Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you, ma’am. (Operator instructions) And our first question comes from the line of John Nelson with State of Wisconsin Investment. Please go ahead.
John Nelson – State of Wisconsin Investment
Hi. I’d like to see if you can comment at all on the competitive landscape and if there has been any change looking over the last – either over the last quarter or prior year as far as – and more specifically for your particular products.
John Dulchinos
Sure. Hi, John.
John Nelson – State of Wisconsin Investment
Hi.
John Dulchinos
(inaudible) have to back on the call again. I think – the market has been pretty stable in terms of competitive landscape over the past – certainly over the past couple of quarters and over the past year. I think in our world, the most significant thing that we’ve done was the introduction of Quattro, which brought us into a new market area in both packaging and solar with a patent-protected technology. And we’ve just been getting the beginning of starting to experience the benefits of that technology in that product line. So we are – I believe we are in a very good competitive position.
If I look at the two areas we focused on, packaging and solar, our products have the best differentiation that we do in any of our markets. The size, the speed, the performance characteristics of Quattro, along with our vision technology and our new ACE PackXpert and solar software give us a really unique product offering. And I think the key thing is we are just starting to get to our stride when the markets go up [ph]. So, from a competitive standpoint, I feel very good about our position. I feel like we are very well poised to penetrate these markets when they start to reinvest in capital equipment. Does that answer your question?
John Nelson – State of Wisconsin Investment
Yes. Just as a follow-on, because I think a lot of the listeners probably don’t know is – who are your leading competitors in the packaging area and then in the solar area?
John Dulchinos
Sure. We have levels of competition. In packaging, our largest competitor is – quite frankly, our largest competitor is doing it by hand. So the biggest opportunity for us in packaging is to take manual packaging lines and convert them to automation. If you then go down a segment and say what’s the next level of competition, then it would be to you some kind of machinery to package your products, which offers high speed, but doesn’t offer the flexibility or the delicate handling that we can offer. And then if you get down a level further, then ultimately it’s the large robot companies like FANUC and ABB and others. But really for us, the most significant opportunity for us in packaging is to replace manual packaging with robotic.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
