Except for historical information contained herein, this "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements were based on various factors and were derived utilizing numerous important assumptions and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Important assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, include but are not limited to: competition in the Company's existing and potential future product lines of business; the Company's ability to attract and retain key personnel and employees; the Company's ability to obtain financing on acceptable terms if and when needed; uncertainty as to the Company's future profitability, uncertainty as to the future profitability of acquired businesses or product lines, uncertainty as to any future expansion of the Company, uncertainty as to the Company's ability to adequately obtain raw materials and components from foreign markets in light of geopolitical developments and the effect of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) on our business and operations (including with respect to supply chain disruptions), and those of our customers, suppliers and other third parties . Other factors and assumptions not identified above were also involved in the derivation of these forward-looking statements and the failure of such assumptions to be realized as well as other factors may also cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. The Company assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting such forward-looking statements. Past results are no guaranty of future performance. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the dates they are made. When used with this Report, the words "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "plans", "intends", "will" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.





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Coronavirus (COVID-19)


We have been actively monitoring the coronavirus ("COVID-19") outbreak and its impact globally. Our primary focus to this point has been to ensure the health and safety of our employees. To that end, we have adopted social distancing practices where appropriate, implemented travel restrictions, and have taken actions to ensure that our facilities are cleaned and sanitized regularly. These are novel and challenging times and the magnitude of this crisis is requiring us to consider all options to promote the safety of employees, including, where appropriate, or where required to comply with foreign, national, state or local governmental authority recommendations, guidelines, and/or mandates, the temporary reduction or suspension of work at certain of our locations and production facilities to protect employees and curb the spread of the coronavirus. All of these factors have adversely impacted our operating results. In particular, the aerospace sector, for which we rely on for a significant part of our business, has been faced with significant reductions to its business due to reduced air travel which has negatively affected new order bookings and has materially and adversely affected the Company's revenues to date. Due to the timing of the COVID-19 outbreak, our new order levels during the first quarter of 2021 have seen continued substantial reductions, while new orders in the second, third, and fourth quarters of 2021 were substantially higher at approximately $6.0 million, $6.1 million and $5.2 million, respectively, and new orders in the first quarter of 2022 were approximately $4.1 million. Significant geopolitical developments across Europe and Asia have and may continue to restrict our ability to procure raw materials and components such as nickel and integrated circuits, as well as impact our ability to sell our products into China, Russia and other Eastern European and Asian regions. We continue to be unable to predict the extent of the impact the pandemic will have on our financial position and operating results for the remainder of 2022 due to numerous uncertainties (including the impact of the COVID Omicron variant), supply chain disruptions, rising costs and the impact on the aerospace sector, but the impact could be material during any future period affected either directly or indirectly by this pandemic. The longer-term impacts from the pandemic are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted.





Executive Level Summary


CVD has continued to serve the advanced materials markets with chemical vapor and thermal process equipment for over 38 years. Our products are used in research and development centers as well as in production environments. We develop, design, manufacture and service a broad range of chemical vapor deposition, gas control and other state-of-the-art process equipment and solutions used in advanced materials and coatings. We serve markets ranging from academic/research initiatives to industrial applications. With the adoption of our technology in these markets we see increased usage of our systems across production environments. Major target markets for our business include advanced nanomaterials, batteries and Silicon Carbide for high power electronics; aerospace gas turbine engines and structural components; medical devices (such as implants); advanced semiconductor devices and Silicon for solar cells; and carbon nanotubes and nanowires. Our Application Laboratory supports the development of new material systems and processes. Our CVD Materials group provides material coating services, process development support and process startup assistance with the focus on enabling tomorrow's technologiesTM. Our Mesoscribe product line continues to support the aerospace and defense markets with robust direct write instrumentation. Our CVD Tantaline subsidiary which underwent a restructuring and consolidation in 2021 provides chemical-resistant coating services to many industrial applications.

Based on more than 38 years of experience, we use our capabilities in process development, engineering and vertical manufacturing to transform new applications into mainstream manufacturing solutions. We have built a significant library of design expertise, know-how and innovative solutions to assist our customers in developing these intricate processes and to accelerate their production and commercialization. This library of equipment design solutions, along with our manufacturing and systems integration facilities, allows us to provide application-specific design, process and manufacturing solutions to our customers.





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To expand our presence into various growth markets, we are developing a line of proprietary standard use products to complement our customized legacy systems. Historically, we manufactured products for research and development on an application-specific basis to meet an individual customer's specific research and production requirements. Our proprietary systems leverage the technological expertise that we have developed through designing these custom systems into a broader standardized product line. The standard product line is easily configured from a wide range of available options to meet diverse product and budgetary requirements. Manufacturing these standardized systems in higher volumes provides us the flexibility to reduce both the cost and delivery time of our systems. These systems, which we market and sell under the EasyTube® and CVD product lines, are sold to universities, research laboratories, and production companies in the United States and throughout the world.

Sales of our proprietary standard systems, custom systems and process solutions have been driven by our installed customer base, which includes Fortune 500 companies. The performance and success of our products has historically driven repeat orders from existing customers as well as generated business from new customers. Furthermore, with our proprietary solutions and expanded focus on "accelerating the commercialization of tomorrow's technologies"TM we have been developing a new customer base in addition to growing with our existing customers. We have generally gained new customers through our industry reputation, as well as limited print advertising and trade show attendance (which has been negatively impacted by COVID-19 in 2020, 2021 and into 2022).

Our core competencies in equipment and software design, manufacturing and process development are used to engineer our finished products and to accelerate the commercialization path of our customer base. Our proprietary real-time software allows for rapid configuration, and provides our customers with enabling tools to understand, optimize and repeatedly control their processes. These factors significantly reduce cost, improve quality and reduce the time it takes between customers' orders and the shipment of our products. Our Application Laboratory allows customers the option to bring up their process tools in our Application Laboratory and to work collaboratively with our scientists and engineers to optimize process performance.

In 2021 and into 2022 our focus has been on our growth markets, the development of standard product solutions and being able to provide solutions from gas/liquid storage through process and process by-product treatment. This has allowed us to provide increased value to our customers.







2022 Developments


In 2021, we launched our strategy to transition the focus of the Company to standardized products serving global growth application markets. Our growth opportunities in 2022 are consistent with our strategic plan to address and serve growth production markets.





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In the first three months of 2022, and in the month of April 2022, total Company orders were approximately $4.1 million and $7.2 million, respectively. This $11.3 million year to date total for April 2022 included 14 system orders for Silicon Carbide ("SiC") growth. There have been twenty (20) systems ordered for our PVT-150 system which has been developed for SiC growth over the last 6 months and planned to ship in 2022. In total there were eighteen (18) CVD systems booked in the first four months of 2022.

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