SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
FORM 10-K
| x | ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE |
For the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2002
| o | TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE |
For the Transition Period From to .
Commission File Number: 0-26820
CRAY INC.
|
Washington
|
93-0962605 | |
|
(State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation or Organization) |
(I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) |
|
|
411 First Avenue South, Suite 600 Seattle, Washington (Address of Principal Executive Office) |
98104-2860 (Zip Code) |
|
Registrants Telephone Number, Including Area Code: (206) 701-2000
Securities Registered Pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Exchange Act: NONE
Securities Registered Pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act:
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the past 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days: Yes x No o
Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of Registrants knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. o
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is an accelerated filer (as defined in Exchange Act Rule 12b-2): Yes x No o
The aggregate market value of the Common Stock held by non-affiliates of the Registrant as of June 28, 2002, was approximately $226,500,000, based upon the last sale price of $4.47 reported for such date on the Nasdaq National Market System.
As of March 21, 2003, there were 65,110,852 shares of Common Stock issued and outstanding.
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Portions of the Proxy Statement to be delivered to shareholders in connection with the Registrants Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held on May 21, 2003, are incorporated by reference into Part III.
CRAY INC.
FORM 10-K
INDEX
| Page | ||||||
| PART I | ||||||
|
Item 1.
|
Business | 3 | ||||
|
Item 2.
|
Properties | 22 | ||||
|
Item 3.
|
Legal Proceedings | 22 | ||||
|
Item 4.
|
Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders | 22 | ||||
|
Item E.O.
|
Executive Officers of the Company | 23 | ||||
| PART II | ||||||
|
Item 5.
|
Market for the Companys Common Equity and Related Stockholder Matters | 25 | ||||
|
Item 6.
|
Selected Financial Data | 25 | ||||
|
Item 7.
|
Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations | 26 | ||||
|
Item 7A.
|
Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk | 33 | ||||
|
Item 8.
|
Financial Statements and Supplementary Data | 33 | ||||
|
Item 9.
|
Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure | 34 | ||||
| PART III | ||||||
|
Item 10.
|
Directors and Executive Officers of the Company | 35 | ||||
|
Item 11.
|
Executive Compensation | 35 | ||||
|
Item 12.
|
Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters | 35 | ||||
|
Item 13.
|
Certain Relationships and Related Transactions | 35 | ||||
|
Item 14.
|
Controls and Procedures | 35 | ||||
| PART IV | ||||||
|
Item 15.
|
Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules, and Reports on Form 8-K | 35 | ||||
Cray, Cray-1, UNICOS and UNICOS/mk are federally registered trademarks of Cray Inc., and Cray Y-MP, Cray C90, Cray J90, Cray T90, Cray T3E, Cray SV1, Cray SV1ex, Cray SX-6, Cray MTA, Cray MTA-2, Cray MTX, Cray X1 and Cray X1e are trademarks of Cray Inc. Other trademarks used in this report are the property of their respective owners.
2
Forward-Looking Statements
This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any projections of earnings, revenues or other financial items; any statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning proposed new products, services or developments; any statements regarding future economic conditions or performance; statements of belief and any statement of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing.
The risks, uncertainties and assumptions referred to above include the timely development, production and acceptance of products and services and their features; the level of governmental support for supercomputers; our dependency on third-party suppliers to build and deliver necessary components; the challenge of managing asset levels, including inventory; the difficulty of keeping expense growth at modest levels while increasing revenue; our ability to retain and motivate key employees; and other risks that are described from time to time in our Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the items discussed in Factors That Could Affect Future Results set forth in Business in Item 1 below in this report, and in subsequently filed reports. We assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
In this report, we rely on and refer to information and statistics regarding the markets for various products. We obtained this information from third party sources, discussions with our customers and our own internal estimates. We believe that these third-party sources are reliable, but we have not independently verified them and there can be no assurance that they are accurate.
PART I
Item 1. Business
We design, develop, market and service high performance computer systems, commonly known as supercomputers. These systems provide capability and capacity far beyond typical mainframe computer systems and address the worlds most challenging computing problems for government, industry and academia. We expect that most of our 2003 product revenue will come from sales of our Cray X1 system, the production version of which first shipped in December 2002. In mid-2002, we began a development project with Sandia National Laboratories to design and deliver a new, high bandwidth, massively parallel processing supercomputer system called Red Storm in 2004. We provide maintenance services to the worldwide installed base of Cray computers. We also offer professional services that leverage our industry technical knowledge.
Our History
In many ways our current history began on April 1, 2000, when we, as Tera Computer Company, acquired the operating assets of the Cray Research division from Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), and renamed ourselves Cray Inc.
Tera Computer
Tera Computer Company was founded in 1987 with the purpose of developing a new supercomputer system based on multithreaded architecture. We had an initial public offering in 1995. In 2000, we were still in the development stage with limited revenue from sales to one customer, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and approximately 125 employees, almost all of whom were located in our Seattle office.
Cray Research
Cray Research was founded in 1972 by Seymour Cray and introduced its first product, the Cray-1, in 1976. Cray Research pioneered the use of vector systems in a variety of market sectors and dominated the supercomputer market in the late 1970s and 1980s. Cray Research introduced a series of vector based
3
Cray Research Acquisition
On April 1, 2000, we acquired the operating assets of the Cray Research business unit from SGI and changed our corporate name to Cray Inc. In that transaction, we acquired the Cray T90, SV1, T3E and other product lines, the Cray X1 development project and related cost-sharing contract, a service organization supporting Cray supercomputers installed in about 200 sites worldwide, integration and final assembly operations, software products and related experience and expertise, approximately 775 employees, product and service inventory, real property located in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and the Cray brand name. Pursuant to a technology agreement, SGI assigned to us various patents and other intellectual property and licensed to us the rights to other patents and intellectual property. We paid SGI $50.3 million in cash and issued SGI 1,000,000 shares of our common stock.
As part of the acquisition, we assumed responsibility for the cost of servicing the Cray T90 vector computers. We agreed with SGI that we would not utilize specified technology to develop specific successor products to the T3E product line, and we agreed to limit our use of SGIs IRIX operating system to the Cray X1 product family.
Post-Acquisition
With the acquisition, we had to integrate our approximately 900 employees into one company, establish company-wide financial, communication and other networks, move employees out of SGI facilities into new offices, establish over 20 subsidiaries for our foreign sales and service operations, and either have service, sales and other contracts assigned to us or enter into new contracts with customers and vendors.
We immediately focused most of our available financial resources on the continued development of the Cray X1 system to keep the development on track both in terms of system capability and schedule. A majority of our revenue in 2000 and 2001 came from maintenance services on the worldwide installed base of Cray products. In order to generate product revenue until the Cray X1 development was completed:
| | we brought back the Cray T3E system from its end of life, with sales starting in the first quarter following the acquisition; | |
| | we continued to sell the Cray SV1 system and made processor and memory enhancements to it, resulting in the Cray SV1ex system which became available for sale in the fourth quarter of 2001; and | |
| | we continued development of our multithreaded architecture by re-implementing our Cray MTA-2 system in composite metal-oxide silicon, or CMOS, a process essentially completed at the end of 2001. |
In May 2001, the U.S. anti-dumping order against Japanese vector supercomputers was lifted, NEC Corporation invested $25 million in us through our Series A convertible preferred stock and we became a distributor of the NEC SX series of supercomputers, re-branded under the Cray name, with exclusive rights in North America and non-exclusive rights outside of North America. In mid-2002, we began a development project with Sandia National Laboratories to design and deliver a new supercomputer system called Red Storm in 2004. While we continue to market the Cray SV1ex, the Cray MTA-2 and the Cray SX-6 systems, we expect that most of our 2003 and 2004 product revenue will come from sales of the Cray X1 system, with a smaller portion from the Red Storm project. See Product Offerings and Projects below.
4
Discussions that relate to periods prior to April 1, 2000, refer to our operations as Tera Computer Company, and discussions that relate to periods after April 1, 2000, refer to our combined operations as Cray Inc.
The High Performance Computer Industry
Since the pioneering Cray-1 system arrived in 1976, supercomputers defined simply as the most powerful class of computers at any time have contributed substantially to the advancement of knowledge and the quality of human life. Problems of major economic, scientific and strategic importance typically are addressed by supercomputers, which usually sell for several millions of dollars each, years before becoming tractable with less capable systems. For scientific applications, the increased need for computing power has been driven by highly challenging problems that can be solved only through numerically intensive computation. For engineering applications, high performance computers boost productivity and decrease risk and the time to market for companies and products in a broad range of industries. The U.S. government has recognized that the continued development of high performance computer systems is of critical importance to the national defense and the economic, scientific and strategic competitiveness of the United States.
Increasing Demand for Supercomputer Power
Applications promising future competitive and scientific advantage demand 10 to 1,000 times more supercomputer power than anything available today, including current low bandwidth systems and existing enterprise-class and mainframe servers. There are three principal drivers to the predicted substantial growth in the high performance computing market: the continuing demand for advanced design capability, increased focus on national security issues and the recognized need for more powerful scientific research tools.
The demand for design capabilities grows seemingly without limit. Automotive companies are targeting increased passenger cabin comfort, better fuel mileage and improved safety and handling. Aerospace firms envision more efficient planes and space vehicles. Using genomic and proteomic technologies for drug development are areas of intensive research and substantial spending by research centers and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
Governments have a wide range of unmet security needs, heightened by the recent emphasis on anti-terrorism. These needs primarily relate to burgeoning cryptanalysis requirements arising from a more diverse and growing number of sources and requirements for rapid and accurate analysis and fusion of information from many disparate sources. In addition, governments need better simulation and modeling of a wide range of weapons and battlefield scenarios and the computational ability to address various classified applications.
In the spring of 2002, the Japanese government announced the completion of the Japanese Earth Simulator project. This high bandwidth, vector-based system currently is acknowledged as the worlds most powerful installed computer system, with a peak speed of approximately 40 teraflops and high sustained operating performance on real applications. The Japanese Earth Simulator validates our proposition that high bandwidth and sustained performance are critical, and provides Japan with the opportunity to lead in scientific research in fields such as weather and climate, geophysics, nanotechnology and metallurgy.
The High Performance Computer Market
International Data Corporation (IDC), a leading industry market research firm, provides information regarding the high performance computing technical systems market, including projections. IDC segments the technical systems market based on prices, complexity and intended use, with classes for capability, enterprise, divisional and departmental systems. Our focus primarily is on the highest-priced ($1 million and up) capability segment where the features we are known for high speed processors coupled with extreme communication speed are needed to solve the worlds most difficult computing problems. There are also needs for supercomputing systems of our caliber in portions of the technical enterprise segment, especially in production-oriented environments.
5
According to IDC, the 2001 combined capability and technical enterprise market totaled approximately $1.9 billion in 2001 and is projected to grow at an annual rate of about 10% through 2006. The 2001 capability segment of this market represented about $800 million, and was led, in approximate percentages, by IBM with 30%, followed by Hewlett-Packard with 21%, NEC with 17%, SGI with 15%, Fujitsu with 8% and Cray with 6%. Cray sales in 2001 primarily came from older systems, such as the Cray T3E and SV1, with the Cray SV1ex not available until December 2001 and the Cray X1 system then in development.
The annual revenue for capability class systems historically has fluctuated as much as 25% due to new product introductions, large system procurements and government funding cycles.
Again using data provided by IDC, our 2001 addressable market can be divided into the following usage-based segments: scientific research 40%, biosciences 20%, design engineering 15%, classified/defense 15% and other 10%.
Scientific Research. This sector includes government laboratories and research centers that may also collaborate with university consortia to reach their objectives. These centers investigate computational modeling of a broad range of physical phenomena in such fields as astrophysics, chemistry, materials science, nuclear fusion and particle physics. Weather forecasting and climate modeling comprise about one-fourth of this market. The scientific research sector requires supercomputers with increasing levels of throughput and faster turn-around time, system robustness and the ability to process large volumes of data. With the success of the Japanese Earth Simulator, the U.S. Department of Energy has indicated its intention to support a competitive U.S. response. If this initiative is funded, the revenue in the scientific research segment should increase accordingly.
Biosciences. Since the mapping of the human genome, there has been an explosion in the volume of genomic and proteomic data available. High performance computers are used to predict molecular structure at various levels of detail based on these data and to search genomic and proteomic data for structural similarities among and across individuals and species.
Design Engineering. Simulation of new products before they are built is an invaluable industrial tool. The automotive sector uses simulation to design lighter, safer and more durable vehicles. In the aerospace sector, software running on supercomputers simulates flight dynamics as well as aspects similar to those of the automotive sector. Government agencies such as NASA and the Department of Defense employ these techniques to improve design effectiveness, improve product quality and decrease the time to deployment.
Classified/Defense. According to IDC forecasts, the long-term spending on national defense and homeland security is expected to increase as a result of the events of September 2001 and related anti-terrorism initiatives. The major effect will be an increase in both the number and size of systems purchased for computational uses in the classified and anti-terrorism arenas.
Other. A small number of customers in scientific industries, such as geosciences, geoengineering and other engineering functions, have objectives and application needs not addressed by widely used application programs and require the use of supercomputers.
The Need for High Bandwidth Supercomputers
Ironically, despite this demand for increased supercomputer power, supercomputers capable of exploiting these new opportunities have become rare. Todays supercomputer market is replete with low bandwidth cluster systems that loosely link together multiple commodity servers or personal computers by means of commercially available interconnect products. Because these systems are measured and priced based upon the number of transistors they contain, they are sometimes referred to as Type T systems. In Type T systems, each processor typically is directly connected to its own private (local) memory and the programmer must manage the movement of data among memory units and processors. As a result, computer systems relying on this architecture can be difficult to program. Given their low bandwidth, these systems are best suited for applications that can be partitioned easily into discrete tasks that do not need to communicate often with each other.
