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Technology Stocks : Mattson Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anaxagoras who wrote (963)	11/28/1998 4:11:00 PM
From: John Stewart	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3661

Anaxagoras; Many of the semi equipment suppliers, including Mattson, spent a great deal of $ funding 300mm programs. With the implementation of 300mm being pushed out several times, I think we are seeing both disappointment and the real possibility of these tools being somewhat outdated (and thus back to a new development) if they are not put in place at some point. This situation is no different Mattson than any others that developed 300mm tools. Thus, their difference in wording, IMHO, represents an industry, rather than just a Mattson problem. I have gotten the impression that their 300mm programs (strip & CVD) are doing very well vs. the competition. I think this will result in increased market share in strip and a real position (vs little today) in CVD whenever the race takes off in 300mm. As more pilot line tool placements are announced over the next year, we'll get a better indication. RTP 300mm look's like it should be ready in time for most of these, haven't seen an indication yet on EPI. Hope this helps, John Stewart

To: Anaxagoras who wrote (963)	11/28/1998 4:43:00 PM
From: Anaxagoras	Respond to of 3661

Just a few things I found interesting in looking at filings and reports and stuff. Basically I'm just thinking out loud here, looking for any comments from others that might feel like jumping in. We know that the company gets most of its net sales from the photoresist stripping systems, and these have list prices ranging between $375K to $750K, depending on specific models and variations like # of chambers, etc. And a while ago Dataquest was estimating that the market for strippers in '97 was about $354M and was expected to almost double to $700M in 2000, or annual growth of about 33% a year. So taking the company at its word for how dependent they are on strippers, and looking at total '97 revenue of $76,730K, let's say $70M in revenues came from strippers. So back in '97 MTSN had 10% market share (probably less). Looking at domestic competitors for the stripper market we've got GaSonics, Matrix and Eaton, while in Japan there's Canon, Plasma Systems Corporation, McElectronics, and Tokyo Ohka, along with various Japanese vendors. Now why am I getting into this? Well, if I understand things, MTSN is trying to decrease its dependence on this particular product line. As I understand it (I'm not versed in this industry), strip tooling isn't critical in the move to 0.18 micron, so something needs to take up the slack in their revenues. This impending shift comes at a particularly bad time since most of MTSN's sales come from Asia/Pac Rim, and, well, we know what's going on there. So what looks most appealing right now is their initial modest success with RTP, specifically the sale of 5 systems to Hitachi. We also have a licensing arrangement of technology from Sandia National Laboratories for MTSN's RTP systems. Competitors in this area of RTP on which the company seems to be pinning its hopes are AG Associates and Applied Materials. In the future I'm thinking that Aspen CVD won't play too much of a role since I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that that's probably the most competitive area in which they play, although etch isn't far behind. With the recent acquisition I guess we're expecting to see a new product line like Aspen Epi soon to be launched, but I haven't read anything about that specifically. So in brief, what I'm going to be especially interested in is what's going on with RTP, so I guess I'll have to take a look at AG Associates in particular for more info. Anaxagoras