There was a time when Carmanah Technologies or its CEO Art Aylesworth won every business award going, when the most striking feature of every annual report was a bar graph showing precipitously climbing sales, and when the only fly in the ointment was some muttering in the wings from analysts about an unimpressive return on investment.
The muttering grew as the small profits turned, in 2006, to small, then, in 2007, big losses.
But happy days are here again for the producer of solar-powered lighting: 2007 saw new people gradually fill the key leadership positions at the firm: the new team bit the bullet declaring one-time losses in the 2007 annual report and before the ink had dried had produced results for the first quarter of 2008 showing the first profit in six quarters.
It was just $83,000, but a big improvement on the $469,000-loss suffered in the first quarter of 2007.