6
Vendors of low bandwidth Type T systems, such as IBM, design and build their processors and systems to meet the requirements of their larger, more commercial computer markets for servers and personal computers rather than for the benefit of supercomputer users. These vendors processors and memory systems do not have the internal bandwidth to communicate and process data at the speeds necessary to address todays most challenging supercomputer problems. Low bandwidth Type T systems can offer greater performance and price/ performance advantages on small problems and larger problems lacking communications complexity, but are inefficient for the most demanding and important challenges.
Why then is the supercomputer market largely filled with Type T systems? First, Type T systems handle less challenging problems well. Second, the U.S. scientific, engineering and government users have had to turn to these systems in recent years for their more difficult problems primarily because they had no alternative. The SGI acquisition of Cray Research in 1996 and the imposition by the U.S. government in 1997 of anti-dumping duties on Japanese vector supercomputer vendors combined to eliminate the availability of high bandwidth vector supercomputers to U.S. users. The SGI acquisition also resulted in the cancellation of the successor to the Cray T3E, the only commercially available high bandwidth, non-vector product. With no competitor planning to offer next-generation high bandwidth systems in the United States, U.S. interest in investing in these systems diminished substantially.
The gap between need and availability for high bandwidth systems did not go unrecognized. In a report to the Presidents Information Technology Committee, a leading industrial supercomputer user observed in 1998 that, The high performance computing industry in the United States today appears almost as if someone hit the pause button. Were seeing a reduction in innovation. A December 2000 report from the U.S. climate researchers to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy noted that, Parallel computers manufactured in the U.S., often with distributed memory [i.e., Type T systems], are difficult to use There are intrinsic limitations to the ability of climate-research algorithms to achieve high levels of performance on these computers. Other scientists noted that using tens of thousands of commodity chips may provide adequate capacity (peak flop rates), but not adequate capability, because of lack of memory bandwidth.
The Cray Solution
We are dedicated solely to the high performance computer market. We believe that by concentrating our product roadmap on high bandwidth interconnect systems and highly capable processors (whether developed by ourselves or others), we are in the best position to provide supercomputer systems with high sustained operating performance that meet the markets most demanding needs.
The greatest differentiator between our systems and Type T systems, such as clusters, is bandwidth. When we speak of bandwidth, we mean the ability of processors to communicate with the systems memory, with other processors and with input/output (I/ O) connections. Because our systems employ more connections, or wires, we package these connections more densely than our major competitors, and we transfer data through these connections at very high rates; our supercomputers are able to handle more data at higher speeds. As our systems are optimized for bandwidth and internal communications, they are sometimes referred to as Type C systems because they emphasize communication capabilities rather than transistors.
Type C systems are important because the worlds most challenging scientific and technical computing problems require many processors to communicate with each other frequently during computation. These processors need to have fast access to large memory and quantities of data. Low bandwidth microprocessor-based Type T systems are not designed for these demanding requirements. They do not support high bandwidth communications and therefore cannot deliver the performance necessary for these critical applications.
Our high performance computer systems are designed to provide high actual sustained performance on difficult computational problems. Theoretical peak performance is the highest possible speed at which a computer system can operate (obtained simply by multiplying the number of processors by the designed rated speed of each processor), and is always a theoretical number. Sustained performance, always lower than peak, is the actual speed at which a supercomputer system operates running an application program. Many Type T systems offer high theoretical peak performance. However, due to their low internal bandwidth and distributed
7
We expect our systems to provide price/performance advantages over low bandwidth cluster systems when performance on real applications used at supercomputer sites is taken into account. In addition, our systems typically use far less electric power and occupy less space than cluster systems and, as a result, our systems have significantly lower costs of operation. And since our systems offer greater capability they run application programs faster and offer features such as checkpoint restart so that if a system crashes it can be restarted from the latest checkpoint rather than at the beginning they provide greater operating efficiency to the user.
The Cray Strategy
Our mission is to become the premier provider of supercomputer solutions for our customers. Key elements of our strategy include:
Focus on high performance computer systems with high bandwidth that run customer applications at high sustained speeds. Our systems are designed to process very large quantities of data quickly and to provide high actual performance on the most difficult computational problems.
Leverage our strong brand, reputation and pioneering position to increase our market share. Cray Research introduced the first supercomputers more than 25 years ago, and we have remained focused solely on the high performance computer market. We intend to leverage our strong Cray brand and reputation to increase our share of the government, industrial and academic markets for supercomputers.
Pursue an aggressive research and development plan to implement our product roadmap. We plan to continue to devote a substantial portion of our resources to research and development activities that lead to supercomputers with higher speed and increased usability characteristics. We currently participate in government research and development programs that co-fund our Cray X1, Cray X1e and Black Widow programs and our Red Storm and Cascade projects. We expect that these and future activities will create technologies that we can use to meet the needs of our customers.
Build relationships with key researchers to penetrate emerging government and industrial markets. The most challenging problems require far more computing power than is currently available. We are developing relationships with government and industrial researchers and users to understand their needs for increased speed and for other supercomputer characteristics that would allow them to solve these problems.
Our Target Market and Customers
Our target markets for 2003 and 2004 principally include the government/classified, scientific research, weather/environmental, automotive and aerospace, and biosciences markets. In certain of our targeted markets, such as the government/classified and scientific research markets, customers have their own application programs and are accustomed to using new, less proven systems. Other target customers, such as automotive and aerospace firms and some governmental agencies, require third-party application programs in production environments. We are currently devoting significant resources to porting widely used third-party application programs to the Cray X1 system with the expectation that deliveries to such customers will begin in 2004.
Government/ Classified
Government agencies have represented a significant segment for Cray Research and ourselves for many years. Certain governmental departments continue to provide partial funding support for our research and development efforts to meet their objectives. We expect long-term spending on national security and defense to increase. Current and target customers include Department of Defense classified customers and the
8
Scientific Research
This segment includes both unclassified governmental and academic research laboratories and centers. The success of the Japanese Earth Simulator has spurred increased interest in Type C supercomputers in basic research in areas such as climate and physics. The Department of Defense, through its Defense Modernization Program, funds a number of research organizations; The Army High Performance Computing Research Center in Minneapolis and the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center in Fairbanks, for example, were early purchasers of our new Cray X1 system. The Office of Science in the Department of Energy, which funds the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, is a key target customer as is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Early in 2003, Oak Ridge National Laboratory ordered Cray X1 systems and related services.
