It looks like Avnet (AVT) is making a comeback in the world of tech. Never heard of it? The Phoenix-based company may not be a household name, but it’s been around for nearly one hundred years. It got its start in New York as a supplier of radio parts.
Today, thanks to CEO William Amelio, Avnet has reinvented itself. It fundamentally changed the way technology gets to market by partnering with customers to take a tech idea and move it to prototype to product to distribution—and quickly. Avnet is now one of the world’s largest distributors of electronic components, supplying two million customers from Silicon Valley startups to tech giants like Intel and Microsoft. With revenues of $22 billion, Avnet is ranked number 128 on the Fortune 500 list of America’s largest companies.
Speaking with Fortune recently, Amelio exudes confidence that Avnet’s steady record of solid financial results will continue to drive growth and prove to investors that the company has staying power. “The great news is this. We’ve now had four quarters in a row where we either beat or met our commitments,” he says, adding that once Avnet reports a few more quarters of sales and earnings gains “our stock price will start to soar.”
There was some proof of that this week when Avnet reported its fifth quarter of better than expected earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter and the stock price rose slightly on the news.
Watch the video above for more from our interview with Amelio.