The 3-D measurement and imaging company Faro (
www.faro.com) has announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2018.
Highlights included: quarterly sales of $92.8 million (up 13.8% on Q1 2017); construction BIM (building information modelling) quarterly sales of $22.7 million (up 19.8% ); a 57% increase in gross margin for the quarter; and a decrease in G and A (general and administration) expenses to 11.9% of sales (down 1.2%).
Simon Raab, president and CEO (pictured), said: “Our first-quarter performance validates our vertical market strategy and growth initiatives with the third consecutive quarter of year-on-year double-digit sales growth and gross margin increase.
“We continued our innovation in the construction BIM market by releasing Faro BuildIT Construction software to ‘leverage’ laser scanner technology to eliminate waste and enhance quality control in construction projects.
“Quarterly earnings were affected by our intentional acceleration of R&D activities for the fast-growing BIM and 3-D machine vision markets.
"In the quarter, we also initiated our global lean continuous improvement initiative — named Faro Best! — to further drive efficiencies and improve our operating margin.
"With these initiatives and continued investment in R&D, both organically and through acquisition, we continue to provide more value to our customers and shareholders.”