Weather/ Environmental
While short-term weather forecasting has largely moved to low bandwidth cluster systems, more challenging climate modeling applications require increasing speed and larger volumes of data and thus are targets for our Type C systems. The success of the Japanese Earth Simulator has spurred interest in high bandwidth systems in this segment. Cray supercomputers are used in weather centers worldwide, from the United Kingdom to China. We have announced a sale of a Cray X1 system to the Spanish National Institute of Meteorology, and we intend to pursue proposals at weather and climate centers in the United States and other countries.
Automotive and Aerospace
These industries, a subset of the design engineering market segment, use supercomputers to design lighter, safer and more durable vehicles as well as to study wind noise and airflow around the vehicle. Several of the major automobile companies and aerospace companies are Cray customers.
Biosciences
While we do not expect this to be a significant market for us in the near term, we believe this emerging segment will contribute to our long-term growth. We currently have a system used for computational drug design at a drug manufacturer and ongoing bioscience collaborative efforts with various laboratories. In addition, bioscience work is planned for our new systems that will be installed at Sandia National Laboratories, the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Product Offerings and Projects
Our high performance computer products provide high bandwidth and other capabilities needed for exploiting new and existing market opportunities. Among supercomputer vendors, we offer the largest variety of products and services in order to address the broadest range of customer requirements and market segments. Our goal is to bring major enhancements and/or new projects to market every eighteen to twenty-four months.
With the Cray X1 system as the cornerstone, we now have developed a product roadmap of high performance computer systems that stretches past 2010, with a goal of then delivering systems capable of running a variety of challenging applications at sustained speeds in excess of one petaflops (1,000 trillion floating point operations per second).
Cray X1 System
In late 2002, we completed hardware development of the new Cray X1 system, which incorporates in its design both vector processing capabilities from the long line of Cray Research vector systems and massively
9
We are developing enhancements to the Cray X1 system the Cray X1e system which will significantly increase processor speed and capability. We will be able to add these enhancements to Cray X1 systems in the field.
Black Widow
Following the Cray X1 product family will be the product family code-named Black Widow that is now planned to be introduced as an initial system followed by two major upgrades. Black Widow systems will have an instruction set compatible with the Cray X1. We expect that the initial Black Widow systems will have a peak performance of several hundred teraflops that, with two enhancements, will grow to a peak performance in excess of one petaflops.
Sustained Petaflops Systems
By 2010, our goal is to have high performance computer systems operating applications at sustained speeds in excess of several petaflops. We expect three major programs or projects will influence these future systems in addition to our planned products: the Red Storm project with Sandia National Laboratories, our multithreaded technology represented by the Cray MTA-2 and our Cascade project. We will utilize advancements in operating systems, programming tools, interconnect systems and other features from these programs and projects into the products on our product roadmap.
Red Storm Project
In mid-2002, we contracted with Sandia National Laboratories to design and deliver a new massively parallel processing system, called Red Storm, that will use 10,000 of the upcoming Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices connected via our proprietary low-latency, high bandwidth interconnect network. The Red Storm project will involve critical network and Linux-based operating system development that may be applicable to our product roadmap. We are reviewing the applicability of this project to the needs of other potential customers.
MTA-2 System
We were formed originally under the name Tera Computer Company to pursue a significant breakthrough in high performance computing by developing a scalable uniform shared memory system that utilizes a multithreaded architecture and a high bandwidth interconnection network. This system is designed to provide programming ease, particularly for new application programs. In 2000 and 2001, we were heavily engaged in re-implementing the MTA system from gallium arsenide technology to more-mainstream CMOS technology. The first MTA-2 system was delivered in December 2001 to the Electronic Navigation Research Institute in Japan. In 2002, we delivered a 40-processor MTA-2 system to the Naval Research Laboratories, which plans to make this system available for investigative purposes to its own researchers and to the Department of Defense national research community. The Cray MTA-2 is aimed at new applications not well served by vector or cluster systems, such as dynamically adaptive meshes, data sorting and problems benefiting from advanced scalability, large uniform shared memory and easier parallel programming. For example, the Cray MTA-2 has shown a significant performance advantage on so-called Monte Carlo codes used in a wide range of sectors, from nuclear physics to finance.
10
The Cascade Project
In mid-2002, we signed an agreement with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to initiate an advanced research program leading to the development of a commercially available system capable of running with sustained performance in excess of one petaflops by 2010. In addition to having high sustained performance, the resulting system is to be designed to be much easier to program, more broadly applicable, and more robust than current designs. DARPA signed similar agreements with IBM, SGI, Hewlett-Packard Company and Sun Microsystems, Inc., paying each company approximately $3 million to pursue a one-year concept study. We have teamed with Stanford University, California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and the University of Notre Dame to investigate an array of advanced design concepts leading to a Phase 2 proposal in mid-2003. DARPA plans to fund up to three vendors for three additional years of continued research and development to further define and validate the proposed system design. Phase 2 funding, if approved by Congress, will be approximately $10 million per vendor per year. Finally, in 2006, DARPA plans to select up to two vendors proposed systems for production as final products, with delivery in 2010 or 2011.
Vector Systems
We currently market two classic vector systems, the Cray SV1ex system and the Cray SX-6.
The Cray SV1ex system provides substantial enhancements to the predecessor Cray SV1 product. Prior to the introduction of the Cray X1 and Cray SX-6 systems, the systems processor was among the fastest of any currently available supercomputer, vector or non-vector; and the Cray SV1ex systems cache-based memory (now shared by the Cray X1 system) significantly improves performance for problems that can make good use of cache memory. The targeted selling focus for the SV1ex systems is 8 to 64 gigaflops, with typical selling prices ranging from $1 million to $2 million. We expect to sell SV1ex systems primarily to existing customers as upgrades to prior generation vector systems.
Pursuant to our distribution agreement with NEC, we currently market the NEC SX-6 system, rebranded as the Cray SX-6, to industrial, academic and governmental customers requiring intense computing power, very large high performance memory and high I/O rates on a vector platform. These systems offer high reliability in a balanced, commercial quality system. The targeted selling focus for the Cray SX-6 supercomputers is from 16 to 64 gigaflops, with expected selling prices ranging from $1.5 million to $3 million.
Professional Services
In December 2001, we formed a professional services organization to support our emphasis on providing solutions rather than just computer systems to our customers. Our professional services team provides consulting, integration of Cray products and cluster solutions, custom hardware and software engineering, advanced computer training, site engineering, data center operation and time-share computing services. These professional services leverage our reputation and skills for services and industry technical leadership.
Technology
Our leadership in the high performance computer industry depends on successful development and introduction of new products and enhancements to existing products. Our research and development activities are focused on system architecture, hardware and software necessary to implement our product roadmap.
Architecture
We are the only company in the world to provide systems that use or combine all three of the basic high performance computer architectures vectors, massively parallel and multithreading.
Cray Research pioneered the use of vector systems, from the Cray-1 to the Cray C90 and T90 systems. These systems typically use a moderate number (one to 32) of very fast custom processors in connection with a shared memory. Vector processing has proven to be highly effective for many scientific and engineering application programs which over the years have been written to maximize the number of long vectors.
