Can FBR’s construction robot fix Australia’s housing supply crisis?

Picture this: You conjure up your dream house on paper; the next day, a robot turns it into reality. That’s the idea robotic tech company FBR (ASX: FBR) is realising with its Hadrian X Wall-as-a-Service technology. However, it’s not without its roadblocks.

Australia has been facing a housing shortage for the past year, propelled by growing interest rates and younger demographics looking to rent, not buy. The housing market has been under great distress, and perhaps, robots like Hadrian X—which can build the walls of a house in a day, thus saving money, time and waste—could be the solution. 

The Company has completed the mechanical assembly of the first next-generation Hadrian X. It is the latest iteration of FBR’s bricklaying construction robot, designed to lay up to 500 blocks per hour. It can complete the external and internal walls of a standard double brick house in a single day. 

The new Hadrian X features a shuttle block delivery system designed to lay any existing commercially available blocks and even those that are not yet available in the market. The delivery system is also adaptable to handle other products like roof tiles subject to further future development.

It has a long 32-metre telescopic boom arm, giving it greater reach than its predecessor. It enables the construction of walls three storeys high from the roadside as well as the ability to lay blocks within 50mm of existing walls. 

FBR designs, develops and builds dynamically stabilised robots that work outdoors using the company’s core Dynamic Stabilisation Technology (DST). The tech might infuse the real estate world with optimism, but FBR’s financial reports indicate that it is not really making much money from Hadrian’s commercialisation. 

The Company has been relying on capital raises to fund its developments. In November 2021, it completed a $10 million equity placement to institutional and sophisticated investors and received its R&D tax incentive cash refund of $4 million. It used $2.6 million of the latter to repay the advanced payment received from Radium Capital. In June 2022, FBR completed a further $4 million equity placement and later completed a $1.9 million placement with strategic investor Brickworks, Australia’s largest producer of bricks and blocks. In October 2022, the Company advised that it had successfully undertaken a fully underwritten Institutional Placement to raise $20 million. 

While these numbers look great, the Company has also been accumulating losses to match. In FY22, it reported an increase in losses to $19.9 million from $9.3 million in FY21. It burned $18.7 million in cash from investing and operating activities. In Q1 FY23 alone, the Company spent over $4.8 million in operating activities. It is uncertain how much longer the Company will be able to carry on with just capital raises and R&D rebates.

Hadrian X is expected to be complete by March 31, 2023. Once commissioning activities are done, Hadrian X will be calibrated and tested before being utilised for demonstration activities to potential WaaS partners domestically and internationally.