VICOR CORPORATION
Management’s Discussion and Analysis of
Financial Condition and Results of Operation
March 31, 2023
Overview
We design, develop, manufacture, and market modular power components and power systems for converting electrical power for use in electrically-powered devices. Our competitive position is supported by innovations in product design and achievements in product performance, largely enabled by our focus on the research and development of advanced technologies and processes, often implemented in proprietary semiconductor circuitry, materials, and packaging. Many of our products incorporate patented or proprietary implementations of high-frequency switching topologies enabling power system solutions that are more efficient and much smaller than conventional alternatives. Our strategy emphasizes demonstrable product differentiation and a value proposition based on competitively superior solution performance, advantageous design flexibility, and a compelling total cost of ownership. While we offer a wide range of alternating current (“AC”) and direct current (“DC”) power conversion products, we consider our core competencies to be associated with 48V DC distribution, which offers numerous inherent cost and performance advantages over lower distribution voltages. However, we also offer products addressing other DC voltage standards (e.g., 380V for power distribution in data centers, 110V for rail applications, 28V for military and avionics applications, and 24V for industrial automation).
Based on design, performance, and form factor considerations, as well as the range of evolving applications for which our products are appropriate, we categorize our product portfolios as either “Advanced Products” or “Brick Products.” The Advanced Products category consists of our more recently introduced products, which are largely used to implement our proprietary Factorized Power Architecture™ (“FPA”), an innovative power distribution architecture enabling flexible, rapid power system design using individual components optimized to perform a specific conversion function.
The Brick Products category largely consists of our broad and well-established families of integrated power converters, incorporating multiple conversion stages, used in conventional power systems architectures. Given the growth profiles of the markets we serve with our Advanced Products line and our Brick Products line, our strategy involves a transition in organizational focus, emphasizing investment in our Advanced Products line and targeting high growth market segments with a low-mix, high-volume operational model, while maintaining a profitable business in the mature market segments we serve with our Brick Products line with a high-mix, low-volume operational model.
The applications in which our Advanced Products and Brick Products are used are typically in the higher-performance, higher-power segments of the market segments we serve. With our Advanced Products, we generally serve large Original Equipment Manufacturers (“OEMs”), Original Design Manufacturers (“ODMs”), and their contract manufacturers, with sales currently concentrated in the data center and hyperscaler segments of enterprise computing, in which our products are used for voltage distribution on server motherboards, in server racks, and across datacenter infrastructure. We have established a leadership position in the emerging market segment for powering high-performance processors used for acceleration of applications associated with artificial intelligence (“AI”). Our customers in the AI market segment include the leading innovators in processor and accelerator design, as well as early adopters in cloud computing and high performance computing. We also target applications in aerospace and aviation, defense electronics, industrial automation, instrumentation, test equipment, solid state lighting, telecommunications and networking infrastructure, and vehicles (notably in the autonomous driving, electric vehicle, and hybrid vehicle niches of the vehicle segment). With our Brick Products, we generally serve a fragmented base of large and small customers, concentrated in aerospace and defense electronics, industrial automation, industrial equipment, instrumentation and test equipment, and transportation (notably in rail and heavy equipment applications). With our strategic emphasis on larger, high-volume customers, we expect to experience over time a greater concentration of sales among relatively fewer customers.
Our quarterly consolidated operating results can be difficult to forecast and have been subject to significant fluctuations. We plan our production and inventory levels based on management’s estimates of customer demand, customer forecasts, and other information sources. Customer forecasts, particularly those of OEM, ODM, and contract manufacturing customers to which we supply Advanced Products in high volumes, are subject to scheduling changes on short notice, contributing to operating inefficiencies and excess costs. In addition, external factors such as supply chain uncertainties, which are often associated with the cyclicality of the electronics industry, regional macroeconomic and trade-related circumstances, and force majeure events (most recently evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic), have caused our operating results to vary meaningfully. Supply chain disruptions, including those associated with our reliance on outsourced package process steps that are essential in the production of some of our Advanced Products, and those relating, for example, to the procurement of raw material, have in the past negatively impacted and may in the
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