Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from Shannon Cross with Cross Research.
Shannon Cross - Cross Research
With the sequential improvement, and we all look sequentially now because we don’t want to look year over year, and that’s not just for your company, but my question is with ink what exactly do you think is driving the increased demand for ink? Any verticals, anything we can point to say this is sustainable? I’m curious as to what your customers as saying?
Guy Gecht
If you look at the revenue, Shannon, first of all we see that UV is growing sequentially, and solvent is shrinking sequentially, and it’s part of what we’ve always said. Our focus was always on solvents. Since we got into UV, we never spent any energy on new products in solvents. In that regard, we see a continued shift, and of course the UV was up more than the overall segment. When we look at globally on a sequential basis, North America grew better than overall, but Europe also grew sequentially which was a very good sign. From a segment of the business, we’re seeing across the board just better spending with our customers which means that in the retail space and point of purchase, people are spending a little bit more. I also would like to think that since normally VUTEk represents the highest quality and highest speed and not necessarily the lowest cost, I think our customers are finding that when there is a smaller pie, maybe it’s an easier to compete on some of the smaller pie because they provide better turnaround time and better quality than our competitor’s customers. Hopefully, that will explain, but in general, I think people are spending more. There is more marketing money, not at the level of last year, but more than at the level of Q1, and the good news is that in July we’re seeing a continuation of that. So far this quarter, the ink continued to improve, and overall anything that causes our customers to utilize the printer more and to get more money and more profit, at some point in the future, it will turn into more printer sales for us.
Shannon Cross - Cross Research
I had a question for John on funding for this equipment. You put in place that program. I am curious as to what you’re hearing from customers in terms of their availability to funding, if you’ve looked into any potential impact from CIT. Theoretically you’re too far removed maybe on the controller side to have much insight, but anything you’ve heard from the OEMs as well on what they’re hearing.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
