MTS, PCTel, Dekra results
As test quarterly results continue to roll in, MTS saw its revenues increase 41% year-over-year to $193 million, with 10% organic growth and 31% due to its acquisition of sensor company PCB. MTS said that nearly 9% of its organic growth came from its test business. Although test orders were down 11.3% to $110 million, MTS noted that converting its test backlog enabled the overall growth. The company’s net income (pdf) was $7.2 million, up from about $3 million in the year-ago period.
MTS observed that “our customers are targeting order placements later in 2017. Based upon these investment plans by our customers, we believe the low-point in orders was reached in our second quarter, and that we will now see increasing order rates throughout the second half of our fiscal year. Supporting this view, quoting rates have accelerated as we entered our third quarter, and the test opportunity pipeline remains at a near record level of $1 billion in opportunities over the next twelve months. The test segment ended the second quarter with a backlog of $298.1 million.”
Meanwhile, PCTel reported a revenue increase of 19% year-over-year to $25 million, with a net loss of about $30,000 compared to a loss of about $1.4 million in the year-ago quarter. “Strong small cell, fleet and utilities antenna demand coupled with scanning receiver sales contributed to improved revenue and gross profit margin for the quarter,” said David Neumann, PCTEL’s CEO. “The need to add more cell sites to increase coverage and capacity combined with expanding applications across IoT will continue to provide opportunities for PCTEL antennas and test and measurement solutions.”
Neuman told investors on the company’s results call that in addition to opportunities for PCTel’s antenna business with the plans for a nationwide deployment of the First Responders Network Authority public safety LTE network by AT&T, PCTel expects to see “test and measurement business towards the end of this year and into 2018 as AT&T deploys infrastructure for FirstNet.”
Germany-basd Dekra also announced this week that its revenues increased 6.7% to more than $3 billion for its full fiscal year. Dekra expanded its internet of things testing capabilities in the past year with half a dozen new IoT testing labs in the Asia-Pacific region, and it expanded its workforce by around 2,700 people. In addition to IoT, Dekra is focused on testing in the automotive segment, including connectivity and electromagnetic compatibility.
In other test news this week:
–Remcom, which specializes in wireless propagation and electromagnetic suimluation software, struck a deal with P3 Group to “provide a fully comprehensive solution for test and measurement combined with EM modeling and simulation.” This is an extension of a partnership between the two companies that started late last year and “gives P3’s customers access to Remcom’s electromagnetic simulation and propagation prediction software to augment test and measurement efforts. In addition, Remcom will now offer its customers consulting services that leverage P3’s management and engineering expertise.”
–Rohde & Schwarz worked with test company DA-Integrated to develop a new millimeter-wave production system for on-wafer radio frequency integrated circuit testing. The solution is a combination of DA-Integrated’s ATE production test system for IC and Rohde & Schwarz’s 67 GHz vector network analyzer
“In addition to considering the capabilities of systems on our floor, it is also critical to ensure the systems are well deployed at outsourced assembly and test (OSAT) locations so customers have a path to very high volume production,” said Scott Bulbrook, co-founder and VP of engineering at DA-Integrated, in a statement. “Our existing RFIC platforms have supported the 2-5 GHz range of RFICs for more than ten years, but production-worthy systems beyond that frequency range do not appear to be in the roadmaps of the primary ATE vendors. We felt it was time to develop this technology ourselves, and in collaboration with Rohde & Schwarz, we did.”
–Spirent Communications said that its Tweakker device intelligence solutions won its first contract in South America through an arrangement with Brazilian mobile virtual network enabler Surf Telecom.
-Equity company First Atlantic has sold its majority stake in California-based test equipment distributor TestEquity to LKCM Headwater Investments. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. First Atlantic purchased TestEquity in 2012 for $65.5 million.
–NI has updated its Wireless Test System with improved support for various technologies, including the new 802.11ax standard as well as testing of Bluetooth 5, ZigBee and Z-Wave. Software release 1.3 for the WTS also supports 8×8 multi-channel configurations.
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