EFI announced second quarter revenue of $193m, up 7% year-on-year, and first half revenue of $381.7m, up 8.5% year-on-year, and forecast that growth would accelerate in Q3 taking total revenue growth for the year to between 8% and 10%.

Gecht said: "This trend makes us even more confident in our ability to deliver on our $1bn revenue target by the end of 2016."

While most of that revenue growth is expected to be organic, Gecht added that EFI was "very busy with M&A activities". "We have a higher mix of larger deals - companies with tens of millions of dollars of revenue - than we've ever had before," he said.

"Whether any of them will close or multiple will close remains to be seen but we feel pretty good where we are today on the M&A pipeline and the organic growth."

EFI's CEO, who was speaking to analysts just days before the firm announced its latest acquisition, that of German software business DirectSmile, said that he definitely expected to see more deals in inkjet and in software.

Acquisitions have already played an important part in the growth of EFI's Productivity Software division, which dipped into single digit growth at 8% in Q2 (versus double-digit growth historically) due to "an unusual number of large deals that got pushed out of the quarter".

Gecht stressed that he expected the division's growth to return to mid-teens in Q3 as these deals close and hailed the arrival of new divisional senior vice president and general manager Gabriel Matsliach, who joined the business in May from Comverse.

"Gabi was selected due to his impressive background in enterprise software and product architecture, coupled with deep global M&A experience," said Gecht. "He brings great leadership to this strategically important part of EFI and we are already seeing some great ideas from him on how we can expand globally."

Industrial Inkjet revenues grew 6.7% to $93.9m in the quarter, in which EFI launched its new UltraDrop Technology, which combines a 7pl minimum drop with four greyscales to create "ultra resolution, high-quality output without slowing down production speeds".

Gecht said that the reception for UltraDrop had been "tremendous", adding that the technology was currently being phased in across EFI's wide-format portfolio. Gecht also hailed the introduction during the quarter of the EFI Vutek H1625 entry-level LED production printer, which can handle a broad range of rigid and flexible substrates.

"Initial demand has been very strong - we sold out our Q2 production and we are very close to selling out our Q3 production," said Gecht.

Meanwhile, EFI's Fiery revenues have continued to hold up well against tough comparables in last year's results, defying their historically cyclical nature.

Gecht attributed this to an increase in analogue to digital conversion and a decline in competition from other DFE developers, as well as the strength of the Fiery product line, as he forecast a small revenue growth for Fiery in 2014.

"Number one, our partners are focusing more and more on digital production [and also] we don't see the same focus on trying to catch up on DFE with EFI as we used to from our partners or third party competition," he said.

Geographically, EFI record a 17.8% decline in APAC revenues to $24.5m in Q2, which Gecht said was due to a weakness in Cretaprint demand that offset strong Vutek and Fiery results in the region.

"We believe this is largely attributable to customers in China slowing down investment as they get concerned about the slowdown in construction spending," he added.

EFI is still targeting a 2014 launch for its Cretaprint inks, although Gecht said he could not be more specific on the exact launch as he did not want to alert EFI's competitors.

With revenues in EFI's Americas market relatively flat at $101.6m (Q2 2013: $100.5m), the highlight was EMEA, which recorded Q2 revenue growth of 34% year-on-year to $66.9m, up from $50m in Q2 2013.

Gecht attributed the strong performance in part to EFI's decision to support May's Ipex exhibition, despite other large suppliers pulling out. "We've been investing in EMEA for quite some time. There was a large industry trade show a few months ago that most of the large vendors backed out of and we actually stayed and I think it paid dividends."

He added: "We're far from being done expanding in EMEA."