Dental Laboratories
Industry Profile Report
Dive Deep into the industry with a 25+ page industry report (pdf format) including the following chapters
Industry Overview Industry Structure, How Firms Opertate, Industry Trends, Credit Underwriting & Risks, and Industry Forecast.
Call Preparation Quarterly Insight, Call Prep Questions, Industry Terms, and Weblinks.
Financial Insights Working Capital, Capital Financing, Business Valuation, and Financial Benchmarks.
Industry Profile Excerpts
Industry Overview
The 5,400 dental labs in the US design and fabricate custom dental prosthetic appliances, such as dentures, crowns, and bridges, for dentist offices and practices. Primary products include fixed and removable prosthetic devices, cosmetic devices, and orthodontic devices. Other products include sports guards and anti-snoring devices.
Foreign Competition
Domestic dental labs compete with foreign labs in China, Mexico, and India, which have specialized in offering low-priced partial frames and traditional crowns, especially zirconia-based restorations.
Competition from In-Office Technology
Advances in technology allow dentists to produce certain dental appliances in-office, replacing services from dental labs with their internal operations.
Industry size & Structure
The average dental lab operates out of single location, employs 7 workers, and generates $954,000 annually.
- The dental lab industry consists of about 5,400 firms that employ 38,800 workers and generate $5 billion annually.
- The industry is somewhat concentrated, as the top 50 companies account for over 43% of industry revenue.
- Large firms include Glidewell Laboratories, Modern Dental Labs, Dental Services Group, and National Dentex.
Industry Forecast
Dental Laboratories Industry Growth
Coronavirus Update
May 8, 2022 - Shortages Hit Wider Array Of Products
- Current medical equipment and supply shortages, including items used in dental laboratories, dwarf the problems experienced in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Forbes Magazine. Shortages might have been more urgent in early 2020, but today’s problems include a much wider array of items. Shortages can be traced to component scarcities, backlogged ports, transportation glitches, and lockdowns in China to combat the spread of Covid-19. Healthcare logistics firm Owens & Minor says that 45% of the items it handles are in some way supply constrained.
- Demand is strong for traditional Small Business Administration (SBA) loans now that the Paycheck Protection Program is winding down. “In our footprint, we’re seeing a significant uptick in both the number of loans and dollars disbursed for our microloan and 504 loan programs,” said Angel Marschik, deputy district director for the SBA’s Western Pennsylvania District Office in Pittsburgh. “Our flagship 7(a) loan program numbers are on pace with second-quarter data from fiscal year 2021. As more lenders move away from PPP forgiveness processing, we anticipate those number to increase as well.”
- Demand recovery for dental laboratory products may slow if the number of new COVID-19 cases continues increasing and visits to dentists decrease. New COVID-19 case rates increased in early May, with the seven-day rolling average increasing to roughly 72,300 on May 7, up from 58,000 on May 1 and 30,000 cases per day on April 8, according to a New York Times COVID-19 case tracker. Experts note that the American population has different vaccination rates, levels of previous exposure to the virus, and degrees of underlying health conditions, so the trajectory of new cases could vary. Analysts note that the data regarding new cases are getting less reliable as the public testing infrastructure continues to wind down and home test results are less likely to be reported to officials.
- About 75% of respondents to a survey of randomly selected members of the Society for Human Resources Management said that the firms which they work for have no plans to require employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus if the Biden administration’s mandate for large employers is not enacted. The Supreme Court blocked in January 2022 the Biden administration from enforcing its vaccine-or-test requirements for businesses with 100 or more employees.
- Small-business owners who received taxpayer-subsidized Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans of $150,000 or less during the coronavirus pandemic can seek forgiveness directly with the government through an online portal that was opened in August, allowing them to sidestep the private financial institutions that ran most aspects of the program for 14 months.
- Some businesses that took PPP loans in 2020 but don't apply for forgiveness soon will need to start making payments on the loan plus interest. The PPP loans will automatically convert to a standard loan at 1% interest if a small business does not apply to the SBA for forgiveness within 10 months of the end of the covered period under which they had to spend the money. For some businesses that received a loan when the PPP launched in April 2020, there was an eight-week covered period, which would put the forgiveness application deadline in the middle of July. For most loans operating under the more popular 24-week covered period, that meant a deadline in September 2021.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that cleaning once a day is usually enough to minimize the chance of coronavirus transmission in most settings. Dental laboratories are likely to benefit if the guidance results in lower pandemic-related cleaning costs. The CDC did identify one appropriate situation for deep cleaning: an indoor environment where a case of COVID-19 had been confirmed within the past 24 hours.
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