JMAR makes the IW list of "25 best growing companies". See the list of all 25 here:
iwgc.com
JMAR broke the downtrend, rallied as high as 2 1/2 today on good volume....news coming soon on Britelight product, then a retest of highs around $5...here is the IW write up on JMAR:
JMAR Technologies
Emerging products driving high-tech manufacturer.
By Peter Strozniak
Advanced technology and creating an entrepreneurial
environment: These are the essential elements that
have made JMAR Technologies Inc. a rising star
among small, high-tech manufacturers.
The 11-year-old, San Diego-based public company
posted more than 100% annual profit growth on 32%
average annual revenue growth since 1995. JMAR
designs and manufactures precision-measurement,
motion-control, and positioning equipment that
inspects semiconductors and disk-drive components.
The company's motion-control and position systems
improve the precision of microelectronics
manufacturing, and its laser-processing products
perform the precise welding, trimming, and cutting
required by the microelectronics and medical implant
industries.
While most of JMAR's revenue stream comes from
the sale of these products, the company is introducing
new advanced technology that could rocket JMAR's
revenues and growth to new heights. "The real value
of the company is in the emerging products that have
not yet been to market but are getting very, very
close," says John S. Martinez, JMAR's CEO and
chairman. Martinez worked in TRW Inc.'s rocket
propulsion lab in the 1960s that helped put the
Apollo astronauts on the moon, and he also helped
TRW establish its laser program.
JMAR's emerging products include a new,
ultra-precision laser system for advanced microparts
manufacturing. The system also enables designing
custom semiconductors to replace obsolete
integrated circuits for industrial and military
applications-two multimillion-dollar markets that
could open up for the company over the next 18
months. More importantly, advanced X-ray
lithography is expected to tap into a multibillion-dollar
semiconductor manufacturing equipment market. In
development for nine years, JMAR's X-ray
lithography system will enable small to midsized
semiconductor manufacturers to produce high-performance computer chips.
(X-ray lithography is a photographic process that transfers the designs of
integrated circuits onto computer chips).
"The whole name of the game is to make circuits smaller so that the electrons
have less distance to cover, and, as a result, you have a faster chip," Martinez
says. "X-ray lithography makes it possible to make small circuits."
There are two different methods for producing X-rays used in lithography. The
first requires the use of a synchrotron that imprints the circuit design on the
chips. Because most U.S. semiconductor manufacturing companies are small,
they are reluctant to adopt X-ray lithography due to the high cost and time
required to modify current factory designs to accommodate synchrotrons that
can be as large as a house.
"The whole thrust of our program is to provide synchrotron-type X-rays but in
a package that is not larger than the current optical lithography systems [about
the size of two or three refrigerators] that are being used today by the small
semiconductor companies," says Martinez. "We are aiming for the mass market
of this product."
JMAR says its X-ray lithography system, named PXS (plasma X-ray source),
can make circuit features of 0.13 microns and smaller. The smallest circuit
features in full-scale production today are about 0.25 microns. When
introduced next year, PXS will cost about the same as existing optical
lithography systems, roughly $8 million.
"The major management challenge at JMAR is to keep our current products
growing while we transition emerging products into the marketplace," Martinez
says. To meet that challenge, he requires his manufacturing engineers and R&D
scientists to work closely together. He also has created an entrepreneurial
culture in which employees are responsible for bringing products to market.
"Typically, in a classical manufacturing company there is resistance to major
change," Martinez observes. "People get used to making good products a
certain way so they become skeptical when someone wants to change it. But,
on the R&D side, what turns on those people is constant change, the quest to
keep things improving and to understand better."
Since creating the confluence of manufacturing and R&D two years ago,
Martinez says, the effects have been good. "There is a sense of enthusiasm
because people in engineering and manufacturing are now seeing this stream of
new technology that means growth for everyone."
JMAR's four business areas -- measurement instruments, semiconductors,
laser manufacturing, and advanced lithography -- are organized as three wholly
owned subsidiaries, each as an entrepreneurial team. Their goal: create a very
competitive and highly profitable stand-alone business by using JMAR's
existing core capabilities, plus alliances with other leading companies in these
business areas. |
