Cognex - Q2 2013
July 29, 2013
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cognex Second Quarter 2013 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, but later there will be a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. If anyone should require audio assistance, you can press star, then zero, and an audio operator will assist you. And as a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. And now I would like to turn the call over to Dick Morin, the company's Chief Financial Officer.
Richard Morin (CFO)
Thank you, and good evening, everyone. Earlier tonight, we issued a news release announcing Cognex's earnings for the second quarter of 2013, and we also filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. For those of you who have not yet seen these materials, both are available on our website at www.cognex.com. They contain highly detailed information about our financial results. During tonight's call, we may use a non-GAAP financial measure if we believe it is useful to investors or if we believe it will help investors better understand our results or business trends. For your reference, you can see the company's income statement as reported under GAAP in Exhibit 1 of the Earnings Release and a reconciliation of certain items in the Income Statement from GAAP to non-GAAP in Exhibit 2.
I'd like to emphasize that any forward-looking statements we made in the earnings release or any that we may make during this call are based upon information that we believe to be true as of today. Things often change, and actual results may differ materially from those projected or anticipated. You should refer to the company's SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K, for a detailed list of these risk factors. Now I'll turn the call over to Cognex's chairman, Dr. Bob Shillman.
Bob Shillman (Chairman)
Thanks, Dick, and hello, everyone. I'd like to welcome each of you to our second quarter conference call for 2013. As you might have been able to see in the news release that we issued earlier today, we reported strong financial results for the second quarter of 2013 with revenues of $86.5 million, which was not only above the high end of our expected range, but which was also record quarterly revenue for our company. Right now, I'm in the R&D center in San Diego, and the financial team is at our Natick headquarters. For the details of the quarter, I'm going to now hand the microphone over to Rob Willett, my partner and our President and CEO.
I will be available during the call and at the end of the call to answer any questions that you may have for me, but I think Rob will be able to answer in far more detail any of the operating issues. Rob, take over.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Thank you, Dr. Bob. Good evening, everyone. I'm pleased to report our results for the second quarter of 2013. Revenue of $86.5 million set a new record for Cognex. Reported growth was 3% year-over-year. The increase was 6%, including currency exchange rates, which reduced second quarter revenue by $2.4 million. Revenue growth was driven by strong execution in the factory automation market, particularly in the Americas and China. From a product standpoint, revenue from ID products grew faster than the rest of our business year-over-year and set another record for Cognex. In recent years, we stepped up our investments in engineering and sales to drive future growth. The contribution from these efforts was meaningful in the quarter, helping to offset the sluggish market conditions we see in Europe, the still soft semi market, and the impact of a weaker yen on reported revenues.
We had strong margin performance in the second quarter. Gross margin was 76%, consistent with the gross margin reported a year ago and in the prior quarter. This reflects the high value of Cognex products, both the unique hardware and leading-edge software. Operating margin is lower year-on-year due to our investments in new product development and sales channel expansion. We feel good about these investments, and we're pleased to see them begin to deliver for us. Operating margin increased 100 basis points on a sequential basis due to leverage from the revenue growth primarily in ID products and China. Earnings were $0.38 per share in the second quarter, one cent higher than the Thomson Reuters First Call consensus estimate of $0.37.
I want to point out that our results for last year's second quarter included an investment gain of $1 million or $0.02 per share that did not repeat this quarter. Now let's turn to the details of the quarter. In the factory automation market, revenue was a record $67.2 million in the second quarter. This is 6% higher than the prior record set just last quarter. Factory automation grew 9% year-on-year on a reported basis, 11% in constant currency. Looking at factory automation from a geographic perspective, Asia, excluding Japan, was our best-performing region in terms of percentage growth. In the second quarter, factory automation revenue from Asia grew 26% year-on-year and 19% over the prior quarter. Growth was led by particularly strong sales to manufacturers of consumer electronics in China, where revenue set a new quarterly record.
