World News
05/01/1999
Worldwide highlights
SEMI book-to-bill above unity again. Shipments from North American semiconductor equipment companies ticked down slightly month-to-month in February to $820 million from $865 million, but new orders remained nearly flat at $963 million (see table). As a result, Semi's monthly book-to-bill ratio was 1.17, above 1.0 for the second straight month. The report indicates that equipment makers are seeing better business conditions, as monthly orders have now been above $960 million for two straight months - about twice the level recorded in September at the market's low point.
Japanese orders for chip gear rise 11%. Orders for semiconductor equipment in Japan were up 11% year-to-year in January, but the region's own equipment suppliers still suffered in the month, seeing orders from both domestic and foreign chipmakers drop 20.9% from year-ago levels, according to a recent report from the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ). In total, Japan's chipmakers ordered approximately ¥37.951 billion (about US$322 million) in tooling, marking the first year-over-year increase in order activity in 13 months. Still, orders for Japanese-made equipment, including exports, fell to ¥47.603 billion. Equipment sales in January also lagged, coming in at ¥24.169 billion, down 57.6% from the same period last year.
USA
In a move that will link two privately held suppliers of wafer handling products and services, Fluoroware, Chaska, MN, and Empak, Colorado Springs, CO, have signed a letter of intent to merge. A closing is anticipated in June.
USFilter's Kinetics Group and Air Products and Chemicals, Lehigh Valley, PA, have formed Trimega, a new 50/50 joint venture company aimed at being a single, low-cost supply source for chemicals, gases, water, and waste treatment, for both new fab and fab upgrade projects. Separately, Vivendi, a French utilities, communications, and construction conglomerate, said it will acquire USFilter, and is offering $31.50/share for USFilter's stock.
SEMX Corp. is planning to acquire Semi-Alloys Co., Mt. Vernon, NY. A letter of intent has been signed, but terms of the deal were not disclosed. SEMX said it will combine its Semiconductor Packaging Materials division with the Semi-Alloys operation. The transaction is expected to close in several months.
Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, CA, is restructuring operations to focus on microprocessor production and, as a result, will cut about 300 positions over the next two quarters, or about 2.5% of its worldwide workforce. The chipmaker was also expected to report a significant loss in its first quarter, after seeing shipments of its K6 microprocessor fall short of a 5.5 million unit goal.
Hyundai Electronics Industries and US subsidiary Hyundai Electronics America have decided to sell a 90% interest in Hyundai's ChipPAC assembly and test business in Santa Clara, CA, to a group of US investors led by current ChipPAC management. Bain Capital and SXI Group LLC will support the transaction. The deal is valued at about $550 million, and Hyundai will retain a stake in the operation.
ASM Lithography, Veldhoven, The Netherlands, is the first foreign litho firm to secure a development license from the US-driven Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Co. ASML is already a participant in Europe's EUCLIDES EUV development program, and will provide a link between the US and European EUV efforts. ASML has also received an order for its 193nm step-and-scan system, the PAS 5500/900, which will be installed at AMD's Submicron Development Center in Sunnyvale, CA.
Komatsu Silicon America (KSA) is idling its Hillsboro, OR, facility, and scaling back employment there by 50%, said president and CEO John Matlock. Commercial epi production at the facility will be halted, though R & D, testing, and customer programs will continue.
Plasma-Therm, St. Petersburg, FL, said it will cut another 15-20% of its workforce, postpone construction of an R&D center and push out introduction of a new PVD tool until late 1999. The thin-film etching and deposition company has reorganized into four business units, broken out along its key markets: optoelectronics/telecommunications, data storage, MEMS, and photomask etch. The company saw a loss of $1.4 million, or 13 cents/share in its 1Q ended February 28, compared to income of $1.5 million a year ago.
Applied Materials, Santa Clara, CA, and Epitronics Corp. will jointly develop and demonstrate silicon germanium (SiGe) epitaxial processes on Applied's Epi Centura system. Additionally, Epitronics will use Applied's systems to manufacture SiGe epi wafers for customers. Separately, Fujitsu Ltd. has ordered a number of Applied's Ultima HDP-CVD Centura systems, to be delivered in Applied's 2Q. VLSI Technology also has ordered the HDP-CVD systems, which were slated for delivery to VLSI's San Antonio, TX, fab in March.
Amkor Technology, West Chester, PA, will double production capacity of its ?BGA chip-scale packages by mid-1999, increasing total monthly output to 6 million units. The company has delivered more than 14 million ?BGA packages since their introduction last year.
National Starch and Chemical, National Semiconductor, and the Georgia Institute of Technology Packaging Center will jointly develop new thermoplastic underfill materials and production processes for flip chip packaging technologies. The firms have been awarded an Advanced Technology Program grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology; new materials could be available for customer sampling by early 2001.
Zygo Corp. will establish a number of new business centers in the US, Europe, and Asia, including a worldwide customer technical support center at its Middlefield, CT, base. A new customer service center will be set up in Sunnyvale, CA; existing manufacturing operations in Sunnyvale will be relocated to other Zygo locations or subcontracted out.
JSR Microelectronics was expected to begin US production of deep UV resists in April, following successful trial production and sampling in December. The company claims to be the first Japanese firm to produce DUV resists in the US, and says it is taking the step in response to "rapidly increasing sales of excimer photoresists in the North American market." JSR opened its Sunnyvale, CA, facility in 1997 with production of i-line resists.
Rudolph Technologies, Flanders, NJ, has opened a new manufacturing facility in Ledgewood, NJ. The 30,000 sq. ft building will house the company's thin-film metrology manufacturing, assembly, and service operations, as well as customer training programs.
Eaton Semiconductor Equipment Operations' Fusion Systems Division said its FusionPS3 photostabilizer has completed marathon testing at the International 300mm Initiative (I300I) with a zero failure rate. Eaton said the result is particularly significant for Fusion's 300mm wafer-handling platform, which supports both PS3 photostabilizers and FusionES3 ashers.
Nikon Precision, Belmont, CA, has received an order for its ArF scanner from Lucent Technologies. The system will be delivered in Nikon's 1999 fiscal year. Lucent will use the system to develop advanced communications chips at its Bell Labs facility at Cirent Semiconductor, Orlando, FL.
Mattson Technology, Fremont, CA, has installed a 300mm Aspen III CVD system at Samsung Electronics' Kihung, Korea, facility. Mattson has also received multiple orders for RTP systems from Hitachi-Nippon Steel and has delivered multiple photoresist strip systems to AMD's Fab 30 site in Dresden.
Japan
Sony said that its recently announced PlayStation 2 video game console will spur a chip manufacturing alliance with Toshiba, and the investment of about $1 billion in new wafer fabs over the next year. The fab program will include a new 200mm facility running 10,000 wafers/month, and later a pair of newly built 200mm "minilines," each running 5000 wafers/month.
In an informal disclosure for the fiscal year ended March 31, Tokyo Electron Ltd. said revenues will total ¥260 billion (about US$2.2 billion), falling 39% from FY97 revenues. Earnings are also down, to ¥7.5 billion, a whopping 86% drop from FY97. ATE firm Advantest said its FY98 revenues are expected to be 44% below last year's results at ¥130 billion, with earnings of ¥25 billion. Lithography supplier Nikon said its revenues for the year will be ¥250 billion with a loss of ¥10 billion, while DaiNippon Screen is expecting a loss of ¥19 billion, on sales of ¥132 billion.
Asia/Pacific
Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Willow Grove, PA, has decided to move its ball bonder manufacturing to Singapore. Site selection is underway, to be followed by equipment installation and training this year. Volume production of the firm's next-generation ball bonder platform will begin in early 2000. Separately, semiconductor assembly subcontractor ASAT has placed a $4 million order for K&S Model 8020 automatic wire bonders and Model 7500 dicing systems. Shipments to ASAT's Hong Kong facility will begin in 2Q of FY99. Thailand's Microchip Technology also has ordered K&S wafer dicing systems, to be delivered in the current quarter.
Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector has signed manufacturing outsourcing agreements with Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. Motorola will license its copper-interconnected
high-performance CMOS process - known as HiPerMos - to both Chartered and Chartered Silicon Partners (CSP), a joint venture fab with Hewlett-Packard Company. The royalty-bearing license covers three generations, beginning at 0.18µm (0.15µm L-effective through 0.10µm L-effective). CSP will begin ramping operations in 1Q00. Motorola's pact with TSMC is based on 0.25 and 0.35?m CMOS logic processes.
Kawasaki has canceled plans to begin building a new 0.18µm ASIC line this summer in favor of a manufacturing deal with foundry UMC Group. Kawasaki is also planning capital investments in UMC's Nippon Foundry Inc., and one of UMC's joint venture fabs in Taiwan. Work will begin immediately under the UMC-Kawasaki alliance to re-target Kawasaki's ASIC library to UMC's 0.18µm process. Volume production is expected to begin by the end of the year.
Europe
Royal Philips Electronics has initiated an offer to buy US chipmaker VLSI Technology, San Jose, CA, for $17/share, but VLSI isn't interested in pursuing the deal. VLSI's board said the offer is inadequate, and urged stockholders against tendering their shares to Philips. Meanwhile, VLSI said it will explore other alternatives, including a merger, sale, or recapitalization of the company.
A group of managers has purchased the Tec-Sem division of robotics supplier Staubli AG, and will develop its product line with a focus on front-end cleanroom applications such as wafer and reticle storage/management systems and OEM products for process equipment. A line of 300mm robotics is already in place. Headquarters will be in Tagerwilen, Switzerland, the former location of R & D and production under Staubli.
Siemens Semiconductors became an official spin off of Siemens AG on April 1, when it began operations as Infineon Technologies AG. Headquartered in Munich, Infineon management, led by semiconductor unit president Ulrich Schumacher, expects to initiate a public offering of Infineon stock later this year or in early 2000. Until the IPO, the chipmaker will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Siemens AG.
Test and material handling firm Integrated Measurement Systems (IMS), Beaverton, OR, will spend approximately $2.3 million for a new application, manufacturing, and assembly plant in Sargans, Switzerland. The facility will also serve as IMS' European headquarters, and will create an additional 15 jobs.
Rest of World
Israel-based foundry Tower Semiconductor hopes to announce formal plans for a $1 billion 180nm design rule wafer fab later this year. The new facility, possibly a joint venture, likely would be based in Israel, said Yoav Nissan-Cohen, co-CEO of Tower.
Chip sales totaled $11.10B in January. Global chip sales in January were $11.10 billion, slipping nearly 2% from $11.31 billion in December, according to the SIA and the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization. The slight month-to-month drop in sales is attributed to the historical slowdown in business seen in the month of January because of holiday closures and the aftermath of Christmas buys. On a year-to-year basis, January's sales were up 1.2% (see table).
FINANCIAL BRIEFS
Novellus Systems, San Jose, CA, is offering 3.9 million shares of its common stock at $67.50/share, for total net proceeds of $255.3 million to be used for general corporate purposes. The offering is underwritten and managed by Hambrecht & Quist LLC; Novellus has granted Hambrecht & Quist a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 579,000 shares of its stock to cover over-allotments.
FEI Company, Hillsboro, OR, has secured a new three-year $50 million revolving credit facility from Koninklijke Philips Electronics, replacing an older $25 million facility secured from a US-based institution. Funds will be used for general corporate purposes. The new facility allows the company (or one of its designated European subsidiaries) to borrow and repay funds in multiple currencies. Koninklijke Philips holds a majority stake in FEI through its Philips Business Electronics subsidiary.
Lam Research Corp., Fremont, CA, has initiated a share repurchase program of up to 2 million shares from the public market or in private transactions. The purchases will take place over a period through and including Dec. 31, 2000. As of Dec. 31, 1998, Lam had approximately 38 million shares of common stock outstanding.
WORLD WIDE WEB BRIEFS
International Packaging Assembly Corp., San Jose, CA, has opened a web site at http://www.ipac.com. The site offers information on package offerings and services, financial reports, employment opportunities, and links to other areas of interest.
ASM Lithography, Tempe, AZ, has launched a web site at http://www.asml.com. Visitors to the site can learn about the company's photolithography products and technologies, financial results, customer support operations, and employment opportunities, and can leave comments.
Newspage is a free online resource at http://www.newspage.com offering the latest news in the semiconductor industry. Information is provided on industry news, competition, new technology, and contracts and partnerships. Subtopics include RISC processors, ASICs, PLDs, CISCs, semiconductor manufacturing, applications, and equipment.
CVC Products Inc., Rochester, NY, a supplier of thin-film process equipment, offers information at its web site at http://www.cvc.com. A corporate profile, company news, employment opportunities, product information, trade show schedule, and links to other web sites and search engines are offered.
The Information Network, Williamsburg, VA, offers information about chemicals, cleanrooms, lithography, mask making, cluster tools, and more at http://www.
theinformationnet.com.