DVT Sold
Wow. What can you say? In a blockbuster announcement Tuesday morning, Cognex Corp., a Natick, Mass. manufacturer of machine vision systems announced it had purchased competitor DVT, based in Duluth, Ga., for $115 million. The vision sensor market has been one of the most hotly contested for the past few years. Apparently it is time for consolidation.
Although Cognex management didn't comment with specifics, Robert "Dr. Bob" Shillman, Cognex chief executive officer, noted that savings can be obtained through elimination of duplicate positions--usually that's accounting, human resources and marketing. Shillman did praise the product design and distribution management teams at DVT. In fact, he spent considerable time in the conference talking about distribution, something that's obviously the crown jewel of the acquisition. Cognex had about 40 distributors while picking up around 150 more from DVT.
The downside for magazines like Automation World is that we'll likely lose some ad revenue as Shillman pointed out that the company would not have to advertise both companies in the same magazine.
Shillman praised DVT as a great company and a great competitor, saying it was better than Cognex at solving the "smaller" vision problems with speed and ease-of-use. Cognex expects to rationalize the product lines and eventually present one complete family of vision products from sensors to high-end systems. It did specifically state that it would continue support of DVT products.
DVT Corp. is a leading provider of low-cost, easy-to-use vision sensors, which it sells primarily to the fast-growing factory-floor segment of the machine vision business. The company's principal product, Legend, is used by a large number of customers in a wide variety of industries for applications such as inspection and quality control.
"This is the largest acquisition that Cognex has ever completed...in terms of price, in terms of revenue, and most importantly, in terms of the positive impact that it will likely have on our company," said Shillman.
Dr. Shillman continued, "In recent years, Cognex has been very successful in expanding its product line by adding low-cost and easy-to-use vision products. Our In-Sight business has grown to over $60 million in just five years, and Checker, our newest entry into the presence-sensing market, is gaining traction. However, reaching the thousands of prospects for these products in factories around the world requires a large third-party sales and distribution channel to supplement our own direct end-user sales force. During 2004, Cognex started to build a third-party distribution channel, and prior to this acquisition we had signed over 40 distributors, mostly in North America. With the acquisition of DVT, Cognex immediately gains a worldwide network of more than 150 additional industrial distributors, all fully trained in selling and supporting machine vision products."
5:05:06 PM 
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