In the Americas, factory automation revenue also set a new record, with revenue increasing 17% over the second quarter of 2012 and 8% over the record revenue reported in the prior quarter. The underlying strength we see in the Americas is encouraging. This is particularly true in logistics, where we're beginning to receive large project orders after lengthy evaluation trials. As you may have seen in the news release issued last week, we received orders totaling more than $1 million from a major retailer who will purchase Cognex ID readers for their U.S. distribution centers. We expect to receive other substantial purchase orders for logistics applications within the next few weeks. Factory Automation Revenue in Europe was essentially flat, both year-over-year and sequentially, while there was a slight increase on a constant currency basis.
We're thankful to our European team for their hard work keeping the business stable in what are difficult market conditions. Currency exchange rates had a negative impact on sales to the Japanese factory automation market. Reported revenue decreased 18% from the second quarter of 2012 and 5% from the prior quarter. However, in constant currency, Japanese factory automation grew 1% year-over-year and 5% sequentially. Revenue from the semiconductor and electronics capital equipment market, or SEMI as we call it, was $7.1 million in the second quarter. SEMI decreased 28% or $2.7 million from a strong quarter a year ago. On a sequential basis, SEMI increased 2%. In the surface inspection market, second quarter revenue was $12.2 million. This represents a decrease of 5% year-over-year. On a sequential basis, surface vision increased 16% off a low base in Q1.
Surface inspection revenue can be uneven due to the timing of deliveries and installations and the impact of revenue deferrals. We continue to perform well in surface inspection, and demand remains at a high level. Moving on to new product development, we were pleased with the productivity and innovation of Cognex engineering. During the second quarter, we released our next generation Advantage engines for integration into OEM equipment. Target customers for these products are in new markets for Cognex, such as life sciences, printing, and kiosks. You'll hear more about these opportunities at our analyst day in September. We introduced In-Sight Track & Trace 2.0. This new version of identification and label verification software brings additional features and functionality to pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers seeking to comply with new regulations and to reduce counterfeiting and other illegal activities.
Our advanced code reading algorithms were ported to our industry-leading DataMan 8000 ID reader, making it the most powerful and reliable industrial handheld ID reader available today. New lighting and optics features that enable easier setup were added to our DataMan 300 series of fixed-mount ID readers. In summary, we had a strong second quarter, and all indications from our sales team are that the momentum will continue to build in the second half of the year. In regard to Q3, we believe that revenue will surpass the record level reported tonight for Q2 and be between $88 million and $91 million. Growth in ID products, driven particularly by customers who are now placing volume orders for logistics applications, as well as the shipment of orders booked late in Q2, is expected to more than offset the seasonal softness we typically see in the factory automation market.
Operating expenses are expected to increase by less than 2% on a sequential basis. The effective tax rate, excluding discrete tax items, is expected to be 19%. Now let's open the conference call up for questions. Operator, we are ready to take questions.
Operator (participant)
Okay. So at this time, ladies and gentlemen, if there are any questions or comments, press the star, followed with the one key, and you'll be placed into a question queue. So again, for any questions or comments, press the star, followed with the one key at this time, and you'll be placed into a question queue. So what I'm showing for our first question is coming from Jim Ricchiuti from Needham & Company. Jim, please go ahead.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Thank you. Good afternoon.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Hey, Jim.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
I'd like to start off with the opportunity in the logistics market. Rob, you say it sounds like you see some additional follow-on business. Do you expect that from the same customer in terms of the substantial activity you're seeing, or do you see new customers coming on?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Well, Jim, as you know, we've been moving into the logistics market for some time, and we've been in some lengthy evaluation trials with many customers. The customer we reported winning the large order from is one of many significant customers we expect to have in that market. I would say it was the first breakthrough, but we expect more orders from that customer, but perhaps more importantly from other large players in that market to come over the next quarters.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Just the way I think we've discussed this, I think you've identified this as a potentially $250 million market opportunity. I don't know if that's changed at all, but it does seem as though clearly you're getting some real validation in the marketplace. At this point, do you see the ability of the DataMan product to really have a more significant penetration into the market, perhaps at a faster rate than you were anticipating?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Sure. I mean, I would say that we're at the beginning of the adoption of Cognex vision in logistics, right? And if it's a kind of an S-curve, we're still pretty near the bottom of the S-curve, and we're beginning to make our way up it. And I would say that's probably pretty typical. I would say we have a very minimal share in that market. You sized it at $250 million as I have in the past. I think we think that's the total opportunity, and it's quite a long journey for us into that market, but we're really still very early in the stage of developing.
