Monday, August 6, 2012

Basler half-year results a surprise?

A 10% drop in revenue for the first half of '12 was a bit of a shocker. Digging deeper into the report shows where the problem lies: The Solutions business has all but vanished. The first half of 2012 saw revenues of just 1.6m ($1.99m) versus €4.9m ($6.08m) for the same period in 2011.
According to the financial report, this dip stems from a lack of business in the LCD inspection market. Most of the sales came from spare parts.
And yet … Basler grew headcount by 20 people, so what are they doing?
Well I suppose they could be out trying to drum up more Solutions business, and indeed, they do project an uptick in the second half. However, the interesting comments relate to camera sales. The ace range is reported to be selling well, especially those with CMOS sensors, and the racer linescan family is just entering production, so that ought to generate new business.
The other point of interest concerned network cameras (the kind that are used for security and traffic applications.) Here Basler states that, we will be able to record growth in sales in the high double-digit percentage range in this market segment in 2012.”
A bold projection, yet given the way those markets are expanding, I suspect it will turn out to be reasonably accurate too. I suppose we'll have to check back early in 2013 to find out.

1 comment:

Vincent Rowley said...

Hi,

It is well known that Basler is working at introducing USB3 Vision cameras at VISION 2012. These would be USB 3.0 cameras supporting the new standard currently being developped under the umbrella of the AIA. Perhaps part of the increase in personel is to support this development effort.

Vincent Rowley