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North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.12 billion in orders worldwide in October 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.05, according to the October EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.   A book-to-bill of 1.05 means that $105 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

The three-month average of worldwide bookings in October 2013 was $1.12 billion. The bookings figure is 13.3 percent higher than the final September 2013 level of $992.8 million, and is 51.4 percent higher than the October 2012 order level of $742.8 million.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in October 2013 was $1.07 billion. The billings figure is 4.9 percent higher than the final September 2013 level of $1.02 billion, and is 8.7 percent higher than the October 2012 billings level of $985.5 million.

“Both equipment orders and billings improved in the October data, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio returning above parity,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI.  “Order activity is well above the figures reported one year ago and point towards on-going investments in advanced process technologies for NAND Flash, microprocessor, and foundry.”

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

 

Billings
(3-mo. avg)

Bookings
(3-mo. avg)

Book-to-Bill
May 2013

1,223.4

1,321.3

1.08
June 2013

1,213.7

1,334.2

1.10
July 2013

1,204.0

1,207.2

1.00
August 2013

1,081.9

1,063.9

0.98
September 2013 (final)

1,020.9

992.8

0.97
October 2013 (prelim)

1,071.1

1,124.5

1.05

Source: SEMI, November 2013

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced that Mike Splinter, former CEO and current executive chairman of the board of directors at Applied Materials, has been named the 2013 recipient of SIA’s highest honor, the Robert N. Noyce Award. SIA presents the Noyce Award annually in recognition of a leader who has made significant contributions to the U.S. semiconductor industry in technology or public policy.

“From the age of 18 when he built his first transistor, Mike Splinter has developed his passion for technology into a distinguished career as a determined leader and tireless advocate for the U.S. semiconductor industry,” said Ajit Manocha, 2013 chairman of the SIA board of directors. “Mike’s vision and leadership have helped advance some our industry’s most important initiatives – such as STEM education, semiconductor research, and others – that have strengthened the semiconductor sector and our economy. On behalf of the SIA board of directors, it is a pleasure to honor Mike with SIA’s Robert N. Noyce Award in recognition of his tremendous accomplishments.”

Splinter is a 40-year veteran of the semiconductor industry. He was named president and CEO of Applied Materials and a member of its board of directors in 2003, and became chairman of the board in 2009. With a portfolio of more than 10,000 patents, Applied is a key supplier of technologies that help customers build the advanced microchips and displays essential to today’s top-selling electronic devices. Before joining Applied, Splinter was a senior executive at Intel Corporation, leading both the Technology and Manufacturing Group and the sales and marketing organization during his 20-year tenure.

Splinter is a strong advocate for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. He serves on a number of national and international public policy bodies, and supports local community education and other philanthropic initiatives in his leadership role with the Applied Materials Foundation. Under his direction, Applied has remained a standard bearer for corporate social responsibility, regularly ranking among the most philanthropic corporations headquartered in Silicon Valley.

Splinter began his career at Rockwell International where he managed the company’s Semiconductor Fabrication Operations. He earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin.

“I am humbled and honored to receive this award and join a celebrated group of innovators whose accomplishments shaped the semiconductor industry,” said Splinter. “Semiconductor technology has had a transformative impact on almost every form of human activity.  As the world goes mobile, the pace of innovation continues to accelerate and the opportunities for our industry have never been greater.”

The Noyce Award is named in honor of semiconductor industry pioneer Robert N. Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.

Imec, a nanoelectronics research center, announced today that it has successfully demonstrated the first III-V compound semiconductor FinFET devices integrated epitaxially on 300mm silicon wafers, through a unique silicon fin replacement process. The achievement illustrates progress toward 300mm and future 450mm high-volume wafer manufacturing of advanced heterogeneous CMOS devices, monolithically integrating high-density compound semiconductors on silicon. The breakthrough not only enables continual CMOS scaling down to 7nm and below, but also enables new heterogeneous system opportunities in hybrid CMOS-RF and CMOS-optoelectronics.

