Dr. Petteri Uusimaa, President & CEO, Modulight Inc

As one of the founders of Modulight, Dr.Uusimaa has been in pivotal role to bring the company and products to international market. Prior to joining Modulight Petteri held numerous manager positions in international product development projects in which he managed relations to international partner companies. Since 1997, Petteri has been managing sales to multinational companies in the field of semiconductors. Dr. Uusimaa has PhD in semiconductor physics from Tampere University of Technology (TUT).

Petteri Uusimaa: Modulight is a Finnish based, privately held laser diode company offering value-adding solutions to optical applications. The company was set up in 2000 to commercialize superior laser technology enabling cost efficient manufacturing of uncooled directly modulated transmitter lasers up to 10 Gb/s. These lasers still constitute the main design platform of Modulight’s transmitter laser product line with top performance in the market and proven reliability. We are also rolling out these lasers into another hot market enabling 10Gb/s communication over multimode fiber opening in 2007. Recently, we have also utilized this technology in interesting new business areas like security and fiber optic test and measurement applications.

The company broke into profit already in 2002 showing exceptional performance in the declining telecommunications market. In 2004, we introduced new product line of high power lasers to enable doubling of revenues annually over 2003 to 2005.

Our market focus for high power lasers is mainly targeted to industrial, medical and defense applications.

Petteri Uusimaa: We are currently in a lucky position to have our business pretty much equally distributed between the 3 product lines helping to avoid too high exposure on narrow market or application arena. We are currently seeing good prospects in all product lines, and expect quite balanced growth over 2007. Having seen the fast revenue growth of high power products from zero to about 30% over two years, we anticipate them to take over bigger share in longer term. This is partly explained by high product value addition and mainly due to interesting growth opportunities that we witness in the industrial and defense applications. Particularly, we have recently introduced excellent products in two major application fields: 1550 nm eye-safe pulsed lasers for range-finding and quasi continuous-wave 808 nm lasers for pumping solid state lasers.

Petteri Uusimaa: We are providing our unique and robust laser design and manufacturing expertise to the benefit of our customers even in the most demanding applications like intra-satellite communication in one extreme. Equally important, we have set up a unique IT infrastructure to manage all business processes in the company ranging from customer interface, to product development, and manufacturing through a real time database application. Combined with our diverse technology base and volume production capabilities these features enable us to provide agile customer service and high-quality products. These are values our customers are unlikely to find anywhere else.

Petteri Uusimaa: We have been strenuously serving our current customer base in specific application areas like defense and medical, and, at the same time, committed to widen our offerings in industrial pumping applications that currently represent the largest market in high power lasers. Availability of certain high power laser diodes seems to be limited in the market and we have been filling that gap for couple of years now as an independent supplier of unmounted laser bars to the whole industry. Having close cooperation with European Space Agency in many fronts, we are also utilizing this technology for space application where laser technology is taking increasing role in new satellite missions.

Petteri Uusimaa: The custom product line was set up to fuel the two main product lines with new opportunities for volume production and also to exploit the existing technology base for more specific applications such as the space industry. Here, we are also probing totally new application areas for lasers, and our technology has demonstrated the potential to grow as a significant business model individually, for applications like oil exploration, road weather monitoring, and digital X-ray mammography to mention a few.

Hemendhira: What are some of the core strengths that high power laser diode manufacturers will need to develop in order to compete in this increasingly competitive market?

Petteri Uusimaa: Standardization of production methods is highly critical in such a competitive market that still appears fragmented. These demand state-of-the-art manufacturing methods and best-of-breed IT tools for structured business processing. In a single sentence, ‘A combination of highly controlled manufacturing environment with increasing portion of automation to an agile and responsive business infrastructure using latest IT technology’ is what every market participant in this industry should strive to adapt.

Customer satisfaction is another important focus-area that every high power laser diode manufacturer should think of. Customers have been able to understand the value of our products and services and we are happy to know that our businesses with them form a core part of their chain. Service is another aspect for a company to maintain and explore its presence in a global scale. Though we are a component supplier, we have identified customer service as a key component to strengthen one’s business on a regular basis.

These are some of the top strengths what we believe in and have been pursuing for some time with great success.

Petteri Uusimaa: I completely agree that packaging of high power laser diodes has a direct effect on their reliability issues. In high power lasers we mainly are relying on long-term partnerships with major packaging vendors in Europe, US and Asia. Our core expertise here is offering high-performance laser diodes to fulfill our customers’ immediate needs. Especially, in the domain of industrial pumping applications we are offering unmounted diodes to major laser companies globally.

Petteri Uusimaa: Modulight will be a leading European laser company and a respectable player in the high-power market. We are turning double-digit gross margin from providing complete solutions for optical applications with over €10M revenues. We are known for our systematic production capabilities that have been instrumental in meeting our customer promises consistently. Going forward, we hope to see our customers’ business grow and blossom through the value addition we provide them. Hopefully we’ll also get some new customers and won’t loose too many.

Petteri Uusimaa: We will continue to increase presence globally by increasing local sales force in main market as we have done last year in US and by appointing more representatives for the geographical markets that Modulight did not penetrate yet. Participation to major trade shows and publishing our excellent work in professional industry magazines continues to be elemental part of Modulight’s marketing activity. We have also recently put effort in realizing new generation laser business model over internet based on our unique IT infra. Details on this shall be revealed later on.

Thank you very much for your time. We wish you and Modulight all the very best for the future.