YDI Wireless Announces Senior Management Changes to Accommodate Growth Strategy
Falls Church, VA — June 29, 2004: YDI Wireless, Inc. (OTCBB:YDIW), a leading developer and supplier of broadband license-free wireless solutions, today announced that it has increased its senior management resources to accommodate future growth and to benefit from its acquisition strategy. YDI has added a new Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, appointed a new Chief Technology Officer, and promoted a current employee to Chief Engineer. In addition, YDI announced that Michael Young, formerly YDI’s President and Chief Technical Officer, has transitioned to a consulting role.
Alexander Young (no relationship to Michael Young) has joined YDI as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Prior to joining YDI, he served in various sales and sales management roles selling enterprise solutions to Fortune 500 and Fortune 2000 clients at companies like GTE, Zenith Electronics, Computer Associates, BrightStart Technologies, and more recently Tecnomatix International, where he headed its Latin American Operations. Mr. Young has already made significant contributions by streamlining and energizing YDI’s sales team and hiring East and West Coast sales and marketing vice presidents to manage those sales forces. He has also initiated a campaign to increase the size of the sales force and increased in-house training for the sales team to increase their knowledge and effectiveness when dealing with customers.
Douglas Karl, co-founder of KarlNet, Inc., has been appointed as YDI’s new Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Karl joined YDI as a result of YDI’s recent acquisition of his company. He started the company in 1993 to market and further develop the KarlBridge, the first commercially available packet filtering firewall. Concurrently, until 1999, Mr. Karl held the position of Associate Director of the Academic Computer Center at The Ohio State University. In this role, he was responsible for the design, installation, and management of the campus-wide fiber network and was heavily involved in the early work with the Internet.
Dean Soucy has been promoted to the position of Chief Engineer. He has over 20 years of technical leadership experience in electrical, software, application development, and test engineering. Mr. Soucy joined the YDI organization through its 2001 acquisition of Zeus Wireless. Prior to joining Zeus Wireless, he held a variety of senior management, project management, and product development positions at Brother International, Zenith Data Systems, McDonnell-Douglas, and Motorola. Among his responsibilities as Chief Engineer will be integrating and coordinating the research and development efforts of YDI’s existing engineering personnel, the engineering resources from the recent KarlNet and Terabeam acquisitions, and any research and development capabilities acquired by YDI in the future.
Michael Young, formerly YDI’s President and Chief Technical Officer, has transitioned to a part-time consulting role. He is continuing to serve as a member of the Board of Directors of YDI. “With the new management staff, I feel that I have an opportunity to step aside,” stated Mr. Young. “I remain a major stockholder of YDI and therefore very interested in the continued success of the company. My expertise will still be available as needed to YDI’s employees and customers.”
Mr. Fitzgerald, YDI’s Chief Executive Officer, stated, “As we mature as a company, we need to expand our personnel capabilities to accommodate our expected growth and organizational demands. Alex and Doug are great additions to our YDI team, and I’m confident in Dean’s abilities to succeed in his expanded role. These additions will free me to focus on other areas such as external communications and strategic direction and opportunities. Michael is a global thinker and a bona fide wireless visionary, and I am confident that he will continue to add value to YDI in his new role.”YDI Wireless, Inc. is a world leader in providing extended range, license-free wireless data equipment and is a leading designer of turnkey long distance wireless systems ranging from 9600 bps to 1 Gbps for applications such as wireless Internet, wireless video, wireless LANs, wireless WANs, wireless MANs and wireless virtual private networks. Additional information about YDI Wireless as well as its complete product line can be found at the company's web site located at http://www.ydi.com or by contacting the company by telephone at 413-665-8551 or by email at IR@ydi.com.
Statements in this press release that are not statements of historical facts are forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. YDI’s actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could contribute to such differences including those relating to the downturn and ongoing uncertainty in the telecommunications industry and larger economy; the intense competition in YDI’s business and resulting impacts on its pricing, gross margins, and general financial performance; difficulties in predicting YDI’s future financial performance; risks arising from and relating to YDI’s recent acquisitions of Terabeam Corporation and KarlNet, Inc.; and risks arising from and relating to YDI’s contemplated acquisition of Phazar Corp. Further information on these and other factors that could affect YDI’s actual results is and will be included in filings made by YDI from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in its other public statements.
David L. Renauld
Vice President, Corporate Affairs
(413) 665-8551