Cisco lent Oplink money before its IPO, and the loan turned into 3.3 million shares the day the company went public. In October 2000 every telecom equipment maker wanted more optical parts than suppliers could build. Oplink, a San Jose company started in 1995, made the small components and integrated optical modules that boost the performance of fiber networks. It sold them to the equipment makers that built the networks.

Parts Inside the Boxes

Oplink's customers were the firms that built gear for phone companies. Its components sat inside their optical equipment and raised the performance of the network, so each fiber could do more work. The company was incorporated in California in September 1995 and moved its legal home to Delaware in September 2000, weeks before the offering. Its biggest customers were communications equipment suppliers around the world.

Bust, Then Koch

Oplink sold 13.7 million shares at $18 in October 2000, raising $246.6 million, and listed on Nasdaq as OPLK. Within months the telecom bust froze spending on optical gear. Oplink stayed public for another 14 years. In November 2014 Koch Industries agreed to buy it for $24.25 a share in cash, about $445 million. The tender offer closed on December 23, 2014, and Koch put Oplink under its Molex electronics unit.

Cover: Moonlight. Night in St Cloud, Edvard Munch. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for moonlight through a window (light through glass).