Aixtron - Die Perle im Technologiebereich (Seite 4614)

[tinoaktie]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 25.778.996 von WAlexandro am 28.11.06 20:26:17

Hallo WAlex,

vielen Dank für die Hilfe, ich wollte jedoch ein Bild von meiner Festplatte uploaden, das wird dann wohl nicht gehen.

na ja kann sich ja jeder den index über den chart legen, mir gefällt das bild....

lg tinoaktie

[WAlexandro]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 25.778.524 von tinoaktie am 28.11.06 20:11:28

Hallo tinoaktie,

mit rechter Maustaste aus den Chart bzw. das Bild klicken, Eigenschaften wählen, die Url kopieren und dann bei W:0 einfügen.
Einfügen natürlich im Zwischenraum zwischen den beiden Zeichen, die Wgesetzt hat " target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener"> .... bzw. [img].
Beachten dabei, ob Bild oder Url eingefügt werden soll.

Wenn du ein paar mal geübt hast, klappt das ganz einfach.

Gruß
WAlex

[tinoaktie]

Hallo,

natürlich kann sich Aixtron noch nicht dem Gesamtmarkt entziehen. Legt man aber den Index über den Chart sieht man wie Aixtron jetzt schon den Neuen Markt outperformt. Einige werden durchhalten andere werden sich mal ärgern. Leider bin ich zu blöd um den Chart einzufügen. Bei Bild einfügen steht nur img da vielleicht kanns ja jemand kurz erklären.... danke schon mal

lg

[Rabe66]

This is Part V of a five-part interview. Part I appeared on November 21, Part II on November 22, Part III on November 24 and Part IV on November 27.

Q: It’s very clear that cost of ownership (CoO) is a key driving concept for Aixtron. The problem, it seems to me, is that CoO threatens to become a very amorphous term, meaning different things to different people. If I'm the head of accounting at a semiconductor manufacturing company and considering buying some Aixtron-Genus tools, what would be the specific parameters on which you would want to give me guidance in defining my CoO, particularly in relation to other technologies and tool offerings from other specialist deposition companies?

PH: Well, that varies, depending on how well developed the industry is, and it’s probably a slightly different answer in compound than in silicon. Silicon is probably more historically focused in terms of CoO, but CoO is definitely an issue on the table in the LED industry, now. And the development of our next-generation systems and the more efficient designs we’ve now launched are very much focused on recognizing that for these end applications to become viable and cost-effective, the equipment industry has to play a part in delivering tools to the industry that enable more efficient manufacturing and more economically efficient use of materials. They have to enable both increased yield and throughput.

At Aixtron we recognize that that’s a key part that we have to play in the equation, particularly as a major player in the MOCVD industry. But this is an old story. In a much more developed industry, such as in silicon, CoO is probably the first tick-box in any analysis and discussion.

BE: If you look at the process with which any semiconductor company looks at CoO, clearly the first element is wafer size, and recently we’ve seen the Silicon industry go from 200mm to 300mm, and now there’s even the initial discussion of 450mm. That’s being driven by a couple of the big players, so wafer size will continue to be a medium of CoO. The second factor is the technology node. Our customers are constantly reducing the technology node or line width, introducing several factors that affect CoO. One is the possibility of more chips on a wafer, regardless of size, and second is a more advanced capability that gives those chips a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The third possibility is the use of new materials, which is a declaration that the incumbent deposition technology, whether it’s CVD or PVD, is no longer capable of delivering the required process.

Once you change the materials, you now have to make an equipment decision. That means you now get into the standard CoO question, in terms of a particular piece of equipment. What does it cost? What’s the footprint? What’s the size of the cleanroom? What’s the throughput? What’s my cost of maintenance? And what’s my overall yield and cost per wafer? The answers to those questions then drive what will become the next-generation equipment technology.

PH: There’s a significant difference in terms of the complexity and difficulty of migrating from 200mm to 300mm and then to 450mm, than there is in the ability to continually improve the CoO and continuously improve the equipment and process technology. The talk of 450mm is a huge challenge. I don’t know anybody who’s saying that this is going to be a natural migration.

BE: That’s especially true at the cost order we’re at right now because when you get to 45nm or 32nm, there is going to be a significant material change, and the management of that material change will, I’m sure, be more important than, “Do I go from 300mm to 450mm?” That material transition has to take place first, so that you then re-baseline your process. Then you may look at going to the next wafer size. But the current migration in wafer size, going from 200mm to 300mm, was achieved with basically, existing process technology. In fact, we were very proud that we could migrate the same process from 200mm to 300mm without any change in process or equipment capability. You could build a bridge tool, and it could be applied at either 200mm or 300mm. Nevertheless, the material change will need to take place first, in my opinion, if the industry is to migrate to 450mm.

