Accelink Spikes in IPO

Don't look now, but the optical components industry has gotten two IPOs in the space of a couple weeks.

The one that got the attention here in the United States was Avago Technologies Pte. , taken public Aug. 6 by private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) and Silver Lake Partners , after a one-year wait. (See Avago IPO's a Go.)

Avago's share price is up 20 percent from its $15 debut, but that's modest compared with the first-day splash Accelink Technologies Inc. made with its IPO, which launched today. (See Accelink Launches IPO in China.)

News reports say Accelink shares closed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange at RMB29.79 ($4.36), up 86 percent from the IPO price of RBM16 ($2.34) apiece. Accelink put up 40 million shares of stock -- one fourth of the company -- to raise RMB 640 million ($93.7 million).

Accelink had talked about going public as early as 2004, but obviously those plans were put on hold. (See Accelink Preps for IPO .)

Accelink got started in 2001 as a spinoff of the Wuhan Research Institute of Posts & Telecommunications. It sells a variety of optical components including triplexers, splitters, and arrayed waveguides (all useful in Passive Optical Network (PON) buildouts, among other places); laser and detector arrays; and isolators and interleavers.

Its highest-profile products, though, are its amplifier subsystems, including erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA)s and Raman amplifiers. In that area, it's "one of the few companies that can be considered a threat to the incumbent amplifier suppliers," namely Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd. , JDSU (Nasdaq: JDSU; Toronto: JDU), and Oclaro Inc. (Nasdaq: OCLR), writes Ovum Ltd. analyst Daryl Innis in an email to Light Reading.

"Accelink is a success story because it is still in the market and growing revenues. Their weakness stems from the lack of a pump laser. They may also need a ROADM, too, to compete in the newly emerging wavelength management subsystem category," Innis writes.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading