Tektronix and Fluke owned by same company - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: onewatt
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2012, 03:40:41 am
content: Did you know that Tektronix and Fluke are now divisions within the same company! - Danaher's Corporation:I don't know about you?... but I was totally surprised.http://www.danaher.com/When it comes to the world, I'm not too connected. I just don't get how financial instruments work and how corporations get things done. For example, I was interested in finding out how Tektronix was doing in the stock market. Now - understand - that I don't invest, and I know very little about what makes stocks go up or down. But when I searched for Tektronix in business, I first came up with-TEK-as their NY stock exchange ticker. But then I fond out that Tektronix was bought November 2007 byDanaher Corporation - DHR, which joined Tektronix and Danaher's Fluke and Fluke Networks businesses.I had no idea that Tektronix and Fluke are now part of the same company.I wish I knew more about stocks and Wall Street, but I'm pretty dumb in that area. I was initially interested in what were the major markets of Tektronix - that is - who was buying their stuff, the market percentage compared to other oscilloscope brands, and so forth. I'm just curious.How could one determine whether a company like Rigol or Agilent are really out selling Tektronix or not? It's all very interesting, but unfortunately, I'm a total knuckle head when it comes to money. I can't figure stuff like that out. Does anyone have a grasp of market fundamentals and analyzing company annual reports and what products companies sell, and who they sell to? In essence, who buys Tektronix test equipment, what market share does Tektronix, Agilent, and Rigol compete for, and where do their profits come from?

author: The_Penguin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2012, 04:21:27 am
content: Dave and Chris talked about this on one of the Amp Hour episodes.Danaher also owns Keithly.

author: ipman
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2012, 06:23:40 am
content: Fluke's and Tek's bussiness currently are not overlapping, so being owned by the same company is not really a surprise.But a surprise is Amprobe, which overlaps somehow with Fluke's products.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2012, 03:12:26 pm
content: Many company's will own several brands which on the surface look like they compete with each other but which in reality do not, the markets may overlap but things such as price ranges and brand loyalty require that the company has more than one brand range, very often you find if you do your research that a product may be sold at two different prices and with two seperate brand names but underneath be much the same product VW and Audi in the motor industry Perkins and RR diesel in the power field same engine made in same factory in the latter case just two different badges, the list is endless and with many company's now being held by hedge fund and the like it is sometimes hard to know who owns who.

author: onewatt
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2012, 03:41:31 pm
content: QuoteI looked it up, and I was again shocked to find that Danaher Corporation also owns Amprobe.

author: Joy at MCS
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2012, 03:46:42 pm
content: I'm not surprised.They own a wide variety of companies including recently obtaining Keithley

author: Ajahn Lambda
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2012, 02:55:57 am
content: A (mostly) complete list of Danaher corporations and brands:QuoteFor me, the biggest 'surprises' were GearWrench, Armstrong Tools, K-D Tools, Kobalt Tools, andMatco Tools?!?I keep a nice database of companies, brands, and corporations, effectively creating a personal 'Green List' and 'Black List'. If you wanna see a typical MBA-run corporate cluster*@&$, look at Newell-Rubbermaid. You can blame them for shuttering the 80-year American production of Vise-Grip pliers, under the Irwin brand name. Every pair on the shelf now is chinese garbage. Guess which of my lists those now fall under.

author: ee851
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2012, 11:26:10 pm
content: Amazing. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.No more American-made Vise Grips? The pair in my toolbox just quintupled in value then, I guess.

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2012, 03:31:00 pm
content: There is a 'golden moment' when companies make great products; for example most folks still revere original HP equipment more than Agilent. For Tek, it dominated and was unchallenged among analog scopes. So, if you can find serviceable and still functionally usable products when companies were at their best, its worth salvaging and restoring. For example, you may not want to restore HPs first digital voltmeter except as a museum piece, but the HP 3456 is still a viable instrument today, and is a better DVM than the HP3457 in terms of serviceability and accuracy.As a primer on stocks, parent companies or holding companies buy smaller companies so they have a legitimate monopoly on otherwise fine products whose manufacturers are being killed by competition or management weaknesses; they can try to fix and control prices and enlarge their market share for specific products, so they dominate a specific niche that competitors will find it hard to move against. For example, Danaher may position Fluke for DMM, and Tek for DSO, and prevent either from competing in each others niche so the lack of competition focuses product development in areas the market already knows they excel. If Tek has a current DMM line they may kill it, or move it to Fluke. Denaher can micromanage the company, by constantly badgering say Fluke's president, or pretty much leave them alone once the game plan is laid out of a fiscal year, and are only concerned when new products are being developed, or if they need to manufacture parts or use patents, they can get it done without hindrance from within their own subcompanies.Investing it them is another issue; you have to know if the market for all their subcompanies will be profitable and since they are very diversified, its not an easy target. The diversification also makes them unlikely to be subject to a specific weakness is a niche, as one can be strong when the other is weak.Danaher is on a lifelong buying spree, and this causes their net income to drop, as they build 'assets' causing their cash on hand and cash flow to suffer. This is not necessarily good depending on the time they choose to buy, as if they cannot consolidate the companies they buy and turn them profitable, they will eat the resources of its parents, and if the company folds, they lose money on the purchase.However, as a 'long term' investment for retirement purposes, they have proven resilience since technology remains the core of industry boom, even if a lot of manufacturing is in China, the Gulf War, health care, Internet infrastructure, cable etc., requires a lot of development and over time, DHR has outgrown the Dow Jones by quite a margin.