Cognex buys DVT for $115 million

Cognex Corp. reports that it has acquired all outstanding shares of privately held DVT Corp. for approximately $115 million. This price tag includes $104 million in cash at closing and a final payment of up to an additional $11 million in cash to be paid at the end of a one-year escrow period.

By Staff June 1, 2005

Cognex Corp. reports that it has acquired all outstanding shares of privately held DVT Corp. for approximately $115 million. This price tag includes $104 million in cash at closing and a final payment of up to an additional $11 million in cash to be paid at the end of a one-year escrow period.

Cognex adds it plans to maintain operations at DVT’s present facility in Georgia, and continue selling and supporting DVT’s vision products through its existing third-party distribution channel. DVT manufactures vision sensors, which it sells mostly to the machine vision industry’s plant-floor sector. The company’s main product line, Legend, is used in many applications for inspection and quality control.

“This is the largest acquisition that Cognex has ever completed in terms of price and revenue, and, most importantly, in terms of the positive impact that it will likely have on our company,” says Dr. Robert Shillman, Cognex’s chairman and CEO. “In recent years, Cognex has been very successful in expanding its product line by adding low-cost and easy-to-use vision products. Our In-Sight business has grown to over $60 million in just five years. However, reaching the thousands of prospects for these products in factories around the world requires a large third-party sales and distribution channel to supplement our own direct end-user sales force. During 2004, Cognex started to build a third-party distribution channel, and prior to this acquisition we had signed over 40 distributors, mostly in North America. With the acquisition of DVT, Cognex immediately gains a worldwide network of more than 150 additional industrial distributors, all fully trained in selling and supporting machine vision products.”


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