COO Philippe Morin to become CEO
Test and measurement company EXFO will have a new CEO effective Saturday, when the company’s current COO Philippe Morin will take over.
EXFO founder, chairman of the board and current CEO Germain Lamonde, appointed Morin to the new role. Meanwhile, Lamonde will become EXFO’s executive chairman and “will maintain leadership of the acquisition strategy and remain actively involved in defining the company’s growth initiatives, customer outreach and corporate governance,” according to a company statement.
“For me, this was something I’ve been planning for a long time,” Lamonde told RCR Wireless News. “The company has grown to a point where there is room for both Philippe and I, playing as a team. … We can jointly work to drive the business to the next level.”
EXFO has recently been quite active in pursuing acquisitions. The company’s most recent purchase came earlier this month, with the $7.6 million purchase of privately held Ontology Systems, which focuses on real-time, automated root-cause analysis and visualization for network troubleshooting. Last October, EXFO bought the optical RF testing assets of Absolute Analysis for $8.25 million.
Lamonde said the company is “looking for ways we can transform and accelerate our position,” either organically or through acquisitions such as the ones it has been making lately.
Morin joined EXFO in November 2015, and has more than 25 years of telecom experience, including senior management positions at Ciena and Nortel Networks. Morin noted recent network investments announced by Charter Communications and Bell Canada reflect ongoing areas of opportunity for EXFO, as does push toward 100G network upgrades (and then 400G) as well as data center growth.
“Any time there is a network transformation or network modernization that gets announced, whether that means bringing fiber closer to the user or fiber all the way up to the antenna, or copper expansion – that’s where we play,” Morin said, who added that in terms of testing, network transformation means a need for more simplification, automation and analytics in test processes that EXFO aims to meet with its product lines.
“After founding EXFO in my apartment and serving as its CEO, I am proud of all we have accomplished over nearly 32 years, taking the company from the concept level to global leader and helping the most advanced network operators worldwide implement their strategic transformations,” said Lamonde in a statement. “Having known Philippe for a long time and having worked closely with him on a wide range of initiatives, I am confident he is the right person to take over the day-to-day stewardship of EXFO and that he will receive the full support of the global EXFO team and partners.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from Germain Lamonde and Philippe Morin.