Celestica

Celestica Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	: CLS : CLS
Industry	Electronics
Founded	1994
Headquarters	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Key people	Rob Mionis (CEO)
Products	Communications, Enterprise and Cloud Solutions, Industrial, Aerospace and Defense, Renewable Energy, HealthTech, Semiconductor Capital Equipment, Consumer
Revenue	$5.6 billion USD (2015)
Number of employees	25,000 (2016))
Parent	Onex Corporation
Website	www.celestica.com

Celestica Inc. is a Canadian multinational electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Celestica’s global manufacturing network comprises more than 20 locations in 11 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia, delivering end-to-end product lifecycle solutions. In addition to manufacturing, the company's global services include design and engineering, systems assembly, fulfillment, after-market services and supply chain services.

Celestica's Toronto headquarters were originally the location of IBM's Toronto sales and support offices, which also supported a small manufacturing unit which built metal boxes for their mainframe computers and associated support systems. Eugene Polistuk, a graduate of the University of Toronto in 1969, joined IBM and rose through the ranks before taking over the Toronto manufacturing division in 1986.

As the world turned from mainframes to microcomputers, Polistuk's operations were forced to reduce headcount in 1986 and 1988. In response, Polistuk started to diversify the plant's product lines, building circuit boards, memory products and power supplies that could be used in a wide variety of IBM products. The $300 million investment was successful, and by 1993 most IBM divisions were buying some of the systems produced in Toronto. The factory site expanded several times.

As IBM transitioned from a hardware company to a software and services company, the future of the manufacturing unit was in doubt despite its financial successes. In 1992 Polistuk suggested that the entire division be spun off into a separate company that would offer their services to anyone. His arguments slowly won over IBM's management, and in January 1994, Celestica was formed as a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM Canada. IBM's other divisions at the location moved to new buildings in Markham.

Polistuk immediately invoked changes in order to break out of what he saw as a moribund management structure left over from the IBM days. An early move was to institute a 5% pay cut in exchange for a profit sharing program that could reap up to 30% of base pay. Another move was to make the same share offerings to everyone in the company, breaking with conventional options plans that offer the best prices to executives.