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Technology Stocks : Dupont Photomasks (DPMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bollmonster who wrote (559)	5/5/1998
From: Duane L. Olson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 955

Hey, Monster. Thanks for sharing the thoughts on CYMI vs DPMI... As a holder of CYMI, I can appreciate the 80% market share -- and the technological capabilities that keep them in that position. Both CYMI and the photomask makers will benefit from the growing number of semi-conductor chips used, as well as from the increased complexity of those chips. But one of the principal reason I go with DPMI (as the leading photomask supplier) is that the amount of revenue per mask at increasingly finer line widths is vastly greater for the photomask suppliers. Moving from .35u to .25u, for example, jumps the mask price from $4,000 to abut $16,000. And the move to .18u moves the revenue per mask up to about $44,000. Meanwhile, for the excimer laser guys, from .35u down to sub-.10, they supply either the Krypton Fluoride or the Argon Fluoride lasers, without the same exponential revenue gain. Well, I'm probably missing something, but that was at least part of my rationale for favoring DPMI slightly over CYMI as the investment of choice. If it turns out that masks are the bottleneck, then that would be additional reason for me to favor the mask suppliers.... it would create some artificial shortages that could be expected to help margins. But my main conclusion has been: buy both! (And I have). TSO