We are a global technology leader committed to creating value by developing solutions to critical customer problems. Our culture of quality, continuous improvement, superior innovation and a relentless focus on the fundamentals enables us to lead in the markets we serve. We incorporated in Minnesota in 1965.
Our Disk Drive Components Division is a leading supplier of suspension assemblies for disk drives. Suspension assemblies are precise electro-mechanical components that hold a disk drive’s read/write head at microscopic distances above the drive’s disks. Our innovative product solutions help customers improve yields, increase reliability and enhance disk drive performance, thereby increasing the value they derive from our products.
Our BioMeasurement Division is focused on bringing to the market new technologies and products that provide information clinicians can use to improve the quality of health care. Late in calendar 2006, we began selling the InSpectra® StO2 System for perfusion status monitoring. This noninvasive device provides a continuous, real-time and direct measurement of tissue oxygen saturation (StO2), an indicator of perfusion status. By helping clinicians instantly detect changes in a patient’s perfusion status, the InSpectra StO2 System helps clinicians reduce risks and costs by enabling faster and more precise assessment of oxygen delivery to vital organs and tissue in critical care settings. Our BioMeasurement Division incurred an operating loss of $23,485,000 for 2009, and we expect it to continue to incur losses for 2010.
DISK DRIVE COMPONENTS DIVISION
Our Disk Drive Components Division manufactures suspension assemblies for all sizes and types of hard disk drives. Suspension assemblies are critical components of disk drives that hold the read/write heads in position above the spinning magnetic disks. We developed our position as a leading supplier of suspension assemblies through an integrated manufacturing approach, research, development and design activities coupled with substantial investments in process capabilities, product features and manufacturing capacity. As the disk drive industry has matured and consolidated, cost competitiveness has become an important factor in maintaining our current market position. We manufacture our suspension assemblies with proprietary technology and processes with very low part-to-part variation. These processes require manufacturing to precise specifications that are critical to maintaining the necessary microscopic clearance between the head and disk and the electrical connectivity between the head and the drive circuitry. During 2009, we shipped 553 million suspension assemblies of all types, supplying nearly all domestic and foreign-based manufacturers of disk drives and head-gimbal assemblers.
We design our suspension assemblies with a focus on the increasing performance requirements of new disk drives, principally smaller read/write heads, increased data density, improved head to disk stability during a physical shock event and reduced data access time. Increased capacity, improved reliability and performance, as well as the miniaturization of disk drives, generally require suspension assemblies with lower variability, specialized design, expanded functionality and greater precision. We will continue to invest, as needed, to advance suspension assembly technology, enhance our process capabilities and expand our production capacity.
In the long-term, we believe that end user demand for storage capacity will continue to increase as evolving consumer electronics and computing applications continue to require storage devices with increased capacity and functionality, which will increase disk drive demand and, therefore, suspension assembly demand. During the first half of 2009, however, world-wide demand for disk drives and suspension assemblies weakened significantly. The weakened demand resulted in a decline in disk drive production as the drive makers reduced inventory levels, which also reduced demand for our suspension assemblies. This lower demand combined with our market share losses during this period resulted in our suspension assembly sales volume decreasing 33% from the first half of 2008. In addition, during the third quarter of 2009 we were notified by our customer, Seagate Technology, LLC (“Seagate”), that it intends to significantly reduce its procurement of suspension assemblies from us. While demand for our suspension assemblies recovered somewhat in the second half of 2009, our shipments of suspension assemblies for the year declined 30% from 2008. For 2010, we expect our overall suspension assembly volume to, at minimum, keep pace with the world-wide demand for suspension assemblies, resulting in a return to year-over-year volume growth. We believe our restructuring actions in 2009 have positioned our business to accommodate both possible instability in suspension assembly demand, and the resumption in year-over-year demand growth that we expect.
Our selling prices are subject to market pressure from our competitors and pricing pressure from our customers. Disk drive manufacturers seek low cost designs and suspension assembly pricing is highly competitive. Our selling prices also are affected by changes in overall demand for our products, changes in the specific products our customers buy and a product’s life cycle. A typical life cycle for our products begins with higher pricing when products are introduced and decreasing prices as they mature. To offset price decreases during a product’s life, we rely primarily on higher sales volume and improving our manufacturing yields and efficiencies to reduce our cost. If we cannot increase our sales volume or reduce our manufacturing costs as prices decline during our products’ life cycles, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.
