Lincoln Electric Bets On 'Physical AI' Welding Cobot To Widen Automation Beyond Carmakers
CEO Steve Hedlund says ExpertLink lets robots adapt to imperfect parts, carries a roughly $3,000-a-year fee, and is not yet in the order book.
Lincoln Electric, the maker of welding and cutting equipment, is betting that a new "physical AI" system can pull welding automation out of car plants and into shops that could never afford it, Chairman and CEO Steve Hedlund said on the company's third-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. The system, ExpertLink, launched last week at the Fabtech trade show and is not yet in the order book, he said.
A robot that adapts like a welder
ExpertLink debuts on the company's Cooper cobot, a robot built to work alongside people. Hedlund said it lets a welding robot adjust on the fly to real-world conditions the way an experienced human welder would. Lincoln plans to build the technology into its wider automation line over the next few years.
The problem it targets, he said, is that parts are rarely perfect. A person sees a gap widen and slows down, weaves or raises wire feed speed; a robot repeats one path and one set of parameters. The old fix was costly fixturing to force parts back into tolerance, which carmakers can afford. For high-mix, low-volume manufacturers, he said, automation has been uneconomical.
Customers at the show called it "an absolute game changer," Hedlund said, because a robot can operate like a human "with no additional programming, no additional training." He added that ExpertLink was "primarily internally driven," reflecting Lincoln's decades of knowledge about what goes wrong when people automate, rather than customer requests.
A $3,000-a-year subscription
Answering a KeyBanc analyst, Hedlund said the first year of subscription is included in the purchase. After that, an ongoing fee of about $3,000 a year applies per cobot or robot arm.
Pressed by a Stifel analyst on how much the addressable market could grow, he said a better view would come through 2027, once Lincoln sees how customers deploy it. He said the launch is not yet showing in the order book. Lincoln also plans to put it into systems from Zeman, its structural steel welding unit.
Automation was already running hot
Automation sales reached $232 million in the quarter, growing at a high teens percent organic rate, as automotive customers emerged from a two-year pause in spending decisions. Hedlund called that more a return to normal than a new surge. Chief Financial Officer Gabe Bruno said automation should grow at a high single digit organic rate over the next 12 months, and that record backlog supports momentum into 2027.
Company-wide, third-quarter sales rose 15% to $1.221 billion, and adjusted earnings per share climbed about 21% to a record $2.98. Lincoln raised its full-year sales growth outlook to the low teens percent range and lifted its capital spending range to $140 million to $150 million, from an initial $110 million to $130 million. Its three segments are Americas Welding, International Welding and Harris Products Group.
Hedlund said the 2027 deployments will show how big ExpertLink's market is.
Sources
- Lincoln Electric Holdings Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript — benzinga.com
- Lincoln Electric Holdings (LECO) Q3 Earnings and Revenues Top Estimates — Yahoo Finance
- Lincoln Electric (LECO) Q3 Earnings: How Key Metrics Compare to Wall Street Estimates — Yahoo Finance
- Lincoln Electric Non-GAAP EPS of $2.98 beats by $0.17, revenue of $1.22B beats by $50M | Seeking Alpha — seekingalpha.com
- SWK or LECO: Which Is the Better Value Stock Right Now? — Yahoo Finance
