Thank you for your posts. As for the prospect of Huls making a bid for the remaining shares, or a portion of them, I have no information as to what the financial picture looks like for Huls. Does anyone know if they have a pile of cash on hand, or if their other businesses are doing well?
As for the reference that SEH is probably hurting more than WFR, that is indeed good news, because it means that SEH will also go slowly in adding capacity in the next boom, meaning that eventually we will get to a state of wafer shortage again. If SEH were weathering the crisis easily they might continue to expand in the hopes of pushing WFR out of the market entirely.
Regarding the investments needed for 300mm, I expect 300mm to come slowly, with fabs pushing their current equipment and adding additional 200mm equipment in an effort to achieve smaller geometries. Unless I am missing something, the primary advantage of a larger wafer is that less space is wasted as die sizes get larger. Well, as we move to .18 the die sizes may shrink fast enough to make the move to 300mm less urgent, and the semi companies are all hurting a bit. Thus I think that we will see continued growth in demand for 200mm, and a long life for that demand, with 300mm moving out into the next century. That combined with the weakness in all the wafer suppliers should slow the construction of plants to make 300mm wafers, and thus I don't expect this to be a major issue down the road.
As for WFR being dead money for awhile, that is indeed possible. But sooner or later it will rise, and I have no way of knowing when that will be.
Carl |