To put a little more color on that, I'd say we think the ID market that we serve today is north of $1 billion, and we probably have less than an 8% share in that market, but we're growing it substantially, and we think we can go on growing it at 30% a year. Logistics will be part of helping to penetrate that as we get more, but I think it's emblematic of kind of where we are in our journey in ID. Still pretty early on with a lot of market to penetrate and a really great set of products behind us and a really now much more capable sales force in order to take us along that journey.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Can you say what ID represented in terms of total revenue, a percent of revenue in the quarter, and what the increase was?
Richard Morin (CFO)
Yeah. Let's see. ID products was approximately 24% of total revenue in the quarter, and it was about, let's see, over Q2 of last year, almost an 18% increase.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Does that exclude currency?
Richard Morin (CFO)
No, it does not.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Okay. Okay. Terrific. Thank you. I'll jump back in the queue.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. And we'll take our next question coming from Ben Rose from Battle Road Research. Ben, please go ahead.
Ben Rose (President)
Good afternoon. For the large order that you recorded in the logistics area from the retailer, could you tell me if it is primarily being used in newer fulfillment centers or in existing fulfillment centers?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yes. The customer is purchasing DataMan readers for their new U.S. distribution centers that were built in 2013, but will also retrofit their highest volume facilities still in the U.S.
Ben Rose (President)
Okay. Great. And is it, Rob, is it primarily the DataMan 503 or the DataMan 50 that they'll be deploying?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
No, it's primarily the DataMan 300, but also the 503 as well. I think we see the 503 as kind of an important wedge in getting into that customer. Our ability to be able to serve the whole part of the market has obviously pulled through a lot more of our DataMan 300 readers than we otherwise would have seen.
Ben Rose (President)
Okay. As far as the additional retailers that may be deploying the ID products during the course of 2013, are they also primarily in the United States?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yes. We're really seeing getting a lot of traction here in the U.S., and that's correct. You said retailers, some of them are major retailers. You would recognize the names, but there are also players in other industries such as courier providers, or post offices.
Ben Rose (President)
Okay. Great. And then just one other case. I know that you are in the process of introducing your first major 3D vision system, and I was just curious to get your feedback as to what you're seeing in terms of early use cases. Is it primarily automotive or some of the other industries that you serve?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yeah, Ben, it's a good question. That's where the beginning also of that market, entering that market, and we're seeing a pretty wide range of applications, I would say. We've had some of our first major wins in automotive, and as you would expect, and then other markets we expected like electronics. But interestingly enough, also we're seeing some pretty interesting opportunities in our pipeline in consumer products and even in food.
Ben Rose (President)
Okay. Thank you very much.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. And we'll take our next question coming from Richard Eastman from Robert W. Baird.
Richard Eastman (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Yes. Good afternoon.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Hey, Rick.
Richard Eastman (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Hey, Rob. How did China or how did China perform in the quarter in FA? I think we talked a little bit about Asia. Japan was down. So China must have been pretty substantial, +25 or something, or?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yeah. We had a great quarter in China. Our factory automation business in China was $10 million in the quarter. It was a 41% increase year-on-year, driven primarily by consumer electronics, but also we're getting real traction in the automotive market, also in China. And then in ID, we saw substantial growth in ID products in China, also growing more than 50% year-on-year in the quarter.
