How nimble Keyence grew into a $140B titan | Hacker News Reader

How nimble Keyence grew into a $140B titan

asia.nikkei.com

58 pointsgabthinking201721 comments

Keyence is well known among tech students in Japan for their high wages (compare to the average) and its cutthroat environment. I hear that they tend to let young engineers do a rather advanced task.

I actually have a lot to be thankful for to Keyence. In a prior life as a process engineer, I had some exposure to Keyence products in a manufacturing setting. Looking to make a career change, I got into their hiring pipeline for a technical sales role. Fortunately, I got rejected after taking a personality test and submitting a video response to some interview prompt.

I instead got my first software development position the following month, which has been an amazingly positive change in my life. So thank you, Keyence. Who knows where I’d be today otherwise!

Keyence is very well known in industrial automation. Many vision and light-based products, largely for sensing and quality control.

High quality components, reasonable prices, attentive, educated technical field sales, will stop calling you if you express that you'd rather not hear from them again.

Keyence is not well known outside of the tech world.

Keyence sales team rocks! They bugged me, annoyed me, gave me tons of free information, free loaners of $100k equipment, persuaded me and we’ve become friends now after years of great engineer+sales relationship. Their purpose truly is to make you succeed as an engineer.

What's the price of the typical product they sell though? I went to one of their booths at a trade show in Shanghai. It seemed that one of their key products was these OCR tools for components manufacturing for QA type tasks, although I assume they have more sophisticated products.

The trade convention was filled with a lot of smaller type competitors as well. I think the typical sticker price for one of those OCR type things is something around 20k RMB which is around 3-4K USD although I can't be sure exactly since they sort of throw these price ranges around, final quotation might be higher.

But at the time I didn't quite understand how such a low revenue product could support all the sales and engineer people running around. Plus these OCR tools tend to be fragile and need to be tailored to a specific production line meaning more costs.

We were mostly interested in surface measurements. I lobbied for $80k VK-X series and bought a whole bunch of them. Ridiculously sexy tech, with great specs and performance. They're a high quality supplier in every way - think Apple of B2B - from sales to support.

The Financial Times has occasionally written articles pondering some of the odder financial decisions at Keyence (eg, hoarding cash, world-beating margins vs. competitors, low relative R&D as a % of sales, etc). Doesn't seem to have hurt the stock price, though.

FT Links: https://archive.md/bFfLI

https://archive.md/58bio

https://archive.md/kn6oY

Edit: formatting

I also had an opportunity to design control systems using their products in Poland. The sensors were very accurate, and competitively priced (although maybe a bit fragile, compared to Sick or other European products - it was visibly different engineering culture), but the most remarkable thing about them was their sales team. They were ready to borrow expensive sensors for months, and responded very quickly.

What is the fastest animal in Japan?

...

A Keyence sales rep. Strange joke made by older japanese coworkers after a sales visit by Keyence.

wait, how is that strange? it makes sense given what the company is known for

I didn't mean strange as "unfitting", but strange as in "this is such an inside joke" from the front-lines of the Japanese tech industry. Admittedly, when I first heard the joke 10 years ago, (and only one more time since then), I didn't quite get it until a Japanese coworker clarified the Keyence sales culture for me. I've only heard confirmations of this since then, and now a decade later the international tech zeitgeist is aware too of their culture.

That’s a delightfully wholesome joke.

$140 billion yen, in TFA. That is big but it's "only" 1.3 billion USD if TFA is correct.

It's also not very clear: the headline on HN says "grew into a $140B titan" but then the sentence says "Keyence reported a record 141.78 billion yen first-half net profit Thursday".

I'm confused.

The previous paragraph:

> This continued adaptation has helped Keyence grow to become Japan's third-most-valuable listed company, behind only Toyota Motor and Sony Group, with a market capitalization of nearly 16 trillion yen ($141 billion).

Its market cap is $143 billion. The half year profit in yen being same is just kind of a coincidence.

https://companiesmarketcap.com/keyence/marketcap/

*16 trillion yen, 141 billion USD = Market Cap.

Vs 141B yen first half profit.

I have used a variety of Keyence stuff in my career ranging from their high end microscopes to industrial automation sensors for machines and process sensing. They make great stuff.

It has been my experience that some of their metrology equipment lags behind API and Faro. Then again I'm a little biased because of my exposure to them both.

Keyence is my go-to for a number of sensors. Their datasheets are always borne out by the sensors' performance. I never hesitate in ordering their equipment.

I run across their name all the time in microscopes and metrology equipment, and I think they do light-curtain stuff too.

I never heard of them before. The link was behind a paywall. But the company seems to be thriving:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyence

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