Light path
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aus "The Motley Fool":
LightPath Shines On
By Brian Lund (TMF Tardior)
March 8, 2000
While the major market indices have refracted down this week, LightPath Technologies (Nasdaq: LPTHA) has
reflected skyward. The optics company announced on Monday that it has been qualified by Avenex
Corporation (Nasdaq: AVNX) to supply high-performance optical components for its telecommunications
products. The news had sent LightPath's stock up 38% by Tuesday's close, which brings the company's gain
since November 1 to about 1700%.
LightPath started its journey in 1985, when it was looking for a way to improve solar-energy technology. In the
course of its research, LightPath developed its patented Gradium glass. Because of its exceptionally precise
refractive qualities that allow it to redirect light with optimal efficiency, Gradium has been widely used in laser
systems.
In 1997, LightPath redirected its focus to optical networking through a subsidiary called LightChip, in which
AT&T Ventures took a $5 million stake in 1998. AT&T ponied up another $16 million in a second round of funding
last December. LightChip refined its glass-polishing and laser-fusion techniques, which led to LightPath's
development of a breakthrough product late last month, when the company unveiled a new collimator that is
expected to yield insertion losses consistently below 0.1dB per pair. That yield is two to three times better than
current collimators.
Sound like Greek to you? It's Latin, actually. A collimator filters (limator) light into unison (col-), producing
parallel rays. That's very important, because optical fiber guides light waves from one end to the other end by
reflecting it within the core. Controlling the angle at which the light waves are transmitted makes it possible to
control how efficiently they reach their destination. As the collimator reduces refraction, it becomes able to
transmit signals over longer distances while using fewer regenerators (amplifiers). This reduces cost and
improves reliability.
LightPath's collimator is pretty big news, so long as it receives some attention from the industry. That may be
why the Avenex announcement stoked the stock as much as the collimator itself. Avenex, a manufacturer of
processors for optical networks, has recently seen its market capitalization approach $16 billion on about $11
million in revenue, after a high-profile initial public offering on February 4. While it may not provide enormous
revenue for LightPath in the near term, Avenex has brought highly visible validation to LightPath's technologies.
LightPath has more to come. It has built a new collimator production facility, providing automated manufacturing
in a mostly hand-assembly market. It is also expected to introduce soon a 1xN fiber-optic mechanical switch,
which it has co-developed with E-Tek Dynamics (Nasdaq: ETEK).
The company is not without significant risks, of course. Revenues were up 30% last year, topping $1 million for
the first time, and grew only 9% last quarter. Those are not stunning growth rates for a young, richly valued
company. Costs, meanwhile, rose 20%, almost entirely because of increases in SG&A, while the company spent
only 8.7% more on research and development (R&D) last quarter and 9% last year. Since LightPath's entire
valuation is based on future product development, those figures are not heartening. What's more, LightPath's
heavy use of warrants, options, and redeemable preferred stock have led to share dilution and big dividend
costs.
Nevertheless, LightPath has qualities a lot of current, flash-in-the-pan stocks lack: lots of cash; smart backing
for LightChip from AT&T; heavy patent protection; proven ability to develop relevant products through in-house
R&D; and vital technologies that provide speed and cost-efficiency to a rapidly expanding field. If its products
live up to their billing, LightPath has an extremely bright future.
Immerhin hat Lightpath jetzt eine Market Cap von ca. 650 Mio. Andererseits: Was sind heutzutage schon 650 Mio?
Ein interessantes Target wäre Lightpath nicht zuletzt wegen seiner vielen Patente bestimmt. Vor ein paar Wochen habe ich sie auch noch auf einer Liste mit Übenahmekandidaten im Fiber-Optic-Bereich gesehen (die Liste finde ich im Moment leider nicht wieder, vielleicht später).
Ich würde mir eine Übernahme aber nicht wünschen. Denn eigentlich muß Lightpath ja jetzt seine zur Marktreife entwickelten und - soweit ich das verstanden habe - bahnbrechenden Produkte nur noch verkaufen...
short-seller: Nichts gegen Lightpath, aber 650 Mio. USD Marktkap. stehen weniger als 1 Mio. Umsatz
14.03.00 08:09
Egal, wie gut die Technik ist, steht die Bewertung entgegen jeglicher Vernunft.
Grüße
Shorty
Ist bestimmt auch von allgemeinem Interesse, nicht nur bzgl. Pandatel.
A Second Look: Fiber-Optic Takeover Candidates
Fayad Abbasi
Feb 24 2000
Last time we wrote about the potential takeover candidates in the fiber-optic field, we looked at price/sales (P/S) ratio as a relative valuation metric. However, this might not be the best way to analyze a nascent industry such as optics. Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) has admitted to using a price to employee ratio – specifically a price/engineer ratio – when evaluating takeover pricing, with the price target ranging from $5m to $6m per engineer.
Looking at our optic takeover candidates, price/employee ratios offer greater insight into the most likely takeover candidates. E-Tek Dynamics (Nasdaq: ETEK), Ortel (Nasdaq: ORTL) and NetOptix (Nasdaq:OPTX) recently agreed to be acquired, and we can see that $4m to $10m per employee is not unusual, depending on the value of the technology to the acquiring company.
Current Market Market
Company Ticker Price Value (m) P/S ratio Emp. cap/Emp.
APA Optics APAT $41.50 $373 1115.63 36 9.83
Avanex AVNX $182.25 $11,396 504.3 251 44.62
C-Cor.net CCBL $33.63 $1,021 4.48 1947 0.5
Ciena CIEN $116.81 $16,277 30.49 1928 28.04
E-Tek Dynamics* ETEK $237.25 $16,113 68.91 1316 10.56
Finisar FNSR $108.81 $3,661 62.31 186 20.43
Harmonic HLIT $126.38 $3,829 20.8 293 12.63
Int'l Fibercom IFCI $29.00 $834 5.1 892 1.03
Lightpath Tech A LPTHA $44.06 $382 n/a 25 12.84
MRV Comm. MRVC $99.94 $2,714 9.4 824 3.03
NetOptix* OPTX $163.81 $1,876 67.5 291 6.53
Northeast Optic Net NOPT $106.00 $1,726 n/a 28 64.29
Optical Cable OCCF $54.63 $2,047 40.38 133 15.79
Ortel* ORTL $157.25 $1,957 25.95 480 3.96
Osicom Tech FIBR $93.00 $1,033 12.11 1318 0.76
* Company has agreed to be acquired
Source: Baseline
We think the speculative fervor for anything optic is unbelievable. Many hedge funds are rumored to be searching the SEC databases for companies that list the words optics or fiber in company disclosures and purchasing shares of these companies. While we feel the demand for optical products is tremendous, having some metrics to evaluate at what price a company may be taken out is valuable. While we do not recommend investors purchase shares of these companies merely on takeover speculation, we believe some of these companies could be taken over by larger optical companies.
http://www.streetadvisor.com/Article/Article.asp?aid=1824