Bookham Technology, maker of fibre optic components and once a tech-stock darling, has promised investors that it will turn in a profit by the end of this year.

"We have got a lot of work to do to get there," warned Steve Abely, the company's chief financial officer.

To achieve the goal, the company will continue its cost-cutting drive and axe 200 jobs at its Milton plant near Oxford.

Bookham is suffering from the downturn in the technology and telecoms sector

During the past year, the company made a loss of �64.7m ($106m), but this is already a much better result than the previous year's loss of �164m.

Bookham has tried to consolidate its market position by buying up a number of divisions put up for sale by rival telecoms equipment makers, among them the UK's Marconi and Canada's Nortel.

As a result, Bookham's revenues have risen sharply - up 88% during the last three months of 2002 compared to the previous quarter.

'We're getting close'

Bookham currently employs more than 1,900 people, all but 300 of them in the UK.

But now it will "significantly downsize" its manufacturing, research and development operations in Milton. 200 of the 350 staff there are expected to lose their jobs.

Mr Abely believes that Bookham is now well positioned to make inroads into what still is a fairly depressed market: "We think we should be able to grow market share during the year".

The company hopes that it will be able to break even once it has 15% of the market, although Mr Abely admitted that the company did not have "the precise plans on getting there, but we're getting very close".

Bookham's losses during 2002 were still larger than City analysts had predicted, but investors reacted positively to the news.

The company's share price gained 1.75 pence to trade at 78.75p.

During the telecoms boom, Bookham's shares had traded above �53, and at one point the company was a member of the FTSE 100 set of blue-chip companies.