The AGM
ottawacitizen.com
Friday 30 October 1998
JDS Fitel to send workers
packing -- to new Nepean
campus
First phase set to open in December, annual
meeting told
Bert Hill
The Ottawa Citizen
JDS Fitel will start moving
about 500 employees in
December into the first phase
of its new Nepean campus on
Merivale Road.
But while chief executive
Jozef Straus joked with
shareholders yesterday that
he hoped he was getting "at
least a little office in a corner
so I can start packing," he
and other JDS executives will
stay at the current
headquarters on Hunt Club
Road for at least another
year.
Typical of a company that
loves to keep its cards close
to the chest, the
telecommunications products
company waited until its
annual general meeting yesterday to finally reveal the design for a campus
that could eventually cost $100 million and cover 900,000 square feet.
Other companies hire public-relations companies to draw attention to big
building plans before the shovel goes into the ground.
But JDS waited a year after construction started at the south end of
Merivale Road near Highway 16 to finally reveal its plans.
The first 257,000-square-foot phase includes a four-storey manufacturing
building built to rigid, heavy-duty standards required for production of
fibre-optic products.
"We needed a building that won't move at all because most of our work is
done under miscroscopes that allow only a variation of a hair's width," said
Zita Cobb, chief financial officer.
It will shelter the components and modules division, a product line that
represents 65 per cent of JDS Fitel's sales and which grew a staggering 111
per cent last year. It will also provide space for people involved in research
and development of these products.
In addition, a new building for sales and marketing employees will open in
December.
Work will probably start soon on a second phase of 200,000 square feet
shortly, but company officials, characteristically, wouldn't say for sure. Most
of that space will also be devoted to manufacturing.
Sales of the company rose 98 per cent last year and profits rose 112 per
cent. It increased employment by 600 people, including 200 in the last
quarter, and now has 1,800 employees.
The company shows no signs of slowing, though many of the companies it
sells to have slowed or stumbled. The reason, Mr. Straus said, is that JDS
makes "the bits and pieces" that everybody in the industry seems to need.
If one traditional customer has weak demand because of competitive
pressure than another will probably pick up the slack.
JDS Fitel makes the fibre-optics related products that allow
telecommunications companies to dramatically expand capacity of
fibre-optic connections to meeting exploding demand from the Internet and
other sources.
**********************************************************************
Pat; re U.S. listing of the stock.
I asked the question during the Q&A and Zita Cobb said she is aware of the interest in having a U.S. listing and considered it when they went IPO. They said that it is under on going review. After the meeting in a informal discussion with Ms. Cobb she very uncharacteristcally (she has a rep as being very streight forward) hedged when I reasked the question.
Other notes from agm
Jozef Straus said WDM is under large scale deployment and expected to grow to $4.3 billion by 2001 and 8.5 billion by 2005.
Companies are looking for one stop shops when buying and JDS is in that position.
JDS is working with several other companies on the submarine cable market but they are not dealing directly.
They have $205 million in cash.
One analyst I talked to suggested that JDS will be a multi billion dollar company. He would not give guidance on time.
The overall impression I got from the company was that everything is going well and expect to see the second building going up shortly. Ms. Cobb said it would take about a year to build.
Regards
Glenn |
