Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1419905
48 PCB007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 interest rates will be going up. I think peo- ple are seeing that and thinking, "We've got a pretty good economy right now, so if I borrow more today, it will be a bit cheaper for me long- term than if I wait and do something further out." I think it's the publicly traded companies vs. privately held companies that have access to greater capital. I have had this conversation with some who have done industry checks on circuit board fabricators; they are horrified because, of the approximately 200 companies le, 150 of them are not profitable. I said, "Well, they're proba- bly all privately-held companies, so the num- ber you need to look at is EBITDA, not prof- its, because you're spending the money on capital so you can take advantage of acceler- ated depreciation and not pay taxes. If you've got the EBITDA to do that, that's great, you're reinvesting." But publicly traded com- panies must beat to a different drummer so they may do things differently. A company like TTM, which has more access to capital than I would ever have, has a lot larger need for cap- ital equipment, and is probably more strategic in how they spend it, may find that they have internal restrictions that I don't have on how much they can spend on CapEx. Yet while I don't have those restrictions, the one I have is just simply that I don't want to spend too much money because I don't want to go broke. Matties: Exactly. When you're looking back to the CapEx expenditure for a specific period, are you looking at a year in advance? What sort of horizon are you looking at when you're planning your CapEx? Bigelow: Every year—which is coming up, probably in an October timeframe—I will put together a capital plan as a five-year outlook. For next year, I have my needs and wants, and I put that list together. en the next year, I will probably have fewer needs and a couple of wants. Some of the needs might be from my want list in the earlier year and I work my way out. I always plug in a number for miscella- neous manufacturing and miscellaneous facil- ity. We own our facility, so we must be aware of those CapEx needs as well. Something may happen that requires we do something to the building vs. spending on the manufacturing equipment side. When I do this, it usually results in a huge number. I know what I can spend so some- times I will blow the budget in one year and then the next year I cut back a little bit on what I spend, but I'm rolling the budget, work- ing it where I need to. ere are some items which for several years we kept pushing out, and there are some things which have popped into a year which we hadn't planned on. But by trying to look at it that way, being flexible and having conversations, we know what's about to break, what has broken, what new things we should be looking at, and we factor that in. As we are a small operation, we can all talk about it easily. Matties: So, the replacement would be straight- forward. You see what's aging, what's wearing IMI's new purchase of a Micro-Vu Excel 661UC vision CMM has expanded their metrology capabilities in terms of accuracy, repeatability and speed.