Including solicitation of interest from potential acquirers

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

20 hours ago, ShaunR said:

So I can retire in October? 

If you happen to own a substantial amount of NI shares, that is certainly possible. 😁

Otherwise you have to consult with your pension provider first. 😎

[ShaunR]

3 hours ago, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

If you happen to own a substantial amount of NI shares, that is certainly possible. 😁

Otherwise you have to consult with your pension provider first. 😎

I was thinking more of not having to support (or make new releases) of my software anymore. 

Edited May 23, 2023 by ShaunR

[X___]

Emerson is busy leveraging its upcoming integration of LabVIEW in all aspects of its business:

https://www.emerson.com/en-us/news/2023/07-emerson-exchange-immerse-2023-registration-open

https://www.emerson.com/en-us/news/2023/emerson-to-acquire-flexim

https://www.emerson.com/en-us/news/2023/emerson-to-acquire-afag

[bbean]

1 hour ago, X___ said:

Emerson is busy leveraging its upcoming integration of LabVIEW in all aspects of its business:

https://www.emerson.com/en-us/news/2023/07-emerson-exchange-immerse-2023-registration-open

https://www.emerson.com/en-us/news/2023/emerson-to-acquire-flexim

https://www.emerson.com/en-us/news/2023/emerson-to-acquire-afag

I didn't see the word "LabVIEW" mentioned in any of those press release.  Just seems like Emerson is on a buying spree.  Typically this happens at the end of a business cycle when companies (CEOs) run out of ideas for how to improve their business from within.  It will be interesting to see how Emerson executes and brings all these acquisitions together under one umbrella and whether LabVIEW has any role.

[X___]

4 hours ago, bbean said:

I didn't see the word "LabVIEW" mentioned in any of those press release.  Just seems like Emerson is on a buying spree.  Typically this happens at the end of a business cycle when companies (CEOs) run out of ideas for how to improve their business from within.  It will be interesting to see how Emerson executes and brings all these acquisitions together under one umbrella and whether LabVIEW has any role.

Precisely.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

Well, the whole NI=>Emerson transaction seems to go as follows:

1) Shareholders from Emerson have approved the deal

2) Emerson created a wholly owned subsidiary in Deleware called Emersub CXIV, Inc for the whole purpose of merging with NI

3) Shareholders from NI approved the merger on June 29, 2023

4) After all the legalities have been dealt with National Instruments and Emersub CXIV, Inc will merge into a new company under the name of National Instruments, and Emersub CXIV, Inc will cease to exist.

The end result is that National Instruments for a large part will most likely simply operate as is and be a fully owned subsidiary of Emerson Electric but for a lot of things simply keep operating as it did so far. If and what technical cross contamination will eventually happen will have to be seen.

You could probably compare it to how National Instruments dealt with Digilent and MCC when they took them over. They both still operate under their own name and serve their specific target audience and for a large part were unaffected by the actual change in ownership. There were of course optimizations such as that most of the MCC boards where eventually actually manufactured and shipped from the same factory that also produces NI hardware. Digilent also has eventually taken over some of the products from NI that were mainly meant for the educational market such as myDAQ but also the Virtual Bench device which they sell under a different name but it is 100% the NI Virtual Bench device and also works with the same drivers.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[Reds]

22 hours ago, X___ said:

Precisely.

The NI P&L statement has a revenue line item called "Software Maintenance" at about $37mm per quarter. It's trending downward. Does any know if LabVIEW revenue is included in this P&L line item? What other things might be in this bucket besides LabVIEW?

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

On 8/18/2023 at 9:55 PM, Reds said:

The NI P&L statement has a revenue line item called "Software Maintenance" at about $37mm per quarter. It's trending downward. Does any know if LabVIEW revenue is included in this P&L line item? What other things might be in this bucket besides LabVIEW?

NI System Link, NI TestStand, NI Measurement Link, NI MultiSim/Ultiboard (barely) , NI LabWindows/CVI (pretty much not anymore), MATRIXx (not sure they still sell that other than to legacy customers), Diadem (not actively sold anymore), and a few others that they have stopped working on.

Other than LabVIEW, TestStand and System Link, NI has pretty much stopped any other software development, so part of the down turn is likely that sales from those other software is dwindling as existing customers jump the boat and no new customers are boarding for them.

[X___]

$37M/quarter at $2.5K a license/year, that's  ~60,000 yearly licenses (assuming all are LabVIEW Pro only).

[HYH]

Hi

Revenue is a complex issue. Consider this :

 

This nice piece of software, MATRIXx, has not been marketed since about 2008. But NI still releases updates to it here in 2023. Must be some important customers, getting that kind of support.

And then NI killed both CDS ( without warning ) and MathScript ( with years of warning ) here in 2023. CDS was NI's own re-implementation of MATRIXx, which they got/bought back in 2003. 

