Investors gave Stratasys
Breaking down the basics
Stratasys has managed to consistently grow both top and bottom lines over the past few years, and last quarter continued that trend:
Sources: Morningstar and Stratasys news release.
Quarterly revenue and net income both grew by about 30% from the year-ago quarter, with non-GAAP net income up by 50% over the same time frame. Research and development spending was also up, rising from $9.8 million in 2010 to $14.4 million last year. Long-term investors should be happy about that figure. A focused commitment to R&D is going to be critical to fend off the company's many challengers.
A few interesting tidbits
Some of the notes to Stratasys' earnings are more interesting than the earnings numbers, at least in my mind. Parsing the information could shed a little bit of light on how Stratasys and the 3-D printing industry might do in the next year or two.
The fourth quarter saw 700 units shipped against 632 for the year-ago quarter. Each printer was worth about $51,700 to Stratasys last quarter, on average. That's up from the $43,300 each printer was worth in the same quarter of 2010. CEO Scott Crump noted that consumable revenue grew 25% during that time frame, which is a great statistic. The razors are using more blades. However, 2011 only sold 47 more printers than 2010, which might be a bit disappointing for anyone expecting 3-D printing to take off soon.
Crump also noted a push to sell more affordable printers, including an initiative to hire 90 sales agents by midyear to push the machines. The cost-effective printers, dubbed uPrint, are functionally (or at least visually) identical to the printer Stratasys supplies Hewlett-Packard
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