11
Massively parallel processing architectures typically link tens, hundreds or thousands of standard or commodity processors to act either on multiple tasks at the same time or together in concert on a single computationally-intensive task. Type T systems connect each processor directly to its own private memory and the programmer must manage the movement of data among memory units and processors. Consequently these systems can be difficult to program. Type C massively parallel systems, unlike low bandwidth clusters, have high bandwidth and low latency interconnect systems and are said to be tightly coupled the Cray T3E and the Red Storm project are examples of high bandwidth massively parallel systems that employ standard microprocessors.
The Cray X1 system is revolutionary in that it is the first supercomputer that combines the attributes of both vector and high bandwidth massively parallel systems. The Cray X1 system has up to 64 processors per cabinet and a shared memory. The Cray X1 system can run small problems as a vector processor would or, by focusing many processors on a task, the Cray X1 system operates as a massively parallel system with a system-wide shared memory and a single-system image. The Cray X1 system is designed to provide efficient scalability and high bandwidth to run complex applications at high sustained speeds.
We are the only company building supercomputers based on multithreaded architecture. Our MTA-2 system is designed to have sustainable high speed, be broadly applicable and easy to program, provide scalability as systems increase in size and have balanced I/O capability. The MTA architecture supports up to 128 separate threads of execution per processor, with zero switching overhead between threads. The multithreading processors make the MTA-2 system latency tolerant and, with the systems flat shared memory, able to address data anywhere in the system. A high bandwidth packet switching network interconnects the processors, memory and I/O.
Hardware
We have extensive experience in designing all of the components of high performance computer systems the processors, the interconnect system and controls, the I/O system and the supporting cooling infrastructure to operate together. Our hardware research and development experience includes:
| | Integrated circuit design we have experience in designing custom and standard cell integrated circuits. Our processors and other integrated circuits have special features that let them use the high available memory bandwidth efficiently. We work closely with our suppliers to take advantage of the latest advances in high speed, high density integrated circuit technology. | |
| | High speed interconnect systems we design high speed interconnect systems using a combination of conventional and microwave circuits, high density connectors and carefully chosen transmission media together with complex memory and cache controls to operate with our network protocols and highly optimized logic design. We are investigating the use of optical interconnects for future systems. | |
| | Printed circuit board design our printed circuit boards are some of the most sophisticated in the world, often more than 40 layers packed with wires and inter-layer connections. | |
| | System I/O we design high performance I/O interfaces that deliver high bandwidth transfer rates and large capacity storage capabilities using low cost devices in highly reliable configurations. | |
| | Packaging and cooling we use very dense packaging in order to produce systems with the necessary bandwidth at reasonable costs. This generates more heat per unit volume. We use specialized cooling techniques to address this issue, including immersion, conductive and spray cooling using various liquids and high volume air cooling. | |
| | Fault tolerance we design our systems to be tolerant of component failure. As individual components fail, our systems operate with minimal adverse performance impact due to designed |
12
| alternative circuits and paths. We closely coordinate our hardware and operating system design with field service requirements for fast repair with minimal impact to users. |
Software
We design and maintain our system software internally. We support multiple operating systems, although all are based on UNIX. The Cray X1 operating system is UNIX-based with common UNICOS extensions. We offer UNICOS/mk in the T3E, UNICOS in the SV1ex and earlier vector processing systems and a UNIX-based system called Cray MTX for the Cray MTA-2 system. The Cray SX-6 system and successors use NECs SUPER-UX operating system, also based on UNIX.
We continue to design and build highly optimized programming environments and performance management diagnostic software products that allow our customers to obtain maximum benefit from our systems. In addition to supporting third-party applications, we develop advanced algorithms and other approaches to improving application performance. We also purchase or license software technologies from third parties when necessary to provide appropriate support to our customers, while focusing on our own resources where we add the highest value.
Maintenance and Support
Our extensive worldwide maintenance and support systems provide us with a competitive advantage and a predictable flow of revenue and cash. Support services are provided under separate maintenance contracts with our customers. These contracts generally provide for support services on an annual basis, although some cover multiple years. While most customers pay for support monthly, others pay on a quarterly or annual basis.
Our employees providing these services include field service engineers, product and applications specialists and product support engineers. They are supported by a central support services group located in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. On December 31, 2002, we had 94 field support personnel in the United States and Canada, another 82 support personnel in other countries and 70 employees providing central support services. Most of our support engineers are based at customer sites and thus have knowledge of the customers requirements for system and application program performance.
Sales and Marketing
We primarily sell our products through a direct sales force that operates throughout the United States and in Europe, Canada, Japan and Asia-Pacific. We serve smaller foreign markets through sales representatives.
As of December 31, 2002, we had 41 sales staff, including sales representatives, sales managers, pre-sale analysts and administrative personnel located in the United States and Canada and 39 sales staff located overseas.
Our marketing staff has a strategic focus on our target markets and those solutions that will facilitate our customers success in solving their most challenging scientific and engineering problems. On December 31, 2002, we had 22 employees in our marketing group, all in the United States and Canada.
No single end-user customer accounted for 10% or more of our revenue for each of the last three years, but agencies of the United States government, both directly and indirectly through system integrators and other resellers, accounted for approximately 79% of our 2002 revenue, 85% of our 2001 revenue and 54% of our 2000 revenue. Information with respect to our international operations and export sales is set forth in Note 14 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements.
Manufacturing
While we design many of the hardware components for all of our products, we subcontract the manufacture of these components, including integrated circuits, printed circuit boards, flex circuits, memory modules, machined enclosures and support structures, cooling systems, high performance cables and other
13
Our manufacturing facilities are located in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. At December 31, 2002, we had 102 full-time employees in manufacturing.
Our systems incorporate some components that are available from one or limited sources. Key components that are sole-sourced include our integrated circuits and processors, interconnect systems and memory products. We obtain integrated circuits for our vector and Cray X1 systems from IBM, for the Cray MTA-2 system from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation and for the Red Storm project from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. IBM also provides packaging for our vector and Cray X1 systems and Red Storm project while Kyocera America, Inc., provides packaging for our MTA-2 system. We obtain custom interconnect components for our Cray X1 and MTA-2 systems from InterCon Systems, Inc., and we obtain I/ O systems for our Cray X1 and MTA-2 systems from Sun Microsystems, Inc. We obtain custom memory products for our vector and Cray MTA-2 systems from Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. We acquire power modules and spray cap cooling systems for the Cray X1 from SAE Power Incorporated and Parker Hannifin Corporation, respectively. We use Celestica, Inc., to assemble our vector and Cray X1 systems and for repair of components for these systems.
Our procurements from these vendors are primarily through purchase orders. We have chosen to deal with sole sources in these cases because of the availability of specific technologies, economic advantages and other factors. We also have sole or limited sources for less critical components, such as peripherals, power supplies, cooling and chassis hardware. Reliance on single or limited source vendors involves several risks, including the possibility of shortages of key components, long lead times, reduced control over delivery schedules and changes in direction by vendors.
