Digital Power Corp (DPW) SEC Annual Report (10-K) for 2015

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

or

Commission File Number 1-12711

DIGITAL POWER CORPORATION

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

48430 Lakeview Blvd, Fremont, California 94538-3158

(Address of principal executive offices, including zip code)

510-657-2635

(Registrant's telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.

Yes ☐   No ☑

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act.

Yes ☐    No ☑

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 preceding 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 ☑    No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files).

Yes ☑    No ☐

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§229.405 of this chapter) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant's 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.   ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer or a smaller reporting company.  See the definitions of "large accelerated filer," "accelerated filer" and "smaller reporting company" in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act).

Yes ☐      No ☑

As of June 30, 2015, the aggregate market value of the voting common stock held by non-affiliates was approximately $3,063,382 based upon the closing price of the common stock on the NYSE MKT on that date. Shares of common stock held by each officer and director and by each person who owns 5% or more of the outstanding common stock have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes.

As of March 22, 2016, the number of shares of common stock outstanding was 6,775,971.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

None.

INDEX

As used in this annual report, the terms "we," "us," "our," "Company," "Digital," or "Digital Power," mean Digital Power Corporation, a California corporation, and its subsidiaries unless otherwise indicated.

The following information should be read in conjunction with the Consolidated Financial Statements and the notes thereto located elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This Report, and in particular "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations," contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In this report, the words "believes," "anticipates," "intends," "expects," "plans," "should," "will," "seeks" and words of similar import identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, the following: our history of net losses; our dependence on third parties, including Advice Electronics Ltd., to design certain of our standard products; the possible limits of our strategic focus on our power supply component competencies; our dependence on a few major customers; uncertainty of market acceptance of our products; the effects of the ongoing slowdown affecting world financial markets; and other factors referenced in "Risk Factors" and other sections of this Annual Report. Given these uncertainties, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. We assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect actual results or changes in factors or assumptions affecting such forward-looking statements.

PART I

ITEM 1.        DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS.

General

We are a solution-driven organization that designs, develops, manufactures and sells high-grade customized and flexible power system solutions for the most demanding applications in the medical, military, telecom and industrial markets.  We are highly focused on high-grade and custom product designs for the commercial, medical and military/defense markets, where customers demand high density, high efficiency and ruggedized products to meet the harshest and/or military mission critical operating conditions.  We are a California corporation originally formed in 1969, and our common stock trades on the NYSE MKT under the symbol "DPW". Our corporate headquarters are located in the heart of the Silicon Valley. 

Our wholly-owned UK -based subsidiary, Digital Power Limited ("DPL"), located in Salisbury, England, operates under the brand name of "Gresham Power Electronics" ("Gresham"). DPL designs, manufactures and sells power products and system solutions mainly for the European marketplace, including power conversion, power distribution equipment, DC/AC (Direct Current/Active Current) inverters and UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) products. Our European defense business is specialized in the field of naval power distribution products . 

We believe that we are one of the first companies in the power solutions industry to introduce a product strategy based on the premise that products developed with an extremely flexible architecture enable rapid modifications to meet unique customer requirements for non-standard input and output voltages. We continue to sell products with flexible configurations to customers serving diversified applications in telecom, industrial and medical market segments. We believe our high density and high efficiency power products have set an industry standard for providing high-power output in a small packaging sizes.

We market and sell our products to many diverse market segments, including the telecom, industrial, medical and military/defense industries.  Our products serve a global market, with an emphasis on North America and Europe.  We offer a broad product variety, including a full custom product design, standard and modified-standard products. Our unique high-speed switching power rectifiers include but are not limited to defense and commercial custom power products, server power supplies, front-end, open-frame, enclosed, CompactPCI, MicroTCA, Desktop/Wall-mount Adaptors, Power over Ethernet POE) and other product solutions. Our product power range is from 10 watts to 75,000 watts.

In an effort to provide high quality products, better control our manufacturing costs and sell our products in a competitive pricing to support our markets, we have entered into several contract manufacturing agreements with several manufacturers both domestically and in Asia, primarily China. To comply with the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations ("ITAR") regulations, we manufacture our military products by a domestic manufacturer that complies with US ITAR regulations and is certified to perform such manufacturing services.

We intend to remain an innovative leader in the development of cutting-edge custom power solutions and feature rich products to meet any customer needs and requirements, rugged power systems to meet harsh and extreme operation environment conditions, and high efficiency, high-density and scalable power systems. 

Power System Solutions

We provide custom power system solutions, high-grade flexibility series power supply products, off-the-shelf products and value-added services to diverse industries and markets including military/defense, telecom, medical and industrial. We believe that our solutions leverage a combination of low leakage power emissions, high power density, superior power efficiency, design flexibility and short time to market.

