Cymer Inc. Chief Executive Rebuts Rumors of Troubles
SAN DIEGO, Calif., Nov. 4 (North County
Times/KRTBN)--Cymer Inc. has greatly
increased its capacity to make lasers used in
computer-chip manufacturing and will
continue to dominate the market, company
officials said Monday at the American
Electronics Association conference here.
The company also rebutted in detail recent
speculation its customers have had unusual
difficulty using the lasers. The speculation
caused shares of Rancho Bernardo-based
Cymer to plummet in September.
But last month, Cymer reported third-quarter
earnings of $7 million and revenue of $57.5
million, compared to $2 million in earnings
and $18.2 in revenue for the same period a
year ago.
Cymer can now make 1,000 deep-ultraviolet
lasers a year, and has assembled a global
support staff to help customers use the
devices, Cymer's President and CEO Robert
Atkins said Monday. Cymer's market share is
80 percent, he said.
"We are the semiconductor industry's
technology of choice," Atkins said.
Cymer's excimer lasers are used in "steppers"
-- instruments that project a light pattern
representing the chip's circuitry upon a wafer
of silicon treated with a photosensitive
material.
The pattern is developed to expose the
circuitry, a technique known as
photolithography. Cymer's customers sell the
devices to chip makers such as Intel Corp.
The degree of detail in the chip is limited by
the light's wavelength -- the smaller the
wavelength, the finer the detail that can be
reproduced. This results in a more powerful
chip with more circuitry.
An excimer laser is a gas laser that emits
radiation as excimers -- a type of molecule
that can exist only in an energized, excited
state.
"The laser is probably the single largest
value-added element in the (chip-making
machine,)" Atkins said. Cymer's customers
have not reported any unusual difficulty in
putting the lasers to use, Atkins said.
"Is it difficult to manufacture deep UV
steppers and scanners? You bet, " Atkins
said. "Do all of our customers face difficulties
and challenges? You bet.
"The real question is, how fast can they
overcome those, and are those problems out
of the ordinary, beyond what would be
expected in ushering in a new technology like
this," he said. "We continue to maintain that
no, that all those problems and challenges are
all well within what is to be expected."
The state of the art at Cymer is lasers using
krypton fluoride, Atkins said. The next step
will be lasers using argon fluoride, which can
produce light with an even shorter
wavelength.
As Cymer plans to meet these technological
hurdles, it has greatly increased its knowledge
of excimer lasers and has added people with
the expertise needed to its staff, Atkins said.
"We know how to build excimer lasers a lot
better now than we did a year ago," Atkins
said. "We had some difficulty earlier in the
year and late last year in ramping up our
(research and development) expenditures.
We've been hiring scientists from all over the
world, had to build new laboratories, get new
equipment to use. Now we're pretty much
back on track."
"This is leading-edge technology that's now
being introduced into the fab (chip factory).
It's been rushed in quickly at the demand of
the chip makers, and everyone's getting the
bugs out," said William A.
Angus, III, Cymer senior vice president and
chief financial officer.
Cymer's technology and market potential is
strong, said Carl Johnson, president of
Infrastructure, a semiconductor industry
research based in Irving, Texas.
"With the industry's transitioning to a smaller
feature size, this plays into their hand,"
Johnson said. "They have been somewhat
constrained by the ability to hire qualified
engineering and support staff. I think they're
getting that under control right now, and the
next couple of years should be pretty
interesting."
Demand from Cymer's immediate customers
is also strong, Johnson said.
"I've talked to a couple of the DUV stepper
manufacturers here, and their business seems
to be doing pretty well. That plays into the
hands of Cymer, because they supply the
lasers."
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