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Technology Stocks : JDS Uniphase (JDSU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pat mudge who wrote (4471)	1/14/2000 2:49:00 PM
From: Kent Rattey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24042

Tiny Nepean company sold for $22 million Bert Hill The Ottawa Citizen It's not getting any cheaper to buy hot technology companies, no matter how small they are. New filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show that JDS Uniphase paid $22 million in stock to buy tiny Oprel Technologies of Bells Corners. Terms of the deal were not disclosed last month when JDS bought the maker of specialized amplifiers used in fibre-optic networks. By most standards -- the ratio of sale price to annual revenues or employees -- the Oprel deal can take its place alongside other deals in recent years that have attracted much more attention. And because JDS stock continues to accelerate in value, the Oprel deal, involving 95,458 shares, just keeps getting richer. Since the stock price was set Jan. 5, the value of the deal has risen to $26 million and will undoubtedly accelerate as JDS approaches another stock split. It's a sign of how a combination of a red-hot market for technology stocks, promising technology and ambitious acquisition programs of bigger companies is turning out new millionaires on a regular basis. In the case of Oprel, the big winner is Tibor Devenyi, 70, a Hungarian refugee physicist who fled his native country in 1956 with his pregnant wife, Esther, and just the few personal belongings they could stuff in a small briefcase. Following the stars and avoiding the Soviet military, they made their way across the border to an Austrian refugee camp. Six months later, they arrived in North America. They received a warm Canadian welcome in a Montreal prison -- the only facility apparently capable of sheltering a flood of Hungarians fleeing the Soviet crackdown. "When we arrived we were put into a prison because there was no other place to put us," Mr. Devenyi told the Citizen. "Half of the prison was for minor criminals, and the other half was for new arrivals like us." Despairing of supporting his growing family in a strange land, Mr. Devenyi finally found work that made use of his training in physics and his knack for electronics. He eventually rose to head the physics labs at Bell-Northern Research where he worked alongside Jozef Straus and other researchers who would eventually form JDS Optical, the forerunner of JDS Uniphase, in 1981. Mr. Devenyi retired from Nortel in 1993, planning to take up a long-neglected hobby of pottery. But Nortel came looking for someone who could produce circuit-testing equipment. With $10,000 in borrowed money, he started Oprel and met the target for delivery of the product just in time. The company grew much slower than JDS over the past six years, searching for fresh capital and going through management changes. Mr. Devenyi said science, not business, was his real strength. But while the company business was not huge, Oprel developed technology that has become increasingly important to the transmission of telecommunications traffic on tiny streams of light. Oprel makes amplifying products, based on a rare element called erbium, which allows light to travel on thin strands of glass farther without having to go through the expensive process of electronic conversion. JDS Uniphase has emerged as the giant of the fibre-optic parts industry by buying or developing most of the nuts and bolts that generate and manage traffic. It makes amplifiers, but was not a strong player in the erbium field. Recently, another key erbium supplier, Oak Industries of California, was snapped up by Corning Inc., a traditional powerhouse of the industry. While JDS said the Corning-Oak deal would not shut off supplies, the deal for Oprel will undoubtedly improve the JDS market position. JDS co-chair Mr. Straus said last month that Oprel "products and technologies will further strengthen our growing product portfolio." Oprel also makes testing gear and other fibre-optic equipment.