Competition
The high performance computer market is intensely competitive. The barriers to entry are high, as is the cost of remaining competitive. We compete by offering systems that have superior sustained performance, price/ performance based on that sustained performance and lower cost of operation coupled with our excellent post-sale service capabilities and established customer relationships.
IBM, SGI, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems offer Type T and low bandwidth massively parallel systems for the high performance market. These systems offer greater performance and price/ performance on small problems and larger problems lacking complexity and offer higher theoretical peak performance.
Internationally we compete primarily with IBM and NEC. While IBM offers large Type T systems, NEC offers high bandwidth vector-based systems with a large suite of ported application programs. We have exclusive rights to market NEC vector processing supercomputers in North America, subject to certain volume requirements; we have non-exclusive rights to market these computers elsewhere. Competition with NEC outside of North America is difficult due to NECs aggressive pricing strategies. We will not meet the required sales volumes under our agreement with NEC. If as a result NEC terminates our exclusive marketing rights in North America, then NEC may compete with us in North America as well. See Factors Related To Our Business Termination by NEC Corporation of our distribution rights for the Cray SX-6 system may decrease our revenue and increase competition.
Each of our competitors named above has substantially greater engineering, manufacturing, marketing and financial resources than we do.
Intellectual Property
We attempt to protect our trade secrets and other proprietary rights through formal agreements with our employees, customers, suppliers and consultants, and through patent protection. Although we intend to protect our rights vigorously, there can be no assurance that our contractual and other security arrangements will be
14
We have a number of patents relating to our hardware and software systems. We license certain patents and other intellectual property from SGI as part of our acquisition of the Cray Research operations. These licenses contain restrictions on our use of the underlying technology, generally limiting the use to historic Cray products, vector processor computers and the Cray X1 systems. Our general policy is to seek patent protection for those inventions and improvements likely to be incorporated into our products and services or to give us a competitive advantage. While we believe our patents and applications have value, no single patent is in itself essential to us as a whole or to any of our key products. Any of our proprietary rights could be challenged, invalidated or circumvented and may not provide significant competitive advantage.
There can be no assurance that the steps we take will be adequate to protect or prevent the misappropriation of our intellectual property. Litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce patents we obtain, and to protect copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and know-how we own. Such litigation, if necessary, could result in substantial expense to us and a diversion of our efforts.
We may infringe or be subject to claims that we infringe the intellectual property rights of others. We currently are defending a lawsuit alleging that the evaporative spray cooling system in our Cray X1 product infringes patents and trade secrets held by a third party, and we intend to defend this lawsuit vigorously. See Legal Proceedings below.
Employees
As of December 31, 2002, we employed 843 employees, of whom 288 were in development and engineering, 102 were in manufacturing, 80 were in sales, 22 in marketing, 249 in service, 51 were in information systems, and 51 were in administration. We also employed 7 individuals on a temporary basis or as interns. We have no collective bargaining agreement with our employees. We have never experienced a work stoppage and believe that our employee relations are excellent.
Factors That Could Affect Future Results
The following factors should be considered in evaluating our business, operations and prospects and may affect our future results and financial condition.
Factors Related To Our Business
If we were unable to produce the Cray X1 system on a sustainable basis, our revenue and profits would be reduced. We expect that our success in 2003 and beyond will depend largely upon our ability to turn the Cray X1 system into a stable production quality product. We depend on our vendors to manufacture components for our systems. If our vendors were unable to manufacture components to our design specifications on a timely basis and with sufficient yields, increased repair charges would reduce margins and profits and any delayed deliveries of production quality Cray X1 systems to customers would adversely affect our revenue and profits. We have received Cray X1 system components with unacceptable yields and are working with our vendors to achieve higher yields of reliable components. We have redesigned, and in the future we may have to redesign further, hardware components of the Cray X1 system because of previously unforeseen defects. Redesign work is costly and could cause delays in the production and sale of Cray X1 systems. We also need to achieve reliable system software to sell Cray X1 systems to production environment governmental and industrial customers. We continue to fix reported software problems and anticipate additional software problems to be reported in the future.
If application programs were not successfully ported to the Cray X1 system, we would have difficulty selling these systems to some customers. To make sales of the Cray X1 system in the automotive, aerospace, chemistry and other engineering and technical markets, including certain governmental users, we must have application programs ported to the Cray X1 system and tuned so that they will achieve high
15
We may not be successful in completing the Red Storm project on time and on budget, which would adversely affect our earnings. Our efforts to complete the development and delivery of the Red Storm project for Sandia National Laboratories in 2004 on time and on budget are subject to significant risks. Our work is pursuant to a fixed-price contract with payment against significant monthly milestones setting out a tight development schedule and technically challenging performance requirements. Our success depends on third-party software development, some of which is to be supplied by Sandia National Laboratories, and the timely availability of the Opteron integrated circuits from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Continued funding of the project is subject to future federal government appropriations. This project is lengthy and technically challenging, and requires a significant investment of engineering and other resources. Falling behind schedule or incurring cost overruns would adversely affect our capital resources and earnings.
If the U.S. government purchases fewer supercomputers, our revenue would be reduced and our profitability would be adversely affected. Historically, sales to the U.S. government and customers primarily serving the U.S. government have represented a significant market for supercomputers. From January 1, 2001, through December 31, 2002, approximately 79% of our product revenue was derived from sales to various agencies of the U.S. government. We expect that our initial sales of Cray X1 systems in 2003 will be predominantly to government agencies in the United States and other countries. Sales to government agencies may be affected by factors outside our control, such as changes in procurement policies, budget considerations and international political developments. If the United States or other governments were to stop, reduce or delay their use and purchases of supercomputers, our revenue would be reduced.
If we lose government support for supercomputer systems, our capital requirements would increase and our ability to conduct research and development would decrease. A few government agencies and research laboratories fund a significant portion of our development efforts. Agencies of the U.S. government historically have facilitated the development of, and have constituted a market for, new and enhanced very high performance computer systems, including the current Cray X1 system and our planned Cray X1e, Black Widow, Cascade and Red Storm development projects. U.S. government agencies may delay or decrease funding of these development efforts due to change of priorities, international political developments or for any other reason. Any such decrease or delay may cause an increased need for capital and may adversely affect our research and development expenditures and our ability to implement our product roadmap.
Procurement proposals based on theoretical peak performance reduce our ability to market our systems. Our high performance computer systems are designed to provide high actual sustained performance on difficult computational problems. Some of our competitors offer systems with higher theoretical peak performance at lower comparable prices, although their actual sustained performance on real applications frequently is a small fraction of their theoretical peak performance. Nevertheless, a number of requests for proposals, primarily from governmental agencies in the United States and elsewhere, continue to have criteria based wholly or significantly on theoretical peak performance. Unless these criteria are changed, we are disadvantaged in these instances by being unable to submit competitive bids, which limits our revenue potential.