“To our knowledge, this is the world’s first functioning CMOS compatible IIIV FinFET device processed on 300mm wafers,” stated An Steegen, senior vice president core CMOS at imec. “This is an exciting accomplishment, demonstrating the technology as a viable next-generation alternative for the current state-of-the-art Si-based FinFET technology in high volume production.”

The proliferation of smart mobile devices and the ever growing user expectations for bandwidth and connectivity, will drive the continual need for software and hardware advancements that extend from networks to data servers and mobile gadgets. At the core of the hardware will be new process technologies that allow for more power-efficient CMOS transistors and increased integration, enabling a higher level of functionality. This prompts process technologies that enable heterogeneous devices spanning operating ranges for targeted circuits, maximizing the system performance.

Aaron Thean, director of the Logic R&D at imec commented: “During the last decade, transistor scaling has been marked by several leaps in process technologies to provide performance and power improvements.  The replacement of poly-silicon gate by high-k metal-gate in 45nm CMOS technology in 2007 represented a major inflection in new material integration for the transistor.  The ability to combine scaled non-silicon and silicon devices might be the next dramatic transistor face-lift, breaking almost 50 years of all-silicon reign over digital CMOS. This work represents an important enabling step towards this new paradigm.”

At the finest grain, co-integration of high-density heterogeneous transistors has been challenged by the ability to combine disparate materials and structures while maintaining low enough complexity and defectivity. Imec’s breakthrough process selectively replaces silicon fins with indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) and indium phospide (InP), accommodating close to eight percent of atomic lattice mismatch. The new technique is based on aspect-ratio trapping of crystal defects, trench structure, and epitaxial process innovations. The resulting III-V integrated on silicon FinFET device shows an excellent performance.

Imec’s research into next-generation FinFETs is performed as part of imec’s core CMOS program, in cooperation with imec’s key partners including Intel, Samsung, TSMC, Globalfoundries, Micron, SK Hynix, Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony, Qualcomm, Altera, Fujitsu, nVidia, and Xilinx.

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Imec is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, and has offices in Belgium, the Netherlands, Taiwan, US, China, India and Japan. Its staff of more than 2,000 people includes more than 650 industrial residents and guest researchers. In 2012, imec’s revenue (P&L) totaled 320 million euro.

The TV market has experienced a significant slowdown in growth over the past couple of years and, with OLEDs delayed, there have been no significant new premium features to drive consumer interest and spur replacement demand. Late in 2012, panel makers began to aggressively push new ultra-high definition panels (UHD) 3840×2160, intended for the larger sized TV panels, a more profitable segment of the TV panel market.

UHD TV panels reached 0.4 million units in the second quarter of 2013, up 142% QoQ, with a forecast of 0.8 million units for the third quarter, a 107% QoQ increase. While penetration, by unit, into the TV panel market will be just 1% in 2013, it should rise to 8% in 2017. Penetration by revenue will rises much faster, reaching 20% by 2017.

UHD TV panels are primary found in a limited number of the larger size panels, but it will quickly diversify into a large variety of panel sizes from between 3x-inch and to over 100-inch panels.While 50-inch and 55-inch panels currently predominate, in 2017 there will be 2.6 million 60-inch panel shipped with UHD, 2.3 million 42-inch panels, 2 million 39-inch panels and 48-inch panels shipped with UHD.

Although panel suppliers are very aggressive for UHD displays, there are obstacles to market growth of insufficient content, inefficient production, high price and insufficient capacity, that panel and set makers must solve to realize the full potential of UHD products.

This report presents an in-depth analysis of large LCD panel shipments, size, resolution, backplane technology and panel makers. It also provides a market outlook of panel shipments by unit and area, by value, and by size, with a market analysis of the outlook for Average Selling Price and Unit Area Price. Each application receives its own in-depth analysis based on its particular market issues and outlook.

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North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $975.3 million in orders worldwide in September 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.97, according to the September EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.   A book-to-bill of 0.97 means that $97 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

The three-month average of worldwide bookings in September 2013 was $975.3 million. The bookings figure is 8.3 percent lower than the final August 2013 level of $1.06 billion, and is 6.8   percent higher than the September 2012 order level of $912.8 million.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in September 2013 was $1.01 billion. The billings figure is 7.1 percent lower than the final August 2013 level of $1.08 billion, and is 13.6 percent lower than the September 2012 billings level of $1.16 billion.

“The book-to-bill ratio reflects seasonal softening and near-term deferral in capital spending in some segments of the industry,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI.  “We expect that market demand for semiconductors will drive continued capacity investment in 2014.”

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

 

Billings
(3-mo. avg)

Bookings
(3-mo. avg)

Book-to-Bill
April 2013

1,086.3

1,173.9

1.08
May 2013

1,223.4

1,321.3

1.08
June 2013

1,213.7

1,334.2

1.10
July 2013

1,204.0

1,207.2

1.00
August 2013 (final)

1,081.9

1,063.9

0.98
September 2013 (prelim)

1,005.6

975.3

0.97

Source: SEMI, October 2013
The data contained in this release were compiled by David Powell, Inc., an independent financial services firm, without audit, from data submitted directly by the participants. SEMI and David Powell, Inc. assume no responsibility for the accuracy of the underlying data.

The data are contained in a monthly Book-to-Bill Report published by SEMI. The report tracks billings and bookings worldwide of North American-headquartered manufacturers of equipment used to manufacture semiconductor devices, not billings and bookings of the chips themselves. The Book-to-Bill report is one of three reports included with the Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS).

How bad were conditions in the notebook PC market during the second quarter?

So bad that that even the red-hot segment of display panels for touch-screen mobile PCs suffered a sequential decline during the period, according to a new report entitled “Touch Panel Shipment Database – Notebook PC – Q3 2013,” published by IHS.

Shipments of touch-screen panels for notebook PC amounted to 4.4 million units in the second quarter of 2013, down 4.9 percent from 4.6 million in the previous quarter, as presented in the attached figure. Up until the second quarter, shipments of these panels had been skyrocketing, rising by 52 percent in the first quarter, by nearly 3,000 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 and by 222 percent in the third quarter of 2012.

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Despite the sequential decline, the nascent market for notebook touch screens still is expanding explosively on a year-over-over basis, with shipments surging to 8.9 million units in the first half of 2013, up from a mere 53,000 in the first half of 2012.

“The touch-screen notebook market stalled in the second quarter, reflecting generally terrible conditions in the mobile PC segment,” said Duke Yi, senior manager for display components and materials research at IHS. “Shipment growth also was impacted as PC makers prepared new models for introduction in the second half of 2013. The good news for the market is that sequential growth is forecast to recover in the second half, traditionally the peak season for PC product sales, following launches of new product lineups.”

Second-quarter blues

Worldwide shipments of all types of mobile PCs—including both conventional and touch-screen models—shrank a steep 5.1 percent during the April to June period compared to the first three months of the year. This represented the first time the notebook PC market experienced a sequential decline since the second quarter of 2002, during the dot-com bust. The mobile PC industry this time faced tough competition from media tablets, depressing sales.

Area reprieve

While unit shipments declined in the second quarter, the market for notebook PC touch screens actually expanded based on another growth metric: panel area. Mobile PC touch-screen-panel shipments measured in terms of square inches rose by 3.4 percent in the second quarter compared to the first. This indicates that display sizes for touch-screen notebooks are expanding.

Notebook touch panels sized 11.6 inches or smaller accounted for 36.8 percent of total shipments in the second quarter, down from 52.7 percent during the previous quarter. Meanwhile, combined shipments of 13.3- , 14- , and 15.6-inch laptop touch panels, which have emerged as the mainstream sizes, jumped to 57.1 percent of the total market, up from 40.1 percent in the first quarter.

Price plunge

Although touch-panel shipments by area increased quarter-on-quarter, prices of touch panels fell significantly amid intensifying competition. The average selling price of laptop touch panels dropped more than 10 percent, despite growing demand for larger touch-screen panels.

Meanwhile, the utilization of low-end technologies has been on the rise. For example, the use of sodalime for the cover glass of a notebook touch panel has increased, replacing aluminosilicate, which made up 35.7 percent of the cover-glass market in the second quarter, down from 65.7 percent in the previous quarter.

The growing adoption of low-end technologies in the notebook PC sector indicates ongoing efforts in the market to cut touch-panel costs while expanding touch-screen notebook PC displays to be as large as those used in conventional notebook PCs.

Happy as a clamshell

Traditional clamshell PCs in the second quarter accounted for 75 percent of total touch-screen notebooks, up from 58 percent during the same period in 2012. Meanwhile, the market share for high-end detachable-type touch-screen notebook PC fell to 11.5 percent, down from 23.7 percent. Development costs for clamshell notebooks are lower than those of other form factors, prompting greater participation from PC makers.

Amid increasing competition, display supplier TPK Holding Co. from Taiwan lost share during the second quarter in the notebook PC touch-screen panel market. The company’s share of market dropped to less than 50 percent. Meanwhile, AU Optronics Corp., also from Taiwan, and China’s Shenzhen O-Film Tech Co. posted rapid growth during the same period. Notebook PC makers on the whole have been diversifying touch screen panel suppliers to reduce the prices of the panels.

The market for controller integrated circuits (ICs) used for the laptop touch screen panels was also hit by fierce competition. California-based Atmel Corp., which previously led the market, lost ground to Taiwan’s ELAN Microelectronics Corp. in the second quarter. Two other entities expanded their market share—Synaptics Inc., also of California; and eGalax-eMPIA Technology Inc., another Taiwanese maker.

IHS timely published a quarterly “Touch Panel Shipment Database – Notebook PC” report to help them understanding the notebook-use projected capacitive touch panel industry quickly and accurately. The report provides quarterly shipments of touch-screen notebooks by unit/area/value; by inch; by brand; by form factor; by touch panel layer; by touch panel module and controller IC maker; and by cover window materials and bonding type, as well as top five models in terms of shipments.

The report should offer insight into the related market and industry to notebook set makers that are interested in notebook-use projected capacitive touch panels and companies related to touch panel modules, parts and raw materials.

Semiconductor capital spending has increased significantly among pure-play foundries as more IDMs shift to a fabless/fab-lite business model and as new foundry participants intensify competition among the old guard. The total capital outlays by the Big 4 pure-play foundries are forecast to be $16.6 billion in 2013, which would represent 53 percent of their combined sales (Figure 1).  This far exceeds the industry average of 18 percent capital-spending-to-sales ratio.  The Big 4’s capital spending as a percent of “final sales” is forecast to be 24 percent in 2013, still well above industry average.

Figure 1

Figure 1

A few years ago, TSMC stated that it planned to keep its capital spending at about 20% of its sales, but that was before GlobalFoundries and Samsung brought competitive pressure to the market and started chipping away at TSMC’s business. TSMC spent $5.9 billion in capital spending in 2010 (a budget that was increased twice in the first half of the year), an all-time record amount of capital spending for the company at that time. TSMC spent $8.3 billion in capital expenditures in 2012 and plans to further increase its capex spending to $10.0 billion in 2013. It appears that TSMC will be aggressive in its marketshare fight with GlobalFoundries and Samsung and is likely to greatly exceed its 20% of sales goal for capital spending outlays over the next few years.

The question with regard to the expected combined 2011-2013 IC foundry spending by the Big 4 pure-play suppliers ($46.3 billion) is whether it is too much.  As shown in Figure 1, the “final sales” capital-spending-to-sales ratio of the major foundries was a relatively low 14-15 percent in 2005-2007 before falling to only nine percent in 2008 and 12 percent in 2009.  In 2010, this figure rose to 23 percent, a level not seen since the boom year of 2004.  Spurred by the surge in capital spending by TSMC and GlobalFoundries, this figure rose to 30 percent in 2011.  For 2012, the capital spending as a percent of sales figure for the Big 4 foundries dropped back to a more “reasonable” 24 percent, with the same percentage expected for 2013.  Given the major foundries high capacity utilization levels for leading-edge device production, it appears that current spending levels are warranted and should not lead to significant overcapacity issues.

