When SDLI surpassed 200 employees, they became no longer eligible for SBIR (small business something of other) grants which are major corporate welfare programs funding research by small and hopefully innovative companies. As I understand it, SDLI actually held the line below 200, even at the expense of growth, to maintain these programs for a further year, before finally bursting to their present size. These will disappear.
SDLI also has several ARPA grants which are multi-million initiatives to develop technologies of interest to the government, often in large consortia. ARPA (and SBIR also) require the firms to provide matching funds, so are good subsidies of research a company would do anyway, but not worth doing simply for the gov't money.
Finally, it wouldn't surprise me if included in this number is its program with Lockheed (or Northrup, can't remember which) which comprised a huge chunk of SDLI's business in recent years.
My take is that gov't funds are a great thing if you can get them, but as an investor I am wary of so-called SBIR shops who live off of escalating gov't contracts and have no established product lines. I don't believe SDLI falls into this category. |
