The impact of the
COVID-19
outbreak, or similar global health concerns, could negatively impact our operations, supply chain and customer base.
The
COVID-19
outbreak has severely restricted the level of economic activity around the world, which may impact demand for our products. Our operations and supply chains for certain of our products or services could be negatively impacted by the regional or global outbreak of illnesses, including
COVID-19.
Any quarantines, labor shortages or other disruptions to our operations, or those of our suppliers or customers, may adversely impact our sales and operating results. In addition, a significant outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic of contagious diseases in the human population could result in a widespread health crisis that could adversely affect the economies and financial markets of many countries, including those in which we operate, resulting in an economic downturn that could affect the supply or demand for our products and services. Our factory in Singapore was given notice by the Singapore government to suspend all
on-site
activities on April 27, 2020. We appealed this notice and were provided an exemption on May 14, 2020. We were temporarily required to limit the number of employees on site at our Singapore factory but these restrictions were lifted on June 2, 2020. We are unable to accurately predict the possible future effect on the Company, which could be material to our 2020 results, and which is highly dependent on the breadth and duration of the outbreak and could be affected by other factors we are not currently able to predict, including new information which may emerge concerning the severity of
COVID-19,
the success of actions taken to contain or treat
COVID-19,
and reactions by consumers, companies, governmental entities and capital markets. Any widespread growth in infections, or travel restrictions, quarantines or site closures imposed as a result of
COVID-19,
could, among other things, require the Company to extend mandatory work-from-home protocols resulting in additional expenses and strain on the business as well as adversely impact its supply chain.
Sales of our equipment are primarily dependent on our customers’ upgrade and capacity expansion plans and whether our customers select our equipment.
We have no control over our customers’ upgrade and capacity expansion plans, and we cannot be sure they will select, or continue to select, our equipment when they upgrade or expand their capacity. The sales cycle for our equipment systems can be a year or longer, involving individuals from many different areas of Intevac and numerous product presentations and demonstrations for our prospective customers. Our sales process also commonly includes production of samples and customization of our products. We do not typically enter into long-term contracts with our customers, and until an order is actually submitted by a customer there is no binding commitment to purchase our systems. In some cases, orders are also subject to customer acceptance or other criteria even in the case of a binding agreement.
Sales of new manufacturing systems are also dependent on obsolescence and replacement of the installed base of our customers’ existing equipment with newer, more capable equipment. If upgrades are developed that extend the useful life of the installed base of systems, then we tend to sell more upgrade products and fewer new systems, which can significantly reduce total revenue.
Our 200 Lean HDD customers also experience competition from companies that produce alternative storage technologies like flash memory, which offer smaller size, lower power consumption and more rugged designs. These storage technologies are being used increasingly in enterprise applications and smaller form factors such as tablets, smart-phones, ultra-books, and notebook PCs instead of hard disk drives. Tablet computing devices and smart-phones have never contained, nor are they likely in the future to contain, a disk drive. Products using alternative technologies, such as flash memory, optical storage and other storage technologies are becoming increasingly common and could become a significant source of competition to particular applications of the products of our 200 Lean HDD customers, which could adversely affect our results of operations. If alternative technologies, such as flash memory, replace hard disk drives as a significant method of digital storage, then demand for our hard disk manufacturing products would decrease.
The Photonics business is also subject to long sales cycles because many of its products, such as our military imaging products, often must be designed into the customers’ end products, which are often complex
products. These development cycles are typically multi-year, and our sales are contingent on our customers successfully integrating our product into their product, completing development of their product and then obtaining production orders for their product from the U.S. government or its allies.
We operate in an intensely competitive marketplace, and our competitors have greater resources than we do.
In the market for our disk sputtering systems, we experience competition primarily from Canon Anelva, which has sold a substantial number of systems worldwide. In the PV equipment market, Intevac faces competition from large established competitors including Centrotherm Photovoltaics, Jusung, Kingston and Von Ardenne. In the market for our military imaging products we experience competition from companies such as Elbit Systems and
L-3
Communications. Some of our competitors have substantially greater financial, technical, marketing, manufacturing and other resources than we do, especially in the DCP and PV equipment markets. Our competitors may develop enhancements to, or future generations of, competitive products that offer superior price or performance features, and new competitors may enter our markets and develop such enhanced products. Moreover, competition for our customers is intense, and our competitors have historically offered substantial pricing concessions and incentives to attract our customers or retain their existing customers.