Daktronics

Daktronics

Daktronics was founded by two South Dakota State University engineering professors who saw the commercial potential in programmable display technology. From its headquarters in Brookings, the company has spent five decades scaling from scoreboard repair to a vertically integrated manufacturing operation that employs thousands. The firm designs its own components, writes its own control software, and manages installation and service — a full-stack hardware model that makes it unusual in a sector dominated by resellers. The company operates across three core business units: Live Events, which supplies integrated video systems to professional and collegiate sports venues; Commercial, which produces large-format LED displays for out-of-home advertising and spectaculars like the NASDAQ MarketSite tower; and Transportation, which builds dynamic message signs and intelligent transportation systems for state departments of transportation. Key installations include displays for the Dallas Cowboys' AT&T Stadium, the San Francisco 49ers' Levi's Stadium, and the Times Square digital billboard network in New York. The company's geographic footprint spans North America, Europe, the Middle East, and China, with manufacturing campuses in Brookings, Sioux Falls, and Redwood Falls, Minnesota, plus an assembly facility in Shanghai. Reece Kurtenbach, the son of co-founder Aelred Kurtenbach, has led the company as CEO since 2012, overseeing a period when the firm has balanced its historic dominance in sports with deliberate expansion into commercial and transportation displays. Daktronics does not operate a venture arm or a family-office co-investment vehicle; its capital allocation is entirely contained within the publicly traded entity. In March 2025, the company reported returning to revenue growth in its Commercial and Live Events segments after several quarters of destocking by large customers, signaling stabilization in its project pipeline (per the firm's fiscal 2025 third-quarter earnings release). The structural differentiator is Daktronics' integration depth: the company controls everything from pixel-level LED design to cloud-based content management software, a full-stack approach that locks in service contracts and creates switching costs for massive installed bases. This manufacturing-centric model — rare in an electronics industry that typically separates hardware design, component sourcing, and integration — generates a recurring revenue tail from maintenance and upgrades that extends decades beyond the initial capital sale.