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Every time a jet engine is stress-tested, a truck is weighed at a highway checkpoint, or a semiconductor tool needs a resistor that will not drift over years of steady use, some small and unglamorous component is quietly doing the measuring. This corner of manufacturing, known as precision measurement and sensing, rarely makes headlines, yet it underpins a surprising share of modern industry. The firms that operate here make foil resistors, strain gauges, load cells and the instruments built around them. Their customers range across test and measurement labs, medical device makers, industrial weighing companies, and aerospace and defense suppliers.
One of the established names in this field is Vishay Precision Group, Inc. (NYSE: VPG), based in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania. The company reported results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2026, which ended July 4th, and the figures told two stories at once.
The brighter story was demand. Orders, which the company refers to as bookings, reached $95.5 million, and its book-to-bill ratio came in at 1.14. That ratio is worth understanding, because any reading above 1.0 means a company is taking in more new business than it is shipping out, which usually points to a growing backlog. Chief Executive Officer Ziv Shoshani highlighted record quarterly orders for the precision resistors that go into AI-related semiconductor equipment, data centers, and aerospace and defense applications. Revenue grew too, rising 11.7% from a year earlier to $83.9 million.
The dimmer story was profit. The company swung to a net loss of $1.7 million, or $0.13 per diluted share, compared with a slim profit of $0.02 per share a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, which sets aside items management views as outside core operations, earnings came to $0.04 per share, down from $0.21 in the same quarter last year. Two pressures explain much of that gap. Unfavorable foreign currency movements reduced profits by roughly $3.3 million against the prior year, and about $3.0 million of shipments in the steel-related systems business slipped into the future after the rollout of a new enterprise software system. Those delayed orders now sit in backlog and are expected to ship by year end.
Underneath the headline numbers, the business runs in three parts. The Sensors segment, home to the resistors and strain gauges, grew fastest, with revenue up 25.8% to $33.4 million. Weighing Solutions, which serves industrial scales and process weighing, edged up 3.1% to $30.3 million. Measurement Systems, which includes crash-test and steel-industry instrumentation, rose 5.2% to $20.2 million.
Management also flagged a development it clearly considers important for the years ahead. During the quarter, the company received a vendor nomination letter from its first humanoid robotics customer, a step that clears the way to supply parts as that customer ramps up production of next-generation robots in the second half of 2026. Machines that walk and grip need to sense force and load with accuracy, which plays directly to what this maker already does.
Looking forward, the company expects third-quarter net revenues of between $84 million and $89 million, holding currency rates steady at second-quarter levels. It also repeated a plan to deliver about $6 million in cost savings this year, part of a longer effort aimed at $20 million in reductions over three years, and said full-year organic revenue growth could run above the 8% to 10% range it had previously outlined.
What emerges is a picture common among suppliers of essential industrial parts. Demand is firm, the order book is filling, and the longer-term bets, humanoid robotics among them, look promising, yet currency swings and one-off operational snags can still weigh on any single quarter. For a reader meeting this company for the first time, the order figures are probably the number to watch, since they tend to hint at where revenue is heading well before it actually arrives.
