Topic: How To Invest

Hi Pat: I was wondering what your thoughts are on Alliance Fiber Optic Products in the U.S. Thanks.

Article Excerpt

Alliance Fiber Optic Products, $18.63, symbol AFOP on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 18.4 million; Market cap: $344.2 million; www.afop.com), supplies fibre optic components, subsystems and modules for the fibre-optic network equipment market. For the three months ended March 31, 2014, Alliance expects to report sales of $24.8 million, up 104% from a year earlier. In 2013, the company’s sales rose 63% over 2012, to $76.1 million, and it made $0.93 a share, up from $0.34. Alliance gets 75% of its sales by making connectors that link two or more fiber optic strands together. The company is a leading supplier of connectors that minimize signal loss at that junction, and it sells the widest range of connectors in the industry. The company sells to the rapidly expanding data centre market, and its largest customer is Google. That gives it growth prospects, because Google plans to keep building big data centres. However, its focus on just a few major customers adds risk. The stock trades at 15.4…