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Technology Stocks : Lam Research (LRCX, NASDAQ): To the Insiders -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (2939)	6/17/1999 1:51:00 AM
From: Jong Hyun Yoo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5867

Brian, TEL has been extremely competitive in the oxide etch area mainly its process module has a great repeatability and has a very wide window. TEL was quick to take market share away from LAM when it was suffering from mechanical reliability issues during the transitional period to TCP products. I believe that if LAM lost a market share in the oxide etch business, it definitely lost more to TEL than to AMAT. Gaining market share is not an easy task since once the machine is qualified for a certain application, the chipmakers like to stay with the same vendor during the entire product cycle. Fortunately for LAM, the continuous shrinkage of device line width made this market share game to start from scratch. They cannot use the existing TEL products to etch below .18 um and hence many chipmakers are in the process of reevaluating the vendors for new process. Of course, TEL is trying to compete for the new process, too with new products. However, from what I have heard, some customers are a bit concerned with low etch rate of TEL systems for high aspect ratio structures.. LAM is trying to use this opportunity to gain market share from TEL with 4520XLE, EXELAN, and 9600PTX. LAM's products in the oxide etch area has been strongest in the history of the company and should be able to win large orders from Korean and Taiwanese customers. This is what I believe will happen and I am sure that LAM employees feel the same. As for the competition with AMAT, AMAT has some nice products as well, especially its new IPS oxide etch systems. IPS is supposed to be low pressure. high density plasma system that will give you a high etch rate for very demanding high aspect ratio etch. However, it has some weakness as well... especially PR selectivity. So everything is up in the air right now, which is good news for LAM. LAM was behind TEL and AMAT before but now it seems like they are going head to head against each other. I can say that LAM did very well with Samsung for the orders for its new FAB in Korea and AMAT was a bit disappointed with the percentage of orders it won. This is not to say AMAT did bad because AMAT probably won a lot of orders but not just as much as it was expecting. I hope that this trend continues.. With increasing EPS and operation efficiency, LAM will gain more respect from the analysts and will someday trade at the share price of AMAT and NVLS..