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

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (723)	11/16/1998 12:48:00 AM
From: dlc	Respond to of 955

>>Based on your experience, can you compare the "typical" cost to the mask user for a critical level mask vs. a non-critical mask? << I don't know what the current mask costs are for critical vs. non-critical layers. I just want to emphasize that in a typical process there are fewer of these leading edge masks than people seem to realize. >>Shrinks let fabs offer more performance as well as more capacity, and they see this as one way to raise their ASPs. Shrinks are not only happening quite rapidly, they are being blamed for the length and depth of the current equipment downturn.<< I defer to you on the number of fabs doing shrinks to get performance. I agree that shrinks improve certain aspects of chip performance but as you correctly pointed out, there is a bit of a vicious circle going on here. Companies are seeking to produce more competitve products and get more die per wafer, yet this contributes to the oversupply and prolongs the recession. I suppose it may also lead to more fab closings. If aggressive shrinks are a fact of life for most fabs, this will inevitabely lead to fewer fabs. That added productivity in the long run may signal the bottom of the downturn. But it sounds like we have further to go. If production moves to fewer but more productive fabs, the effect on the mask business is a wash. For the non-lithography equipment guys, things will get worse. I will defer to little max on these issues of finance/forecasting. Sounds like he has a better feel for the economics of the fab than I do.

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (723)	11/16/1998 1:11:00 AM
From: Duane L. Olson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 955

Katherine, hello again...I "took the summer off" . thanks for the continuing great inputs. For those tracking this discussion, here are the current charts on DPMI, PLAB, and MASK, respectively. iqc.com iqc.com iqc.com Comment: Listening with my economist's hat on, your comment that a recovery in the semi sector would be hard to visualize without the participation of SE Asia was an excellent one. To follow up somewhat, weren't there several recent reports about the bigger mask manufacturers taking over the (formerly) captive mask shops in Korea (and others)? Would you see that as a future positive for the companies doing the takeover, while perhaps contributing to less stelar results currently?.. Any comments much appreciated, as always. TSO