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primarysourced Photonics sector Coherent
COHR
~6 min read · 1,269 words ·updated 2026-04-29 · confidence 100%

II-VI Incorporated — the 1971–2022 era

The current Coherent Corp. (CIK 0000820318) traces its corporate identity continuously back to II-VI Incorporated, founded in 1971 in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania. The CIK and the SEC filing history are the same continuous thread; pre-September 2022 filings register under “II-VI INCORPORATED,” post-rename filings register under “COHERENT CORP.” When you read pre-Sept 8, 2022 history accurately, the entity that bought Finisar in 2019 was II-VI Incorporated — not “Coherent.” The Finisar deal closed three years before the Coherent name even applied to the surviving entity.

Founding (1971)

  • Founders: Dr. Carl J. Johnson and James Hawkey. Johnson, a Bell Labs alumnus (1964 Illinois PhD in EE) who had been Director of R&D at automotive supplier Essex International, was the technical and commercial driver.
  • Location: Saxonburg, PA — a Butler County borough north of Pittsburgh; Saxonburg has remained the headquarters town through every name change and acquisition.
  • Name etymology: “II-VI” refers to columns II and VI of the periodic table. The company’s first commercial product was cadmium telluride (CdTe) — cadmium is in column II, tellurium is in column VI — used for substrates and crystals. Subsequent II-VI compound-semiconductor products extended this materials franchise: zinc selenide (ZnSe), zinc sulfide (ZnS), zinc telluride (ZnTe), gallium arsenide (GaAs).
  • First commercial output: Lenses, windows, and mirrors for CO₂ industrial lasers. ZnSe windows in particular were a long-running franchise — ZnSe is one of the few materials that transmits efficiently at the 10.6 μm CO₂ wavelength while withstanding high-power flux.

Brief correction: the seed brief says “ZnSe IR-optics origin.” More precisely, II-VI started with cadmium telluride (the literal II/VI compound from which the company name derived) and expanded into ZnSe — the ZnSe expansion was funded by the 1987 IPO. The seed brief also names only Johnson; James Hawkey was a co-founder and primary-source corporate histories (FundingUniverse, Encyclopedia.com) credit both. ✓

IPO (1987) and ZnSe expansion

II-VI went public in 1987. Per Carl Johnson’s later commentary, the IPO proceeds were specifically directed to expanding zinc-selenide manufacturing capacity. Through the late 1980s and 1990s, II-VI’s research with zinc, cadmium, and gallium compounds (and gradually the rare earths) refined the materials platforms that would underpin both the materials business and the optics franchise.

By the late 1990s the company had a profitable materials/optics core but was small (sub-$100M revenue) — the next 25 years are the story of the roll-up.

The roll-up era (1995–2018)

II-VI was one of the more aggressive serial acquirers in the photonics-and-materials sector. The acquisition cadence accelerated through the 2010s, much of it under Fran Kramer (CEO ~2007–2016) and then Vincent “Chuck” Mattera (CEO 2016–June 2024). A non-exhaustive list of pre-Finisar acquisitions:

YearTargetStrategic addition
1995Litton Systems’ silicon-carbide groupFirst SiC platform — became the seed of today’s SiC power-electronics business
1995Virgo OpticsVisible / near-IR precision optics
1996Lightning Optical CorporationMerged with Virgo to form the VLOC division
2000Laser Power OpticsHigh-energy laser optics
2004Marlow IndustriesThermoelectrics — temperature-control modules for laser packaging
2007, 2013HIGHYAG LasertechnologieBeam-delivery optics; fiber-optic delivery for industrial lasers
2010Photop TechnologiesCrystals, optics, and visible/IR lasers — sizable Chinese manufacturing footprint
2012Oclaro Santa Rosa facilityCommunications-laser fab
2016AnadigicsRF / GaAs electronics
2016EpiWorksVCSEL epitaxy — the platform II-VI was building before Finisar landed
2017Integrated PhotonicsMagneto-optic crystals for telecom

Pattern: the materials-science and crystal-growth nucleus stayed in Saxonburg, while II-VI added optical-component and laser-component capabilities through serial acquisition. By 2018, II-VI had its own VCSEL-epi capability via EpiWorks and a robust optical-component portfolio — but it lacked a transceiver platform and lacked the InP wafer scale that would make it a peer of Lumentum or NeoPhotonics. Finisar (2019) solved both problems in one transaction.

The CEO succession

CEOTenureNotes
Dr. Carl J. Johnson~1985–2007 (per public profile)Co-founder, first CEO, longest-serving leader. Retired from day-to-day operations May 2010 but remained Chair.
Francis (“Fran”) J. Kramer~2007–2016Drove the early roll-up acceleration
Dr. Vincent D. (“Chuck”) Mattera Jr.2016 – June 3, 2024Final II-VI CEO; first Coherent Corp. CEO post-rename. One person — “Chuck” is a nickname for Vincent, not a separate predecessor.
James R. (“Jim”) AndersonJune 3, 2024 – presentFirst Coherent-Corp.-era CEO with no prior II-VI tenure

Mattera was the architect of the two transformative deals that ended the II-VI brand:

  1. Finisar acquisition — announced Nov 9, 2018 (~6 months after his Mar 2017 chairmanship and ~2 years after CEO appointment); closed Sep 24, 2019 for $3.2B. (See finisar acquisition.)
  2. Coherent Inc. acquisition + rename — announced March 2021 against a competitive Lumentum bid; closed July 1, 2022 for $7.01B; the combined entity renamed to Coherent Corp. on Sep 8, 2022. (See coherent inc acquisition.)

Mattera’s planned retirement was announced Feb 20, 2024; he served until Jim Anderson’s appointment on June 3, 2024.

Why retire the II-VI name

The September 8, 2022 rename was deliberate brand consolidation. Three rationales:

  1. Recognition asymmetry. The legacy Coherent Inc. brand was substantially more recognizable in industrial-laser and life-sciences end-markets than the II-VI brand — Coherent had a 56-year history of consumer-and-scientific laser identity dating to 1966 Palo Alto. II-VI was a B2B materials-and-optics name primarily known to optics customers.
  2. Customer continuity. Renaming the combined entity Coherent reduced re-branding friction for the legacy Coherent Inc. industrial-laser and life-sciences customer bases — they kept the name on the products they’d been buying.
  3. Brand simplification post-merger. A unified single-brand identity simplifies marketing, partner communications, and equity-market positioning. The IIVI ticker had also been an informal sub-brand identity for the trading community.

The COHR ticker that traded after the rename is the renamed II-VI ticker IIVI — not the legacy Coherent Inc. ticker COHR (which was retired at the merger close on July 1, 2022). This is a frequent source of confusion. CIK 0000820318 is the II-VI CIK carried forward.

Continuity in the modern Coherent Corp.

What persists from the II-VI legacy in today’s Coherent Corp.:

  • Saxonburg, Pennsylvania headquarters
  • Pennsylvania state of incorporation (with all the PA corporate-law specifics — see governance)
  • CIK 0000820318 and the continuous EDGAR filing history
  • Materials segment — SiC substrates, ZnSe / ZnS / GaAs / rare-earth optics, the legacy crystal-growth IP — is the direct continuation of the 1971 II-VI core franchise
  • 52/53-week fiscal year ending Saturday closest to June 30 — inherited from II-VI

Cross-references

Sources