Other Revenue. In 2007, and to a lesser extent in 2008, we manufactured and sold to competitive suspension assembly manufacturers etched and stamped component parts, such as flexures and baseplates, for suspensions. In 2008, these sales were a reduced portion of our revenue as our customer’s programs utilizing our components reached the end of their market lives. Component sales were a minimal amount of our revenue in 2009. We also enter into arrangements with customers that provide us with reimbursement for engineering services and specific program capacity to partially offset the costs of our investment. We recognize the associated revenue over the estimated life of the program to which the services and capacity relate.
To derive additional value from the unique expertise and capabilities in metrology, tool design, tool build and precision component manufacturing that we have developed in our Disk Drive Components Division, we are offering these capabilities to targeted companies in several industries. We have secured some initial business for our expertise and capabilities, resulting in opportunities to further leverage our existing infrastructure and generate cash.
Manufacturing
Our manufacturing strategy focuses on reliably producing suspension assemblies in high volume with the consistent precision and features required by our customers. We have developed advanced proprietary process, inspection and measurement systems and controls, and related automated production equipment. We have adopted an integrated manufacturing approach that closely couples design, tooling and manufacturing, which has facilitated the development, implementation and high-volume production of new suspension assembly products. We believe that our integrated approach and dedicated development capability give us a competitive advantage in quickly supplying suspension assembly prototypes, ramping volume manufacturing and responding to short-term shifts in market demand.
New manufacturing processes for advanced suspension assembly features and suspension assembly types, such as those currently used for manufacturing our TSA+ flexures, initially have lower manufacturing yields than those for more mature products and processes. Manufacturing yields generally improve as the process and product mature and production volumes increase. Manufacturing yields also vary depending on the complexity and uniqueness of products. Small variations in manufacturing yields can have a significant impact on gross profits.
Our products require several manufacturing processes, each dependent on different technical disciplines, to ensure the high degree of precision and the process control necessary to meet strict customer requirements. We also have developed additive processing to produce flexures for current and future generations of suspension assemblies that meet the increasingly tighter performance specifications of our customers. Additive processing involves depositing thin metal layers onto a polyimide surface in the shape of the desired circuitry and then imaging and plating up metal layers to form the suspension’s electrical conductors. The manufacturing processes we employ include photoetching, stamping, chemical deburring, automated optical inspection, plasma etching, plating, precision forming, laser welding, metal deposition and ultrasonic cleaning.
We are establishing an Asian assembly operation to manufacture our disk drive products. We have selected Thailand as the location, with a goal of initiating production in the second half of calendar 2010. We expect this operation will further enhance our long-term cost position, as well as our ability to serve our customers’ operations in Asia.
Our critical raw material needs are available through multiple sources of supply, with the following exceptions. Certain types of stainless steel, polyimide and photoresists are currently single-sourced because the raw materials provided by these sources meet our strict specifications. We have chosen to obtain certain other materials, such as laminate constructed from raw material that contains stainless steel, polyimide and copper, from a single or limited set of sources because of quality and pricing considerations. To protect against the adverse effect of a short-term supply disruption, we maintain several weeks’ supply of these materials. Similarly, we obtain certain customized equipment and related repair parts from single sources because of the specialization of the equipment and the quality of these supply sources. In light of current uncertain market and economic conditions and the effect they may have on our suppliers, we continue to look for options that may reduce our risk of supply disruption.
Our production processes require the storage, use and disposal of a variety of chemicals that are considered hazardous under applicable federal and state laws. Accordingly, we are subject to a variety of regulatory requirements for the handling of such materials. We do not anticipate any material effect on our capital expenditures, earnings or competitive position due to compliance with government regulations involving environmental matters.
Research and Development
The disk drive industry is subject to rapid technological change, and our ability to remain competitive depends on, among other things, our ability to anticipate and respond to changes and to continue our close working relationships with the engineering staffs of our customers. As a result, we have devoted and will continue to devote substantial resources to research and development efforts. Our research and development expenses for the Disk Drive Components Division were approximately $22,511,000, $34,944,000 and $51,038,000, in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively. In 2008 and 2007, we continued development of the additive processes required for our TSA+ flexures and development of new process technologies for next-generation suspension assembly products and equipment. In the fourth quarter of 2007, we began classifying all of the costs of running our TSA+ suspension manufacturing lines as cost of sales, whereas we had previously classified a portion of these costs as research and development expense. This change, along with cost reduction measures that occurred during 2008, resulted in reduced research and development expenses in 2008. The reduction in research and development expenses from 2008 to 2009 was primarily related to lower labor expenses due to reduced headcount.
The transition to smaller disk drives, the development of smaller next-generation read/write heads, continuing improvement in data density and the increasing use of disk drives in consumer electronics applications necessitate the further miniaturization of suspension assemblies. We have and will continue to implement alternative technologies, as needed, including additive processing to produce flexures for our TSA+ suspensions, which we believe will be required for manufacturing future generations of our products. In order to meet customer requirements, we expect to continue to produce a portion of our suspension assemblies using purchased additive flexures.
Our research and development efforts also are directed at continuing to develop suspension assembly capability and features that enable our products to meet performance criteria desired by our customers for specific drive applications. Measurement, process development and process control are critical to improving capability related to static attitude, gram force, resonance and windage, all performance characteristics important to suspension assemblies. We are actively involved with several of our customers on DSA designs and prototypes. Our current suspension assembly features include clad unamount arms, formed and polished headlifts, larger dampers with through hole features, a variety of limiter configurations and DSA.
Customers and Marketing
Our disk drive products are sold principally through our account management team operating primarily from our headquarters in Hutchinson, Minnesota. Through subsidiaries, we have managers, technical representatives and quality coordinators in Asia. We sell our suspension assemblies to original equipment manufacturers for use in their products and to subassemblers who sell to original equipment manufacturers. Our account management team is organized by individual customer, and contacts are typically initiated with both the customer’s purchasing agents and its engineers. Our engineers and account management team together actively participate in the selling process and in maintaining customer relationships.
We have established “vendor managed inventory,” or VMI, facilities near the major production centers of certain individual customers to assure that we meet the customers’ inventory requirements. Certain agreements with our customers provide that we maintain minimum finished goods inventory levels. During 2009, approximately 93% of our suspension assembly shipments were distributed to our customers in Thailand, Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China through our VMI facilities. We also have established a service center in Thailand that provides product logistics support, technical support and measurement services.
We are a supplier to nearly all domestic and foreign-based manufacturers of disk drives and head-gimbal assemblers. The following table shows our five largest customers for 2009 as a percentage of net sales.
Sales to our five largest customers constituted 99%, 99% and 89% of net sales for 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively. Significant portions of our revenue may be indirectly attributable to large manufacturers of disk drives, such as Samsung, Toshiba and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, which may purchase read/write head assemblies from read/write head manufacturers that utilize our suspension assemblies and suspension assembly components. The disk drive industry has consolidated significantly in recent years. For example, in October 2009, Toshiba Corporation completed its acquisition of the hard disk drive business of Fujitsu Limited of Japan and in September 2007, TDK Corporation acquired the recording head business of our customer Alps Electric Co., Ltd. We expect to continue to depend upon a limited number of customers for our sales, given the relatively small number of disk drive manufacturers and head-gimbal assemblers. Our results of operations could be adversely affected by reduced demand from our major customers.
Backlog
We generally make our sales pursuant to purchase orders rather than long-term contracts. Our backlog of purchase orders was approximately $43,800,000 at September 27, 2009, as compared to $96,900,000 at September 28, 2008. This year-over-year reduction was due to the significant decrease in demand for our suspension assemblies during 2009 and some customers had not yet provided their purchase order requirements as of September 27, 2009. Our purchase orders may be changed or cancelled by customers on short notice. In addition, we believe that it is a common practice for disk drive manufacturers to place orders in excess of their needs during growth periods. Accordingly, we do not believe that backlog should be considered indicative of sales for any future period.