SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND INDUSTRY DATA
This report, including the sections entitled “Business,” “Risk Factors,” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and certain information incorporated by reference into this report contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: "ability," "anticipate," "attempt," "believe," "can be," "continue," "contemplate," "could," "depend," "enable," "estimate," "expect," "extend," "grow," "if," "intend," "likely," "may," "objective," "ongoing," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "propose," "rely," "should," "target," "will," "would" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words.
Forward-looking statements in this report include, but are not limited to, statements about:
You should refer to the "Risk Factors" section of this report for a discussion of other important factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. As a result of these factors, we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements in this report will prove to be accurate. In addition, statements that "we believe" and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based upon information available to us as of the date of this report, which although we believe such information forms a reasonable basis for such statements, such information may be limited or incomplete, and our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted a thorough inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely upon these statements. Furthermore, if our forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. In light of the significant uncertainties in these forward-looking statements, you should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by us or any other person that we will achieve our objectives and plans in any specified time frame, or at all. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
PART I
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Overview
We are a leading provider of high-power semiconductor and fiber lasers. Our lasers are changing not only the way things are made but also the things that can be made. We design, develop and manufacture the critical elements of our lasers, and we believe our vertically integrated business model enables us to rapidly introduce innovative products, control our costs and protect our intellectual property. In 2018, we sold our products to over 350 customers worldwide in three primary markets: industrial, microfabrication, and aerospace and defense.
Our semiconductor lasers are the industry's most brilliant and serve as the core building block of all of our products. Our vertical integration enables us to incorporate our semiconductor lasers into our proprietary fiber lasers and also to sell our semiconductor lasers as standalone solutions. We offer differentiated high-power fiber lasers that provide our customers with significant advantages over legacy fiber lasers in the areas of programmability, serviceability and reliability. By engaging with our customers early in their system design cycle and utilizing our platform-based approach to product design, we are able to offer semiconductor and fiber laser solutions optimized to meet our customers' requirements.
Semiconductor and fiber lasers are displacing legacy lasers and non-laser energy sources across a wide range of applications in the industrial, microfabrication, and aerospace and defense markets. In the industrial market, high-power semiconductor and fiber lasers have enabled the creation of next-generation industrial systems to perform manufacturing processes such as cutting, welding and drilling, as well as advanced manufacturing techniques such as additive manufacturing. In the microfabrication market, many of the critical microscale features incorporated into products in the automotive, electronics, medical, semiconductor and other markets are made commercially viable by the precise power delivery of lasers. In the aerospace and defense market, high-power semiconductor and fiber lasers are currently used across a wide range of mission critical applications, such as defending aircraft against missiles, and are enabling next-generation defense systems.
The growth of the high-power fiber laser market has been driven by a significant reduction in cost per brilliant watt and a substantial increase in the power output of semiconductor lasers, at a rate that we believe is similar to Moore's Law for integrated circuits. Our global customers include Cincinnati Inc., DMG Mori, Han's Laser Technology Group Co. Ltd. and Suzhou Quick Laser Technology Co. in industrial, MKS Instruments and Samsung in microfabrication, and BAE and Raytheon in aerospace and defense.
We generated revenues of $191.4 million, $138.6 million and $101.3 million in 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. We had net income (loss) of $13.9 million, $1.8 million and $(14.2) million in 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. As of December 31, 2018, we had approximately 1,130 full-time employees worldwide. Our vertically integrated operations include a semiconductor laser manufacturing facility at our Vancouver, Washington headquarters, an optical fiber manufacturing facility in Lohja, Finland, and a laser packaging and assembly facilities in Vancouver, Washington, Hillsboro, Oregon and Shanghai, China. We were founded in 2000 and possess an intellectual property portfolio that included over 460 issued or pending patents as of December 31, 2018.
Industry Overview
Legacy Lasers
A laser converts electrical energy into optical energy, or light, that can be concentrated and shaped to create a powerful beam that can cut, manipulate, melt and vaporize materials. The two main parts of a laser are an energy source and a gain medium. Gas and crystal lasers, named for the materials used as the gain medium, were the initial types of lasers used in industrial applications. While gas and crystal lasers are an improvement over mechanical and other non-laser techniques for material processing, they have various deficiencies, which may include lower reliability, the need for costly cooling and more frequent maintenance, less desirable beam quality, energy inefficiency, and lack of programmability and serviceability.
Fiber Lasers
In a fiber laser, the gain medium is an optical fiber infused with rare earth elements, and the energy source is one or more semiconductor lasers. The term "semiconductor laser" can describe an individual semiconductor laser chip or a product that combines an array of such chips into a more powerful device, which is typically the approach used to build a fiber laser. Semiconductor lasers vary based upon the material used as the gain medium, the spectrum of light generated, the beam shape, the power yielded, the brilliance, as well as other characteristics. Substantial improvements in the power, brilliance, cost, reliability and efficiency of semiconductor lasers have been foundational to the improved performance and cost competitiveness of fiber lasers.
Power and brilliance are critical measures of laser performance. Both laser power and laser brilliance can vary dramatically. For example, a single semiconductor laser chip used in a handheld laser pointer generates a fraction of a watt of power, whereas high-power semiconductor laser chips used in a high-power fiber laser can generate as much as 20 watts of power per chip. The output power of a high-power fiber laser, using an array of high-power semiconductor lasers amplified via specialty fiber, can be thousands of watts, or kilowatts. Laser brilliance is a measure of how much power a laser generates over a given emission area and the rate of divergence of its beam. Therefore, two lasers emitting the same power but with different emission areas or beam divergences will have different levels of brilliance. Semiconductor laser brilliance is critical for scaling power in fiber lasers, as high-power fiber lasers require efficient aggregation of the output power of many semiconductor lasers into a single fiber.