Ben Holgate meets the chief executive of firm which now specialises in motion capture

Nick Bolton had been chief executive of Oxford Metrics Group (OMG) for only weeks when he had to turn down the chance to meet Hollywood screen siren Scarlett Johansson.

In 2005, OMG co-founder Julian Morris and three others won an Oscar, in the technical achievement awards, for the development of OMG business Vicon’s motion capture technology. Mr Bolton had to attend a funeral and so left the honour of embracing the Oscar ceremony’s star host to the engineers.

OMG’s original Vicon business has developed cameras and software that record a human’s movements to make digital characters in film or TV seem more realistic. The technology has been used in movies such as Gladiator, Titanic and, more recently, American Sniper.

Over the past decade, since taking over from Dr Morris as CEO, Mr Bolton has overseen a restructuring of OMG to diversify its revenue streams and pursue higher-growth sectors.

The group is still based in its original location, in the Minns Business Park, off Botley Road, where Vicon was established 31 years ago as a spin-out from Oxford Instruments. Vicon is now a mature business, with clients in 70 countries and offering “only modest growth”, he said.

Today, entertainment accounts for only about 20 per cent of Vicon’s revenue. Another 25 per cent is derived from engineering and more than half from life sciences, for which applications of the firm’s motion capture technology are as diverse as tracking the movement of stick insects to preventing injuries for people with cerebral palsy.

Although Vicon is still OMG’s primary cash generator, contributing two-thirds of total revenue, Mr Bolton aims to grow the Yotta division, which generates about one-third of group revenue but has a higher growth rate than Vicon (up nine per cent year-on-year in the six months to March 31, 2015).

Yotta develops technology that measures roads and highways. In the UK alone, its vehicles survey more than 27,000 miles of A and B roads every year for Highways England and local authorities, using lasers to represent visual images of what the roads look like now and how they might deteriorate over time. The division recently commenced its first contract in the Netherlands and is exploring commercial opportunities in Australia and New Zealand.

The CEO has also been cleaning up the business mix. In April 2015, OMG sold its 2d3 defence software division to a Boeing subsidiary for US$25m (£16.8m), in order to reduce volatility of group revenues and earnings. Of the net proceeds £10.8m was returned to shareholders.

The company also shut down its OMG Life division’s Autographer product – a wearable camera designed to automatically take still photos of a person’s life throughout the day, and developed for people with Alzheimer’s – which resulted in £0.62m in one-off costs in the first half of the 2014-15 financial year. The group posted £11.3m in revenue against an adjusted pre-tax loss of £0.7m during the period.

Mr Bolton said OMG was negotiating with two companies about licensing the Autographer technology and that he expected the Life division, which incurs £0.9m in annual operating expenses, to break even next year.

The CEO talks animatedly about the company’s technology. “The thing that gets me excited is technology that can change people’s lives,” said Mr Bolton, who keeps a book about the ultimate tech entrepreneur, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, in his office bookshelf. Mr Bolton, 46, first joined OMG in 1995, as the company’s 13th employee.

“Manufacturing was a very strong calling for me, the idea of creating wealth for all by taking that base ingot of an idea and turning that into jobs,” he said.

By 1999 he had become product manager at OMG, but left to do various things, including running his own business.

About six years later, he returned to the fold as group marketing director and was appointed CEO shortly after to drive through operational changes, taking over from Dr Morris.

Dr Morris remains at the company as chief technology officer and deputy chairman. Another co-founder, the Australian Tom Shannon, also remains at OMG, as a group director focusing on risk and compliance.

OMG, which listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM index for smaller growth companies in 2001, now has seven offices worldwide: three more are located in the UK, in London, Leamington Spa and Stonehouse; while the others are in Los Angeles, Denver and Singapore.