| Founded in 1971 and first listed on the Nasdaq way back in 1987, the II-VI business has changed dramatically over the past decade. As the name implies, the company's original focus was on materials - largely zinc selenide optical components used in high-power carbon dioxide lasers for industrial applications. But since 2013 the firm has completed a series of acquisitions that has positioned it as one of the world's leading providers of photonic components, modules, and subsystems for optical communications and, latterly, 3D sensing applications. The Coherent merger makes it the arguably the world's largest optics and photonics company bar none, with annual revenues likely to exceed $5 billion - ten times the figure posted by II-VI a decade ago. Image: II-VI. |
