Third quarter results from Cognex

"Pretty good" pretty much sums up the third quarter. Revenue (sales) up 13% from the same period in 2012 and income (profit) up 16%.

The income number is especially impressive when you compare the most recent quarter with the one before. That shows an improvement of 23%.

And where does this come from?

Reading between the lines, Cognex scored a sweet deal on sales of Dataman code readers to a large logistics organization. No word on who that is, but I bet they’re beating themselves up for not having pushed Cognex for lower pricing!

In other news, I was pleased to see R&D spend up significantly, albeit in proportion to revenue. Still, at around 13% I think there’s room for improvement. And with Keyence nipping at their heels, I really think they need to do more. Perhaps they could ramp up the 3D product for instance. I’d like to see that run a whole lot faster.

The guidance for Q4 was that it also looks pretty good. I guess machine vision is doing well at the moment.