The next big thing in Oregon tech may turn out to be the very first thing in Oregon tech.

Electro Scientific Industries, founded in 1944 as Brown Engineering, has emerged from a decade of struggles. The Washington County company’s laser drills play an essential role in producing the iPhone and many other gadgets.

Sales last quarter were more than triple what they were a year earlier, nearly $111 million, and ESI is on track for its first annual profit since 2012. That’s a massive turnaround in less than a year.

“We were talking survival versus thriving,” said Michael Burger, 59, a veteran Oregon technology executive who took the helm at ESI 18 months ago. “There’s no question we’re thriving now.”

Though Oregon tech increasingly shifts toward software, web services and emerging technologies such as connected devices and virtual reality, ESI built its rebound on old-fashioned hardware manufacturing.

Its strategy hasn’t fundamentally changed, according to Burger. What has changed is demand for its core technology. As Apple and other tech companies cram more features into smartphones and other devices, ESI’s lasers help tie that technology together.

Inside your phone, computer chips sit layered atop a thin, flexible plastic sheet. ESI’s lasers drill minuscule tunnels between them. Those holes provide conduits to link computer chips crammed into the tight spaces inside.

These flexible sheets are one-third the thickness of a piece of paper. ESI’s lasers can drill a hole thinner than a human hair, hitting a target on the sheet within 1-1000th of an inch. And it can control its depth so the laser reaches the copper at the bottom of the sheet without damaging it.

ESI plans to build 600 laser drilling machines in its current fiscal year, selling them for about $500,000 apiece.

“They completely dominate this market,” said Tom Diffely, an investment analyst with D.A. Davidson & Co. who has followed ESI for years.

And the market for ESI’s laser drills is erupting as Apple and others build in more advanced technologies, such as high-quality OLED displays, that require additional drilling and more complexity.

The companies that make those new technologies need ESI’s tools, too, expanding the market to new customers.

“There’s a lot more capacity that needs to be added to be able to process that demand over the next couple years,” Diffely said.

Wall Street isn’t sure what to make of ESI. The stock was trading below $7 a year ago and began steadily climbing last summer. It soared 20 percent last month, after ESI reported its preliminary quarterly results, to more than $26 a share.

A week later, though, when ESI reported a more subdued outlook for the fourth quarter, shares plunged.

“People panicked. It’s weird,” said Diffely, who rates the stock a “buy” and has a $32 price target on ESI. The stock closed Friday at $17.24.

The issue, according to Diffely, is that ESI has been an erratic performer in a cyclical industry. Investors are wary that ESI is nearing the top of the curve and may be headed for a fall.

“We have, as a company, a long history of disappointing investors,” said Burger, the CEO.

He allows that last quarter’s eye-popping sales were anomalous. ESI had been filling pent-up demand and benefitting as new suppliers start using the technology. That won’t continue indefinitely.

But ESI is in a better position than it has been, Burger maintains. Before smartphone manufacturers discovered its lasers, ESI was reliant on the volatile memory chip market. When that industry collapsed several years ago, ESI almost did, too.

The mobile electronics industry it serves is more stable.

Beyond that, ESI has substantially reduced its costs — eliminating about 100 jobs last year. That makes its bottom line less vulnerable to cyclical declines in revenue.

“This business will not stay at the rate it is today. We’ve said that 100 times,” Burger said. “But when it does retract, we will still be profitable.”

In the meantime, ESI has more to invest in research and aspires to expand its business beyond flexible circuit boards and into new markets, including other kinds of circuitry that require the same precise laser drilling that the flexible circuit market does. That could substantially expand ESI’s business and make it a considerably larger company.

ESI is not only Oregon’s first tech company but one of just a handful of large tech businesses whose headquarters remain here. Over the years, Tektronix, TriQuint Semiconductor, FEI Co. and Mentor Graphics, among others, have sold to out-of-state buyers.

Before ESI, Burger had been CEO of two other Beaverton tech manufacturers — Merix Corp. and Cascade Microtech — that he later sold. Many of his employees assumed he’d been hired to do the same at ESI, Burger said.

“We’ve got nobody that’s expressed interest, and we’re not actively selling it,” Burger insisted. He said the board has charged him with growing ESI as big as it can grow.

Burger said he has no interest in a deal for Oregon’s original technology business before ESI has had the chance to capitalize on its sudden revival.

“Hopefully, this’ll be my last company,” he said, “because I think this company has got a huge future.”