Richard Eastman (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Was the consumer electronics rebound, was that market-related, or is there any new application share gains there?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Well, consumer electronics can be kind of, it can depend on product development cycles by major consumer electronics companies. So I think it's fair to say we had some pretty significant success with major players in that industry, which fed through and looked like will continue to do well for us in the coming quarters. So I think it was a little bit of share gain, but also just a design cycle where I think we've been working for a while and saw things doing well for us.
Richard Eastman (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Okay. Okay. Great. And then I just have a question on the semi OEM business. I know how we try not to give any kind of guidance on this. However, looking at semi back-end equipment bookings, they largely from February of this year through May have largely doubled, and that's just data from the semi association. And I'm curious, does that give you a positive vibe six months out towards the end of this year? There's a pretty substantial increase in bookings for semi back-end equipment guys. I mean, do you feel better about that business six months out?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Well, Rick, I agree with your opening statement that you're always asking. We're not giving you guidance on that, but I mean, I think we all read the same reports you do. But I think it's we're not seeing a broad-based recovery in orders from our customers. The improvement in SEMI that we've experienced over the past few quarters has been limited to higher sales to just certain customers, the customers I'd say that look like they're winning in this market from the research we all read. But so far, we've not seen a broad-based recovery from the market downturn. So I think we're not necessarily predicting significant increases, although I think we're hopeful that the market should increase a little in the back in the second half.
Richard Morin (CFO)
We're feeling better than we did six months ago.
Richard Eastman (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Okay. Well, you know what? It's very comforting to know that we read the same thing, that we're well-read. Then just one last question. I'm curious on the In-Sight, this Track & Trace 2.0 product, again, kind of targeted at this pharma market and the counterfeiting side of this. Does that product address any of the issues that you may have bumped into with 1.0?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Well, as you'd expect with any product development at Cognex, our products are better and better with each generation. So certainly, issues like ease of use, speed, OCR, optical character recognition, and barcode read rates and performance are substantially better. So as much as those issues are holding back 1.0, they've been addressed in 2.0. But I would say this market for pharmaceutical track and trace, it's one with a lot of potential, but still pretty hung up by government regulation. Regulations seem to be on the way and have been on the way forever. So we've seen some pretty nice moments where governments, such as the one of France, when they passed CIP 13 regulation over a year ago, that did feed through into some nice business for us. And I think we're hopeful that that will occur also in other markets, but it's still difficult to predict.
Richard Eastman (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Wasn't one of the issues in that track and trace market on the pharma side that the route to market was more through engineering shops or most consulting firms to get product or components into that market? Is this product easier to network or easier to use, or?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Well, I mean, that market is served by a lot of integrators, and large pharmaceutical companies generally are implementing middleware from many, many companies to service those track and trace needs. And I would say over the last two years, we've signed up with a lot of those integrators.
Richard Eastman (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
I see. Okay.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
What they've seen, they see our products now more powerful, easy to use, but I think they've also recognized, as lots of companies do that try to get into the vision market, is the vision's really difficult, and it requires a lot of R&D and engineering expertise, and they've realized that that's not a core competence. And now we've been able to pick them up as customers of Cognex. So certainly, that has occurred in at least three occasions that I'm thinking of over the last 18 months.
Richard Eastman (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Gotcha. Okay. Great. Thanks so much. A really nice quarter. Thank you.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. And our next question is from Jagadish Iyer from Piper Jaffray.
