Greetings, and welcome to the Cognex's third quarter 2019 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Susan Conway, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please begin.
Thank you, and good evening, everyone. With us today are Cognex's President and CEO, Rob Willett, Vice President and Corporate Controller, Laura McDonald, and Cognex's Treasurer, Chris Stagna. I'd like to point out that our earnings release and quarterly report on Form 10-Q are available on our investor relations website at investor.cognex.com. Those contain highly detailed information about our financial results. During the call, we may use a non-GAAP financial measure if we believe it is useful to investors or if we believe it will help investors better understand our results or business trends. You can see a reconciliation of certain items from GAAP to non-GAAP in Exhibit 2 of the earnings release. Any forward-looking statements we made in the earnings release or any that we may make during this call are based upon information that we believe to be true as of today.
Things often change, however, and actual results may differ materially from those projected or anticipated. You should refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K, for a detailed list of these risk factors. With that, now I'd like to turn the call over to CEO Rob Willett.
Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I know most of you are used to hearing Cognex's Chairman, Dr. Bob Shillman, welcome participants to our earnings call. Dr. Bob is unable to join us this evening due to a prior commitment. He sends his regards, and he looks forward to talking with you on our next call. Cognex delivered Q3 results in line with our expectations, with revenue at the top end of our July guidance. That said, our revenue was down both year-on-year and sequentially as a result of the ongoing slowdown in manufacturing investment. The decline can be almost entirely attributed to consumer electronics, which decreased by approximately $50 million, roughly 50%, from Q3 of 2018. The automotive and the broader industrial sectors also continued to weaken due to persistent global economic uncertainty and trade conflicts, particularly in Europe and China.
That deterioration was partially offset by growth in logistics, which increased by approximately 50% year-on-year. We have confidence in our logistics strategy, and we believe we can continue to grow at that 50% rate over the long term. In logistics, well-known traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are starting to invest heavily in logistics automation to compete more effectively with their e-commerce competitors. They are changing their supply chain, and they are looking to Cognex's industry-leading products to help them implement an automation strategy to fulfill orders rapidly, reliably, and cost-effectively. Near-term market conditions notwithstanding, the long-term potential for machine vision and for Cognex is unchanged. Our long-term operating model remains intact, and with a target of 20% compound annual growth, mid-70s gross margin, and 30% operating margin.
I'd like to say a few words about our recent acquisition of SUALAB, an outstanding technology company specializing in deep learning software to automate inspection tasks that are currently done by human visual inspectors. SUALAB is the type of acquisition that we like to do. It has an excellent engineering team, I'll expand on this in a few moments, and also is a great cultural fit. We believe that deep learning technology will be a major growth driver for Cognex in the years ahead. For the first time, machine vision is reaching a level of performance that allows it to replace tens of thousands of humans globally whose work it is to perform highly repetitive visual inspection tasks to identify cosmetic flaws and defects on products during their manufacture.
The market we serve today for machine vision using deep learning in factory automation is estimated at $100 million of annual revenue and is growing rapidly, we believe by 75% per year. The largest and fastest-growing segment of that market is the replacement of human inspectors in Asia, particularly for electronic components and finished products, where SUALAB is well-positioned. The acquisition of SUALAB not only extends our deep learning capabilities for inspection application. It more than triples the size of the Cognex team dedicated to developing and applying deep learning technology to industrial inspection tasks. Upon closing, we welcomed approximately 100 smart, ambitious, and energetic new employees who share our passion for machine vision, the majority of whom are in engineering departments and are highly skilled in both contemporary programming techniques and applying deep learning to inspection tasks in the manufacturing process.
Led by co-founder Seongkyung Jung, the SUALAB engineering team will continue to operate from its headquarters in downtown Seoul. They will work closely with our team based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is led by Reto Weiss, a co-founder of ViDi Systems, which we acquired in 2017. The ViDi acquisition established our deep learning development efforts and is the reason for our success in this area to date. Here are a few more details on the acquisition that I'd like to share with you. The purchase price was $195 million. We paid $171 million in cash at closing. Payment of the remaining $24 million is deferred until a later date. Although SUALAB's revenue is modest, the price is justified by the high value of the company's substantial engineering team, its core technology developed over the last six years, and its experience applying that technology at very large companies in Asia.
