Bloomberg article on Nikon.
Found this over on the Fool. Don't particularly like it, but here it is.
Comments?
John
Nikon Says Stepper Shipments Lower Than Expected (Update1)
(Adds analyst comments.)
Tokyo, Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Nikon Corp., a Japanese maker of equipment for producing computer chips, says stepper machine shipments will be 10 percent below forecasts for the year through March.
Nikon is cutting back shipment targest for steppers -- machines used to etch electronic circuitry on silicon wafters by laser -- as demand drops from Japanese and South Korean semiconductor-makers, the company said.
"However we looked at it, there was just no way we were going to sell all those machines," said Takashi Ogawa, general manager of Nikon's public relations department.
The company has about 47 percent of the $3 billion global market for stepper machines, adi Richard Kaye, an analyst at Merrill Lynch Japan Ltd.
Semiconductor-making equipment accounted for almost three-fifths of Nikon's 379 billion yen ($3 billion) sales in the year ended march 31, the company siad. Nikon also makes carmeras, scanners, microscopes and other optical instruments.
Steppers
Nikon will ship 150 excimer-laser steppers, 50 fewer than the original target of 200, in the year to March.
That will hurt Nikon because it needs to ship 300 excimer steppers a year to maintain proft margins comparable to those on its older I-line stepper machines, Kaye said. Nikon has to maintain production volume of the newer excimer steppers because the lenses, light sources and research costs for excimer steppers are more expensive than for I-line steppers, he said.
Excimer-laser steppers cant etch circuitry on silicon wafers at widths of between .25 and .18 microns. A human hair is 300 microns wide. Such steppers are used to etdch the most advanced of current computer chips.
Nikon will ship 300 I-line steppers during the period, as originally planned. I-line steppers emit light at longer wavelengths are are used to etch wider circuitry.
Concern that orders from Korean makers will continue to drop is forcing Nikon to reconsider plans to boost stepper production capacity in the year beginning April 1, Ogawa said.
Nikon had planned to boost production of exicmer and I-line steppers at its plant in Saitama prefecture, west of Tokyo, to 500 machines each for the year, he said.
Nikon shares rose as much as 10 yen to 1,460.
--Peter Poole-Wilson with reporting from Miki Takeyama in the Tokyo newsroom
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