Item 1 - Business
General
As used herein, the terms “Company,” “Kimball Electronics,” “we,” “us,” or “our” refer to Kimball Electronics, Inc., the Registrant, and its subsidiaries. Reference to a year relates to a fiscal year, ended June 30 of the year indicated, rather than a calendar year unless the context indicates otherwise. Additionally, references to the first, second, third, and fourth quarters refer to those respective quarters of the fiscal year indicated.
Overview
Kimball Electronics, Inc. was a wholly owned subsidiary of Kimball International, Inc. (“former Parent” or “Kimball International”) and as of 5:00 p.m. New York time on October 31, 2014 became a stand-alone public company upon the completion of a spin-off from former Parent. In conjunction with the spin-off, on October 31, 2014, Kimball International distributed 29.1 million shares of Kimball Electronics common stock to Kimball International Share Owners. Holders of Kimball International common stock received three shares of Kimball Electronics common stock for every four shares of Kimball International common stock held on October 22, 2014. Kimball International structured the distribution to be tax free to its U.S. Share Owners for U.S. federal income tax purposes.
Kimball Electronics was incorporated in 1998 and is a global provider of engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain services to customers in the automotive, medical, industrial, and public safety end markets. We offer a package of value that begins with our core competency of producing “durable electronics” and includes our set of robust processes and procedures that help us ensure that we deliver the highest levels of quality, reliability, and service throughout the entire life cycle of our customers’ products. We believe our customers appreciate our body of knowledge as it relates to the design and manufacture of their products that require durability, reliability, the highest levels of quality control, and regulatory compliance. We deliver award-winning service from our highly integrated global footprint which is enabled by a common operating system, a standardization strategy, global procedures, and teamwork. Our Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) model is key to providing our customers convenient access to our global footprint and all of our services throughout the entire product life cycle, making us easy to do business with. Because our customers are in businesses where engineering changes must be tightly controlled and long product life cycles are common, our track record of quality, financial stability, social responsibility, and commitment to long-term relationships is important to them.
We have been producing safety critical electronic assemblies for our automotive customers for over 30 years. During this time, we have built up a body of knowledge that has not only proven to be valuable to our automotive customers, but to our medical, industrial, and public safety customers as well. We have been successful in growing and diversifying our business by leveraging our automotive experience and know-how in the areas of design and process validation, traceability, process and change control, and lean manufacturing to create valuable and innovative solutions for new customers in the medical, industrial, and public safety end market verticals. We have harmonized our quality systems to be compliant with various important industry certifications and regulatory requirements. This allows us to take advantage of other strategic points of leverage in the supply chain and within our operations so we can cost-effectively manufacture products for customers from all four of our end market verticals in the same production facility.
Many of our customers are multinational companies that sell their products in multiple regions of the world. For these customers, it is important for them to be able to leverage their investment in their supply partner relationships such that the same partner provides them with engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain services in multiple regions of the world. It is common for us to manufacture the same product for the same customer in multiple locations. Our strategy for expanding our global footprint has aligned us with the preferences of the customers in our four end market verticals and has positioned us well to support their global growth initiatives. Our global systems, procedures, processes, and teamwork combined with our CRM model have allowed us to accomplish this goal for many of our largest customers.
Our global processes and central functions that support component sourcing, procurement, quoting and customer pricing provide commonality and consistency among the various regions in which we operate. We have a central, global purchasing organization that utilizes procurement processes and practices to help secure sources from around the world and to ensure sufficient availability of components and a uniform approach to pricing while leveraging the purchase volume of the entire organization. Customer pricing for all of the products we produce is managed centrally utilizing a standardized quoting model regardless of where our customers request their products to be produced.
Our CRM model combines members of our team from within our manufacturing facilities and members of our business development team who reside remotely and nearer to our customers around the world. We also have cross functional teams in the areas of quality, operational excellence, quoting and design engineering with representatives from our various locations that
provide support to our teams on a global basis. The skill sets of these team members and the clarity in their roles and responsibilities help provide our customers with a strong conduit that is critical to execution and forming a strong relationship. We have institutionalized a customer scorecard process that provides all levels of our company with valuable feedback that helps us drive the actions for continuous improvement. Our customer scorecard process has helped us deliver award-winning service and build loyalty with our customers.
Our corporate headquarters is located at 1205 Kimball Boulevard, Jasper, Indiana. Production occurs in our facilities located in the United States, Mexico, Thailand, China, and Poland.
Our services are sold globally on a contract basis and we produce products to our customers’ specifications. Our engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain services primarily include:
We pride ourselves on the fact that we pay close attention to the evolving needs and preferences of our customers. As we have done in the past, we will continue to look for opportunities to grow and diversify our business by expanding our package of value and our global footprint.
Our Competitive Strengths
Our competitive strengths derive from our experience of producing safety critical electronic assemblies for automotive customers for over 30 years and leveraging this experience to create valuable and innovative solutions for customers in different industries. Our core strengths include:
Our Business Strategy
We intend to achieve sustained, profitable growth in the markets we serve by supporting the global growth initiatives of our customers. Key elements of executing our strategy include:
Emerging Growth Company Status
We qualify as an “emerging growth company” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the “JOBS Act”). For as long as a company is deemed to be an “emerging growth company,” it may take advantage of specified reduced reporting and other regulatory requirements that are generally unavailable to other public companies. These provisions include: