EXFO started in Quebec City in 1985 with two employees and a handheld box for testing fiber. Fifteen years later the world was laying fiber as fast as crews could dig, and every new strand needed checking. Carriers, equipment makers and research labs used EXFO's gear to measure how light behaved in the glass. When EXFO went public in June 2000, it sold shares on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange at the height of the optical boom.

Two People, One Test Box

Germain Lamonde founded EXFO in 1985 to build portable instruments that measured the physical traits of optical fiber. Fiber carries data as pulses of light, and a bad splice or a dirty connector can ruin a link. EXFO's tools found the problem. The company grew from handheld testers into a full line of test, measurement and monitoring products. Lamonde ran it as chairman, president and chief executive when it filed to go public.

Back to Its Founder

EXFO priced its IPO at $26 a share on June 30, 2000. The optical bust arrived months later, and test-equipment orders fell with the rest of the industry. EXFO survived and kept selling to carriers as networks moved to faster speeds. In 2021 Lamonde took the company private through a buyout that paid public shareholders in cash. Its shares left Nasdaq in August 2021.

Cover: Freer Glen at Watkins Rainbow Falls and Triple Cascade 3rd Glen, J.C. Burritt. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a rainbow over falls (light split into its colors).