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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (11064)	12/5/1997 7:35:00 PM
From: Mr. Aloha	Respond to of 25960

Regarding CYMER's opinion of competition in late Oct. 97 Gunnar Miller, Paine Webber. Miller: I was over in Asia about two weeks ago, and there were some increasing indications from Nikon, Canon, as well as ASM Lithography and SVG that they are taking a pretty close look at Lambda Physic and Komatsu. There was a recent announcement in Japan that Ushio is also entering this market. I wonder if you could frame out for us what you'd view as your sort of worst-case market share next year and in 1999. Akins: Well, let me describe our view of the competitive situation in perhaps a little bit more detail than I did already. I don't know that it would be our job to speculate on the types of market share that those companies may or may not be in a position to obtain over time. I think we have time and time again described our competitors Lambda Physic and Komatsu as uh, Lambda as our closest technical competitor, our closest technology competitor. Why? Because Lambda does make its laser performance and basic technology more or less available through various public channels, as does Cymer, as does - as do most equipment suppliers. And of course Lambda had the most significant market share prior to Cymer's inception. They have lost market share principally as Cymer has gained market share. Komatsu is still a black hole of information as far as we are concerned from a competitive front. Again, we get no access to real [stresses 'real'] information about their product's performance or its reliability, and that information continues to be very very closely guarded by those companies who talk or use uh, talk to Komatsu or use that company's product for evaluation in their factories. So it's impossible for us to make a real statement there. Of course, Lambda Physic and Komatsu claim on paper - and have for years now - that their performance is equal to or in most cases in excess of the specifications of Cymer's product, and I will have to observe that certainly that is a position that a company attempting to gain market share most assuredly must take. At some point in time, we completely agree, that those companies will develop lasers that are equivalent in performance to a product that we may have already introduced. And of course ongoing competitiveness depends on our ability to manage our customers, manage our technology roadmap, manage our new product introduction, so-on and so-forth. This is not a new situation for us, as we have been fighting both of these companies as competitors for approximately ten years now. Ushio is a different kind of competitor. You know they all, that they manufacture the mercury bulb used in steppers. Ushio has had a press release recently discussing their work on a solid-state alternative light source technology - alternative to excimer laser light source technology. This is not a new alternative. It was proposed oh, maybe seven years ago or so by, principally by Sony. Sony developed this technology. It's a GAG laser, frequency-multiplied to the Deep-UV area. There are significant limitations to average power in these machines. There are significant problems with spatial coherence which provides [here a word that sounds like 'speclum'] noise in the wafer. You have to gang these lasers together to produce the types of average power required. I ask anyone interested to check into the literature - which has been in place for years now - about the real competitiveness issue and cost of ownership associated with these lasers. We actually hired a graduate student from UC Berkeley about five years ago who did his thesis on comparing solid-state laser alternatives to excimer lasers for Deep-UV lithography. He worked in [here a word that sounds like Dote] Oldham's group, and we stay very abreast of these technologies, and at this point in time as in the [unintelligible] past five to seven years we feel that excimer lasers are the best solution to this problem. Aloha

To: FJB who wrote (11064)	12/5/1997 10:26:00 PM
From: ForYourEyesOnly	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 25960

1. Did previous Komatsu reports mention that they will be setting up overseas support centers? I think that they will be in Korea and Taiwan very soon, as these are not only crucial markets, but also countries where Japanese companies have adapted well to local business practices. What is Goto's basis for denying the Komatsu production plans? I own Cymer, and am not trying to tank the stock. I just want to stimulate realistic debate on this thread. 2. The article is part of a series introducing equipment that will be used to produce 300mm wafers. Since DUV will be a key technology, they included excimer lasers in the series. 3. Another magazine I got at the show reports that a 300mm wafer fab that produces 40,000 wafers a month will need 110 DUV steppers. Multiply that by the number of 300mm fabs to be ramped to 40,000 wafers/year and you can get an idea of how big this market will be!!! Good luck..... THC