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Monday, October 30, 2006
Emcore Moving Its Headquarters to the Duke City
By Andrew Webb
Copyright © 2006 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer
Albuquerque is about to get a brand-new publicly traded company. Emcore Corp. is moving its headquarters from Somerset, N.J., to here.
The semiconductor business, which makes photovoltaic cells and optical communications devices here, is expected to announce the move today during a ribbon cutting for a 20,000-square-foot expansion of its photovoltaic cell plant at the Sandia Science and Technology Park. That expansion will make way for an additional 50 to 80 jobs.
The headquarters move won't mean a lot of new jobs, but it is a major plum for the state's growing tech sector.
David Danzilio, vice president and general manager of Emcore's photovoltaics division, credited the decision to move to a recent renegotiation of Emcore's lease at the far east Albuquerque business park and the availability of optics technicians and engineers here.
The company also recently sold a New Jersey semiconductor wafer manufacturing division and moved a photovoltaic business from City of Industry, Calif., to Albuquerque.
"So it made perfect sense to move the company headquarters to be co-located with the largest single manufacturing site Emcore has," Danzilio said.
The move will make Emcore one of New Mexico's largest publicly traded companies— the $287 million in company shares trade on the NASDAQ as EMKR.
"It's very exciting news," said Fred Mondragon, director of Albuquerque's Office of Economic Development. "The fact that Albuquerque is being considered as a headquarters location speaks a lot to the city."
The headquarters move will result in only a handful of new jobs here, but the expansion, to make way for increased photovoltaic work, could bring 50 to 80 new jobs to Albuquerque, said Sandia Science and Technology Park Executive Director Jackie Kerby Moore. Emcore currently employs about 430 people here.
"We appreciate the fact that Emcore is committed to New Mexico and choosing to put its corporate headquarters here," she said. "Over the eight years that Emcore has been in the park, they've continued to grow and increase employees. This is another sign of that continued investment."
Emcore's communications equipment division was originally founded in Albuquerque as Micro Optical Devices, or MODE, which Emcore bought in 1998. That division, which makes up about 65 percent of Emcore's business, is booming again after a telecommunications industry downturn sent the company's earnings plummeting from $185 million in 2001 to $60 million in 2003.
"The last several years have been robust in the fiber-optic area— we're over the telecom-bust hill," Danzilio said.
Emcore's photovoltaic work has historically centered around building power generation panels for government and communications satellites. Such devices require rugged, long-lasting devices whose prices are far higher than typical solar energy technology used on Earth, and Emcore's high-efficiency, multi-junction solar cells are the leading technology for that purpose.
More recently, Emcore announced a cooperative agreement with Sandia National Laboratories to couple its solar cell technology with optical sunlight concentrators for use in terrestrial solar generation by utility companies. Though the company's gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells are an order of magnitude more expensive than conventional silicon cells, such as those used on house rooftops, Danzilio said their efficiency, coupled with optical concentrators, will more than make up for the cost in large generating systems operated by utilities.
"Our goal is to become the leader in solar energy power systems," Emcore CEO Reuben Richards said in July news release about the agreement.
Sandia, whose cooperative relationship with Emcore goes back to the mid-1990s, will provide technical support for the project.
Emcore owns two buildings, totaling 170,000 square feet, at the Sandia Science and Technology Park, a patchwork of public and private land east of Kirtland Air Force Base that is home to several technology companies. It owns the land under one of its buildings, but its photovoltaic plant sits on 10 acres of state-owned land.
In March, the company and State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons reached an agreement to reduce what Emcore called an "onerous" lease on that land from $130,000 per year to about $75,000.
The Land Office "really sat down and worked to keep business in Albuquerque," Emcore chief operating officer Scott Massie told the Journal then.
Lyons is one of several invited speakers expected at today's ribbon cutting, as is Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., a longtime supporter of campus-like technology parks aimed at encouraging cooperation between companies and institutions.
"The businesses located in New Mexico's science parks are creating some of the best high-paying jobs in our state," he said in a statement last week.
Emcore reported third-quarter 2006 revenues of $42 million, up 26 percent from the same period in 2005. Its stocks, which reached a high in April of $10.88, were trading at less than $6 at the end of last week.
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