Jagadish Iyer (Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. 2 questions. When you guys talk about the logistics business, I was wondering it's all U.S.-centric. Have you had any penetrations or kind of serious engagement with non-U.S. players and where you are in terms of the logistics business?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yeah. Hi, Jagadish. Absolutely. So I'd say we're seeing the most kind of penetration and adoption of our product in the U.S., but we are certainly seeing trials and initial orders in Europe coming through from major retailers. And in fact, the major order we got from this very major retailer also placed a small first order in Europe as well. So I think we're seeing that. I'd say typically, it's our experience with new products that America is earlier to adopt than other places. And we've also seen, though, the beginning of some orders and some initial orders from logistics businesses in China as well and in Japan. So we're seeing the seeds of business beginning, but it's still some way behind, obviously, the adoption rate that we're starting now to see in the U.S.
Jagadish Iyer (Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah. What was actually the reason for the wins there, given that it's a long evaluation cycle? Can you give us some highlights in terms of what were the winning criteria and how you did it in terms of winning against the competition?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Right. Yes. So Cognex Vision wins in ID because the technology is just vastly superior. Why is it superior? Well, the read rates are much higher. Typical read rates on a Cognex Vision system would be well north of 99%. And on the products it's replacing, which are often lasers or line scan vision systems, those read rates are frequently around 95%. So if you think of a big logistics factory that's producing and shipping thousands and thousands of boxes a day, that means that with Cognex readers, they're reading significantly more boxes that don't need to be reworked, held up, slowed down, going to customers. So that's the number one reason our read rates are substantially better. There are also other reasons, including the fact that our products have no moving parts, so they're much more reliable. They tend to break down much less frequently.
And finally, the price point now of Cognex Vision is, in some cases, significantly lower than what our competitors are charging for laser-based or line scan-based vision systems. So it's a pretty easy decision once a customer really evaluates, gets their head around the issues involved, and sees our performance to see that this is pretty majorly disruptive and superior technology. And that's what this customer's seeing, and that's what other customers are starting to see in this space.
Jagadish Iyer (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. Fair enough. One last thing: if you have to look at the second half of this year between your three segments, semis, web inspection, and their third segment, how would you basically describe the kind of trajectory one would see between these three segments in the second half of this year? Thank you.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yeah. Well, I think factory automation, obviously, is the biggest part of our business, and it's the piece where we're investing most, and we're most optimistic about. So you've seen some nice performance, and I think that we're positive about seeing that continue. Surface inspection, typically, the second half of the year is better. First surface inspection the first. We expect that to be the case here. We have a strong order book in that business, and so we're very positive about the outlook of that. And as Rick Eastman, one of the former callers, asked, and I replied, "Semi is much more difficult to predict." So I'd say that's the area where we're least informed, I would say, or least capable of saying what we expect to happen in the second half.
Jagadish Iyer (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. This is a question, sorry, for Dr. Bob.
Bob Shillman (Chairman)
Yes.
Jagadish Iyer (Senior Research Analyst)
Just quick thoughts on why stock split now? Any thoughts on that besides catering to different investors? Why now?
Bob Shillman (Chairman)
Well, as you probably know, most institutional investors don't care about the price of the stock. They care about the quality of the company behind it. And that's true for, I think, all investors care about the quality of the company, the quality of the management team, the quality of the earnings, and the likelihood those earnings and financial statements will continue to impress. However, there are people who wish to buy 100 shares of stock or 200 shares of stock, and for them, the price per share does matter. And we would just as soon include all those shareholders, including retail, which are more sensitive to the price of stock. And we envision the company continuing to do very well under management's leadership, and we're confident that the stock will continue to maintain itself in the double-digit price range.
But when we looked at other high-tech companies, the price typically is somewhere between high teens and high twenties, and we felt that we would be doing those retail shareholders a favor by keeping the price at that range.
Jagadish Iyer (Senior Research Analyst)
Thank you, Dr. Bob.
Bob Shillman (Chairman)
Sure.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. And we'll take our next question coming from Jérémie Capron from CLSA.
Grace Lee (Equity Analyst)
Hi. Can you hear me?
Bob Shillman (Chairman)
Sure, we can. Hello, Jérémie.
