VPG Investor Relations Call & Humanoid Update🦾

Vishay Precision Group $VPG is emerging as a critical precision play for the humanoid robotics market. I recently spoke with IR, who shared deep insights into their 2026 outlook, robotics strategy, and customer traction.

2026 Financials and Capacity Constraints

The business is currently capacity constrained in H1 2026 for its sensor segment. Bookings slowed in 2024 but inflected in H2 2025, creating a significant backlog and management had to right size the team and capacity to meet demand, which they will have corrected in H1 2026. Management expects a push of revenue from Q1 into Q2 as capacity scales. The 2026 Capex plan is largely a carry-over from 2025 due to timing, as they missed their Capex plan by $2-$4M last year. The business requires roughly 4% of sales in annual Capex. Management is prepared to increase spend if the humanoid hockey stick ramp accelerates like they and investors hope. No major equipment upgrades are planned in the existing Capex forecast, as the focus remains on maintenance and lane growth. IR explicitly stated there is a plan in place to meet humanoid demand of 100k+ units if the hockey stick ramp comes and that capacity would come from adding equipment and lanes in their existing manufacturing facilities (Means shorter lead time to meet demand, which is great). 

Humanoid Traction and Unit Economics

VPG currently serves three humanoid customers, including the first two customers being confirmed “ABSOLUTELY” top-five Western OEMs. IR pointed out that if they said the names, I would know them immediately. They stated the third customer is a smaller humanoid player in the design phase that has some unique applications. IR stated that their strain gage sensors are positioned as the premium, most reliable, and precise solution in the marketplace and the OEMs that choose them are willing to pay more for this reliability and precision. Below is what $VPG provides to each customer

• Customer #1: 15–20 torque sensors per robot

• Customer #2 (Figure AI): 10 tactile sensors per robot.

• Customer #3: 15–20 torque sensors per robot.

IR stated that they do not provide both torque and tactile sensors to any of the three customers, but having the foot in the door allows for deeper conversations surrounding cross-selling. 

Management expects pricing to settle near $400 per robot at volume production scale (Confirmed for Customer 1, unclear for Customer 2). Production volume was defined as 5,000 to 10,000 units per week (250k-500k per year baseline); 5,000 units per month would still be considered the prototyping stage.

When asked “What are the deployments your customers are targeting near term”, IR stated that in some cases, especially in initial deployments, they will be used in the developer’s own warehousing operation and eventually selling them to other companies/general public. Both Figure and Tesla have publicly stated they will deploy their Helix and Optimus robots in their own warehousing operations in 2026, with the idea of robots building robots.

IR also stated that their customers don’t provide them with forecasts, but do walk in and outline different build scenarios for the near term and ask things like “What if we built 10k, 20k, 30k robots? What would your cost and LT be?” Tesla has publicly stated they plan to build 10k-30k Optimus Gen 3 robots in 2026. 

The $6M Floor and Margin Profile

The internal revenue estimate for humanoids in 2026 is at least $6M, which management “views as very conservative”. Given the momentum management is seeing in the humanoid robot market, they believe this target can prove to be extremely conservative. If we strip out the humanoid segment of the business and apply a 50x P/S multiple, like the market has given other hyper growth speculative businesses like $IONQ, $EOSE, $RKLB, we would see the humanoid business be valued at $300M at the $6M conservative estimate and $500M if VPG were to hit a $10M target for this year. 

A 50x sales multiple could be conservative given the expected hockey stick ramp of humanoids from thousands to millions over the next decade, and the picture becoming clearer and clearer that Vishay Precision Group is firmly entrenched in the design of the two leading humanoid companies. This quick math excludes all the other growth initiatives that are contributing to management’s $45M order target for 2026 in automated logistics (Physical AI), Space, and Data Centers. Management beat their 2025 business development target by nearly 30% in 2025, so it is reasonable to assume that $45M growth target is also conservative. 

IR stated “We don’t know what the scale or time of the ramp might look like and we need to be prepared. Frankly, there is a scenario where it could be quite large where we see a huge hockey stick ramp.” VPG believes existing sites can support a ramp of over 100,000 robots through incremental equipment additions. At scale, gross margins will be slightly lower than the core business, but with minimal SG&A requirements, th vast majority of gross profit will flow directly to operating income.

Market Outlook and Strategy

While the cost of humanoids currently remains above a reasonable ROI for human replacement, IR stated that economics become compelling at a $20k–$30k price point. Hint, Tesla publicly states a $20k robot cost all the time. Figure’s CEO Brett Adcock has also cited the target of $20k-$30k in multiple interviews, March 2025 and recently in February 2026.  

VPG first announced a significant design win in late 2023 with a leading humanoid developer in beta phase, which is widely considered the start of the Optimus partnership. Tesla released videos of Optimus doing its first genuinely useful tasks in May 2024. Management has confirmed they've been working with Customers #1 and #2 for a couple of years. 

VPG is currently focusing on Western Premium OEMs and all three customers are not Asian/Chinese OEMs, though its strategy regarding Asian domestic suppliers is evolving and conversations are being had. 

The Figure AI / Customer #2 Correlation

The timeline of VPG’s Customer #2 mirrors the development of Figure AI, specifically the launch of the Figure 03 robot and Helix 2. VPG’s disclosure that Customer #2 utilizes 10 tactile sensors aligns with Figure 03’s architecture, which features specialized tactile sensors in each of its ten fingertips to enable high-fidelity manipulation. VPG’s 6-8 week lead time provides a clear mapping of this partnership:

Pre Q2 2025: Customer #2 placed orders for the initial tactile sensor baseline.

• October 2025: VPG received a $600k follow-on prototype order right before Figure officially unveiled Figure 03.

• January 2026: A $1M follow-on order preceded the public release of Helix 2 (Unclear which customer placed the follow-on order in January), signaling the shift from prototyping to industrial pilot production.

Tesla & Figure Capacity Estimates

Tesla is currently operating and expanding production lines at its Fremont factory with a theoretical capacity of 1 million units annually, though actual 2025 output was limited to around a thousand for internal factory testing. For 2026, Tesla is ramping up a dedicated humanoid facility at Giga Texas, with Elon Musk estimating producing 10k - 30k units in 2026 to do real world simulations, as they transition toward a long-term goal of 10 million robots per year by the end of the decade. This massive expansion is supported by a $20 billion capital allocation in 2026 specifically for autonomous systems and robotics. 

Figure AI currently manufactures its robots at BotQ with a initial capacity of 50,000 humanoid robots per year. The company plans to scale this infrastructure to 100,000 units annually within the next few years. To accelerate this timeline, Figure is implementing a robots building robots cycle in 2026, aiming to reach a manufacturing cadence of one robot every 30 minutes to meet surging industrial demand. 

Why Now?

VPG Management has cited they expect initial real world deployment of their customers’ humanoid robots in 2026. The evidence and the momentum is compelling to believe that Vishay Precision Group is a mission critical supplier for the two leading western humanoid OEMs. This is while trading at a $600M market cap, with a cash flowing core business doing $300M+ in revenue and targeting a 22% operating margin within 3-5 years. That would put the business as a whole trading at a 12x P/E, when assuming a 26% tax rate and assuming they achieve the margin expansion they are targeting over the next few years. By mine and analysts 2026 EPS estimates, VPG is trading between 20x-28x forward P/E multiple. You have a core business that is targeting low teens growth over the next 3-5 years that serves as a floor, and the incredible upside of humanoid deployments in the millions within 5 years that would serve as more revenue than the entire core business does today.