Termination by NEC Corporation of our distribution rights for the Cray SX-6 system may decrease our revenue and increase competition. We market a rebranded product known as the Cray SX-6 system, which was developed and is built in Japan by NEC Corporation. This product first became available for delivery in North America in the first quarter of 2002, and we are the exclusive distributor of NEC vector supercomputer systems in North America and a non-exclusive distributor outside North America. If we do not achieve
16
Lower than anticipated sales of new supercomputers would further reduce our service revenue from maintenance service contracts. High performance computer systems are typically sold with maintenance service contracts. These contracts generally are for annual periods, although some are for multi-year periods, and provide a predictable revenue base. Revenue from maintenance service contracts has declined from approximately $125 million in 1999 to approximately $68 million in 2002 as our older systems are withdrawn from service. This revenue is expected to decline further until a sufficient number of our new computer systems are placed in service to balance the withdrawal of our older systems.
Our reliance on third-party suppliers poses significant risks to our business and prospects. We subcontract the manufacture of substantially all of our hardware components for all of our products, including integrated circuits, printed circuit boards, flex circuits and power supplies, on a sole or limited source basis to third-party suppliers. We use a contract manufacturer to assemble our components for the Cray X1 and other systems. We are subject to substantial risks because of our reliance on these and other limited or sole source suppliers. For example:
| | if a supplier did not provide components that meet our specifications in sufficient quantities, then production and sale of our systems would be delayed; | |
| | if a reduction or an interruption of supply of our components occurred, it could take us a considerable period of time to identify and qualify alternative suppliers to redesign our products as necessary and to begin manufacture of the redesigned components; | |
| | if we were ever unable to locate a supplier for a key component, we would be unable to deliver our products; | |
| | one or more suppliers could make strategic changes in their product lines, which might delay or suspend manufacture of our components or systems; and | |
| | some of our key suppliers are small companies with limited financial and other resources, and consequently may be more likely to experience financial and operational difficulties than larger, well-established companies. |
From time to time we have experienced delays in obtaining manufactured components and completed assemblies on a timely basis and in sufficient quantities from our suppliers, which have resulted in delays in the development and production of our products.
Our ability to use the SGI IRIX operating system is limited by our agreement with SGI, and we plan to develop an alternative operating system for our Black Widow and other future products. The technology agreement through which we acquired and licensed patent, know-how and other intellectual property rights from SGI restricts our use of certain SGI technology. Most significantly, the technology agreement limits our use of SGIs IRIX operating system to the Cray X1 product family. We are unlikely to obtain a license from SGI to use its IRIX operating system on successors to the Cray X1 product family, and thus we plan to develop or acquire elsewhere our own UNIX-based operating system for these successor systems, starting with the Black Widow system. Developing a new operating system is a difficult process, and might delay the availability of the Black Widow system.
17
The high failure rate in the Cray T90 installed base may reduce our earnings. Some of the components in the Cray T90 vector computers, a product we acquired through the Cray Research acquisition, have an unusually high failure rate. The cost of servicing the T90 computers exceeds the related service revenue. In connection with our acquisition of the Cray Research business unit from SGI, we recorded a warranty reserve to provide for anticipated future losses on the T90 maintenance service contracts. The balance of this reserve was $5.3 million as of December 31, 2002. We anticipate that almost all of our T90 systems will be deinstalled by the end of 2003. We believe that the warranty reserve balance at December 31, 2002, is a reasonable estimate of the extent to which our costs to service these computers will exceed the revenue generated from existing service contracts. Our estimates may prove to be inaccurate, and our actual costs may differ materially from our estimates. In addition, the T90 failures have adversely affected our reputation for quality products with some customers and may adversely affect sales of our new systems.
If we cannot attract, retain and motivate key personnel, we may be unable to implement effectively our business plan. Our success also depends in large part upon our ability to attract, retain and motivate highly skilled management, technical and marketing and sales personnel. Competition for highly skilled management, technical, marketing and sales personnel is intense, and we may not be successful in attracting and retaining such personnel.
We may infringe or be subject to claims that we infringe the intellectual property rights of others, and we are defending a lawsuit asserting infringement claims. Third parties may assert intellectual property infringement claims against us, and such claims, if proved, could require us to pay substantial damages or to redesign our existing products. Regardless of the merits, any claim of infringement requires management attention and causes us to incur significant expense to defend. For example, we currently are defending a recently commenced lawsuit alleging that the evaporative spray cooling system in our Cray X1 system infringes patents and trade secrets held by a third party. The complaint seeks injunctive relief and damages. While we intend to defend this lawsuit vigorously, pre-trial discovery is just beginning and at this time we cannot predict the outcome of this lawsuit.
We may not be able to protect our proprietary information and rights adequately. We rely on a combination of patent, copyright and trade secret protection, non-disclosure agreements and licensing arrangements to establish, protect and enforce our proprietary information and rights. We have a number of patents and have additional applications pending. There can be no assurance, however, that patents will be issued from the pending applications or that any issued patents will protect adequately those aspects of our technology to which such patents will relate. Despite our efforts to safeguard and maintain our proprietary rights, we cannot be certain that we will succeed in doing so or that our competitors will not independently develop or patent technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our technologies. The laws of some countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent or in the same manner as do the laws of the United States. Although we continue to implement protective measures and intend to defend our proprietary rights vigorously, these efforts may not be successful.
U.S. export controls could hinder our ability to make sales to foreign customers and our future prospects. The U.S. government regulates the export of high performance computer systems such as our products. Occasionally we have experienced delays in receiving appropriate approvals necessary for certain sales, which have delayed the shipment of our products. Delay or denial in the granting of any required licenses could make it more difficult to make sales to foreign customers, eliminating an important source of potential revenue.
Factors Related To Our Industry
If we are unable to compete successfully against larger, more established companies in the high performance computer market, our revenue will decline. The performance of our products may not be competitive with the computer systems offered by our competitors. Many of our competitors are established companies that are well known in the high performance computer market, including IBM, SGI, Hewlett-Packard, NEC (outside of North America), and Sun Microsystems. Each of these competitors has broader product lines and substantially greater research, engineering, manufacturing, marketing and financial resources
18
We may not compete successfully against innovative competitors or new entrants. Our market is characterized by rapidly changing technology, accelerated product obsolescence and continuously evolving industry standards. Our success will depend upon our ability to sell our current products, and to develop successor systems. We will need to introduce new products and features in a timely manner to meet evolving customer requirements. We may not succeed in these efforts. Even if we succeed, products or technologies developed by others may render our products or technologies noncompetitive or obsolete. New companies have capitalized on developments in parallel processing and increased computer performance through networking and cluster systems. Currently, these products are limited in applicability and scalability and can be difficult to program. A breakthrough in architecture or software technology could make cluster systems more attractive to our potential customers. Such a breakthrough would impair our ability to sell our products and reduce our revenue.