Custom Power System Solution.    We provide high-grade custom power system solutions to several customers in multiple industry segments. Our custom solution technology includes full Digital Signal Processing ("DSP") control, digital load sharing intelligent power management and customizable firmware. The products feature high power density, special layout and multiple outputs to meet each of our customer's unique requirements. We combine our power design capabilities with the latest circuit designs to provide complete power solutions for virtually any need. In the design of custom power solutions, we work closely with our customers' engineering teams to develop mechanical enclosures to ensure 100% compatibility with any hosted platform.

Our standard contract for custom power solutions includes a multi-year high-volume production forecast that allows us to secure long-term production guarantees (and therefore possible savings on manufacturing costs for volume orders) while providing an environment that promotes the development of our intellectual property ("IP") portfolio.  We believe that this business model provides an incentive to our customers to be committed to high-volume production orders.

High-Grade Flexibility Series Power Supply Product . We offer our feature rich based power rectifiers that support flexible configuration and high-grade design implementation. This includes innovative designs and implementation including DSP control for Power Factor Correction ("PFC") and DC/DC, synchronous rectifier outputs under DSP control, two phase PFC, hot pluggable, current sharing and other features. While some of our customers have special requirements that include a full custom design, other customers may require only certain electrical changes to standard power supply products, such as modified output voltages and unique status and control signals, and mechanical repackaging tailored to fit the specific application. We offer a wide range of standard and modified standard products that can be easily integrated with any platform across our diversified market segments. 

Value-Added Services .    In addition to our custom solutions and high-grade flexibility series proprietary products that we offer, we also provide value-added services to original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs").  We incorporate an OEM's selected electronic components, enclosures, cable assemblies and other compliance components into our power system solutions to produce a power subassembly that is compatible with the OEM's own equipment and specifically tailored to meet the OEM's needs.  We purchase parts and components that the OEM itself would otherwise attach to, or integrate with, our power systems, and provide the OEM with the integration and installation service, thus eliminating a complex, time-consuming and costly integration.  We believe that this value-added service is well suited to those OEMs who wish to reduce their vendor base and minimize their investment in manufacturing that leads to increased fixed costs.  Based on these value-added services, the OEMs do not need to build assembly facilities to manufacture their own power sub-assemblies and thus are not required to purchase individual parts from many vendors.

Our products have a warranty period from date of shipment to the customer.

Markets

We sell our custom power system solutions, high-grade flexibility series power supply products and value-added services to customers in a diverse range of commercial and defense industries and markets throughout the world, with an emphasis on North America and Europe. Our current customer base consists of approximately 220 companies, some of which are served through our partner channels. We serve the North American power electronics market primarily through our domestic corporation, Digital Power Corporation; the European marketplace is served through DPL, our wholly-owned subsidiary.

We sell products to our OEM customers through direct sales or through our sales channels , including our manufacturers' representatives and distributors.  Our sales strategy is to identify and focus on strategic accounts. This strategy allows us to maintain a close and direct relationship with such accounts, which positions us as the supplier of choice for these customers' challenging, innovative and demanding new product requirements.  In striving for additional market share, we simultaneously seek to strengthen our traditional sales channels of manufacturer representatives and distributors. We plan to continue to build more channels and increase our market share through 2016 .

Commercial Customers . We serve global commercial markets including medical, telecom, and industrial companies. Our products are used in a variety of applications and operate in a broad range of systems where customers require mission critical power reliability and occasionally extreme environmental conditions. 

Medical (Patient Contact and Non-patient Contact):

Telecom :

Industrial Process Equipment and Embedded Controls:

Military/Defense Customers . We have developed a broad range of rugged product solutions for the military and defense market, featuring the ability to withstand harsh environments.  These ruggedized product solutions, which include both custom modifications and full custom designs, are designed for combat environments and meet the requirements of our defense customers. We are compliant with the regulations of ITAR and are an approved vendor for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army.

At the core of every military electronic system is a power supply. Mission critical systems require rugged high performance power platforms that will operate and survive the harsh environmental conditions placed upon such systems. Our power supplies, which include the following, function effectively in these severe military environments:

Our military products meet the relevant defense standards MIL-STD in accordance with the Defense Standardization Program Policies and Procedures. Space, weight, output power, electromagnetic compatibility, power density and multiple output requirements are only part of the challenges that any military power supply design faces. With many decades of experience, our engineering teams meet these tough challenges. Our power supplies are a critical component of many major weapon systems worldwide.

Our wholly-owned subsidiary DPL develops and manufactures some military and defense products manly being deployed in international naval fleets.

Full custom military project services: