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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. K. G. who wrote (7325)	11/17/1998
From: Candle stick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

JMAR makes the IW list of "25 best growing companies". See the list of all 25 here: iwgc.com JMAR broke the downtrend, rallied as high as 2 1/2 today on good volume....news coming soon on Britelight product, then a retest of highs around $5...here is the IW write up on JMAR: JMAR Technologies Emerging products driving high-tech manufacturer. By Peter Strozniak Advanced technology and creating an entrepreneurial environment: These are the essential elements that have made JMAR Technologies Inc. a rising star among small, high-tech manufacturers. The 11-year-old, San Diego-based public company posted more than 100% annual profit growth on 32% average annual revenue growth since 1995. JMAR designs and manufactures precision-measurement, motion-control, and positioning equipment that inspects semiconductors and disk-drive components. The company's motion-control and position systems improve the precision of microelectronics manufacturing, and its laser-processing products perform the precise welding, trimming, and cutting required by the microelectronics and medical implant industries. While most of JMAR's revenue stream comes from the sale of these products, the company is introducing new advanced technology that could rocket JMAR's revenues and growth to new heights. "The real value of the company is in the emerging products that have not yet been to market but are getting very, very close," says John S. Martinez, JMAR's CEO and chairman. Martinez worked in TRW Inc.'s rocket propulsion lab in the 1960s that helped put the Apollo astronauts on the moon, and he also helped TRW establish its laser program. JMAR's emerging products include a new, ultra-precision laser system for advanced microparts manufacturing. The system also enables designing custom semiconductors to replace obsolete integrated circuits for industrial and military applications-two multimillion-dollar markets that could open up for the company over the next 18 months. More importantly, advanced X-ray lithography is expected to tap into a multibillion-dollar semiconductor manufacturing equipment market. In development for nine years, JMAR's X-ray lithography system will enable small to midsized semiconductor manufacturers to produce high-performance computer chips. (X-ray lithography is a photographic process that transfers the designs of integrated circuits onto computer chips). "The whole name of the game is to make circuits smaller so that the electrons have less distance to cover, and, as a result, you have a faster chip," Martinez says. "X-ray lithography makes it possible to make small circuits." There are two different methods for producing X-rays used in lithography. The first requires the use of a synchrotron that imprints the circuit design on the chips. Because most U.S. semiconductor manufacturing companies are small, they are reluctant to adopt X-ray lithography due to the high cost and time required to modify current factory designs to accommodate synchrotrons that can be as large as a house. "The whole thrust of our program is to provide synchrotron-type X-rays but in a package that is not larger than the current optical lithography systems [about the size of two or three refrigerators] that are being used today by the small semiconductor companies," says Martinez. "We are aiming for the mass market of this product." JMAR says its X-ray lithography system, named PXS (plasma X-ray source), can make circuit features of 0.13 microns and smaller. The smallest circuit features in full-scale production today are about 0.25 microns. When introduced next year, PXS will cost about the same as existing optical lithography systems, roughly $8 million. "The major management challenge at JMAR is to keep our current products growing while we transition emerging products into the marketplace," Martinez says. To meet that challenge, he requires his manufacturing engineers and R&D scientists to work closely together. He also has created an entrepreneurial culture in which employees are responsible for bringing products to market. "Typically, in a classical manufacturing company there is resistance to major change," Martinez observes. "People get used to making good products a certain way so they become skeptical when someone wants to change it. But, on the R&D side, what turns on those people is constant change, the quest to keep things improving and to understand better." Since creating the confluence of manufacturing and R&D two years ago, Martinez says, the effects have been good. "There is a sense of enthusiasm because people in engineering and manufacturing are now seeing this stream of new technology that means growth for everyone." JMAR's four business areas -- measurement instruments, semiconductors, laser manufacturing, and advanced lithography -- are organized as three wholly owned subsidiaries, each as an entrepreneurial team. Their goal: create a very competitive and highly profitable stand-alone business by using JMAR's existing core capabilities, plus alliances with other leading companies in these business areas.