With demand for IC foundry services from fabless and fab-lite IDM companies expected to be high over the next five years, there is little doubt that demand for IC foundry production will remain strong.  Overall, IC Insights believes that the pure-play foundry market will further divide into the leading-edge IC foundries like TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, and Samsung, and the specialty foundries like TowerJazz, X-Fab, etc.  Thus, the vast majority of future foundry capital spending can still be expected to come from the small group of major foundries targeting leading-edge IC production.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and design, today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $25.87 billion for the month of August 2013, an increase of 6.4 percent compared to August 2012, marking the industry’s largest year-over-year growth since March 2011. Sales in the Americas increased by 23.3 percent compared to August 2012, while global sales in August were 1.3 percent higher than the previous month’s total of $25.53 billion. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average.

“Global semiconductor sales have now increased for six consecutive months, and the industry is well ahead of last year’s pace, thanks largely to sustained growth in the Americas,” said Brian Toohey, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Strong demand for memory products has driven sales in recent months, but sales were also up in August among non-memory products, demonstrating the breadth of the semiconductor market’s strength.”

Regionally, August sales topped sales from the same month last year in the Americas (23.3 percent), Asia Pacific (7.6 percent), and Europe (5 percent), but decreased in Japan (-16.4 percent), in large part because of the devaluation of the Japanese yen. Sales in August were up across all regions compared to the previous month.

“Semiconductor sales have demonstrated increasing momentum in recent months, thanks in part to stabilizing macroeconomic conditions, but this week’s government shutdown and a looming debate over the nation’s debt limit threaten to destabilize the economy and disrupt growth,” said Toohey. “Congress and the Administration should work together to avoid these self-inflicted wounds and get America’s fiscal house in order.”

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin jointly announced this week having achieved a new world record for the conversion of sunlight into electricity using a new solar cell structure with four solar subcells. Surpassing competition after only over three years of research, and entering the roadmap at world class level, a new record efficiency of 44.7% was measured at a concentration of 297 suns. This indicates that 44.7% of the solar spectrum’s energy, from ultraviolet through to the infrared, is converted into electrical energy. This is a major step towards reducing further the costs of solar electricity and continues to pave the way to the 50% efficiency roadmap.

Back in May 2013, the German-French team of Fraunhofer ISE, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin had already announced a solar cell with 43.6% efficiency. Building on this result, further intensive research work and optimization steps led to the present efficiency of 44.7%.

These solar cells are used in concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), a technology which achieves more than twice the efficiency of conventional PV power plants in sun-rich locations. The terrestrial use of so-called III-V multi-junction solar cells, which originally came from space technology, has prevailed to realize highest efficiencies for the conversion of sunlight to electricity. In this multi-junction solar cell, several cells made out of different III-V semiconductor materials are stacked on top of each other. The single subcells absorb different wavelength ranges of the solar spectrum.

“We are incredibly proud of our team which has been working now for three years on this four-junction solar cell,” says Frank Dimroth, Department Head and Project Leader in charge of this development work at Fraunhofer ISE. “This four-junction solar cell contains our collected expertise in this area over many years. Besides improved materials and optimization of the structure, a new procedure called wafer bonding plays a central role. With this technology, we are able to connect two semiconductor crystals, which otherwise cannot be grown on top of each other with high crystal quality. In this way we can produce the optimal semiconductor combination to create the highest efficiency solar cells.”

“This world record increasing our efficiency level by more than 1 point in less than 4 months demonstrates the extreme potential of our four-junction solar cell design which relies on Soitec bonding techniques and expertise,” says André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, Soitec’s Chairman and CEO. “It confirms the acceleration of the roadmap towards higher efficiencies which represents a key contributor to competitiveness of our own CPV systems. We are very proud of this achievement, a demonstration of a very successful collaboration.”

