TTM Technologies: The Quick-Turn Artist

TTM Technologies is
a combination of a variety of companies. The ‘Power Circuits’ division was
founded in 1985 and the ‘Pacific Circuits’ division was founded in 1978.
Combined, the company had sales of $125 million in 1999 and 1,180 employees.
The company is a leading provider of time-critical, one-stop manufacturing
services for complex printed circuit boards.

Now, the company is expected to go public next week. The lead underwriter
is Robertson Stephens. The price range is $13-$15 and the proposed ticker
symbol is TTMI.

TTM Technologies’ circuit boards are the core for such products as routers,
switches, servers and communications equipment. Such products are complex,
yet have short life cycles.

To this end, TTM Technologies has developed sophisticated manufacturing
systems to develop specialized products quickly. The system is called
‘quick-turn,’ because custom-designed circuit boards can be provided to
customers in as little as 24 hours. In fact, the company’s name stands for
Time-to-Market (TTM).

Sometimes companies need a small order of circuit boards. But, if demand
increases, the TTM can accomodate. The company has a system called
‘ramp-to-volume production,’ which can deal with volume spikes.

TTM Technologies is growing at break-neck speed. In the first half of 2000,
sales were $88.2 million, which was up 101.4% from the same period a year
ago. About 28.5% of revenues was from the Power Circuits acquisition and
$15.9 million was from internal sales. Profits for the first six months of
2000 were $5.1 million.

No question, TTM Technologies serves customers that are in high-growth
markets, such as broadband, optical networking, wireless and data storage.
In other words, expect the TTM Technologies’ growth to continue to soar,
making this a top IPO candidate for next week.