A little refresher on contract extensions for those who may be new to the co. and others who may not have taken notice:
San Jose, California - June 15, 2000-- SDL, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDLI) has completed an agreement with SIEMENS Information and Communication Networks Group to supply high-speed optical modulators for SIEMENS' 10 Gb/s dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transmission systems. Optical modulators are key components used in long distance fiber optic networks to encode a high-speed data stream on laser light transmitted in these networks. The use of high-speed optical modulators is expected to increase rapidly to support the deployment of fiber optic networks operating at 10 Gb/s. This agreement supports SIEMENS' 10 Gb/s DWDM deployment plan for years 2000 and 2001.
San Jose, California and Nepean, Ontario - May 30, 2000-- SDL, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDLI) and JDS Uniphase (Nasdaq: JDSU; TSE: JDU) announced an extension to their contract through 2001 under which SDL supplies grating-stabilized 980 nm pump lasers to JDS Uniphase for JDS Uniphase's high-performance erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs). The contract extension more than doubles the base quantities which were agreed upon in the previous contract.
San Jose, California, January 31, 2000-- SDL, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDLI) has reached an agreement with Alcatel Optronics to extend an existing multi-year agreement for the supply of 980 nm laser chips and fiber Bragg gratings up to the year 2003. The agreement covers supply of 980 nm laser chips and fiber Bragg gratings used in pump modules manufactured by Alcatel Optronics for use in undersea fiber optic networks. The extended agreement follows the successful joint qualification and production ramp of these chips announced in August 1999. A significant feature of the extended agreement covers the next generation of the SDL 980 nm chip, the 6540 Series, continuing the successful collaboration of the two firms to produce the highest performance pump modules for undersea DWDM networks. The new pump module will be capable of powers exceeding 180 mW and will be available later this year.
San Jose, California, April 15, 1999-- SDL, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDLI) today announced that it has entered into an 18-month supply agreement with Corning Incorporated (NYSE: GLW) to be the primary supplier of 980 nanometer (nm) pump modules. The final value of the contract will be determined by the number of units and the product mix required by Corning throughout the life of the agreement.
[Four months left on this one.]
I don't know if Lucent has a supply agreement in place, but it wouldn't surprise me based on their announced intentions of entering the submarine market:
Message 13268562
I also don't know if Nortel has an extended agreement, but I suspect they're a customer since SDL's management has often said they sell to all the big players. From the last CC:
Same four 10% customers: Alcatel, Corning, JDSU, and second undersea pump customer [analysts list Tyco].
13 customers were over $1 million.
And for anyone who doubts the strength of SDL's market, here's an interview with Alcatel in the San Jose Mercury News back in March:
Q We're seeing an acquisition wave in the optical space. What do you think is behind that?
A Today we are in an industry that is young because the technology is young, an industry that is young because the demand is new. The telephone is already old, but the demand using these lines for transferring files, for video, for data is absolutely new.
This industry is new also because the big ones like Lucent, Nortel, Alcatel, maybe Cisco, and the other ones, have not yet, I would say, clarified their positions in terms of where they want to go, what kind of standardization they are going to pursue, even what kind of products are we going to offer. So there is still a big, big, big space available for new companies just being created with smart guys, one idea, one product.
The companies that are growing quickly, they very quickly realize that they cannot have the resources to develop all the products that their customers will need. First because it is costly, but also because you need to have a very, very good vision of the future to develop all the products. There are so many possibilities. But that's probably the reason why there are a lot of small companies or start-ups. Some of them die very quickly, a few of them are successful. And these companies, where they develop products, they give the big ones, or the potential acquirers, an extremely good possibility to go quickly to the top.
Today you cannot, of course, develop everything. And if you want to be quick to the market, because the market is growing so fast, when you develop a product three months before your competitors, you make a lot of money -- a lot of money......
Q Where is bandwidth increasing the fastest today?
A If you talk about capital deployed for backbone optical networks, I think the mainstream is still probably in the United States. But what we're probably going to see in 2000, 2001, is Asia coming up.
In terms of the backbone, in terms of big submarine architecture (in Asia), for three years we have done nothing, almost nothing. The perception we have today -- and it is not only a perception, it's the number of calls for bids -- there is something in the range of $8 billion in submarine systems that are in preparation in Asia today.
My feeling is that we will see in Asia the same kind of history as we've seen in Europe, for example, where we are currently building, 30, 40 pan-European networks. In Asia, you have the incumbent operators with their networks and we have the new carriers like Level3 and Qwest coming into Asia to build. And after that, they will have to connect back into the United States for access to Internet servers.
In the United States, I think we will see a change. The capital will be more into the regional metro and enterprise markets. It will be the opposite in Europe, because Europe still needs to equip the networks they are currently building.
>>>>
All while watching the grass grow. . . .
Pat |
