Oclaro was a US-based business manufacturing and selling optical components. Oclaro was formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The company is now part of Lumentum (LITE) after it was acquired in December 2018.

History

The company was founded in the United Kingdom in 1988 as Bookham Technology. It became the first company to make optical components that can be integrated into a silicon integrated circuit. In 2002 the Company expanded substantially when it acquired the optical components businesses of Marconi and Nortel Networks. In 2003 it acquired Cierra Photonics of Santa Rosa, California, and New Focus, a US business, for £118 million. In 2004 it acquired Onetta, Inc. and became a US-domiciled company. In March 2006, Bookham acquired Avalon Photonics, based in Zurich, Switzerland. Avanex Corporation was incorporated in 1997 and had their initial public offering on February 4, 2000, raising US$216 million, and was based in Fremont, California. By 2002 (after the dot-com bubble had burst) restructuring included shutting down a plant in Richardson, Texas. In 2003 Avanex acquired Alcatel Optronics France SA from Alcatel and the photonic technology business of Corning Incorporated. In the first quarter of 2009 Bookham faced increased losses on sales reducing from $50M to $47M. In late April 2009 the Bookham and Avanex Corporations announced that they had merged, creating what they hoped would be one of the largest suppliers of optical components, modules and subsystems for telecommunications. The newly combined company was named Oclaro combining the words Optical and Clarity. Opnext, Inc. was founded as a venture of the Clarity Group and optical researchers from Hitachi. Opnext raised over $253M on their initial public offering on February 15, 2007. On March 26, 2012, Oclaro, Inc. announced the acquisition of Opnext. The merger between Oclaro and Opnext was approved by shareholders of both companies on July 23, 2012. On September 12, 2013, Oclaro, Inc. announced the sale of their Gallium-Arsenide (GaAs) laser diode business in Zurich to II-VI Incorporated (now Coherent) for $115M. As part of the agreement, II-VI purchased the Oclaro Zurich, Switzerland company, which includes its GaAs fabrication facility, and also the corresponding high-power laser diodes, VCSEL and 980 nm pump laser product lines, including intellectual property, inventory, equipment and a related R&D facility in Tucson, Arizona. Revenues for the Zurich business were approximately $87M for the fiscal year ended June 29th 2013. The company designs, manufacturers and sells optical components primarily for fiber-optic communication networks. Oclaro was acquired by Lumentum in December 2018 for approximately $1.8 billion.