Grace Lee (Equity Analyst)
Oh, hi. This is Grace Lee sitting in for Jérémie Capron today. Yes. Hi. I have several questions. First, investment in new products and distribution have had a sustained impact on operating expenses, we think. And then we noted that it has outgrown revenue for a couple of years now. How should we think about these going forward?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yeah. So I think what I would say about that is, obviously, over the last couple of years, we've seen a situation in, well, I would say more like the last year, we've seen a situation in the market where the market hasn't been that responsive. But we've noted our very positive outlook about where vision is going ultimately. So Cognex is a company that recognizes that we're bringing very powerful technology to a market that has very substantial growth potential over the long term. We sized that growth potential in factory automation to be around 20% compound annual growth and ID 30% compound annual growth. And we're investing behind our vision that we can accomplish that. So we're not ones to think about the short term and to be cutting growth programs or investment opportunities based on shorter-term considerations. We see great opportunities for Cognex.
So we're really delivering on now around China and ID. And these are areas where we've invested substantially in our sales channel and in our products. And again, we see those investments coming through. I'd say going forward, if you look at what we just told you in the call today, we're expecting sequential growth in Q3 to be higher, almost double the rate. If you take the middle of guidance from what we're saying, we see expenses increasing at. So obviously, you can see that trend potentially unwinding going forward starting in Q3.
Grace Lee (Equity Analyst)
I see. Thank you for that answer. And then the second question is about buying back. I mean, starting buying back is definitely good news, even though the share price is a little bit elevated. And should we expect a similar pace of buying back for the rest of the year?
Bob Shillman (Chairman)
Well, this is Dr. Bob speaking. And the objective of our buyback is to counteract the effect of stock option dilution. We strongly believe, even after 32 years in business, that stock options remain a valuable way of attracting and retaining employees. And from the shareholders' perspective, it maintains stock options offer us the opportunity to hold salaries at a reasonable level. The overall package that we offer our employees, we believe, we hope is the best of all, but it generally does not include the highest salaries. We hold salaries at somewhere around 70-80 percentile, and we make up for that by stock options. Now, there are many shareholders in the past, institutions, who were reticent to sign up or to give us permission to increase the number of options that we grant or to renew the plans.
And as a nod to them, what we're doing is putting in place our plans to continue buying stock back irrespective of price. Now, that may not always be true, but pretty much irrespective of price to buy back the dilution caused by options that previous year so that the argument that stock options are dilutive will no longer be in place.
Grace Lee (Equity Analyst)
I see. And the last question is about North America. Are you seeing any changes in sort of competitive dynamic in North America? Because Keyence, which you referred as a key competitor in previous call, we noted that it reported phenomenal growth in U.S. in recent quarters. We're wondering whether this affects Cognex to any degrees. If you can give us some color on these aspects, that would be great.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Sure. I think so we're seeing nice performance from our Americas business. Factory automation in Americas is $25 million in the second quarter, up $3.7 million or 17% year-over-year. So we're seeing some nice acceleration in that business. In terms of our market share in the U.S., we have very substantial vision market share in the U.S. And we are seeing other competitors. We do see other competitors coming and going in that marketplace, some certainly a losing share. The one you referred to, Keyence, is certainly a serious competitor. Their share in the U.S. vision market is still very small, but their company is quite large, and vision represents less than 10% of their overall revenue.
So I think the numbers you're referring to, certainly, if you have any specific vision numbers on Keyence sales in the Americas, I'd sure like to see them, but I don't think they're readily available. But I would tell you that they're pretty small.
Grace Lee (Equity Analyst)
I see. Yeah. We don't have vision specific number for U.S., but we just realized that overall number looks good, so. But you don't see any sort of changes in competitive dynamics for this?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Well, no. We see them investing significantly in the market, but obviously, as your first question referred to, we're investing too pretty significantly. I think we both see this as a great market with a lot of growth and high margin potential going forward.
Grace Lee (Equity Analyst)
I see. Well, thank you.
