SkyWater opens in Indiana, posts weak results
NSWC Crane is a Navy lab providing research, development, test, evaluation and logistics support to the Department of Defense (DOD). Many of NSWC Crane’s efforts focus on advancing DOD-unique capabilities in rad-hard electronics, radio-frequency (RF) technology, optoelectronics, advanced packaging and trusted and assured microelectronics.
SkyWater anticipates its presence will open up opportunities in DoD research. Kevin Jackson, recently appointed as SkyWater’s senior vice president of corporate development, will lead the company’s efforts there. Jackson has experience in the aerospace and defense microelectronics ecosystem to manage rad-hard and other customized solutions delivery.
On November 2 SkyWater reported it made a net loss of $13.9 million on revenue of $35.0 million. The revenue was up 6 percent compared with the same quarter a year before while the loss had jumped by a factor of eight.
“Supply chain challenges and hiring constraints plus continued delays in the funding of existing United States Government programs had a magnified near-term effect on the company. This resulted in delayed revenue for certain Advanced Technology Services and Wafer Services programs in the amount of approximately $15 million for the third and fourth quarter of 2021,” said Thomas Sonderman, SkyWater CEO, in a statement. “Despite these headwinds, the company continued to aggressively ramp our advanced technology ervices and wafer services businesses and sustainably grew our overall sales pipeline. All of these factors give us a strong conviction in our long-term growth model of 25 percent annual top line growth.”
He added: “We made important progress on our radiation hardened and power management platform qualifications while adding eight new advanced technology services customers in the quarter, for a total of 25 in the past twelve months.”
The company did say that up to $15 million of expected revenue from multiple programs was being pushed out into 2022. Part of this was due to US government funding delays and some due to obstacle in ramping volumes of customer wafers, such as tooling and qualifications. SkyWater did not give forecast for 4Q21 revenue but Steve Manko, CFO, told analyst that 4Q21 would be similar to 4Q20 except that it was set to be a four-week month compared to a five-week month which might be responsible for $2.5 million of revenue that would not repeat in 2021.
In effect, Manko, guided for a down quarter both sequentially and year-on-year.
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