II-VI to Acquire CoAdna Holdings Inc.

Materials and optical solutions developer II-VI Inc. will acquire wavelength selective switch developer CoAdna Holdings Inc. for $85 million.

The transaction price includes the acquisition of CoAdna’s approximately $40 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2018 and is subject to the approval of CoAdna’s shareholders, regulatory approvals, and customary closing conditions.

Founded in 2000, CoAdna is a developer of wavelength-selective switches (WSS) based on its patented LightFlow liquid crystal platform and II-VI’s micro-optics. CoAdna’s WSS modules have had successful field deployments with integration alongside II-VI’s optical amplifiers, optical channel monitors, and other components on ROADM (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer) line cards designed by II-VI, CoAdna, and their customers.

“CoAdna and II-VI have been great business partners for many years, leveraging each other’s complementary products and technologies to serve the optical transport market,” said Sunny Sun, president of II-VI’s photonics segment. “We are eager to realize our synergies to grow the WSS business over our strong sales channels and shorten the time to market for our new products. With our manufacturing scale, unmatched vertical integration, and broad product portfolio, we are well positioned for the growth in ROADM demand driven by metro network upgrades, new data center interconnect architectures, and the emerging 5G wireless infrastructure.”

The companies’ combined portfolio of products for ROADM line cards will include fixed- and flex-band 1xN WSS, tunable multiplexers and demultiplexers, dual-chip pump lasers, passive components, arrayed-erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, high-resolution optical channel monitors, and optical time-domain reflectometers. II-VI also designs and manufactures fully integrated ROADM line cards. CoAdna will contribute to the joint product portfolio its OvS platform, featuring a distributed cross-connect architecture for data center networking.