Your company made a great deal of progress in 1957 and I am pleased to report some of the highlights to you. Our business was slowed down a bit in the fourth quarter by the downturn in the National economy and by the severe slowdown in spending for the defense effort. Nevertheless, we finished out the year with sales of just under $28,000,090, a 39% increase over 1956, and a satisfactory operating profit of $2,402,557. This is a little over 784 a share which is a 34% increase over 1956. At the time of the public stock issue this Fall, we gave our employees a substantial stock bonus. This allowed us a non-recurring tax credit of $460,703 which brought the net income applicable to stockholders' equity to $2,863,260 or 934 a share. We increased our research and development ex- penditures to $1,563,929, more than 50% above the 1956 ex- penditure. The results of this increased effort in research and development will begin to show up in additional new products before the end of 1958. During 1957 we also completed the first two buildings of our new facility in Stanford Industrial Park. We moved about half of our production into the first of these new buildings during the year and had it opelating up to full efficiency within a few months. The second building will house our research and devel- opment organization. The move will be completed by the first of February. Substantially all of the capital equipment for these new facil- ities was purchased during the year, bringing our total expendi- tures for buildings and equipment to $2,682,000 for 1957. This entire amount was taken out of working capital and profits during the year. This has left our current position a little heavier than we would like to see. We are converting part of this to a longer term bank loan, but otherwise we see no need for additional financing in the near future. We now have facilities and other resources sufficient to handle a volume of between $40,000,000 and $50,000,000 in the next two or three years. We plan to continue to use substantially all of our profit to finance additional growth and so we see no like- lihood of cash dividends for the next year or two. With the generally unsettled business situation, it has been very difficult to make a realistic prediction for 1958. The effect of Soviet satellites on the national defense programs is not yet clear. We think our sales will be at least 10% ahead of 1957 and we hope to be able to maintain our profit margins. If there is a long step up in the national defense program, it will begin to affect us in the second quarter and may bring a very substan- tial increase in our business by the end of the year. Under these conditions our estimate for 1958 may turn out to be very con- servative indeed. We plan to place great emphasis in 1958 on building for the longer term opportunity. We are increasing our research and development work. We are expanding our marketing activities
and we hope to further strengthen our manufacturing program.
This work has already begun. As a result, our first quarter profit
may be down a bit, but we will be in an excellent position to
take advantage of the opportunity which may come from the
accelerated defense program.
In the pages that follotv you will find, in addition to the
financial reports, a little story about our people, our products
and our philosophy. As new stockholders, we thought you would
be interested.
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