Q: Could you say, briefly, why that materials change becomes so absolutely necessary?

BE: Well, there are two areas at stake. One is capacitor formation. The other is transistor gate formation. It’s been well documented that silicon dioxide (SiO2) will not get you the Equivalent Oxide Thickness (EOT) that you need for next-generation transistor formation. Today, the standard for capacitor formation is silicon-insulator-silicon, and that’s where the polysilicon electrode needs to change to some form of metal electrode, and that electrode will then have a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) formation. That’s a materials change. What’s the new electrode material? What’s the new high-K insulator material? Those are the material changes that the industry must go though to get to the next technology node.

That change in the materials started with the move to 65nm, and that then was pushed out to 45nm, and today we hear talk of 32nm. We’re not surprised by that because typically that’s how technology slowly migrates into high-volume manufacturing. And these are US$3 billion customer production lines that we’re talking about today. There’s just one little problem. If the front end shuts down, that creates a huge downstream liability.

Gordon Moore, of Moore’s Law fame, once jokingly said of a silicon fab: “It eats like an elephant and defecates like a parakeet.” If you’ve got all this stuff going in, and there’s nothing coming out, you’re in big trouble. Semiconductor companies today will not put unproven technology into high-volume manufacturing. Hence, you go through a tremendous qualification process before anything ever gets into high-volume manufacturing.

PH: And in fact, the delay – particularly if you go back to some of the delay in the adoption of ALD, for example, as well as delay in AVD – the delay may well turn out to be of benefit to Aixtron because it’s given us more time to re-focus the technology, which we have done, and get those JDPs running to the point where it’s delivering an acceptable integrated technology solution.

BE: As a combined company today, we’ve got a much broader sweep of technology than we did as an independent, so that today we’re a formidable competitor to anybody in the global deposition market.

Q: How much broader a set of offerings than other companies in the deposition market?

BE: Genus was very much focused on DRAM only because our core competence was in CVD, Tungsten Silicide. We’ve now moved into ALD, and that is also memory driven. Aixtron, on the other hand, had focused on logic and gate formation, with their AVD technology. So now we’ve got logic and memory, within our portfolio, with CVD, ALD and AVD. That’s a very powerful technology combination. So for me, the merger was the right decision at the right time.

PH: With compound MOCVD we’re also able to offer both planetary and showerhead deposition technologies, but what we’ve also done, over the last three or four years, is move to common-platform technologies. If you look at our showerhead technology, or indeed our planetary technology, there’s greater modularity, more component commonality, a modular architecture, which is also playing its part in being able to reduce the cost of ownership for customers.

The approach we’re now taking with silicon, the approach that Bill is now pursuing, is to take that same modular approach to give better economies of scale within manufacturing and purchasing. In terms of the impact on CoO, the front end is the key enabling technology and the key enabling cost driver. So I believe we’re in a good position, a good space, and the direction we’re taking is encouraging, certainly in terms of market dynamics.

Q: Last year the financial picture looked mixed, and it's the same again this year. The latest results, for first-half 2006, point to increased bookings, revenues and margins, but at the half year point in 2006 you reported a net loss of €4.3 million. The hope is for breakeven in 2006. What would be your comments to investors and potential investors, at this stage?

PH: Well, let’s try to put this in context because we have to remember that last year saw the closing of the acquisition, with Genus, and there were a number of significant one-off costs that were related to that. Our previous projected result for 2005 was a net loss after tax ranging from approximately €10 million to approximately €15 million, but balance-sheet adjustments, including balance-sheet adjustments that were necessary for areas where we thought the emergence of the market will perhaps take longer, were also a factor in the final result.

If you compare the first six months of this year, which is the only thing we’ve announced so far, to last year, what’s significant is, as you say, order intake, in terms of both compound and silicon, a major increase, as a result, in our order backlog. Our equipment order backlog as of June 30, 2006 was €81.2 million. So our revenue forecast for €150 million and net result breakeven is quite a significant improvement on the year before.

If we look at our gross margins for the six months, they were seven percentage points up on the prior-year comparable period, so we’re talking gross margins of 37%. So I think that given that 80% of our revenues were in dollars, and the dollar is a significant influence on our result, I think we can be very pleased with the progress we’ve made in the first six months. And with the improvement in market conditions, and the improvement in Genus’ business over the last 12 months, I think we’ve got a lot to be positive about.

