National Instruments has released a Q1 revenue of $238 million, a new first quarter record and a 24 per cent increase from Q1 2010. This met the company's guidance of between $230 million and $244 million, which was provided on 25 January 2011.
Dr James Truchard, co-founder, president and CEO of NI, commented: 'Our core platforms of LabView, DAQ, PXI and CompactRIO drove our growth this quarter, and we believe that our commitment to innovation and growing relationships with our customers will continue to drive growth in these strategic platforms.'
NI graphical system design product sales were up 25 per cent and its instrument control product sales were up 18 per cent year-over-year. During Q1, deferred revenue increased by $6 million, which is double the amount in Q1 last year, and backlog declined by $7 million.
While the trends of the global Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) continued to be positive in Q1, the impact of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, the spike in oil prices and US federal budget issues all impacted global business conditions, especially in the automotive sector. These macroeconomic events have made the company incrementally more cautious regarding Q2.
'While we are pleased to see greater than 20 per cent year-over-year order growth in April, we do see some reasons for caution as we look out to the rest of Q2,' said Alex Davern, NI COO and CFO. 'However, we are confident in our long-term opportunity and are successfully executing on our plan to aggressively increase our R&D and field sales personnel in 2011.'
NI expects revenue for Q2 to be between $241 million and $255 million, an increase of between 14 and 20 per cent over Q2 2010.
