Hexagon AB

Hexagon AB is a Swedish measurement technology group founded in 1975 and headquartered in Stockholm, listed on Nasdaq Stockholm under the ticker HEXA B. The group reported operating net sales of EUR 5,426.5 million in fiscal 2025, up 2% organically, and employs approximately 24,500 people in 50 countries.

Corporate Snapshot

Hexagon is the largest supplier of geometric measurement hardware in the world, but it did not build that position organically. It acquired it, in a sequence of deals that brought together Brown & Sharpe and DEA coordinate measuring machines, Leica Geosystems surveying instruments, ROMER portable arms and PC-DMIS metrology software under one owner. The result is a group that sells geometry across an unusually wide range — from a micron feature on a machined part to the layout of a construction site.

Fiscal 2025 produced operating net sales of EUR 5,426.5 million against EUR 5,401.1 million in the prior year, with adjusted operating earnings of EUR 1,474.9 million, a gross margin of 67.2% and EBITDA of EUR 1,978.8 million, a 36.5% margin. Fourth-quarter net sales were EUR 1,429.2 million. Research spending runs at 12% to 15% of revenue.

Competitive Advantages

The software position is the deepest moat. PC-DMIS and QUINDOS are not merely the programs that drive Hexagon machines; they are the platform on which a customer's part programs, tolerance models and measurement history accumulate. Once that history exists, changing machine vendor means re-validating a measurement process rather than buying different hardware — which is why software and services reached 44% of revenue and recurring revenue 28% in fiscal 2025.

Manufacturing is vertically owned to an unusual degree. Hexagon operates more than thirty manufacturing bases with capability running from granite cutting and optical sensor packaging to linear encoder scale ruling, and its Qingdao campus in China is the group's largest coordinate measuring machine plant. Because accuracy in dimensional metrology is set by the stability of exactly those components, owning the process sets the group's own accuracy ceiling rather than a supplier's.

Segment performance confirms where the money is made. In fiscal 2025 Manufacturing Intelligence contributed adjusted earnings of EUR 476.0 million, Geosystems EUR 398.6 million and Autonomous Solutions EUR 235.1 million — measurement, not adjacent software, remains the profit centre.

Strategic Reshaping

Two transactions redefined the group during the period. Hexagon spun off its software business as Octave Intelligence plc, which became an independently listed company in May 2026, concentrating the parent on measurement and positioning hardware. Separately it acquired Waygate Technologies, a specialist in industrial computed tomography and non-destructive testing, extending the portfolio from surface measurement into internal geometry — the same capability that ZEISS and Werth have built around CT.

The spin-off should be read as a deliberate narrowing. Running coordinate measuring machines, laser trackers, total stations, mining software and autonomous mining equipment under one management team had become genuinely difficult, and separating the software business gives both halves a clearer mandate.

Risks & Outlook

Organic growth of 2% in fiscal 2025 is modest for a group of this size, which suggests the acquisition engine rather than the installed base is driving expansion. The China concentration is the sharpest single risk: the Qingdao plant is the largest CMM facility in the group, making it simultaneously a competitive asset and a geopolitical exposure at a moment when export controls and localisation policy are reshaping industrial demand.

The Geosystems business is also tied to construction and mining capital cycles — the same demand that weakened for Topcon and FARO in the same period — which makes the measurement franchise less insulated than its software mix implies. Against that, a 67.2% gross margin, EUR 1,474.9 million of adjusted operating earnings and a 28% recurring revenue base give Hexagon financial room that no competitor in this ranking can match. VerityRank Score of 89/100.