Dalsa financials looking better

Well I must have been napping because Dalsa sneaked out their full year 2009 results back on January 28th without me noticing. Perhaps they were trying to keep them quiet, but if that’s the case I can’t think why. From a machine vision perspective the trends seem quite encouraging.

Here are the numbers: for Dalsa as a whole 2009 revenues (sales) were down 21% over 2008 with income (profit) down a whopping 97%, but still just positive. Cash flow however did drift into negative territory. But a closer look at the “Digital Imaging” side of the business tells a more intriguing story.

In the 4th quarter revenues from Digital Imaging jumped 10% from Q4 ’08, mainly on the back of increased demand from Asia. My take is that this signals Asian manufacturers are feeling more confident and expect to be ramping up their own manufacturing volumes in 2010. This would suggest that machine vision is going to see an appreciable uptick in demand, initially from the east and then, as the year progresses, from both Europe and North America.

For once, some good news!