We expect technology acquisitions to be accretive within two years, and it looks like SUALAB will fit within that model. Moving on to the next topic, we have published an updated view of our served market. You can find it on our investor relations website at investor.cognex.com. Our new estimate of Cognex's total served market for machine vision is $4.2 billion. This is a narrow definition of what we can serve with our current product offering. This estimate is 20% higher than our previous estimate as a result of both growth in the underlying market and new opportunities that are now addressable with Cognex products. Despite near-term challenging market conditions, we believe our served market will grow in the low teens over the long term, and we expect to continue to outperform market growth as a result of our superior technology and the strength of our customer relationships.
I will turn the call over to Laura for financial details from the third quarter. Laura, the microphone is yours.
Thank you, Rob. Hello, everyone. Revenue in Q3 was $183 million at the high end of our expected range. Revenue declined 21% year-on-year due to lower sales in consumer electronics, particularly smartphone manufacturing. Revenue from automotive and the broader factory automation market also declined from Q3 2018. Partially offsetting the shortfall was growth in logistics. Gross margin of 74% was down slightly from Q3 2018 and consistent with Q2 2019, despite lower revenue. Operating expenses declined from both Q3 2018 and the prior quarter, reflecting reduced expenses for incentive compensation plans. We continue to be prudent with discretionary spending without changing products development plans. Operating margin in Q3 was 24%, representing a decline both year-on-year and sequentially due to the lower revenue environment. Excluding discrete tax items, earnings per share were $0.23 in Q3 2019, compared with $0.39 in Q3 2018 and $0.27 in Q2 2019.
Looking at revenue growth year-over-year from a geographic perspective, the Americas was the best performing region, increasing mid-teens year-over-year due to strong growth in logistics. The impact of this quarter's substantially lower contribution from consumer electronics was most noticeable in Europe, where revenue declined by more than 45% year-over-year. Customers in Greater China continue to defer their capital spending plans, resulting in low double-digit revenue decline year-over-year. This decline would have been greater in Greater China and less extreme in Europe if not for procurement changes made by certain customers in consumer electronics, shifting their purchases to China from Europe. In the rest of Asia, revenue was relatively flat with Q3 2018. Turning to our strong balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $918 million in cash and investments and no debt.
Even after purchasing SUALAB, we have enough capital to support our organic growth objectives and M&A plans and for sharing our ongoing success with our shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends. In that regard, our board of directors has increased the quarterly cash dividend by 10% to $0.055 per share. The dividend is payable on November 29th to all shareholders of record on November 15th. I'll turn the call back to Rob.
Thank you, Laura. Moving next to guidance, we expect revenue for the fourth quarter will be between $155 million-$165 million, making it the lowest revenue generating quarter this year. Compared with revenue of $193 million reported in Q4 of 2018, industrial markets are significantly weaker today and continue to deteriorate, led by automotive. The contraction is most pronounced outside of the United States, and particularly in business that relates to China. Unlike Q3, we don't expect growth from logistics to offset the overall revenue shortfall in Q4. Even though logistics revenue grew by approximately 50% year-on-year in Q3, we expect it to decrease year-on-year in Q4. This is the result of a major customer delaying delivery of large orders for new sites. Gross margin for Q4 is expected to be in the mid 70% range, consistent with the gross margin for Q3.
Operating expenses are expected to increase by mid to high single digits on a sequential basis. Approximately four percentage points are attributable to incremental costs for the SUALAB team, estimated amortization of intangibles, and expenses associated with the acquisition. The effective tax rate is expected to be 16%, excluding discrete tax items. I'd like to make you aware of two discrete tax items expected to be recorded in 2019. The first item involves changes to our corporate tax structure, which came about because of legislation passed by the European Union. For that one, we expect a discrete tax benefit of between $100 million and $125 million, and a slight increase to our 16% effective tax rate, excluding discrete events going forward. The second item is our decision to move acquired SUALAB technology out of Korea to align with our corporate tax structure.
This is expected to result in a discrete tax expense of between $27 million and $33 million. These items continue to be evaluated. Because of that, we do not have more detail at this time. With that, we will open the call for questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up prior to getting back in queue. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset prior to pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Joe Giordano with Cowen and Company. Please proceed.
Hey, guys. Good evening.
Hi, Joe.
Rob, could you size that big order that was pushed? Is it something that you just found out recently? Is it something that you have visibility into just delivering it after the quarter or something? I'm just trying to see how indicative it is of the logistics environment in general, or if this is just kind of a one-off thing that gets fixed in a few weeks.
Yeah. It's a pretty substantial order. Let me give you a bit of color on it. Overall, our logistics funnel is strong and growing, but we expect lower revenue year-on-year from logistics in Q4 as a result of this major customer delaying delivery of large orders to new sites. This same customer did take substantial deliveries in Q4 of last year. Many of these orders are on our books awaiting delivery, which we now expect to result in revenue next year and not in Q4. Our visibility of that is quite recent for us, but we see probably that some major integrators may have had some more specific understanding of that situation earlier. We continue to see strength in our logistics business, particularly among a broad base of customers who are growing very well indeed.
We remain confident that we can grow it 50% over the long run, but we now just don't expect to grow at that rate for the full year in 2019.
Can I just clarify one thing there? This is an order you have received, right? This is not an order that you thought you might get that didn't materialize. This is an order that you already have, though.
It's an order that's coming in many pieces. It's very substantial, right? We don't have all of it, but we have much of it.
Okay. Yeah, go ahead.
Please. I was just going to sort of say that I think that it's really to do with changes at the customer about their plans and the timing of their plans, which unfortunately for us is moving revenue out of this year and slowing down our overall growth rate in Q4 and for the full year for logistics.
Okay. My follow-up would be around China. Obviously, a lot of talk around trade war and what a phase 1 agreement might do. How much do you attribute any of this weakness to that specifically? If there is some sort of phase 1 of 3 kind of deal coming out, does that change anything on the ground for you guys, do you think, on a near term?
It's difficult to call, but I have to say, yes. I mean, certainly China is our softest region at the moment, after being a real engine of growth for us for so many years. I mean, customers there have a real wait and see mindset, and they're very slow to place orders, and they continue to reduce and delay capital expenditures. We're seeing, and I think Laura pointed out also, that revenue from China in Q3 benefited from purchases from certain consumer electronic customers that have started to purchase our products in China, when previously they bought them out of Europe. That's also maybe making our China numbers or the situation in China look better than it really is. Yeah. How quickly will that turn around?
Well, my experience with China, my experience with our business in general is that when things do change, the business can come back very quickly. I've seen that on a number of occasions. I don't know whether this is really a different and long-term situation unlike what we've seen before, but I do happen to think if confidence can return, we see momentum in the other direction, we could see a quick recovery. I just have no way of gauging if and when that will come.
Fair enough. I have some others I'll jump in queue, though. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Eastman with Robert W. Baird & Co. Please proceed.
Yes. Good afternoon. Rob, could you put a little color around SUALAB? When we looked at their website, they have a pretty impressive customer list and all the big majors on the consumer electronics side, it appears. I'm curious, with very modest revenue presently, how is their product deployed? Is it still kind of in a piloting phase, or is it deployed at a central location, or is it deployed on equipment itself? Just walk me through that maybe just a little bit, and how quickly the revenue expectations can inflate given the application.
Sure. SUALAB has a business model very like ViDi, right? They sell SuaKit, sophisticated deep learning machine vision software, and they have a very strong team of application engineers who help customers apply it, right? The vast majority of their business today, over the trailing 12 months, is related to that, right? I think more excitingly, I think what we see the potential is to take that technology, and they're already working on this, and to deploy it through machine builders, to help it scale, much in the way that we have in our consumer electronics business over the last five years or so. We of course, have a great network of machine builders and integrators who can help them speed that up.
They have some very nice application-specific related products in their pipeline that we think will be very powerful in changing this market. There's a base kind of business that I would describe very much like ViDi, very good technology with some relative strengths, and differences compared to ViDi, and then some very interesting opportunities to apply more application-specific products through machine builders in a form that should be more scalable in the coming years, and where we are very well positioned to help them.
Okay. All right. Just a follow-up on this issue that you raised about a consumer electronics customer purchasing in China for China versus prior, product was purchased out of Europe. What predicated that switch? Is it a currency issue, or why is there a shift there in where the purchases are occurring for presumably the same application?
Yeah, I'm sort of limited into what I can say specifically about the internal workings of our large customers. I think certainly in that case, perhaps due to some of the trade situations we're seeing and tax consequences and other things, they've decided they want to purchase from us locally in China rather than out of a subsidiary in Europe. It doesn't really change the nature of the work we do, nor does it really change our profitability on the business, generally speaking. It just does mean where you see it show up in regions is different.
Okay. That would start at this quarter?
Laura?
Materially this quarter, yeah.
