"They run Daktronics like a private company," Dyer said. "Time will tell if that's the right strategy." Analysts say the firm's past success has hinged on three factors: its longevity in the market (it was founded by two South Dakota State University professors in 1968), its reputation for service, and a made-in-America advantage in building huge LED displays. What Daktronics doesn't have is much of a technological edge; it buys LED components in Asia and assembles them into large displays controlled by Daktronics' own software.

"Daktronics tends to be viewed as the best at what they do," Dyer said. "As a result, they can sell products for 5 to 10 percent more than competitors can." Chief adversary is economy In addition, Daktronics has some built-in protection against competition from the Asian firms that have traditionally dominated the video screen business.

"A lot of our business is building video displays to order," Morgan said. "Mitsubishi may have a cost-of-production advantage over us, but in the end they have shipping costs and delay time to get their products here." But these days, Daktronics' chief adversary is the economy.

"Digital billboards ramped up very quickly and turned down very quickly a little less than a year ago," Morgan said. "Our billboard revenue went down to just a trickle." The billboard business isn't expected to recover until at least 2011, he said.

Even so, the market for digital billboards will come back because they represent an untapped advertising market, Dyer said.

"There's half a million billboards in this country, and only about 1,500 have been converted to digital," Dyer said.

Steve Alexander --612-673-4553 To see more of the Star Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.startribune.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, Star Tribune, Minneapolis Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.