Introduction
As a $6.3-billion company, Axon Enterprise (AAXN) dominates the segments of less-lethal weapons, bodycams and sensors for police departments, and SaaS solutions for law enforcement. With no long-term debt and revenue growing at +25% YoY, Axon is a good addition to a diversified portfolio. Our recommendation for Axon is "Outperform." There is a pending lawsuit against the FTC. If the market overreacts to the outcome of this dispute, it may be a buying opportunity to increase positions.
Overview
"Making the bullet obsolete"
Axon Enterprise is a leader in law enforcement technology. The company was previously known as TASER International, but changed its name in 2017 when the leadership team decided to prioritize expanding into other law enforcement solutions beyond the less-lethal electric gun that made the company famous in the previous decades.
Figure 1 - Taser X26 conducted electricity gun (source: wikimedia)
The company's mission statement and motto for its TASER division is "Making the bullet obsolete." Its popular conducted electricity gun has multiple models used for law enforcement, military and self-defense. Although there had been several dozen deaths associated with the use of TASER guns in the last three decades, the ultimate goal of the product was to reduce firearms usage and the fatality rate caused by it in case of confrontation.
The whole suite of products and solutions created by Axon had one goal since its early beginnings: de-escalation in public safety incidents.
The company was started in 1993 by two brothers and a NASA scientist
CEO Rick Smith started the company with his brother Tom Smith and scientist Jack Cover, after two personal friends were killed with firearm in a road rage incident. The company later went public under ticker symbol TASR, which was finally renamed in 2017 to Axon Enterprise changing the ticker to the current AAXN. Quoting Rick
