<<Mason, would you please summarize the "problems" of Cymi has at this junction as much as you can see, no matter how persmistic it may sound.>>
1. An apparent lack of candor from management at Cymer and several stepper fabs about possible downsides, use of Komatsu lasers, and equipment failures/problems. They've lost a lot of faith.
2. Inability of stepper manufacturers to manufacture steppers ("steppers" meaning all DUV photolith, including step-and-scan) as fast as announced, because of technical problems.
3. Increasing possibility of future push-outs of stepper orders in Asia due to inability to get financing.
4. Increasing competition from Komatsu, and as time goes by, increasing possibility of competition from Coherent.
5. Uncertainty about the effective life of DUV technology (such as IBM's x-ray fab).
The industry slowdown (or slower growth than anticipated) is doubly harmful to Cymer. Not only does it hurt quarterly earnings, but the longer it takes to get DUV steppers in place, the more the other negative factors come into play. If this goes on long enough, one could imagine firms starting to lower DUV orders, saving their capital for one of the technologies which use non-light sources and therefore won't be increasingly difficult at sub-.18um sizes (and impossible, or nearly impossible, at .10um).
One could easily imaging what would happen if there were an announcement of a big breakthrough in masking technology. If the chipmakers think x-ray will be practical two years from now, they would almost certainly cut orders for DUV equipment. |
