Now
that camera-maker Dalsa is part of Teledyne it’s hard to get a
clear view of what’s happening there, but the recently published Q2
2013 results and associated conference call offered a few clues.
(www.seekingalpha.com
is a great resource if you’re interested in conference call
transcripts.)
The
results showed that while revenues in the Digital Imaging group were
off 6% in the second quarter income was up 5.3%. That says to me
there’s been some cost-cutting going on, and indeed, as much was
admitted during the conference call. It was however also mentioned
that industrial machine vision sales were up slightly so the
shortfall is elsewhere.
Also
in the conference call was some discussion of Teledyne’s
acquisition of a company called Axiom IC. Axiom designs CMOS chips,
and I’d like to share with you a couple of quotes from the
conference call.
First
off, CEO Robert Mehrabian said, “This quarter, we made a small but
important acquisition for Teledyne DALSA. We acquired Axiom IC, a
designer of high-performance CMOS mixed signal integrated circuits.
The technologies at Axiom will help us continue developing highly
differentiated CMOS imaging sensors and cameras for our machine
vision market.”
Then,
answering a question about the integration of Axiom, he commented,
“…right now, our focus is to get our CMOS imaging development
programs improved.”
What
can we take away from this?
First,
it says to me that Teledyne is serious about investing in the Dalsa
camera business. And second, perhaps Teledyne’s management thought
Dalsa’s R&D effort needed a bit of a kick in the pants.
And
the implications for machine vision cameras?
I
think Teledyne and Dalsa are seeing opportunities for differentiated,
and presumably higher performance imaging sensors. My guess is that
will mean higher frame rates, lower noise levels, and perhaps more
development of TDI technology. All this has to be good for us
end-users, (and perhaps for Basler too, since there might be less
overlap with their business.) The only downside is that these new
products will likely command premium prices, but then you get what
you pay for.
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