After dour 2012, another positive quarter for iRobot

iRobot yesterday reported strong financial results for second-quarter 2013, which ended June 29. According to CEO Colin Angle, “[iRobot] had an excellent quarter following our outstanding Q1. Our Home Robot business delivered strong results both domestically and overseas and the outlook continues to be excellent. We announced our second remote presence market initiative, Enterprise Tele-presence, in partnership with Cisco, and our Defense & Security business performed as expected.”

Q2 revenue was $130 million, a year-on-year increase from $111 million, with net income of $8.3 million, up from $7.4 million in 2012.

These results follow on from Q1’s positive trend after a difficult (by iRobot standards) Q4 2012, when revenue of $100.7 million represented a 23 percent year-on-year decline, meaning the firm sustained a net loss of $5.9 million versus Q4 2011’s net income of $10.6 million. This tallied with a full-year 2012 revenue of $436.2 million representing a 6.3 percent year-on-year decline.

iRobot’s 2012 difficulties were attributed by Angle at the time to a stagnant military market and an ongoing corporate restructuring, with the company’s financial future being increasingly tied to its already-dominant consumer and emerging corporate products.

Angle continues to describe the company in these terms, noting yesterday that “our business performance over the next few years will be driven by our rapidly growing home technology business. Home Robots is expected to grow roughly 20 perfect this year and comprise 90 percent of total company revenue. In addition, we have an emerging remote presence business and have stabilized our defense business.”

This is reflected in Q2 results, with the firm’s Home division reporting $116 million in revenue, a 20 percent year-on-year increase, while Defense and Security reported revenue of just over $12 million, down slightly from 2012.

Not yet contributing to revenue is the company’s much-touted RP-VITA medical telepresence robot, the first official adopters of which were announced in May. According to Angle, this unit is expected to begin generating revenue within the next two to three years: “Remote Presence business unit is NOT expected to generate meaningful revenue in 2013. We are very excited about our progress in this segment and do expect the product to be a growth driver over the next couple of years.”

Angle also announced a “a joint marketing agreement with Cisco to bring the enterprise-grade Ava 500 video collaboration robot to market,” for which iRobot “will be initiating a Beta program this year … targeting limited availability through select Cisco partners in 2014.” This represents what the firm is calling “the second initiative of our Remote Presence business.”

[ photo courtesy of iRobot ]

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