Acterna (Quote) is trading the Bay State for the Beltway. The technology company targeting the
communications, aviation and government markets, will move its headquarters from Burlington, Mass., to Germantown, Md.
"The greater Washington market is an excellent global home for Acterna Corporation," said John Peeler, Acterna's president. "Since we have such a
significant management and employee presence already in Germantown, it made sense to locate our corporate headquarters here as well.
The move impacts about 20 Acterna workers in Burlington, several of whom are considering relocating, a company spokeswoman said. Acterna will continue to operate a sales office in Massachusetts.
By summer, Acterna will have completed its move into a 6-story building in an office park off I-270 in Germantown. The facility will also contain the company's
networking labs and its manufacturing operations to test and build optical, access, data and wireless network equipment.
Acterna already employs hundreds of engineers in Germantown (thanks to earlier consolidations), many of whom are researchers working on developing
technologies such as high-speed optical networking, gigabit Ethernet, virtual data services, and DSL. Once completed, the facility will house more than 850
employees when completed.
With fiscal 2001 pro-forma revenue of $1.4 billion, Acterna is now one of the five largest technology companies based in the Washington area and one of
Maryland's 20 largest corporations. Acterna is the holding company for four technology-related companies: Acterna, Airshow, da Vinci Systems and Itronix.
Shares of ACTR opened up 0.08, or 2 percent, to 3.89. In the last 52 weeks, the issue has ranged from 2.4 to 21.75.
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