Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Badger Meter (BMI) provides liquid flow measurement products and control technologies to utilities (primarily water and to a much, lesser extent natural gas) and industrial customers.

The company sells manually read meters, automatic meter reading (AMR) systems and fixed network advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems to utilities. Badger Meter continues to post higher sales in its utility product line, which accounts for more than 80% of its total revenue.

A major factor behind the company’s growth is the decision for water utility customers to upgrade to advanced metering (AMR/AMI) systems from manually read meters. The company is satisfying this market demand with its popular ORION drive-by AMR and the GALAXY fixed network AMI.

In addition, Badger Meter has an agreement with Itron (ITRI) to resell the ITRON drive-by AMR until early 2011.

There are plenty of customers that are still operating manually read meters. According to the company, less than 30% of water meters installed in the United States have been converted to AMR/AMI, which means approximately 37,000 water utilities are still operating manually read meters.

Also, Badger Meter claims a current market share of 20% in North America for AMR/AMI. We agree with management that there is plenty of room for growth as more customers upgrade their meters to the newer technologies.

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