Security With Advanced Technology Inc. is a small Westminster company with big plans to improve how the U.S. military fights in Iraq and how law enforcement and average citizens defend themselves.
“We protect people, places and transportation,” said Scott Sutton, president of the public company, whose acronym SWAT is also its ticker symbol.
One arm of the company, Veritas Tactical, is training U.S. Marines instructors at California’s Camp Pendleton in hand-to-hand combat. Courses in the use of edged weapons – knives and bayonets – are in the works.
Meanwhile, police departments in Boulder and Denver could be among the company’s first customers for a new line of synthetic pepper-powder launchers from a company unit called Avurt International.
For the really big revenues, however, SWAT is counting on a mass-market pepper weapon called the IM-5, which can stop an attacker from 40 feet away.
“There is no consumer-based product in the pepper-powder line,” Sutton said.
SWAT’s stock remains a risky proposition, however. The company’s stock closed Tuesday at $3.73, down from a high of $9.86 in November.
The stock is down after investors sold shares following an equity offering in the fall.
The company’s head count is about three dozen people. Its market capitalization is less than $18 million, with spending outstripping revenues as the company brings the IM-5 to market, which should happen sometime in the second quarter.
Kevin Skislock, an equity analyst with Laguna Research Partners in Irvine, Calif., estimates SWAT could generate $32 million in sales this year in what is expected to be a $46.7 billion market for security services.
Security guards, postal carriers, animal-control officers, pet owners, campers, hikers, bikers, aid workers and safety-conscious consumers are among the likely buyers of the IM-5.
The product, with five practice rounds and five live rounds, will sell for around $300, a price point designed to keep it out of the hands of petty criminals, Sutton said.
The projectiles are paintball shells filled with powder. Because they are powered by a nitrogen cylinder, rather than gunpowder, the launcher doesn’t fall under concealed-weapons laws, Sutton said.
The combination of a laser sight, popping sound and painful impact are designed to stun an attacker. A powder cloud forms after impact, strong enough to knock a person or animal to the ground gasping for air.
Unlike oil-based products now on the market, the powder, called pelargonic acid vanillylamide, is more consistently potent and deactivates quickly with water, a big plus if a weapon is used against its owner, Sutton said.
Avurt currently resells weapons from PepperSpray Technologies but plans to target law enforcement agencies with its own line of higher-end launchers.
The new launchers, rather than relying on carbon-dioxide canisters, use nitrogen cartridges for each projectile, making them more reliable, said SWAT chairman Greg Pusey.
“We are anxious to see what they have. As far as us committing to buying, we have not done that,” said Sonny Jackson, a spokesman for the Denver Police Department.
Police departments in Colorado and other states have come under criticism in recent years for deaths and injuries resulting from stun guns and Tasers, which send an electric shock through their target.
The new launchers will stop attackers at a distance of 40 feet or more, compared with 15 feet for Tasers, Sutton said. Unlike a Taser, the weapon can fire quickly multiple times.
The two other SWAT divisions specialize in building security systems and the monitoring of transit systems, the original business line of A4S, SWAT’s Loveland-based predecessor.
Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.
