NASHUA – Eighteen years ago, Nashua engineers Kedar Gupta and John Talbott founded GT Equipment Technologies out of their basements with $1,000 between them. Now, nearly two decades and two name changes later, it has grown to a $1 billion business.

The company, now known as GT Advanced Technologies, has come a long way from the founders’ basements. It reported more than $950 million in revenues last year and $1.1 billion in total assets and employs more than 600 people in nine locations across the globe, and it’s recognized as one of the world’s leading developers of energy production technology and one of the region’s leading employers.

The Telegraph is profiling the company as part of a series on the region’s top economic engines – large employers whose stock is traded on Wall Street.

“The equipment that we produce is world-class, and we are the leader in every section in the industry that we participate in,” Tom Gutierrez, the company’s president and CEO, said from GT’s Nashua headquarters.

And state officials are happy to have companies like GT Advanced Technologies around.

“Not only do they represent the type of advanced manufacturing that we like to see in New Hampshire, but the type of work they’re doing is totally unique,” said Gary Chabot, a regional resource specialist for the state Division of Economic Development. “They’re the only ones around doing what they do.”

A change in focus

GT, which developed a name for itself as GT Solar through the 2000s, doesn’t produce energy products. Instead, it develops materials that other companies use to produce solar cells and LED products, among other items.

“We’re not actually a solar panel manufacturer. We sell to the people that do that,” Gutierrez said last week.

At the start, company officials focused on a variety solar materials. Solar energy was emerging on the market at the time, and the company grew along with the industry.

But, in the early 2000s, company researchers developed a new technology – a silicon casting furnace – that helped to spur growth over the next decade.

The furnace, the first of its kind, produced the crystalline wafers that form solar cells, and it helped the company grab a corner of the solar market.

Company officials, who were based in Nashua, constructed new Merrimack facilities in 2001, and the next year, they opened their first Asia office to harness the region’s growing solar market.

“Most of the manufacturing of solar wafers and cells is done in China, Taiwan and Korea. … There’s very little solar manufacturing in the U.S.,” Gutierrez said. “We wanted to be where the business is.”

The investment quickly paid off when GT took in a $13.5 million order from a company in Taiwan. That year, officials reported revenues of $28 million, which more than doubled to $58 million in 2005.

“That (furnace) really became the engine that really drove the growth of the company,” said Jeff Nestel-Patt, a company spokesman. “Casting furnaces had been around, but we really came to market with kind of a unique product architecture that was really well-timed and well-positioned for the explosive growth the solar industry has had over the last 10 years.”

In 2004, GT employed about 35 workers, and by 2006, that number increased to 120. That same year, the company was purchased by a holding company controlled by GFI Energy Ventures LLC, a private equity investment firm, and Oaktree Capital Management L.P., a global investment manager.

Officials then rebranded the company as GT Solar to reflect its focus on solar energy.

“That’s what we were doing at the time, addressing opportunities in the solar industry,” Nestel-Patt said. “We wanted a name that demonstrated that.”

A messy break

At the end of 2006, Gupta, the company’s co-founder, left GT, moving on to found another firm, ARC Energy, in Nashua. The break wasn’t a clean one.

In 2011, five years after Gupta left, GT officials sued the co-founder, claiming that he copied a new method for making crystals at his new company.

The lawsuit alleged that ARC Energy learned the method from Chandra Khattak, a GT executive who had developed the strategy in his time at another company.

GT officials acquired that company, Crystal Systems Inc., after Gupta left the company.

Last year, Gupta and ARC Energy filed a countersuit against GT, claiming company officials with making “knowingly false and defamatory statements.” Both suits are ongoing.

In 2008, after several years of consideration, the company became the 19th New Hampshire company to go public, offering its stock for sale on the Nasdaq exchange.

“It provided capital,” Gutierrez, the company CEO, said about the move. “That facilitated the company’s ability to attract the investment it needed to attract.”

On the first day of trading, the company opened trading at $16.50 a share before falling to $14.59. According to federal reporting documents, GT earned $5.1 million in profits during the first quarter of 2008, but things went south over the following months with the onset of the recession. In December 2008, company officials announced 25 layoffs due to several order delays.

Still, the company continued to expand its footprint, around the country and across the globe.

In 2010, GT officials opened a second office in Hong King.

That same year, the company expanded its operations, entering the LED market by purchasing Crystal Systems Inc.

The Salem, Mass., company supplies sapphire, a main component of LED chips, used in televisions, cell phones and computer screens, among other technology.

“It’s been my philosophy … that while the solar industry was doing well, this was a growing company,” Gutierrez said. “If you’re tied to just one industry and that industry gets sick or has a cyclical downturn, you have an exposure. So we extended our reach into the growth systems for sapphire, and that has turned into a very, very substantial win for us.”

With GT now expanding beyond the solar industry, company officials decided it was time for another name change, this time moving to GT Advanced Technologies.

“The company’s no longer just a solar player,” Gutierrez said. “In fact, had we just stayed in the solar industry as our primary business area, the company would actually be having a very, very difficult time right now.”

GT has continued its expansion in the months since the name change. Last year, officials purchased Confluence Solar Inc., a solar panel producer from St. Louis.

The company’s performance on the stock exchange has ranged since then. On Wednesday, stock was selling at $6.08 a share, down from more than $17 last summer. Still, early reports show the additions have paid off.

Earlier this year, company officials reported earning $183 million in profits during the 2012 fiscal year, up from $175 million last year. The company took in $60 million in profits in the second quarter of 2012, according to recent filings.

“Today, there’s a lot of negativity towards solar (in the stock market),” Gutierrez said. “But you would expect that, over a longer period of time, the performance of the company is what drives the stock price.”

Looking forward, officials expect the company will continue to grow, expanding further into the LED field by providing parts to manufacturers of cell phones, electric cars, among other products.

But the company remains committed to its southern New Hampshire home.

Company officials, who opened a new corporate headquarters last year in Nashua, continue to employ nearly 300 workers between its Merrimack and Nashua offices. And the company has no plans to relocate.

“For us, this area provides access to technical people that we wouldn’t have the ability to reach … if we were in a different part of the country. That’s been part of what’s given us an advantage,” Gutierrez said,

“They do very well by us and for us,” added Chabot in the state economic development office. “It creates an atmosphere whereby if other companies may be looking at the state, they see somebody like GT, that has been a trailblazer, and it makes them want to come here. … We look forward to them being a part of our business community for a long time.”

Jake Berry can be reached at 594-6402 or jberry@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Berry on Twitter (Telegraph_JakeB).