General economic and market conditions could decrease our revenue, increase our need for cash and adversely affect our profitability. While much of our business is related to the government sector, which is less affected by short-term economic cycles, a slow-down in the overall U.S. and global economy and resultant decreases in capital expenditures have affected sales to our industrial customers and may continue to do so. Cancellations or delays in purchases would decrease our revenue, increase our need for working capital and adversely affect our profitability.
Factors Related To An Investment In Our Company
We have experienced annual losses from operations prior to 2002, and we may not achieve net income on a consistent basis. We experienced net losses in each full year of our operations prior to 2002. We incurred net losses of approximately $35.2 million in 2001, $25.4 million in 2000, and $34.5 million in 1999. For the year ended December 31, 2002, we had net income of $5.4 million. Whether we will achieve net income on a consistent basis will depend on a number of factors, including:
| | our ability to market and sell the Cray X1 system and other products and maintain the Red Storm project on schedule; | |
| | the level of revenue in any given period; | |
| | our expense levels, particularly for research and development and manufacturing and service costs; | |
| | the cost of servicing the Cray T90 installed base; and | |
| | the terms and conditions of sale or lease for our products. |
Because of the numerous factors affecting our results of operations, there can be no assurance that we will have net income in the future.
Our quarterly operating results may fluctuate significantly. Our operating results are subject to significant fluctuations due to many factors. One or a few system sales may account for a substantial percentage of our quarterly and annual revenue, and thus revenue, net income or loss and cash flow are likely to fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter. This is due to the high average sales price of our products, the timing of purchase orders and product delivery, and our general policy of not recognizing product revenue until our customers accept our products. Red Storm revenue and margin may fluctuate from quarter to quarter due to the level of contract activity, including purchases of materials and changes in the estimates of the cost to complete. Because a number of our prospective customers receive funding from the U.S. or foreign
19
| | the timely availability of acceptable components in sufficient quantities to meet customer delivery schedules; | |
| | changes in levels of customer capital spending; | |
| | the introduction or announcement of competitive products; | |
| | timing of the receipt of necessary export licenses; or | |
| | currency fluctuations and international conflicts or economic crises. |
Our stock price may be volatile. The stock market has been and is subject to price and volume fluctuations that particularly affect the market prices for small capitalization, high technology companies like us. The trading price of our common stock is subject to significant fluctuations in response to many factors, including our quarterly operating results, changes in analysts estimates, our future capital raising activities, announcements of technological innovations by us or our competitors and general conditions in our industry.
A substantial number of our shares are eligible for future sale and may depress the market price of our common stock and may hinder our ability to obtain additional financing. As of December 31, 2002, we had outstanding:
| | 56,039,016 shares of common stock; | |
| | 3,125,000 shares of Series A preferred stock convertible into 3,136,763 shares of common stock, plus any dividends on the Series A preferred stock that are paid in shares of common stock; | |
| | warrants to purchase 8,964,373 shares of common stock; and | |
| | stock options to purchase an aggregate of 13,380,602 shares of common stock, of which 6,811,975 options were then exercisable. |
Almost all of our outstanding shares of common stock may be sold without substantial restrictions. All of the shares purchased under the warrants and exercisable options are available for sale in the public market, subject in some cases to volume and other limitations. All outstanding shares of Series A preferred stock are owned by NEC Corporation. The Series A preferred stock is not convertible into common stock unless the Series A preferred stock is sold or we sell substantially all our assets or we are acquired and the holders of our voting stock own less than a majority of the voting stock of the entity surviving the acquisition. If we sell substantially all our assets or are acquired in such an acquisition, the holder of Series A preferred stock, in lieu of conversion of that stock into common stock, may elect to receive the liquidation preference of $8.00 per share of Series A preferred stock, plus any accrued and unpaid dividends, before any payment is made to the holders of common stock. Any shares of Series A preferred stock that are sold automatically convert into common stock. NEC has agreed not to sell the Series A preferred stock before May 10, 2003. After that date, NEC can sell the Series A preferred stock without restriction, except that NEC cannot sell privately to any person who is, or by such sale would become, a beneficial owner of 5% or more of our common stock. In addition, after May 10, 2003, if requested to do so by NEC, we are obligated to register for public resale the common stock issuable upon conversion of the Series A preferred stock. Warrants to purchase 3,524,523 shares of common stock, with exercise prices ranging from $3.00 to $6.00 per share, expire between September 28, 2003, and November 2, 2004. Warrants to purchase 300,442 shares of common stock, with exercise prices ranging from $4.50 to $6.00 per share, expire between November 7, 2005, and September 3, 2006. The remaining warrants outstanding as of December 31, 2002, to purchase 5,139,408 shares of common stock, with an exercise price of $2.53 per share, expire on June 21, 2009. Sales in the public market of substantial amounts of our common stock, including sales of common stock issuable upon the exercise or conversion of the warrants, options and Series A preferred stock, may depress prevailing market prices for the common stock. Even the perception that sales could occur may impact market prices adversely. The existence of outstanding warrants, options and Series A preferred stock may prove to be a hindrance to our future equity
20
Provisions of our Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws could make a proposed acquisition that is not approved by our Board of Directors more difficult. Provisions of our restated articles of incorporation and restated bylaws could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us. These provisions could limit the price that investors might be willing to pay in the future for our common stock. For example, our Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws provide for:
| | a staggered Board of Directors, so that only two or three of our eight directors are elected each year; | |
| | removal of a director only in limited circumstances and only upon the affirmative vote of not less than two-thirds of the shares entitled to vote to elect directors; | |
| | the ability of our board of directors to issue preferred stock, without shareholder approval, with rights senior to those of the common stock; | |
| | no cumulative voting of shares; | |
| | calling a special meeting of the shareholders only upon demand by the holders of not less than 30% of the shares entitled to vote at such a meeting; | |
| | amendments to our restated articles of incorporation require the affirmative vote of not less than two-thirds of the outstanding shares entitled to vote on the amendment, unless the amendment was approved by a majority of our continuing directors, who are defined as directors who have either served as a director since August 31, 1995, or were nominated to be a director by the continuing directors; | |
| | special voting requirements for mergers and other business combinations, unless the proposed transaction was approved by a majority of continuing directors; | |
| | special procedures must be followed to bring matters before our shareholders at our annual shareholders meeting; and | |
| | special procedures must be followed to nominate members for election to our board of directors. |
These provisions could delay, defer or prevent a merger, consolidation, takeover or other business transaction between us and a third party.
Additional financings may be dilutive to our shareholders. We may need to raise additional equity or debt capital if we experience lower than anticipated product sales due to delays in availability of Cray X1 systems for delivery to customers or general economic conditions, or if we fail to receive sufficient governmental support for our products and research activities. Financings may not be available to us when needed or, if available, may not be available on satisfactory terms and may be dilutive to our shareholders.