GSI Group Inc. (GSIG)

GSI Group Inc. supplied precision photonics, motion control and vision components to equipment makers in the medical and advanced industrial markets. Its products included laser scanning and beam steering systems, lasers, precision motors and encoders, and imaging and printing components that customers built into surgical systems, lab instruments, semiconductor tools and industrial machines. Customers valued these parts for their accuracy and reliability in demanding uses.

The company traces its roots to the 1999 combination of General Scanning Inc. of Massachusetts and Lumonics Inc. of Canada, which formed GSI Lumonics. The business later shortened its name to GSI Group. In the late 2000s it went through an accounting restatement, a period of delisting and a Chapter 11 reorganization before its shares returned to Nasdaq under GSIG.

After the restructuring, management sold or exited lower-margin businesses such as semiconductor systems and moved the portfolio toward medical and precision technology products. Acquisitions added companies in medical imaging, visualization and motion control, and a growing share of revenue came from long-term supply agreements with medical device makers. This made revenue less dependent on the cycles of the semiconductor and electronics industries, which had driven its results in earlier years.

To reflect that shift, the company adopted the name Novanta Inc. in May 2016, and its stock began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market as NOVT on May 13, 2016. Novanta remains based in Bedford, Massachusetts, and continues to sell photonics, vision and precision motion components to equipment manufacturers. The change was only to the name and ticker; the shares themselves stayed the same, and holders did not need to take any action.