Finisar cuts quarterly loss to $22.1 million
US-based fiber-optic component manufacturer Finisar has reported revenue of $61.9 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2005 - $53.8 million from optical subsystems and $8.1 million from network test and monitoring equipment.
The figure includes a full quarter s contribution from the VCSEL business unit acquired from Honeywell on 2 March, 2004.
The revenue is an increase on both the $57.0 million recorded for the previous quarter, and the $39.4 million in the first fiscal quarter 2004.
Net loss stood at $22.1 million, an improvement of $2.4 million sequentially, and substantially lower than the $41.2 million loss recorded a year ago. Gross profit in the recent quarter was $10.6 million, or 17% of revenue.
Finisar s CEO, Jerry Rawls, revealed that achieving the increased revenue was hampered by "softness in our LAN/SAN business", but added: "More recently we have seen a resurgence of orders for both our LAN/SAN and metro businesses."
The Sunnyvale, CA, company also released a DWDM small form factor pluggable (SFP) transceiver, designed for metropolitan access and core networks, capable of spanning 120 km and operating at 0.62-2.7 GHz.
"With the addition of the SFP [transceiver] to our WDM product portfolio, we ve taken the next strategic step to address higher density applications," said Atikem Haile-Mariam, product marketing manager for WDM transceivers.
Finisar is also one step closer to acquiring Infineon s fiber optics business. Now that the two companies involved have received clearance from merger authorities in the US and Europe, the one remaining hurdle to the deal is approval by Finisar s stockholders at its annual meeting, scheduled for either September or October.
