Encouraging signs from Basler

Basler, the German manufacturer of machine vision cameras, published their full year 2009 results at the end of March. As might be expected, they’re pretty ugly. Anyone who enjoys reading horror stories should take a look here and click the link for the 2009 annual report.

But I do have good news! Rather than dwell on the grim picture that was 2009, let’s look at the trends. These show that March ’09 seems to have been the real low point, with steady recovery ever since. The forecast for ’10 seems very cautious to me, but I suppose that’s the financially prudent line to take. Much better to delight your shareholders rather than disappoint them.

A couple of particularly interesting trends that I picked up are:

• GigE cameras have been Basler’s savior, which shows the importance of investing in R&D.
• It appears that Basler are going to concentrate their efforts on their “components” (meaning cameras,) business rather than “solutions.” Given how hard it is to make money in integration, that seems like a prudent thing to do.