Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1415897
16 SMT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 Feature Interview by the I-Connect007 Editorial Team e I-Connect007 Editorial Team recent- ly spoke with John Vaughan, Greg Halvor- son, and Brett McCoy of Summit Interconnect about their capital expenditure (CapEx) strat- egies. ey discuss the challenges they face when planning CapEx aer acquiring fabrica- tors with different capabilities, and the need to have dedicated funds ready for expenditures each year. Nolan Johnson: Let's start with the recent growth at Summit. Greg Halvorson: Yes. Summit is growing both or- ganically and through acquisition. With the tail- winds in the industry, we're typically following the approximate same percentage growth as in the industry in general. Specific to our core mar- ket in defense, the growth is more pronounced. CapEx Planning With Summit Interconnect Johnson: at leads us into our discussion on capital expenditure. ere are two flavors to capital expenditure thinking for you. One of them is what you need in order to integrate the different companies you're bringing together through acquisition, and then what you need in order to meet changing market opportuni- ties. Is that a fair assumption? Halvorson: Yes. We divide our expenditures into growth CapEx, and maintenance CapEx; the driver behind the majority of our decisions are what we would foresee as gaps in the indus- try where we can provide services that we see some of our competitors are weak in, as well as just listening to the customer and following the direction of their technical roadmaps and where they're going, both via capacity require- ments as well as technical requirements. Johnson: Let's start with the growth drivers first. After three months of renovation, and nearly $250,000 of capital investment, Summit Anaheim was excited to open the doors to its pristine 900 square foot laboratory earlier this year.