A record year for YSI Inc.
- Published: April 24, 2008
YSI Incorporated had a record year in 2007, posting a top-line revenue growth of 15 percent, to nearly $73 million, and a 40 percent increase in profits, said President and CEO Rick Omlor at the company’s annual shareholders meeting held at the Yellow Springs world headquarters Friday, April 18, according to a company press release.
“YSI continues to acquire complementary sales, support and solutions businesses in strategic locations near areas with critical and growing water resource and environmental concerns,” Omlor said.
YSI Inc. is a global company that designs sensor instrumentation and real-time monitoring systems for professionals who protect natural resources and aquatic life.
The company employs 155 persons at its Yellow Springs headquarters, and 291 worldwide, according to Danielle Dumont, the company’s corporate communications manager. This year, YSI Incorporated added 13 new positions in Yellow Springs.
The company’s growth can be linked to the growing need in the water monitoring industry, with more and more municipalities concerned about water quality in an atmosphere of climate change and diminishing water resources, according to Dumont.
“There’s an increased need to monitor water resources, and we provide the instruments to do that,” she said.
As planned in 2007, the company opened an office in India earlier this year and will open one in Australia later in the year. YSI’s international growth has been over 15 percent for a number of years and now half of the company’s sales are outside of the U.S.
YSI Incorporated, formerly called Yellow Springs Instruments, was launched in 1948 by Antioch College graduates Hardy Trolander, an electrical engineer, John Benedict, a mechanical engineer, and David Jones, a chemist, with David Case as the fourth stockholder.
“We were about to have the world by the tail,” Trolander wrote in a history of the company, adding that the founders thought that a team “consisting of an electrical/electronic engineer and a mechanical engineer plus a chemist could do damn near anything, or so we then thought.”
Based on the company performance each year, YSI’s board of directors approves a percentage of earnings to allocate to the firm’s philanthropic arm, the YSI Foundation. The foundation contributed $240,000 last year to a variety of selected local as well as global charitable causes. Its third annual “Minding the Planet” grant — aligned with YSI’s main business of providing products and services for water monitoring applications — will be awarded in May to an organization that demonstrates a need for capacity building in a volunteer watershed monitoring organization. This year’s grant will be somewhat larger than usual — at $60,000 — in honor of the company’s 60th anniversary which it celebrates this year.
For more information on the company, go to http://www.YSI.com.
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