NPI's 1994 performance fully justified the market's enthusiastic support of that June and November's initial and secondary offerings. Operating income shot up to $6,504,000 on sales of $33.5 million--spectacular numbers for a 5-year old hi-tech company battling several strong rivals like Cisco Systems, Interphase, SysKonnect and 3Com.
Since the IPO Lo Alker has devoted her energies and the treasury toward growing NPI as quickly as sound practices allow. She has already added 35 employees, mostly in the engineering and manufacturing areas, bringing the total to about 120. Another 35 work in R&D and 30 in marketing, sales and sales support, with the balance in adminstration and finance.
"We are competing with some very large companies," Lo Alker says, suggesting the great sense of urgency behind her growth plans. "Large companies are continuing to consolidate and they move very fast, and they also react very quickly. We have to grow very fast, get critical mass through continued product partnerships, or maybe acquisitions. We have to execute quickly from here on out."
She refuses to discuss the particulars of NPI's acquisition plans, but there will certainly be several. A fast-growing startup with a treasury brimming with $55.7 million from the public offering and 94 profits would have to be comatose not to snap up the best small companies with which there is minimal overlap of talent.
Lo Alker flatly refuses even to consider plans that go beyond two or three years.
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"In our industry three years is a lifetime," she says in impatient response to a request for a 10-year projection. "This industry moves so fast, one single event can change the whole landscape overnight. So talking about 10 years is ridiculous. What the plan is is to continue to grow the company and we are positioned in a place where it's possible to grow very fast, and in order to do that, we have to execute very well and be thinking about very aggressive plans."
At the moment Lo Alker is obviously pressed for time. She and Steve have their home in the exclusive Blackhawk area near Danville, but recently Lo Alker bought herself a second home closer to NPI's Milpitas offices to save commute time on weekdays. She's been too busy lately to play her beloved piano or to engage in Chinese brush painting, another favorite hobby. As a marketing-driven CEO, however, she has made time to head up the Asian American Manufacturers' Association and to sit on the board of software company Insignia Solutions whose chairman is fellow AAMA member Dr Robert Lee.
Son Kevin graduated from college last year and is doing inside sales for a Silicon Valley hardware manufacturer. Lo Alker sees no place for Kevin at NPI. "I wouldn't want him to work for me. If he worked for our company, people just wouldn't treat him the same way." Nor does she see any prospects for a mother-son business relationship of any kind in the forseeable future.
