Hi Sam:
Thanks for your kind comments. If I may keep my "customer" and business person's hat on for the moment, I'd like to share some thoughts regarding The farming analogy.
This comes from a joke I'd heard early in my carrier that goes something like this:
" How do you make a little money in the optics ( or your niche market of choice ) business??? - Start with a big one!"
The problem with the optics business (and many small cap technology companies) is that unless you can provide a product that "doesn't cost - it pays"; that is it's purchase provides a positive Return On Investment (ROI), it is quite difficult to exponentially grow sales volume. Much of the hi-tech business is a technology in search of an application (market). That's where all of the margin-killing mom and pop competitors come from.
Once a hi-tech company starts thinking like business people rather than gentlemen-scientists, they realize that nobody buys technology be cause it's cool, but because it solves a problem. This implies that a company has the applications, warranty and repair, and all the things beyond neat technology that really solves a problem.
I think Newport is one of those companies. As I mentioned in my previous post, moving into the vibration isolation stuff arms them with a market offering that has a large growth opportunity because of OEM sales volumes, but may also have a synergistic effect on the rest of their product line. This is because vibration is the enemy of precision optics.
But I digress, you asked:
I don't know about the business side of Melles Griot, but it's unlikely that they could buy New Focus, since it's founder is none other than Newport's original fonder Milton Chang.
Of course, stranger things have happened! As it is, they seem to be acquiring and licensing every vibration isolation technology in sight. As for George Gilder, he sounds like some sort of techno-evangelist. I've never read his work, but I'll do some research.
Regards;
McDuck |
