Universal Robots Posts Strong Financial Results

Universal Robots A/S (Odense, Denmark), have recently published financial statements that leave no doubt as to the enormous growth potential of the robot industry. With revenue reaching 418 million Danish Krone (DKK) in 2015, the company achieved 91 percent growth compared to 2014, and a 223 percent increase compared to 2013.  Profit of 65.4 million DKK before tax is a 122 percent increase compared with 2014.

This means that the robot manufacturer has both increased revenue and reduced costs per robot and has thus been even more efficient in 2015 with profit increase exceeding revenue growth.

It created quite a stir when Teradyne Inc. (North Reading, MA), paid more than $285 million for all the shares in Universal Robots, in the spring of 2015. The price of the company with 150 employees reflected the expectations of significant growth rates in the robot industry; particularly, in the new market for an innovative type of robots called collaborative robots or cobots; low-cost, easy-to-deploy and simple-to-program robots that work side by side with production workers to improve quality and increase manufacturing efficiency. Universal Robots is behind the invention of the world’s first cobots.

The first cobot was sold in December 2008, and in 2015 the market was estimated at $100 million. The market is estimated by some analysts to reach over $3 billion by 2020. So the Danish frontrunner has secured its owner, Teradyne, an extremely strong position in this high-growth segment.

Since 2012, Universal Robots’ annual sales have increased an average of approximately 75 percent. All production of robotic arms takes place in Odense, and the robots are sold through 200 distributors, with 45 percent sales in Europe, 30 percent in the Americas, and 25 percent in Asia for 2015.

The company’s financially strong owner is also prepared to invest ambitiously in maintaining their lead in collaborative robots. With the employment of additional robot developers in 2015, the staff in the development division in Odense has almost doubled.

“In the coming years, we expect the market for collaborative robots to grow by at least 50 percent annually, not the least is due to the short payback period, often less than 12 months,” stated the chief executive officer of Universal Robots, Enrico Krog Iversen. “We are the clear market leader and have considerably increased investments in engineering, sales and customer support to expand that lead. Although I will be moving from position of the chief executive officer to a consultant capacity later this year, I’m confident that our company will continue to thrive using our crystal clear strategy based on three key points: Focus, Simplicity and uncompromising Execution.”

Universal Robots is the result of many years of intensive research at Denmark’s successful robot cluster, located in Odense. The company was established in 2005 by three researchers, Esben Østergaard, Kasper Støy and Kristian Kassow. They wanted to make robot technology accessible to all by developing small, user-friendly, reasonably priced, flexible industrial robots that are safe to collaborate with and that on their own can be used to automate and streamline processes in the industry. The product portfolio includes the collaborative UR3, UR5 and UR10 robotic arms, named after their payload in kilos.

Since the first UR robot was launched in December 2008, the company has experienced considerable growth, and the user-friendly robots are now sold in more than 50 countries worldwide. At just 195 days, the average payback period for UR robots is the fastest in the industry. Part of Teradyne Inc., with headquarters in Odense Denmark the company, has subsidiaries and regional offices in the US, Spain, Germany, Singapore, Czech Republic, India, and China. And employs more than 200 worldwide.

www.universal-robots.com, www.teradyne.com