Okay. Okay, very good. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Pokrzywinski with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.
Hi, good evening, guys.
Hi, Josh.
Just want to follow up on the logistics comment, maybe some more color about some of the lumpiness there. I guess, first of all, can you talk us through kind of the concentration from a customer perspective in that case? It sounds like there was one large order that got pushed, but is this going to be something kind of analogous to the electronic side with your large customer there, where we do see lumpiness, just related to one customer really driving kind of the quarter-to-quarter cadence?
Yeah. Okay. Your question is sort of what's the kind of customer mix in logistics and how does that play out in terms of lumpiness in the business? In our logistics business today, we have a handful of large, important customers, right, who can be ordering substantial amounts from us. In the order of $10 million-$20 million in a quarter would not necessarily be unusual, I think, in terms of how we see them playing out. Those orders are based often on their automation plans and how they roll them out, right? I think that does have the potential to move revenue in and out of quarters. I think that is probably a reality of our logistics business going forward. Then we have many smaller customers who might be buying very small amounts up to a few million dollars.
There's a good base of that business that looks much more consistent overall. That business actually is, when we look at it's growing faster than our overall business. We expect that probably to go on as our technology becomes easier to integrate, more widely known and accepted, and as we develop our own capability and our integrated network to deliver it. In kind of answering your question, we have a handful of customers, and I think the one we referenced, not by name, but today, and I can certainly think of others, may mean that our revenue as it plays out in the coming quarters will be lumpy in logistics, and we'll just try to give you a heads up to that.
We're really in this for the long term, and we see a big change going on in our 50% long-term growth strategy is all based around that. I think we're relatively comfortable with the fact that may change, but we realize we need to explain it to you as soon as we see it, as we're doing now, and sometimes that can move.
Understood. That's helpful. Then just taking a step back from consumer electronics, obviously, weakness there has been perpetuated for a couple reasons. Obviously, the tough comp coming off of some of the OLED rollouts a couple years ago, and then, general weakness in the electronics industry in 2019. We are starting to see kind of select green shoots from folks in the broader definition of capital equipment, maybe products that look an awful lot different from what Cognex is supplying. Some kind of early indicators that 2020 will be better.
I guess from your perspective, you guys don't get a lot of that color until more the 2Q timeframe, but is there anything you can share with us either on kind of product roadmaps, any kind of technology shifts that you see out there that would maybe help define important things to watch for 2020, understanding now that you have kind of a couple years of easy comps starting to build out?
Okay, Josh, I think, I'll point to a few things, but these are really just reprising what I've said before. We really get a better view of our consumer electronics business in Q2, probably when we're reporting Q1 next year. I think that's when we'll have a real read on how it's shaping up. Always, I would say at this stage, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the consumer electronics pipeline that we have some visibility on. The question is sort of how well it's funded and able to be implemented as we get into the year. I mean, obvious kind of things that could really help and be a big tailwind for the business overall next year. 5G is a very obvious one, to what degree that is implemented and the technical challenges around implementing.
There are always new features that we have a line of sight on coming in the electronics market, that can really drive. Again, it's interesting to see which ones make it in each year. As you mentioned, the rollout of OLED, specifically as it relates to high-end phones, foldable screens, et cetera, that definitely has a life in it, as I think you can see by reading the paper that that's technology, where there's a lot of value that Cognex can add. I think then headwind would remain. There is one of the largest smartphone companies in the world is one we can't sell to. That certainly is an ongoing headwind and I'd like that situation to change, and I think so would they, but at the moment, that's a potential problem for us.
Just one final one I'd like to squeeze in there. Were you doing business with that company before and now you can't? Is there any way to size kind of what that missed opportunity was? I'll leave it there.
Yeah. We don't really like to talk about customers by name specifically, but you can assume, I mean, we're the leading machine vision manufacturer in the world, so any company that's performing advanced discrete manufacturing is likely a Cognex customer, and you would expect a big electronics company to certainly be doing a few million dollars or more with us.
Understood. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone.
Joe.
Rob, just a few quick ones. Maybe just following up on that question on electronics visibility and 5G. How much visibility will you have as the year progresses, and what do you think the timing of that visibility will be? Will it be kind of early next year? Will you know by 1 Q? I'm just trying to get a sense for timing and visibility.
I think we'll be in a position to give you a clear view of that as we have in past years when we report our Q1 results. I guess that is end of April, right?
Okay.
