Frank Hart, Managing Director -- Global Sales and Marketing, PVA

The fourth quarter of 2019 was extremely strong for Air-Vac as a larger-than-normal number of companies used remaining 2019 capital funding to purchase equipment at year-end. The first quarter of 2020 was also very strong , however orders plunged in the second quarter of 2020 due to Covid-19, forcing us to furlough most of our employees and manage the business with a skeleton crew.

We received PPP money which allowed us to bring back all of our employees prior to a ramp up of orders which did happen in the third quarter of 2020. We thought the worst was over but we were wrong as the second wave of Covid-19 hit causing a second round of business uncertainty that resulted in lower than normal fourth quarter machine orders during our busiest time of the year.

Covid-19 travel restrictions significantly complicated our ability to provide on-site installation and training for our equipment, forcing us to implement on-line installation and training which worked far better than we expected. We expect this approach to now become an important part of our business model.

The very slow rollout of Covid-19 vaccines is causing continued major uncertainty which will keep capital spending on the sidelines, however we feel businesses are poised to buy a significant amount of new equipment in the third and fourth quarters of 2021.