“Earlier this week, Apple announced a multiyear alliance with GT Advanced Technologies that will see the company manufacturing sapphire material at a new Apple facility in Mesa, Ariz.,” John Paczkowski reports for AllThingsD. “With prepayments of approximately $578 million to GT, this is a significant deal for both companies — perhaps even more so than originally thought.”
“During a Monday earnings call, GT revealed a few bits of data that suggest it is rejiggering its entire business model around sapphire production,” Paczkowski reports. “As Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brian White noted today, GT’s sapphire business accounted for 11 percent of its year-to-date sales — about $28.9 million in revenue. But, in forecasting 2014 revenue, the company said it expects to make $600 million to $800 million, with 80 percent of those sales attributable to its sapphire business.”
Paczkowski reports, “In other words, following the signing of this new deal with Apple, GT’s sapphire segment will not only become the company’s main source of revenue, it will also drive a stratospheric spike in it.”
Read more in the full article here.
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