Operator (participant)
Okay. Thank you. And our next question is coming from Tom Hayes from Thompson Research Group.
Tom Hayes (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, . Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Hey, Tom.
Bob Shillman (Chairman)
Hi, Tom.
Tom Hayes (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Just a quick question. Most of my questions have been answered. I was just trying to get your thinking on the pace of the continued sales force expansion. I know it's a topic we've been talking about for the last couple of quarters. I was just trying to get a read, as you indicated in your release, maybe a slowing of the sequential SG&A growth. I was just wondering if that had a read-through on your changing your pace of additions for sales force?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
It's an interesting question, Tom. I mean, we're focusing a great deal on sales productivity at the moment. So we've certainly added a lot of salespeople, particularly in China, and we're very focused on bringing them up to speed. We've implemented a new CRM system that gives us a lot more visibility, which we've now had in the market in operation for over six months. So our focus is on productivity, and we expect sales per salesperson to improve substantially in the coming quarters. But depending on what we see, we may go on adding salespeople as well at a good clip if we think the growth opportunities are there. But we're very mindful of sales expenses and revenue growth and making sure that those two are well in line and correctly in proportion in the long term.
Tom Hayes (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll take our next question coming from Ben Rose from Battle Road Research.
Ben Rose (President)
Just a follow-up question for Rob. On the automotive market, I know that you mentioned factory automation in China was very strong this quarter, and specifically the automotive industry you cited as one of the drivers there. Could you talk a little bit about what's happening in the European factory automation market for automotive and as well in North America?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yeah, sure. So revenue from the automotive industry in Q2 increased 5% year-on-year. And we're seeing we think it's an important contributor, and we do see automotive revenue continuing to grow, particularly in America as we look forward into the second half of the year. But we do expect even some growth in Europe in automotive, primarily in Germany and Eastern Europe. But I would say compared to other industries and overall growth, I would say automotive may be slightly behind what we expect to do overall for all of our industries this year.
Ben Rose (President)
Okay. Is that to say that you would see electronics as your fastest-growing opportunity overall, or how would you characterize perhaps some of the other faster-growing market segments at this point?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Yeah. I'm referring to percentage growth rates. So automotive is and will continue to be our largest market. This year, certainly accounting for somewhere in the mid-20 percentage points of our overall FA business. But I would say in terms of faster-growing verticals, obviously electronics, yes, on a percentage basis. But we also see very substantial growth in consumer products on a percentage basis this year. Pharmaceuticals should well outpace those also. So some of the smaller verticals where we're starting to see broader adoption of machine vision clearly will be contributing higher percentage growth rates. And of course, logistics, we expect to see very high percentage growth rates in that market. So those are more, I'd say, early adopters of vision and hence the growth rates we expect to be faster than in automotive.
Ben Rose (President)
Okay. Thanks very much.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. So again, ladies and gentlemen, to queue up for a question, press the star followed with the one key, and you'll be placed into a question queue. So again, for any questions, press the star followed with the one key at this time. And we'll take our next question from Jim Ricchiuti from Needham & Company.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Rob, can you talk a little bit about what you're doing with this new initiative, the Advantage engines? I know we're only a month away or so from the Analyst Day. Is this going to be a variant of the DataMan 300 engine that you're planning?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Right. Okay. Yes. Well, yes. So for a while, we've been looking at the life science market, which is a market where a substantial number of barcode readers are being sold into equipment that is used to analyze a test tube with your blood in it or other bodily fluids in the life science market. So we've seen that market as interesting, and we launched our first product into that market a couple of years ago. And it kind of likened it in some ways to logistics where we launched a product a couple of years ago, the DataMan 500, which started to get us into that market. And we learned a lot. And our second kind of foray into that market, the second push, is really producing substantial results. So in a way, it's analogous. We launched a product into that market.
