March 14, 2001–Fremont, California–Citing the sharp economic slowdown and accompanying inventory corrections in worldwide technology markets, Asyst Technologies, Inc. has revised its expectations for revenues in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2001(ending March 31, 2001), and announced that a workforce reduction of 17% will take place.

The company now anticipates that fourth quarter revenues will be approximately 15% lower than the previous sequential quarter, yet as much as 15% above the $94 million revenues reported a year ago. Previous company guidance, provided on January 25, 2001, anticipated flat sequential revenues from the third to the fourth quarter. All revenue expectations are stated before the impact of the adoption of Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 101, and before accounting for the recent acquisitions of Advanced Machine Programming and Semifab, Inc.

“Weak global economic conditions are affecting business across the board in our customers’ fabs, and they are in turn reducing their capital spending,” says Mihir Parikh, Asyst’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Although we cannot predict the length of the current slowdown, we continue to capture additional opportunities in the 300mm interfaces, portal and FOUP product arenas, further demonstrating our 300mm market leadership.”

The company further reports that the uncertainty surrounding current industry dynamics prevents it from providing meaningful guidance at this time for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2001 with reference to gross margin, operating expenses as a percent of revenue or net income.

To accommodate lowered revenue expectations, the company has implemented several cost-reduction measures, including reducing worldwide headcount by approximately 17% and lowering non-essential discretionary spending. The headcount reductions affected both temporary and regular full-time positions and were implemented during the past 2 weeks.