FEIC was not showing strong financial and combined with Phillips Electron Optics (PEO) with FEIC being the surviving entity, I believe. This is really out of my area of core competencies but I will give you an opinion.
FEI and PEO are into FIB (Focused Iom Beams), most notably for electron microscopes and possibly for reticle repair. FIB also may have a place in the IC manufacturing process down the road. In the present scheme of things, FIB is down the road from the present mainstream. The market for FIB is not fully developed for wide commercial use, in my opinion. FIB is still a niche business dealing with more R&D, Quality Control, and Reliability Engineering.
Being a semiconductor Engineer, I see more limited applications (# of systems and number of places requiring systems) for this technology than in other areas of the semiconductor equipment and manufacturing sector. There is a need for FIB but not as much as there is a need for UTEK steppers in numerous diverse businesses.
This is not to say that getting in now and waiting for the applications to develop is not a bad idea. Cymer laser was a company I did that with and after the IPO (at $9), it saw $50+ in relatively short order as the DUV stepper business took off. It is noe in the 30-40 range, having dropped off dramatically in the recent downturn.
I beleive there are better opportunities out there for more immediate monetary satisfaction.
Tegal(TGAL) is an entirely different story. They owned the etch business 10-20 years ago and let it slip through there fingers. Companies like Lam Research (LRCX), Applied Materials(AMAT), Gasonics (GSNX), Mattson Technology (MTSN0, Matrix (not publicly traded), and others, have surpassed and bypassed TGAL and left them in the dust. This is just my opinion. I was a TGALuser for many years and never had problems with their equipment. They just let the other companies come in and eat away at their market. I do not believe they will ever regain the glory of past years. At these prices TGAL is a great bargain. But look at the price charts for the past few years. I have been following this stock and its charts for the past 4 years. To me, TGAL affords a speculative risk of doing a price range of 5 to 8 which is a nice profit. However, I really worry about it going in the other direction. I do not know of any product they have that would be of interest to another company so TGAL as a takeover candidate is not likely.
I have a list of companies I beleive are targets for this next round of equipment consolidations and TGALis not one of them. TGAL is actually on a list of possible casualties as a result of consolidations. I do not mean to bad mouth TGAL since they make a fine product. I just do not see their customer base expanding as fast as its competitors. The used to be a relationship between TGAL and MOT. I do not know if this relationship still exists but MOT used to be one of its major customers.
If I were considering and investment in this price range, I would seriously consiider Genus (GGNS) based on the probability of its MeV implanter being a commercial success or as a possible takeover target of a company like AMAT, Eaton Corp or Varian Corp. The patented BILLI process on the GGNS MeV implanter will reduce the number of processing steps required for certain device manufacturing and could also eliminate the need for epi wafer substrate material in other device applications. I believe that 8" epi wafers carry an $80-100 premium over bulk silicon substrate and 2-3 masking levels could be eliminated form a process thereby reducing wafer cost and cycle time to process wafers through the manufacturing area.
Please do not take GGNS as a recommendation without doing your own homework. My comments are directed at a tech stock in the ~$5 price area in an enabling or new technology that has a good probability of success. GGNS is my personal counter proposal to your choice of TGAL or FEIC.
I would like to invite you over to the "General Lithography" thread where we can carry on additional conversations and not adversely impact the discussions on UTEK that take place here.
Andrew Vance |
