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

To: Curlton Latts who wrote (11067)	12/5/1997 7:49:00 PM
From: Mr. Aloha	Respond to of 25960

More comments from the Oct. 97 conference call.. On the competitive front, I think it's best described - our competition status is best described today - as trying to introduce their equipment to Cymer's 5000-series laser. I'll point out that at this point in time, to the best of our knowledge, there is no third-party [Akins stresses the 'third-party'] information verifying actual performance or providing reliability data on the competitor's products. At this time, as we have been discussing recently, we are introducing our so-called "second-generation improvements." - our CIP Continuous Improvement Process improvements - into our products in the field. These are improvements that have been generated only because we are in the business of volume producing these lasers. We know how to build lasers better now than we did last year. Our suppliers know how to build critical components and assemblies better now than they did last year. That extra knowledge - that extra performance - in the area of lifetime of modules and cost of ownership only came because of Cymer's pushing of volume production and our suppliers pushing volume production to the levels that we have. So we are now, as you know, implementing those kinds of next-generation improvements into our products to ensure that all of our lasers in full-volume production see the benefit of such improvements. We feel that we have greater than a one-generation lead in the next generation Argon-Fluoride laser. I discussed that in some detail in our last conference call at the end of the second quarter, and [at] the presentation that our Doctor Sandstrom, Vice-President Advanced Research made in the Hokkaido Conference. We are on schedule, with the delivery of prototype lasers, as scheduled, before the end of this year. Those lasers will be available in two different varieties: partially-narrowed, for the all-refractive projection systems, and, uh- I'm sorry, highly-narrowed for the all refractive - and partially-narrowed for the partly-reflective or catadioptric systems. Again as previously discussed, we have been working on some next-generation technologies applicable to both Argon-Fluoride and Krypton-Fluoride. Those two critical technologies go by the name of pulse-stretching and also multi-kilohertz operation. Pulse-stretching allows one to tailor the pulse of the laser to achieve optimal lifetime for the optics train by minimizing damage to optical material. And multi-kilohertz operation of course provides extra throughput, and extra precision in dosage control for both steppers and especially for the next-generation of scanners. We are certainly proud to announce in this conference call that we have successfully completed some critical demonstration milestones on both programs as part of our Sematech program, and we have realized 1.4 million dollars in revenue in this quarter as a result of those successful demonstrations. Those technologies certainly greatly enhance competitiveness of future products that Cymer can introduce. ---------------- Yes, Komatsu etc.. better hurry because Cymer's going to flood the market with the 248nm laser and then pretty much lock in future customer upgrades in 1999+ to the 193nm laser. Aloha