April 10, 2000 - Lightpath news
Local glass company enjoys its continued growth
abqtrib.com
By Sue Vorenberg Tribune reporter
Automation, unique products and a booming telecommunications market have given LightPath Technologies Inc. stock a wild ride in the past year.
The company's stock price has grown nearly 1,400 percent, from $2.94 a share in March 1999 to $44 per share in March 2000. The Albuquerque company is also expanding at a rapid pace, leasing an additional 17,000-square-foot facility and building a 5,000-square-foot clean room. Its employee headcount has grown from 25 to 65 in the last six months, with more hires expected in the near future.
Don Lawson, president and CEO, credits the company's quality products, base technology and being in the right market at the right time as major factors in the company's recent growth spurt.
"You work hard to get yourself in this kind of situation," Lawson said. "This is what every small company strives for. When you double the number of employees in such a short time it takes time and management to handle it carefully. But we feel we've put in place the right management to handle the kind of growth we expect in the future."
The company manufactures products for the telecommunications and optics industries. Its Gradium glass, which refracts light in a unique way, has been the backbone of the company for years.
"The company decided two years ago to follow the strategic path to take its proprietary glass material and its professional packaging ability in fiber optics and focus on the telecom markets," Lawson said. "The transition jump-started the growth we're experiencing now, and we see ourselves continuing to stay totally focused in that field."
LightPath's main products today are collimators, telecom products that couple light signals in and out of individual fibers within fiber-optic cables, allowing the signals to be rerouted or changed to electronic signals.
"They're the nuts and bolts of the optical system -- millions of pieces are required each year," said Boyd Hunter, director of technical consulting and business development. The company has also designed several of its own machines to automate the polishing, shaping and testing of its optics products, which has saved money, improved quality and stepped up production. Through automation LightPath can correct imperfections in the glass and assure a more consistent product. It also manufactures its lenses in a clean room, which further eliminates the chance of imperfections damaging its product quality.
"A lot of work in the industry is far too manual," Hunter said. "One of the fundamental differences between us and our competitors is automation. It's all around the right way to do the job."
The first incarnation of the company, Integrated Solar Technologies Corp., formed in Taos in 1985 to improve solar energy technology by making optics that could bend sunlight as the sun traveled across the sky. To do this, the company developed its Gradium glass, which has a high refractive index, 1.8 on one side of the glass and 1.6 on the other.
"A refractive index is basically a way of measuring the optical density of the material," Hunter said. "The higher the number, the more strongly it bends light."
In 1987 management realized the company's unique optics had potential for more applications and entered the imaging optics field. In 1989 ISTC changed its name to LightPath Technologies Limited Partnership and moved to San Jose, Calif., and then to Tucson. In June 1992, the company changed its name to LightPath Technologies Inc. LightPath went public in February 1996 and returned to New Mexico.
"We decided to set up in New Mexico for a few reasons," Lawson said. "We felt we had access to good technical talent here, and a quality labor force. We also had good access to the national laboratories -- Los Alamos and Sandia. And then there was the city economic group (Albuquerque Economic Development, Inc.) -- Gary Tonjes did a great job of making our transition seamless. Plus it was all a homecoming of sorts because we started out as a New Mexico corporation."
LightPath is still the only source in the world for Gradium glass and for large axial-gradient lenses with the company's unique refractive properties. It makes and sells lenses as large as 80 millimeters and as small as two millimeters. In the future, the company plans to continue its growth in the telecommunications market. Currently is focused on collimators, LightPath plans to expand into a wider range of telecommunications products, particularly in the optical-components sector of telecom.
"Specifically, we are taking advantage of our knowledge base in the areas of optics, materials and packaging automation to develop enabling optical components for future switching products," Hunter said. "We're going to take a run at it just like everyone else." |
