First quarter 2013 results from Teledyne

Teledyne is the parent of Canadian camera-maker Dalsa, and having last week commented on German competitor Basler’s results it seems only right to do the same for the Canadians.

Unfortunately Teledyne publish far less data than do Basler, but I can share the big numbers: the Digital Imaging segment (Dalsa plus a few other bits,) saw sales increase 8.7% to $102.4M and profit jump 20.9% to $5.2M.

That profit number concerns me, for two diametrically opposite reasons. First, it’s not really a very good margin. Basler seems to have higher margins, although in fairness, I find it very hard to extract the actual numbers from their report. But second, how did they achieve such a jump? Has there been some cost-cutting? Perhaps becoming part of a bigger business meant some overhead could be moved up to head office. I hope it’s that rather than someone taking the knife to R&D.

Time, (and the 2013 final report,) will tell.