National Instruments saw flat revenue year-over-year, with net income plunging from $26.4 million to $14.4 million. The company cited industry weakness in giving a lackluster estimate for its third quarter revenues.
Revenues for the second quarter edged up just 1% year-over-year. NI said its orders under $20,000 declined 4% compared to the same period last year, while orders between $20,000-$100,000 grew 4% but orders larger than $100,000 were down about 30% year-over-year after strong growth in the previous year’s second quarter.
The company also noted that its GAAP gross margin was down to 72%, and cited lower factory utilization and lower margin on its first RF test application for its largest customer, which the company described as being “in a highly competitive space and in an area National Instruments has not served for this customer before.” The company received $30 million in orders from that customer during the first half of the year, of which $23 million came in the second quarter.
“Although the test and measurement industry had a challenging quarter, we were able to grow revenue while executing disciplined cost management,” said Dr. James Truchard, co-founder of NI as well as its president and CEO. “Thanks to the efforts of our employees, we have seen accelerated growth in customer leads and opportunities for our strategic product platforms oriented around LabVIEW despite the fact that customer budgets are tight.”
The company’s revenues in U.S. dollars were down 1% in the Americas, up 2% in Europe, up 10% in east Asia and down 15% in emerging markets, NI reported.
Alex Davern, NI’s COO and CFO, said that despite a difficult quarter, the company believes it was able to gain market share and is adjusting its spending. NI said it will continue to be conservative in its guidance due to industry weakness, and expects revenue for the third quarter of 2013 to be between $265 million-$295 million, down 3% year-over-year at the midpoint of its guidance.
