Like many other companies associated with the Internet, Tellabs's business declined when the dot-com boom of the late 1990s began to fizzle out by early 2001. The following excerpt from the company's 2005 annual report describes the effect this had on the company's operations. (The carriers and service providers referred to are the companies that buy Tellabs's products; material charges are expenses that are significant enough to affect the company's stock price.] As you review these two paragraphs (don't worry about all the technical and financial details), you can see that the first discusses the period from 2001 to 2003, when the company's financial results suffered. The second discusses the upturn that began in 2003 and continued through 2005.
The markets for our products have undergone dynamic change over the last few years. Beginning in 2001, carrier overcapacity, a softening economy and other factors caused our customers to reduce their capital spending significantly. The impact on Tellabs was a dramatic decline in revenue for each of the years 2001 through 2003. In addition, we had manufacturing overcapacity, excess inventories and a cost structure that could not be supported by our smaller revenue base. We responded by closing manufacturing facilities, reducing global head count, consolidating office space, exiting certain product lines and instituting cost controls across the organization. We also reviewed our product portfolio and cut back or stopped development efforts on some products. In addition, at the end of 2003, we moved to outsource the majority of our remaining manufacturing operations to third-party electronics manufacturing services providers to take advantage of their greater purchasing power and other efficiencies. These actions caused us to record material charges in 2001 through 2005 for excess and obsolete inventory and excess purchase commitments, severance costs, facilities shutdown costs, including accelerated depreciation on certain manufacturing and office buildings and equipment due to shortened useful lives, and various contractual obligations. We also recorded charges for other impaired and surplus assets.
Market stability began in 2003 and continued in 2004 and 2005 as service providers invested in their networks at levels at or above 2003. This stability enabled us to post year-over-year revenue growth in 2004 for the first time since fiscal 2000. Growing demand for wireless services, including third-generation (3G] services, drove capital investments by both wireless and wireline service providers and helped drive sales of our transport and managed access products.
Which of the following transition sentences would be the best choice to add at the beginning of the second paragraph, signaling to readers that the story is about to change from the negative news of 2DQ1 to 2003 to the more positive results that began in 2003?
a. Were we glad to see the dark days of 2001 to 2003 behind us!
b. Fortunately, those bad times didn't last forever.
c. These aggressive measures helped the company survive the extended downturn and prepared us to grow again when the market recovered.
d. Transitioning forward, the situation began to improve beginning in 2003.