Yeah, end of April. We'll probably have visibility earlier than that. I think it's my experience now, having been through a number of cycles, is there's a lot of stuff there in the funnel, but in reality, the kind of overall view of the market of what gets rolled out really doesn't crystallize until that kind of timeframe, and that's very different than our other markets. We sometimes liken it to, they're building the airplane as it's going down the runway in that industry. We do have quite late visibility as to what really makes it into a final build.
Yeah, that's fair enough. Just, I know we've been talking about this topic a little bit on the call already, but the customer delaying the decision on large orders to new sites. Can you maybe give us a little bit of color on why there was a deferral?
It has to do with their plans to roll out automation, their automation plans and delays that are changing that, right? Those are delays that are related to that company and their plans, not related to Cognex vision and our ability to meet that demand. I can't get more into specifically, what and where that customer is finding those issues.
Okay. Got it. Yeah, I guess I was just trying to get a sense for whether it was a liquidity issue from a customer perspective or whether it was just managing too much and having the capacity to roll this out.
This is a very substantial company. It's really much more about engineering an automation product rollout and plans, rather than anything to do with financial or anything to do with Cognex's ability to fulfill those orders that we have on our books and are expecting to complete on our books soon.
Got it. Okay. One quick one, I may have missed it earlier, but you mentioned on SUALAB, the accretion within two years. What's the expectation then from a financial perspective for next year?
Generally we have a policy of not talking about the forecast for next year for the full year. We're not currently disclosing that. Obviously we're looking for some significant growth from them.
Okay.
Obviously based on what I've said, it would be dilutive to us next year.
Okay. Got you. Thank you.
Yeah. Accretive in two years. I think we'll be in a better position to give you more detail on that when we report the full year as well. It's still a relatively recent acquisition for us.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Coster with JP Morgan. Please proceed.
Hi, this is Paul Chung on for Paul Coster. Thanks for taking our question. Just another follow-up on the SUALAB acquisition. Why now on this? Is this kind of customer driven demand or is this part of your vision for capturing some incremental offerings across your verticals? If you could also talk about some of your cross-selling benefits here with their existing consumer base. I have a follow-up.
Sure. Yeah. Sure. I think the right way to view it is, at Cognex, we pride ourselves on having a deep understanding about the technology and the applications for machine vision. We spend a great deal of time studying those. We've talked about logistics and how we see that has hit a tipping point where the need for automation is changing. There's another tipping point going on currently in the world of machine vision, and it has to do with the deep learning technology and its progress, and its huge technology development going on in that space. The potential it provides to replace human visual inspectors in electronics, of whom there are tens of thousands in Asia.
The technology is getting to the point where it's really now a very attractive market opportunity, and our large customers really see that, and they're very interested to work with us. They face a lot of challenges around finding people to staff, human visual inspection, visual inspection not being very effective. A human visual inspector might be 85% effective in their work in catching defects, while machine vision has the capability to be 99.9% effective. There's a very good return on investment that's, I think, pretty clear to us and to the big electronics customers that we see in Asia. I think that's the reason why this is happening now and why we're so positive about it. I think we're also fortunate in that we acquired ViDi two and a half years ago, and we've really had the chance through owning them to see the potential.
Seeing that potential also made us realize that we needed more engineers and we needed more reach and engineering capability in Asia, where this market really is. As we looked at that and we worked on it, we really realized that SUALAB is really right in the sweet spot of all of that. We got to know them. I think we developed a lot of mutual respect for one another, and we were so pleased to see a fantastic cultural fit, which for us is really important at Cognex because we like to buy acquisitions. We like to buy companies that have great engineers and great growth potential. The amount of excitement that that creates in us and in them is something that works very well for us.
We did that with ViDi, and we've done that with Chiaro and other acquisitions we've made over the years. The more we drilled, the more we got to know each other. The more we understood the market, the more we talked to large customers in this space and saw where SUALAB is working, the more excited we got and the easier it was in our minds to justify making this, for us, pretty substantial acquisition.
Okay, thanks for that. Then switching gears on free cash, you're up despite material lower revenues and earnings. Can you just talk about the puts and takes of what's driving your working cap conversion benefits this year relative to last? Is this kind of temporary in nature, or is there something more structural going on in how you see working cap trends over the next six months? Thanks.
Yeah. I'm going to ask Laura McDonald to answer that. Do you need more clarification?