We learned the life science market, and we learned about it, the first image engine. Now we've launched the second family of image engines, which you'll see when you come much smaller, much more powerful, lower price point. We're now having some significant success in that marketplace with the new product. What is the product? It's a tiny but very powerful image engine with a lot of powerful vision tools on it, not only ID, but many different capabilities. I think an important thing to understand about that life science market, though, Jim, is it's a market that has a very long sales cycle. So big producers of life science equipment are developing products over about a three-year period before they launch them. A substantial part of it is getting government approval for the product.
So we're now seeing some design wins in that marketplace, which will feed through, we believe, into substantial opportunities in revenue in coming years. But still, the near-term opportunities you won't see in revenue for some time.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
When you talk about opportunities in kiosks and things like that, that's further out?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Oh, no. So okay.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Maybe I misunderstood.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
No, no, no. You're right. So we've been talking about life science, and life science is kind of the primary market. But this image engine really has a lot of other applications. And so because we've come out with something smaller, more powerful, easier to use, less expensive, it's opening up some other areas in that market. And some of them I referred to as printing. So we have had our first design win in the printing market, which is where you see kind of large, very expensive printing equipment that requires a lot of vision inside it to do things like alignment and calibration of the machine. So we've seen a first substantial player adopting our engine into that market.
And then a market we're targeting and seeing a lot of interest is specifically kiosks, the kind of thing you might see at your supermarket where you might get a DVDs returned or other products like that, lottery-type opportunities as well, where there's substantial image engines being sold today and the opportunity for our image engine to offer a lot more capability at a similar price to what's being offered by the current suppliers.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Got it. So you could see potentially some revenue in 2014 from these areas?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Sure. We're seeing small amounts of revenue even this year from some of those areas. But I think in terms of the big market opportunity, which is life sciences, we don't expect that to feed through in. Although we'll see sales successes, we won't see revenue coming through, probably not until, yeah, later 2015, perhaps.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Got it. One final question. It relates to China and probably just because we've seen so many headlines around China. If we think of the SISD business, which is a more mature business, you've been in China probably more traction there for a longer period of time. Are you seeing any impact on that business from the potential slowing in China?
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Right. So yes, right. We do have substantial customers, particularly in the metals industry in China. Like you, I've certainly been reading about the tightening and the slowing down of the economy that's being seen in China. Here's what we're seeing in that market, which is, the metals industry could be divided broadly into two segments. One is more kind of commodity metals, and one would be more specialty metals. The commodity metals customers, we're seeing suffering more with tight liquidity and kind of overcapacity in their industry. They're, I think, under some pressure. But the real business that we're serving, where we see much more opportunity and where we're seeing some quite nice growth potential, is more in specialty metals and inspecting those metals for defects. This is things like stainless steel used in appliances.
It's also aluminum used in car bodies, which are going forward for use in Chinese cars. Like you and I, we both read that China is now the number one market in the world for new cars sold. So those opportunities for us, I think, more than outweigh the overcapacity, the liquidity issues that some of the biggest state-owned enterprises in steel are facing.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Okay. That's helpful. Thanks a lot. Congratulations on the quarter.
Rob Willett (President and CEO)
Thanks.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I'd like to turn it back to Dr. Shillman for any concluding remarks.
Bob Shillman (Chairman)
Yeah. Thank you. Well, we reported very good results tonight for the second quarter. And we currently anticipate similarly impressive results for the third quarter based on the order book that we've put together. These results are clearly due to just the great people on the Cognex team who are working hard first to develop the new products and then to manufacture them and finally to deliver them all over the world. Finally, as you may have seen in the news release that we issued also tonight, we declared a two-for-one stock dividend. And this action was done really to reflect the board's confidence in our financial strength and where we see the company and therefore its stock going in the future. Thank you for joining us tonight. And I look forward to seeing all of you at Analyst Day at our headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, on September 10th.
That's it for now. And see you then. Bye-bye.
Operator (participant)
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference. You may now disconnect and have a great day.