This is good...
ENERGY CONVERSION DEVICES INC files addtl proxy materials.
March 05, 1999 20:50
Excerpted from DEFA14A filed on 03/05 by ENERGY CONVERSION DEVICES INC:
ENERGY CONVERSION DEVICES INC files addtl proxy materials.
(4) Date Filed:
March 5, 1999
Dear Stockholder:
We are pleased to provide you with the 1998 Letter to Stockholders which reviews
the Company's activities during the past year and the new Technology and Product
Brochure which highlights the commercialization of our core products and
technologies.
By now you should have received the Notice of Annual Meeting, Proxy Statement
and related materials for the Company's upcoming annual meeting of stockholders,
to be held at 10:00 a.m. (EST) on Thursday, March 25, 1999 at the Presidential
Banquet Center, 4548 Presidential Way, Kettering, Ohio. A short distance from
the meeting site is Ovonic Energy Products, Inc., GM Ovonic's recently opened
and expanded nickel metal hydride battery manufacturing facility for electric
and hybrid electric vehicles. Tours of Ovonic Energy will be available following
the conclusion of the annual meeting.
We look forward to seeing you at the annual meeting. If you are unable to attend
the meeting in person, it is nevertheless important that you vote on the
proposals being presented at the meeting. In the event you have not yet signed
and returned the proxy card that was previously mailed to you, please do so at
your earliest opportunity. For your convenience, a duplicate proxy card and
return envelope are enclosed.
Thank you again for your support.
Sincerely,
s/ Stanford R. Ovshinsky /s/ Robert C. Stempel
Stanford R. Ovshinsky Robert C. Stempel
President and Chief Executive Officer Chairman
ECVCM-CL3
ENERGY CONVERSION DEVICES, INC.
1675 West Maple Road
Troy, Michigan 48084
USA
Telephone: 248.280.1900
Fax: 248.280.1456
e-mail: ovonic@aol.com
www.ovonic.com
1998 LETTER TO STOCKHOLDERS
Dear Stockholders:
The technology invented and developed by ECD over the years has been gaining
wide industry and public acceptance. Now our task is to move forward the
commercialization of these technologies, making products for everyday use.
Building on ECD's extensive, basic and fundamental patent portfolio, we are
taking the steps towards profitability, capitalizing on the many years of
investments in our inventions.
ECD, an energy and information company, has three core product areas:
- Information and data storage (phase-change optical and electronic memories)
- Energy generation (flexible, thin-film photovoltaic products)
- Energy storage (nickel metal-hydride batteries)
All of these product areas are based on the company's proprietary amorphous
and disordered materials. An important complementary business is our Production
Technology and Machine Building Division, which designs and builds many of the
special machines used by ECD and its joint ventures and licensees to manufacture
products. Information about ECD's products can be found in our new Technology
and Products brochure.
This annual stockholder letter is a departure from those of the last several
years. Prior letters, discussing the business, focused on technology and our
achievements during the year. Now it's time to talk about our progress in
commercialization and creating shareholder value. Let's look at each of our
core product areas in detail, reviewing the past year's activities in the
context of our continuing efforts towards meeting these objectives.
Information Technology -- Optical Memory
Walk into any video or electronics store and you're likely to see more and more
rewritable compact disks (CD-RW) and pre-recorded digital versatile disk (DVD)
titles on the shelves. Indeed, industry analysts estimate that the total DVD
market will grow to a $2 billion business in the intermediate term, replacing
VCR and CD-ROM applications. ECD's high-capacity phase-change optical memory
technology has clearly become the technology of choice for rewritable CD and
DVD, and it is the most likely near-term income growth opportunity for the
company. ECD originated phase-change optical memory and has licensed this
technology to leading electronic and computer companies, including Sony,
Matsushita/Panasonic and Toshiba. Phase-change refers to the ability of
amorphous (disordered, non-crystalline) material to be changed to an ordered
crystalline state by optical or electrical means and reversed by the same
process. This allows for recording and playback using digital media, much like
a typical tape recorder. Phase-change rewritable technology is used in PD,
CD-RW, DVD-RAM, and DVD-RW disks.
Both of the 650 megabyte rewritable optical memory disk formats -- PD and CD-RW
-- use ECD's phase-change technology. Rewritable DVD disks are available in two
data formats: DVD-RW, developed by Sony, and DVD-RAM, developed by Matsushita
Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. Both use ECD's proprietary phase-change rewritable
optical memory technology. While it is too early to speculate whether one format
will dominate in the marketplace, ECD's patents cover disks manufactured with
both formats, and both pay a royalty on the recording media based on factory
sale price.
Information Technology -- Electronic Memory
In January 1999, ECD announced the formation of a joint venture between ECD and
Mr. Tyler Lowrey, a world-recognized authority in semiconductor memory
technology and the former vice chairman and chief technology officer of Micron
Technology, Inc., of Boise, Idaho. Mr. Lowrey will be president and CEO of the
new joint venture, "Nanovonics, Inc.," and Stanford R. Ovshinsky, ECD's
president and CEO, will be chairman. Mr. Lowrey also has joined ECD as a vice
president and director. Ovonic Unified Memory is a unique, thin-film,
nonvolatile, solid-state memory that offers key competitive advantages for the
microelectronic memory and embedded logic marketplace in terms of cost,
performance and scaling over conventional
solutions. Microelectronic memory devices are used in a wide variety of
applications, including computers, cell phones, graphics-3D rendering, GPS,
video conferencing, multimedia, Internet networking and interfacing, digital
television, games, PDA, modems, DVD, ATM machines and pagers. ECD is very
pleased with the opportunity to work with Mr. Lowrey to develop and
commercialize the next advance in memory technology. In addition to the
licensing potential, ECD will be able to participate in the manufacturing of
the devices. The microelectronic memory market is more than $25 billion.
(End of Item Excerpt)
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