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

To: Nevin S. who wrote (14102)	2/4/1998 1:09:00 PM
From: Yakov Lurye	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

Re: Carl Johnson's Article. Nevin, Carl Johnson is very knowledgeable, but he is also known to be quite conservative when it comes to ramp-up/transition issues. Sometime ago Infrastructure had an article that claimed that no testing equipment needed for .25 production is being shipped by one of the key suppliers. They had also a quote from unnamed source about "lasers drawing neat circles" instead of making chips that had caused a minor panic on this thread a few months ago. Nevertheless, we know by now that DUV is being increasingly used in production. His point re extended use of i-line is well taken in a sense that it is one of alternatives available to manufacturers. The issue of i-line/DUV shipment ratios had been discussed on this thread before many times, and I, for one, was surprised by the high share of DUV-based tools in current ASMLF backlog (60%) that had been reported. However, since than Nikon came up with a similar (50% DUV) forecast, SVGI that is Intel's/IBM's supplier had 50% DUV output for the quarter, etc. Looks to me that Mr. Johnson is a bit conservative - which is, in my opinion, quite a reasonable position for a serious publication like Infrastructure. His points about difficulties with new DUV equipment are also well taken, but in no way are they something new. Akins had addressed this issue to an extent during the CC, pointing out that manufacturers receiving additional DUV shipments are having much easier time than with pilot installations. The real uncertainty for CYMER in 98 is not the speed of DUV acceptance, but how smmothly will they be able to introduce new products. I hope that they will have less problems with software support than with 5000 - that is one of the major complaints. Also, we may see some design problems as they'd had with 5000. Just an opinion, Y.