Regards 

Edited August 21, 2023 by HYH

[crossrulz]

48 minutes ago, HYH said:

And then NI killed both CDS ( without warning ) and MathScript ( with years of warning ) here in 2023. CDS was NI's own re-implementation of MATRIXx, which they got/bought back in 2003. 

It took me a bit of time to figure out CDS is LabVIEW Control Design and Simulation Module.  Yeah, that kind of came out of nowhere, but it was really only used in academia as far as I am aware.

MathScript was also dropped mostly due to it being a major PITA to maintain, especially since Matlab was such a better product to do something very similar.  As soon as NI and Mathworks became friends, I saw this coming.

[Reds]

On 8/21/2023 at 12:12 PM, X___ said:

$37M/quarter at $2.5K a license/year, that's  ~60,000 yearly licenses (assuming all are LabVIEW Pro only).

OK, I did some more digging in the investor's annual report. $37mm/quarter consists of:

• LabVIEW
• LabWindows
• Measurement Studio (is this still a thing?)
• TestStand
• VeriStand
• Flexlogger
• SystemLink
• Optimal Plus
• DIAdem

43% of their business in the Americas (incl. Mexico and South American presumably). So we could guess that's about $50mm/year in US license revenue for *all* of the above products.  And if we assumed all of those licenses averaged out to $2.5k/year each, that's 20,000 active US licenses for all NI software products. Now lots of people are going to have both LabVIEW *and* TestStand licenses, so the number of active LabVIEW developers is presumably much less than 20,000 in the US.

Thoughts on this analysis??

[X___]

Yes. I wonder what the next 100 years of engineering that ambitiously will change to this picture.

[Reds]

They also say this in the annual report: "We have empowered hundreds of thousands of loyal users of LabVIEW, a unique graphical software platform optimized for engineers, and numerous other application software tools".

But I don't see how that statement could possibly be supported by current facts, unless they're including everyone who has ever used LabVIEW at any time in the last 30 years.

[codcoder]

13 hours ago, Reds said:

Thoughts on this analysis??

Two thoughts.  

One, does this include everyone who still holds licenses from before LabVIEW became a subscription service?

And two, does everyone pay full price? Large corporations surely must receive significant discounts through licensing plans, right?

[mcduff]

On 8/22/2023 at 11:33 AM, Reds said:

that's 20,000 active US licenses for all NI software products. 

Thoughts on this analysis??

Is this number greater than the number of COBOL programmers? It seems like it's getting close.

[crossrulz]

It is now official: Emerson Completes Acquisition of NI, Advancing Global Automation Leadership

[X___]

5 hours ago, crossrulz said:

It is now official: Emerson Completes Acquisition of NI, Advancing Global Automation Leadership

... and LabVIEW for macOS is dead (but with a permanent license).

[codcoder]

Yes! NI is now Emerson Test & Measurement headquarted in Austin.

So will the corporate colour scheme revert from green to blue now to complete the circle? 

[crossrulz]

4 hours ago, codcoder said:

So will the corporate colour scheme revert from green to blue now to complete the circle? 

I'm glad I wasn't the only one having that thought.

[ensegre]

On 10/12/2023 at 10:08 AM, codcoder said:

So will the corporate colour scheme revert from green to blue now to complete the circle? 

I landed over https://www.emerson.com/en-us/esg/environmental-sustainability

"Greening Of. Greening By. Greening With"🤣

[mcduff]

Good Read here, a bit depressing

https://nihistory.com/nis-commitment-to-labview/

[HYH]

Related to mcduff's good reference.

Carsten Thomsen was hired as VD to be the mastermind/driver of PXI development and high-speed DAQ. So he has a sentiment for the LabVIEW/DAQ concept. Which ruled the world for some years.

And I fully agree with his observation :

Quote

The failure to address this concerns me.  Also, the NI statement “But we’re focused on the future of LabVIEW, not the past” is difficult to parse.

NI does not directly say what that future is. But it could well be giving up LabVIEW as a general programming language and refocus it to being glue logic for TestStand. This makes sense, seeing how NI has behaved in the recent years.

NI once tried to cover all engineering bases creating software toolkits and modules for LabVIEW. There were once more than 100 such. Now "Sound and Vibration 'Toolkit' and 'Measurement Suite'" is one of the last still supported. So they are clearly pulling out of general engineering. Probably too much expensive engineering knowhow required and too little revenue.

And then there is the world approaching a World War aspect. With restrictions of what can be sold where in the near future. You don't want to empower a future enemy with advanced tools.

The article The Edge referred to, included this nice graphics :

I think I have seen that specific illustration too many times over the years. NI is clearly in for re-use.

Regards

Edited January 26 by HYH
clarification