrastructure as well as future-oriented renewal programmes. The shift towards more personalised and sustainable end-to-end commuting solutions will drive more interconnected public transport networks, as well as advanced road and rail systems that improve reliability, efficiency and safety.
As the rail industry continues to be transformed by digitalisation, we aim to leverage our successes and pursue opportunities to move up the value chain as a turnkey rail solutions provider. In urban traffic management, emerging technologies such as edge computing, machine-to-machine communications and cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology are transforming the industry. In particular, C-V2X is set to play an important role in connected vehicles and 5G-enabled cities of the future, enabling more agile and insightful decision-making to reduce congestion and emissions while creating safer roads. We will be futureproofing our smart traffic management solutions with V2X capability to capitalise on growth opportunities in this emerging space.
With Asia’s electric vehicle (EV) market poised for growth, the race to deploy EV charging infrastructure will continue to heat up. Our experience and capabilities in delivering an extensive and integrated suite of EV charging solutions will allow us to seize the opportunities that lie ahead.
The blend of emerging innovative technologies, broader adoption of cleaner vehicles and policy measures such as congestion pricing, can help cities holistically manage urban mobility for more seamless and greener journeys. We are confident that our differentiated Smart Mobility offerings, combined with robust go-to-market strategies and plans to expand our U.S. footprint through TransCore, will strengthen our position as a Smart Mobility market leader and unlock new growth opportunities.
As cities grow, resource management needs to be more efficient to meet operational and sustainability goals. Through IoT technology combined with smart city operating platforms and digital twin technology, unprecedented operating insights, resource optimisation and efficiencies across verticals and entire cities can be achieved to elevate sustainability outcomes. We aim to build on our established success in enabling smart city infrastructure through devices and platforms to strengthen our IoT, Smart Street Lighting and Water Advanced Metering Infrastructure businesses in growth markets.
In parallel, cities need to stay resilient against physical and online threats – this is where advanced technology can provide peace of mind. In the post-pandemic future, contactless Smart Security operations leveraging biometric technology, AI automation and robotics built on robust cybersecurity technology, are set to be the new norm. We aim to leverage our deep expertise in robust integrated Smart Security management solutions to pursue innovations and opportunities in this space.
The satcom industry continues to transform and will see significant investments driven by several trends. These include a growing demand for satellite connectivity that is sparked by a boom in connected devices in the agriculture, maritime, mining and oil and gas markets as well as an expanding space defence market where commercial satcom ground assets will increasingly be deployed for critical missions and built-in redundancies. In addition, more powerful satellites entering the market coupled with a surge in multi-orbit deployments of HEO, GEO, MEO and LEO constellations will continue to supply terabit-level capacity to the market.
In tandem, the strong push for space-terrestrial network convergence, combined with the shift towards cloudification and virtualisation, will form the foundation for 5G infrastructure to create seamless hybrid networks that fuel new applications.
The intersection of new connectivity demand, network convergence and capacity supply surge will create opportunities for the ground segment – in reducing costs and providing seamless connectivity – to play a pivotal role in the industry’s transformation. We will continue to strengthen our ecosystem partnerships and focus on driving innovation to improve the speed, scale, cost and agility of service delivery to set new benchmarks in seamless connectivity and enhance value for our customers.
As a ground segment leader, we are uniquely positioned to drive the industry forward through engineering innovations that bring ecosystems and technologies together to work as a unified network. To realise our vision of pioneering a fully digitised and virtualised ground infrastructure that will transform the economics, engagement models and technologies to rapidly expand global satcom accessibility, we will strengthen our product roadmap and capabilities in virtualisation, standardisation, orchestration as well as cloud and explore opportunities that will bring us closer to achieving our vision.