“This new record value reinforces the credibility of the direct semiconductor bonding approaches that is developed in the frame of our collaboration with Soitec and Fraunhofer ISE. We are very proud of this new result, confirming the broad path that exists in solar technologies for advanced III-V semiconductor processing,” said Leti CEO Laurent Malier.

Concentrator modules are produced by Soitec (started in 2005 under the name Concentrix Solar, a spin-off of Fraunhofer ISE). This particularly efficient technology is employed in solar power plants located in sun-rich regions with a high percentage of direct radiation. Presently Soitec has CPV installations in 18 different countries including Italy, France, South Africa and California.

Gary Dickerson (L), president and CEO of Applied Materials and Tetsuro Higashi, chairman, president and CEO of Tokyo Electron.

Gary Dickerson (L), president and CEO of Applied Materials and Tetsuro Higashi (R), chairman, president and CEO of Tokyo Electron.

Applied Materials Inc. and Tokyo Electron Limited today announced Applied Materials agreed to merge with Tokyo Electron in a deal valuing the Japanese semiconductor production equipment maker at $9.3 billion, creating a giant in the chip and display manufacturing-tools sector. An all-stock combination values the new combined company at approximately $29 billion. The companies expect the transaction to close in mid to second half of 2014.

“Today, we are launching a new company and taking a bold step forward for our industry,” said Tetsuro Higashi, chairman, president and CEO of Tokyo Electron.

Under the terms of the agreement, Tokyo Electron shareholders will receive 3.25 shares of the new company for every Tokyo Electron share held. Applied Materials shareholders will receive 1 share of the new company for every Applied Materials share held. After the close, Applied Materials shareholders will own approximately 68 percent of the new company and Tokyo Electron shareholders approximately 32 percent.

Gary Dickerson, president and CEO of Applied Materials, said he believes they are creating a global innovator in precision materials engineering and patterning.

“We believe the combination will accelerate our momentum for profitable growth, increase the value we deliver to shareholders and create great opportunities for our employees,” said Dickerson.

The new company will have a shared leadership team. Tetsuro Higashi will serve as chairman, and Gary Dickerson will serve as chief executive officer.  The board will be made up of eleven directors with five directors appointed by each company and one additional director to be mutually agreed upon. Seven of the eleven directors will be independent. Bob Halliday of Applied Materials will serve as chief financial officer. The company will also have a new name, dual headquarters in Tokyo and Santa Clara, a dual listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, and will be incorporated in The Netherlands.

This merger could give the new company control of as much as a quarter of the entire market. Other top Applied Materials rivals include Veeco Instruments, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research Corp and ASM International.

In its official release, Applied Materials said the combined organization is intended to accelerate the existing strategic visions of Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron and increase the new company’s opportunity to enable major, future technology inflections and advance customers’ roadmaps in both semiconductor and display, citing the market growth in personal mobile electronics, such as smartphones and tablets, as a driver in the company’s strategic plans.

“We are building this new company in the spirit of a merger of equals,” said Dickerson. “For five decades, we have each made significant contributions to the semiconductor industry and we have deep respect for the capabilities that the other brings to this combination. Both companies have a strong heritage of customer service and an enduring commitment to push the boundaries of technology and engineering.  We share many common values and are confident we will execute together to achieve our strategic and financial goals.”

The companies expect to achieve $250 million in annualized run-rate operating synergies by the end of the first full fiscal year and $500 million in run-rate operating synergies realized in the third full fiscal year.  In addition, the new company expects to realize meaningful savings as a result of the new corporate structure. The new company intends to commence a $3.0 billion stock repurchase program targeted to be executed within 12 months following the close of the transaction. On a non-GAAP basis, taking into account the buyback, the transaction is expected to be EPS accretive at the end of the first full fiscal year after transaction close.

Goldman, Sachs & Co. acted as Applied Materials’ exclusive financial advisor, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, Mori, Hamada & Matsumoto, and De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek acted as legal counsel to Applied Materials.  Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co., Ltd. acted as Tokyo Electron’s exclusive financial advisor, and Jones Day, and Nishimura & Asahi acted as legal counsel to Tokyo Electron.