To protect and profit
Paul Clinton
Joel Moskowitz’s assertion that he “saves lives” as the chief
executive and chairman of Costa Mesa’s Ceradyne Inc. sounds like
exaggeration.
Last year, however, 29 U.S. soldiers survived machinegun attacks
overseas with armor provided by Moskowitz’s ceramics company.
Moskowitz even received a letter from an army ranger stationed in
Afghanistan who said he was shot in the back with a Russian-made
AK-47 assault rifle. The bullet was absorbed by Ceradyne’s ballistic
armor.
“That’s a dead man [without the armor],” Moskowitz said. “In order
to stop a machinegun bullet, you have to have something harder than
the bullet. The only thing harder than these ceramics is a diamond.”
Ceradyne, headquartered in the city since 1975, manufactures and
markets state-of-the-art ceramics products, including the armor,
ballistic plating for a new Lincoln Towncar, orthodontic braces,
truck engine parts and other products.
In the defense market, Ceradyne sells protective panels for
military helicopters -- the Black Hawk, Cobra and Apache --
ceramic-plated seats for Hummers, as well as the personnel armor.
As investors scour the stock tables for defense-oriented
companies, with President Bush’s readying a military action against
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Ceradyne has worked its way into the
spotlight.
Moskowitz said he isn’t counting on the possible war to benefit
his share price, which closed Friday at $8.65, down 22 cents.
“What is going to affect our stock is our performance,” he said.
“The future looks pretty bright.”
On Feb. 24, the publicly traded company announced that it beat
Wall Street’s consensus earnings estimates, by reporting
fourth-quarter sales of $17.6 million, or 11 cents per share, which
was a 45% increase from the $12.1 million, or 10 cents per share,
from the fourth quarter of 2001.
Ceradyne trades as CRDN on the Nasdaq exchange.
In 2002, the company grew sales 35%, from $45.3 million to a
record $61.2 million.
Moskowitz, Ceradyne’s founder, owes his success, in part, to his
success in attracting contracts from the military. On Feb. 13, the
company nailed down a $3.7-million deal with the Army’s Defense
Supply Center in Philadelphia to provide the personnel armor.
Moskowitz himself served in the Army, as a young ROTC officer in
the 1960s, after graduating from Alfred University in Western New
York. After a stint at a base in Alabama, Moskowitz worked for a
ceramics company in Glendale; he formed Ceradyne with colleagues in
1967.
In 1970, Moskowitz took the company public with an offering of
shares.
More than a quarter of a century later, Ceradyne now counts three
operational plants in the country (including Georgia and Kentucky),
350 employees and two satellite offices in London and Beijing.
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