Q: So you are looking for breakeven this year?

PH: We are. The final results for 2006 will become available in late February 2007.

Both 2005 and 2006 have also been very busy years for us with regard to regulatory compliance work. We’re now listed both on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (the Aixtron stock is a member of the TecDAX), and on the NASDAQ, and consequently there are additional SEC requirements that we have to also comply with. The result I’ve talked about takes into account that there’s significant investment in being registered with the SEC. We also invested a considerable amount of effort in the adoption of IFRS financial reporting and the SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) requirements. In the first half of the year we invested something close to one million euros just on SOX preparation.

So we’re in good shape. We’re encouraged, we’ve done a lot of the difficult stuff, we’re making good progress and we’re seeing increased customer activity and increased customer interest in our new technologies. In terms of profitability, we’re targeting 40% gross margin, and there’s a very good chance we could achieve that. The only thing that could negatively influence our ability to achieve 40% would be the speed of revenue recognition for new technology shipped this year. There are some fairly strict regulations about when you can recognize new technology as revenue, but we’re on course to return to a more profitable performance and higher volume.

Q: When I look at the semiconductor industry overall, I get the same sense of conundrum – that there do seem to be tremendous demand drivers, but that inventory, in the first half of this year, continued to have a negative impact.

PH: If we take snapshot of say the first quarter of this year in memory and flash, we saw real hesitancy in the market for ordering capital equipment for DRAM and flash. I think what we’ve learned from talking to our customers is that that nervousness in DRAM resulted from the delay of Microsoft’s Vista OS. Nevertheless, sentiment returned very quickly when the industry realized that the consumer would buy a Vista-ready PC, whether the Vista OS had been launched or not.

Secondly, there was some hesitancy in the NAND flash market, which was an inventory issue, which I suspect occurred because Apple amongst others had built up some inventories and consequently switched off purchases, again for a relatively short period of time. If we look at that space; the Apple nano-type technology, you’re certain to get bigger capacity systems coming soon. They’re delivering products that have video capability, and the announcements Apple just made about the downloading of movies are certainly a step in the direction of next-generation NAND-flash type design. I think you’re right in what you say, but I think the key for equipment suppliers is to refine the business model such that you can deliver on shorter and more responsive cycle times.

We don’t build box systems. We’ve worked to the point now where we can probably ship MOCVD systems in three to five months, depending on whether we know the configuration requirements. In the case of silicon, in many cases, we’re shipping almost in the same quarter as we’re taking the order.

What we have today is great challenges and great opportunities – in equal measure. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

[wolf4920032000]

Folgende Antwort bezieht sich auf Beitrag Nr.: 25626900 von skat am 23.11.06 18:16:41
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Hallo Skat,

danke,

Grüße alle meine Freunde und wünsche noch ein schönes Wo-Ende.

P.S.
Denke dass Aixtron noch ein paar Cent fällt, aber unter 3,-- € auf keinen Fall.

[WAlexandro]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 25.765.196 von Rabe66 am 28.11.06 10:35:55

Das dürfte die erwartete und von vielen angekündigte allgemeine Konsolidierung der Märkte und ihrer Indizes sein. AIXtron kann sich dem leider nicht entziehen.
Die Amis mit ihrem schwachen Dollar und die sich abzeichnende Bruchlandung der US-Wirtschaft sind die Hauptursache.
Hoffentlich geht es nicht noch gewaltig runter.

Aixtron selber steht von der Auftragslage her nicht schlecht da und wird nach dieser allgemeinen Talfahrt wieder Fahrt aufnehmen.
Es ist halt ein langer Weg nach oben. Aber er dürfte sich dann auch lohnen.

[Rabe66]

nicht schön aber auch nicht so selten diese phänomen.
wenn wir heute noch ins plus drehen ist das eher ein schönes kaufsignal

[Fruehrentner]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 25.764.541 von swisssimon am 28.11.06 09:51:50

Ja wirklich traurig der Kursverlauf. DAS hat AIX nicht verdient! Nur interessiert das die Börse natürlich nicht.

Zum Glück gucke ich mir das von der Seitenlinie an.

[swisssimon]

Es dürfte bald an der Zeit sein, einen thread zu gründen für solche, welche den Aixtron-Kurs zum Kotzen finden. Ich wäre sofort dabei....

[Macrocosmonaut [Blogger]]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 25.745.117 von Rabe66 am 27.11.06 14:45:03

Sehr interessanter Artikel - vielen Dank.

Das hört sich nach zukünftigen Kooperationen bei Aixtron an.

MfG.