High-tech manufacturers say that with orders and backlogs beginning to build, they're looking for better times in 2010.

Key Tronic Corp., a Spokane Valley-based contract manufacturer, recently removed a salary freeze it had instituted about a year earlier and has revised its fiscal year 2010 second-quarter net income projections upward, says Craig Gates, the company's president and CEO.

"We've upped our guidance from 3 cents a share up to 10 cents" for the quarter, based in part on an increase in new customers, Gates says. Key Tronic now is hiring, albeit cautiously, he says.

The products Key Tronic manufactures range from specialty printers and multimedia touch panels to gaming and medical devices.

"I think because of all the new customers we've added, we're enjoying a bit more prosperity than most. Forty percent of our business this quarter is due to new customers we've gotten in the last 18 months," Gates says.

In addition, Key Tronic customers that had been hard-hit by the recession have started "bouncing up off the bottom" and increasing their orders again, Gates says.

MacKay Manufacturing Inc., of Spokane Valley, also is expecting a positive 2010, with its backlogs having increased and its recent expansion into the food-service and defense fields, says Mike MacKay, its president. About 60 percent of MacKay Manufacturing's business still is in the medical equipment sector, which MacKay predicts will remain strong in the coming year.

Though the company saw its sales dip about 9 percent or 10 percent in 2009, that was off of an increase of 35 percent in the previous year, and MacKay says things could have been much worse.

"Given the conditions we see nationwide, we are feeling very, very lucky," he says. He says that like Key Tronic, MacKay Manufacturing is hiring. In addition, it has taken advantage of "rock-bottom prices" to replace some aging equipment.

MacKay says he's hearing similar positive statements from others in the high-tech industry.

"Machine-tool dealers are seeing life, the silicon wafer industry is picking up, and electronics is showing some life," MacKay says.

"Without exception, our customers are poised for growth in '10—some customers with slight growth, some with significant growth," he says. "We are starting to see a pickup not only in new business, but in old business that had died off."

Wayne Williams, CEO of Liberty Lake-based Telect Inc., said recently that company has laid groundwork that it hopes will pay off in 2010.

"We're looking for more base hits and doubles, rather than home runs, but those base hits are paying off—we expect a stronger 2010 because of them," Williams says.