Yeah. Well, let me see if I can answer. You'll let me know if you need more clarification. One of the noticeable changes in our balance sheet is our decline in our inventory balance, which has come down in Q3 as we delivered on large opportunities and shipped recently introduced new products. We've worked that down nicely from the end of the year. We believe we now have an inventory balance at an appropriate level. That was one noticeable change in working capital. Does that answer your question?
Yes, somewhat. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Summerville with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed.
Hi, thanks. Maybe just two quick questions. First, with respect to the Americas, can you provide a little bit more granular detail in terms of what you're seeing across the different end markets there? You mentioned logistics, but I could've missed it. Just any more color in terms of what you're seeing there would be helpful.
Sure. Hi, Matt. Yeah. Pretty much like all of our end regions, the Americas region is soft. Particularly in automotive. I would say, relative to other regions, I think we saw that softness early this year, and now it's more stable. We're not seeing it declining at rates we're seeing elsewhere. I think as we look at the market overall, we're seeing a lot of uncertainty and delays. Automotive is our biggest market in the Americas. We're not anticipating a sort of a significant budget flush in Americas or anywhere, really, that we might expect at the end of the year. That's kind of baked in our guidance. The Americas has a relatively better growth profile than elsewhere, also as a result of a higher weight in logistics.
It's a home market where we have relatively more business in logistics than anywhere else, and that's a business that is growing very strongly. That's also helping our results in this region. Other industries in the Americas, just out of interest, the other industries that are holding up well, medical-related business, food and beverage, and packaging. They're all doing okay. I think they're all growing currently, despite the difficult market conditions. Logistics is growing well, but then certainly automotive is much more challenging overall.
Got it. Are you able to parse out between what the year-over-year revenue changes would've looked like had that customer not changed their geographic, I'll call it, procurement strategy, just to try and bridge that. Instead of Europe being down mid-forties, maybe what would that have been down? Instead of China being down low teens, maybe what would that have been down if that change didn't happen?
Yeah. There's still quite a lot of moving parts as we come through the end of the quarter. I don't think we're going to try to do that per se. Laura, do you want to add to that?
Yeah, I think that's kind of pro forma information that we haven't prepared to disclose.
Yeah. We're not really ready to give you a read on that yet.
Okay. Got it. Thank you, guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Karen Lau with Gordon Haskett. Please proceed.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. Just a quick one on OpEx. I think you mentioned about four points of the sequential increase is due to SUALAB, but you also mentioned there is some amortization in there. I just want to clarify how much of that would you say is sort of one time that shouldn't really continue into next year, and how much should we really put in the base number as we project forward?
Sure, I can answer that, Karen. The four percentage points represents the SUALAB team ongoing operating expenses in addition to an estimate of amortization of intangibles. We're still in the process of finalizing the purchase price allocation, we don't know exactly what those numbers will be. I can tell you that we expect the majority of the $170 million that we'll allocate to be assigned to goodwill. That 4%, there was a small percent that I would say is non-recurring. Most of the 4%, like 3% of the 4%, I'd say would be recurring. Again, we expect most of the purchase price will be allocated to goodwill.
Okay, got it. Parsing out that four points, that sequential increase that is related to SUALAB, the core spending would be the remaining four points. I noticed that in the third quarter, in terms of OpEx, looks like you underspend a little bit versus your guide. Is the sequential uptick more in the core OpEx spending more of a timing issue, or should we read into that as maybe some of the pent-up investment coming back, or maybe you're positioning for some projects next year? How should we think about that?
Yeah, I think what you saw us underspending a little compared to the guidance in Q3 related primarily to adjustments to our incentive compensation plan.
Okay. All right. Okay, thank you. Then just, I guess, taking it more broadly into next year, Rob. Let's say for whatever reason, whether it's stabilization or consumer electronics start to turn next year, I would imagine you guys have been doing a good job in quote unquote "cutting the crap," but also there is probably some You know, pent-up spending that might have to come back at some point. Let's say the end markets start to turn next year, would you expect sort of a normal type of incremental margins to be realized? Do you think that, given so many things have been kind of, investment and spending-wise, have been delayed this year because of the environment, there is more sort of catch-up spending that needs to happen next year if things start to get better?
I'm just trying to get a sense of the incremental that you would expect.
Yes. Okay. Well, it's an interesting question, Karen. At the moment, I'm not expecting that kind of our markets to recover very strongly going into next year. It's obviously, and it's really too early to talk about next year. Here's what I can say. I think we run Cognex for the long term. We're not kind of cutting back on important things that are essential to our three-year growth strategies. In fact, we go on investing in those things that we consider essential. I think through what is obviously a much lower rate of increase in spending, we've been able to keep our new products on track and our plans intact. I'd say that's the case.
If I then go back and I look at times when we have seen a big recovery in our markets or a big incremental step-up in growth, and I'm talking about years like 2010, 2014, 2017, where we had growth in excess of 30%. The fall through in those years is awesome, right? Given our kind of gross margins, and there isn't a great need to add in additional incremental expense related to growth like that. I would expect, if and when our markets recover, and if they come back strongly as they had, we should see very, very good fall through on incremental revenue.
Okay. there is no kind of delay in spending that would have to be caught up.
Well, the thing-
the end market come back next year.
Well, I think, the thing to point out would be incentive compensation.
Okay.
Really. This is a year where we're not achieving our budget, and we're certainly paying out much less incentive compensation. If we went back to a normal year, it would be a step up in that. If we went back to a strong year, it would be a significant step up in that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jim Ricchiuti with Needham. Please proceed.
Hey, guys, this is Mike Sison for James Ricchiuti. Just a couple of questions here. The first, coming back to the delayed shipments for this logistics customer. I wanted to get a better sense. It sounds like this is one of your larger customers, and I know you kind of scoped the large customers contributing as much as $10 million-$20 million per quarter, not being unusual. Fair to assume that this customer coming in at the higher end of that range? It's not higher than that $20 million bogey?
We're not sure exactly where it would come in, but perhaps order of magnitude, in a range of significance, probably south, not as much as 20, it all depends on how much of the orders we would expect them to take in a particular quarter. I do just want to clarify, you wouldn't take that number and multiply it by four to get the size of the customer, right? It would be just more like, customers have plans, they roll out at a certain cadence, that may mean the quarterly revenue for any particular customer might be on that order of magnitude, that might be the kind of level of challenge that we're seeing in a headwind this quarter.
I see. Okay. I guess if you had said that the logistics business, because of this Q4 shift, is not expected to grow 50% year-on-year, how fast is it growing in 2019 then, based on what you currently have in hand?
Yeah, that's not a number we're going to disclose at this time, right? We've told you Q3, we're going to sort of see how things play out in Q4. We might have more, give you a better view of that when the year is over.
I see. Okay. Just one final question, if I may, on the gross margin front. Was interested in hearing how you guys are able to maintain call it this mid-70s% gross margin versus Q3 on the lower revenue base. Is part of that mix shift, or is there anything else we should be thinking about in that?
Yeah, that was a result of the revenue mix in the quarter.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from a line of Andrew Buscaglia with Berenberg. Please proceed.
Hey, guys, quick question. Consumer electronics, can you comment if that continued to get worse from Q2? Sounds like auto's somewhat stabilized, but how would you characterize consumer electronics?
Well, I would say consumer electronics has kind of played out as we expected this year, based on what we told you in April. I think if I think back and we certainly were unhappy to discover back at that time that our customers in consumer electronics were really looking at a very dry year, and I think we kind of had eyes on that and communicated at that point, and it's played out as we expected. Annual revenue from consumer electronics is on track to decline by roughly one-third this year, and it represented 30% of our business in 2018. Particularly as a result of smartphone manufacturing. The decline you'll see is most notable in our European region, followed by China and the rest of Asia. It's certainly been a year of diminished investment, and I think that's as we expected.
Just to confirm, I think you said in the prepared remarks it was down 50% year-over-year?
Yeah. Revenue for consumer electronics in Q3 declined.
In Q3
by approximately 50% year-on-year, or nearly $50 million, due particularly to smartphone manufacturing.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Ben Rose with Battle Road Research. Please proceed.
Yes. Hi, Rob, Laura, and Susan. Rob, can you identify the industry of the customer for the logistics product?
It's a large customer of ours in logistics, so you can assume it's either e-commerce or retail.
Okay. I just wanted to be sure.
It's not airport baggage handling.
Okay
poastal, which might be the other segments where you can see some larger chunks of business, but that's not what it is.
Okay. Just a question on SUALAB. Are the customers today, for their product, are they primarily the Korean OEM manufacturers? Do they have any meaningful penetration thus far outside of Korea?
Yeah, their main markets are in Korea and China and Vietnam overall. They're really with Chinese and Korean electronics or electronic components manufacturers doing inspection. Something we like about them is they, like us, really have close high-level engineering relationships with senior engineers at those companies. They're not trying to move their product through the OEM machine builder. It's being pulled by the end user, who really many of them are employing many thousands of visual inspectors and are looking to see better cost and performance out of that aspect of their business.
Okay. Sorry, just one final perhaps. Has the company actually validated the technology with the kind of reduction in visual inspectors that you mentioned earlier in the call, in the order of hundreds or thousands of visual inspectors being replaced by the technology?
Absolutely. Yes. I don't think we would've acquired the company had we not done our due diligence on that for sure. Right. We ourselves, Cognex, before we met SUALAB, see opportunities where our electronics customers really are very interested and have been previously unable to replace those visual inspectors with machine vision. We're seeing a lot of interest from them as a result of this news.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Karen Lau with Gordon Haskett. Please proceed.
Oh, hey. Thanks for taking my follow-up. Rob, I'm just curious on consumer electronics and maybe broadly more on China. There's been stories about Chinese companies kind of future-proofing their supply chain. I don't know if that's the right word to use, but just sort of in light of blacklisting or all of a sudden they get cut off from their U.S. suppliers. I think that it's more concentrated in chips manufacturing, that sort of thing, but I wasn't sure if you are seeing any of that sentiment in areas that you participate in China. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
Yes, Karen. The answer is, we're looking for that, and we're really not seeing it among our customers. I can really only think of one instance that I've heard of where a Chinese company, and it's not a company any of us would know readily, was concerned or didn't want to do business with us because we were American. That's not widespread, and I think what you're reading about is much more components than chips.
Okay. Yep.
Technology in that way. I think the other thing important to realize is our technology basically isn't owned inside the U.S. or sold from the U.S. per se, right, in terms of how we're recognized by our customers. I think that also somewhat insulates us from this. Clearly what we've seen with one of the largest and some companies where we might become unable to sell to them, if that was a real threat on a larger scale, that would be a big problem for us.
Okay, nothing beyond Huawei that you're seeing that concerns you in terms of Chinese companies sourcing from suppliers from other geographies?
Correct.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joe Giordano with Cowen. Please proceed.
Hey, thanks for taking my follow-ups here. On SUALAB again, I understand the geographic presence they bring and the engineering capabilities. Is this a fundamentally different product than ViDi, or is this something that you foresee over time, like one offering globally that's integrated as whatever you guys might call it? Is it one thing or is it two kind of things?
Hi, Joe, I should say to everyone, this is the last question I think we have time for, but I'll answer it. A point from earlier, I think you might have asked the question, what do we bring to SUALAB? I think what we do bring is a lot of customer relationships and a big sales footprint in the market. I think I just did want to make that point. This is very much complementary, I think, for both companies. Synergies on the growth side for both of us working together. Your question related to what? Can you repeat that again? I'm sorry.
Are these two fundamentally different things, ViDi and SUALAB? Or is this something that ultimately is one team, one integrated product that Cognex offers?
Yeah. I'm sorry. Yes. No, they're quite similar products. Deep learning software can do various functions, and we've developed with ViDi certain functions that really relate more to our end markets where we've been focused, particularly automotive, and based on our geographical presence, right? SUALAB has some strong tools and capabilities that relate to Asian visual inspection. Similar, but developed in different ways, right? I would say that. Because they have a big footprint of engineers and application engineers in Asia, they have the ability to help unlock a lot of potential that we see in that market where we didn't have that capability. They bring a lot of engineering application capability, which could be applied to either ViDi or to SUALAB, right? We have a big sales network, where we have pent-up demand that they can help unlock.
That's kind of where the complementary parts of the business go. The product itself, ViDi and SUALAB Kit, are quite similar. There's quite a lot of overlap, with quite a few complementary strengths around specific tools, capabilities, user interfaces, and other key elements.
That's very helpful. If you don't mind, you can answer it in two words if you want, the medical, food and beverage, and consumer verticals that we don't spend a lot of time talking about, do you expect those to be up this year?
Yes. Yes, we do.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have reached the end of the call. I will now turn it back over to Mr. Willett for closing remarks.
Thank you. While our results are not what we'd hoped for at the start of this year, we're confident in the future role of machine vision and in the long-term prospects for Cognex. Thank you for joining us tonight. We look forward to speaking with you on our next quarter's call. Good night.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.