Rob,
We disagree on the new(er) fab. The timing was just awful and may have been prejudiced by the fact that a major stock holder and board memeber is a fab developer. IDT had several choices including 1) building a smaller facility. 2) working out a fab agreement with one of the Asian tigers who were strapped with over-capacity of new fabs and were cutting great deals with American IC firms. 3) Made do with the existing facilities until the next business cycle. At the time IDT built the Oregon fab, the cycle was at its peak, semi equipment was a sellers market, and IDT did not have immediate needs for the facility. By the time the fab was put into operation, the cycle had already started down, prices collapsed and IDT failed to make use of it. It is still a question whether they can make money out of the fab or it will grow old as a drain on profits.
My point wasn't that the fab was a good idea in hindsight. I think it was one of the good ideas at the time, though. My point was that not committing to using the fab, just slowly migrating to it, was a major problem. So we had a decision to build that turned out not to be that good given the magnitude of the downturn, compounded by a decision not to utilize and migrate to it causing the need to support extra fabs, plus the lengthened bringup time for the 8" line increasing unit costs all around.
Well, we may still disagree :-). The net result is bad, and that we can agree on. And I do agree that the fab may grow old before it ceases being a drain.
-musea |
