About six months after promising “dramatic” investment in the United States to expand its presence here, German equipment vendor Adva Optical Networking reported tepid momentum here in its first-quarter earnings.

Adva reported 4.5 million euros in revenue from the Americas in the first quarter. While that number is 25% higher than it was a year earlier (aided by Adva’s acquisition of Covaro Networks last fall), it represented a smaller fraction of the company’s overall business. The Americas contributed 12.1% of Adva’s total revenue in this year’s first quarter; they contributed 12.4% in the first quarter of 2005. Adva’s North American revenue grew more than 80% last year to 23.7 million euros, or more than 18% of Adva’s total revenue.

“Q1 wasn’t a great sales number,” Adva chief executive officer Brian Protiva said of the North American region. “You’ll see a very strong Q2 in the U.S. We feel very comfortable in the U.S. We’ve been over-investing in North America.”

Protiva stressed that the company is currently focusing on growing its market share rather than achieving bottom-line improvements, and it may not focus on the bottom line next year either. “Let us grow our market share,” said Protiva, who moved from Germany to New Jersey in late 2004 to focus on the U.S. market.

Adva ended the first quarter with 79 U.S. employees, about what it predicted last fall, when it was adding about 40 Covaro employees to its own existing U.S. staff of about 35. The company plans to scale to at least 100 U.S. employees “fairly quickly,” Protiva said last fall.

Adva’s FSP 150 Ethernet access products are sold in North America as the 5150 line by Fujitsu Network Communications. Adva’s FSP 500 fiber access product is sold as Fujitsu’s Flashwave 7410, and Adva’s FSP 3000 metro wavelength-division multiplexing platform is sold as the Flashwave 7420.

Adva reported total first-quarter revenue of 37.1 million euros, up less than 4% sequentially and up 23% from a year earlier. Based on International Financial Reporting Standards, the company’s first-quarter net profit was 3.8 million euros, up nearly 19% from a year earlier.