Revenue Up, but Profits Down at Flir

In the first quarter of 2011, net income at thermal imaging manufacturer Flir Systems Inc. was $51.3 million, or 32 cents a share, compared with $55.9 million, or 35 cents a share, in the same quarter last year.

The company’s revenue in the same period was $373.5 million, up 30 percent compared with $287.3 million in the first quarter of 2010. Operating income in the first quarter was $76.6 million, compared with $84.3 million last year, with the downturn attributed by the company to a lack of shipments related to the US Army’s Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) program, as well as by acquisition-related charges.

Revenue from its commercial systems division increased 51 percent from the first quarter of 2010, to $194.6 million. Within this division, revenue from the thermal vision and measurement segment was $144.1 million, an increase of 12 percent over equivalent business segments last year.

Revenue from its government systems division increased 13 percent over the first quarter of 2010, to $178.8 million. Within this division, revenue from the surveillance segment, composed of the legacy government systems business and the imaging and radars businesses acquired with the acquisition of ICx Technologies Inc., was $149.9 million, a decrease of 5 percent from the first quarter of 2010 results of Flir's legacy government systems business. Revenue from government systems' other two new segments — detection and integrated systems, which were created following the acquisition of ICx Technologies — was $17.9 million and $11.1 million, respectively.

Based on financial results for the first three months of 2011 and the outlook for the remainder of the year, Flir is increasing its outlook for revenue and narrowing its outlook for earnings per share for the full year 2011. Management currently expects revenue for 2011 to be in the range of $1.7 billion to $1.75 billion and net earnings to be in the range of $1.70 to $1.75 per share.

For more information, visit: www.flir.com