OTHER RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

12 Months Ended

Oct. 30, 2016

OTHER RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS [Abstract]

OTHER RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

NOTE 18 - OTHER RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

The executive chairman of the board of the Company is also a director of an entity that provided secure managed information technology services to Photronics. Another director of the Company is the chief executive officer and chairman of the board of this entity. Since 2002 the Company has contracted with this entity for services it has provided to all of the Company's facilities. The Company incurred expenses for services provided by this entity of $0.2 million, $1.0 million, and $1.2 million in fiscal years 2016, 2015 and 2014, respectively, and had an outstanding balance of less than $0.1 million as of November 1, 2015.

Commencing in July of 2016 the Company entered into a contract for information technology services with a parent entity for which a member of our board of directors serves as the chief executive officer and chairman of the board of a wholly owned subsidiary of that entity. The executive chairman of the Company is also a director on the subsidiary company as well.   During 2016 we incurred expenses of $0.3 million from the parent entity and had payables outstanding to the parent entity of $0.2 million at October 30, 2016.

The Company purchases photomask blanks from an entity of which an officer of the Company is a significant shareholder. The Company purchased $16.3 million, $20.2 million and $20.1 million of photomask blanks from this entity in 2016, 2015 and 2014, respectively, for which the amount owed to this entity was $2.7 million at October 30, 2016, and $4.5 million at November 1, 2015.

The Company believes that the terms of its transactions with the related parties described above were negotiated at arm's length and were no less favorable to the Company than terms it could have obtained from unrelated third parties. See Note 5 for additional related party transactions.