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Technology Stocks : Wolf speed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (6571)	1/2/2003 7:20:08 PM
From: John Carragher	Respond to of 10713

meanwhile we are up 6.3% today... g

To: pompsander who wrote (6571)	1/7/2003 10:14:19 AM
From: Ron	Respond to of 10713

IBD feature interview with Svoboda: Internet & Technology LEDs Shine Light On Chipmaker Cree BY JAMES DETAR INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Tuesday, January 7, 2003 Chipmaker Cree Inc. (CREE) is a leader in light emitting diodes, or LEDs. Companies use LEDs to backlight the screens in everything from watches to cell phones. Cree also makes laser devices and radio frequency chips used in wireless devices. It's designing a new product, a blue laser chip that it says will enable digital video discs to store up to five times as much stuff as today's DVDs can. Cree uses exotic materials like silicon carbide in its chips. These materials perform better than standard silicon and aluminum chips. The firm weathered the recent chip sales downturn better than some. The slump took total chip sales down 32% in 2001 to $139 billion. Industry officials say chip sales in 2002 will likely turn out to have been flat. For the most recent quarter, Cree earned 5 cents on sales of $48.8 million. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial First Call expect Cree to earn 8 cents a share this quarter on sales of $50.3 million. In a recent interview, Cree Chief Executive Charles Swoboda talked about some of the new electronics devices coming down the line, and the new chips Cree is designing. IBD: Cree stayed profitable at a time when many chipmakers lost money. Why is that? Swoboda: We're seeing increased business and demand for our products. IBD: Across the board or in certain product segments? Swoboda: Our largest product family is our blue and green LEDs. That's driving growth now. Our fiscal year ends in June. From the end of the June quarter to the end of the September quarter, we saw top-line revenue grow 29%. And we saw 50% LED revenue growth. IBD: What are the main uses for Cree's LEDs? Swoboda: Cree sells at the chip level. We sell blue LED chips for (cell phone) keypads, for use as a white LED in a PDA or other small application. Cree LEDs go into car dashboards. All Volkswagens have blue Cree LEDs in the dashboard. Whether it's Volkswagen, Mercedes or whatever, cars are using more LEDs. IBD: Cree uses several unusual materials to make chips. Why is that? Swoboda: The core technology at Cree is the ability to make silicon carbide and gallium nitride. A blue LED is gallium nitride on a silicon carbide base. Cree is one of the few companies that can work with those materials. We're taking those same materials and using them for blue lasers, microwave transistors and power switching devices. We're really in the device business. The commonality is this materials expertise. IBD: How did Cree get that expertise? Swoboda: The founders of Cree in 1987 were scientists at North Carolina State University who found a way to grow silicon carbide. We're still pursing the same core strategy they had in 1987. And now it's starting to get traction. IBD: What's the biggest benefit of using those materials? Swoboda: Today if you were going to build cell phone base stations and wanted to do 1.8 gigahertz, 1.9 GHz and 2.1 GHz, you would need to build three separate power amplifiers. Those are three of the common frequencies used. Silicon carbide and gallium nitride operate over a wider frequency than silicon. So we can use them for all three devices. In other words, we will do with one transistor what it takes three to do today. The idea is take this materials expertise and try to leverage it into new products. IBD: When will the new products be on the market? Swoboda: They'll be available over the next couple of years as Cree's product line expands. That will help. Design cycles for wireless devices are typically 18 months. So we are still a couple of years away from commercial products. IBD: Cree also makes power management chips. What's Cree's strategy there? Swoboda: Today the power chips in big telecom gear are pretty much silicon based, such as our silicon diodes. Cree has designed silicon carbide diodes over the last seven months. Silicon carbide switches faster than silicon. That lets you build better efficiencies. It's a fledging product line. Over the next 12 months you'll see the first production type orders for these products. IBD: Cree is also designing something called a blue laser. What's that, and how will companies use it? Swoboda: If you open up a DVD player today, it relies on red lasers. Blue is for next-generation products. When you go from red to blue, you can increase the amount of data you can put on a disk. Blue laser is able to make a smaller spot than red. It can increase storage by a factor of four to five. IBD: What are overall chip industry prospects for 2003? Swoboda: I see an industry that is stabilized. There's a lot of hope for growth in the first few months of the year.