Aixtron's revenues reflect state of the market
In the second quarter alone, Aixtron generated revenues of EUR 36.1 million, a sequential fall of 23% compared with EUR 47.2 million in the first quarter and a drop of 39% compared with EUR 58.9 million in the year-ago period.
The company says that in view of customers’ restrained capital spending and their tendency to push out the delivery of systems until the next fiscal year, it is forecasting revenues of EUR 160.0 million for 2002 as a whole, compared to earnings of EUR 240.1 million in 2001.
"Despite the current market conditions we remain optimistic about our growth projections in the coming years," said Paul Hyland, Aixtron’s CEO. "Aixtron’s MOCVD technology is the first critical step in the value chain for a large number of modern electronics and photonics applications, for which market researchers are predicting encouraging growth rates."
Pre-tax earnings totaled EUR 17.0 million in the first half of 2002, compared with EUR 30.4 million in the year-ago period, and consolidated net income amounted to EUR 10.3 million, compared with EUR 16.5 million last year.
New orders in the June 2002 quarter amounted to EUR 26.1 million, a figure in line with planning. Orders for the second quarter of 2001 totaled EUR 50.1 million. Companies that placed orders in the June 2002 quarter included Rohm of Japan, Furi of China, and Forepi, UEC and Epistar, all of Taiwan. The order backlog at the end of the first half of 2002 totaled EUR 110.3 million, compared to EUR 160.7 million in the previous year.
In the first half of 2002, Aixtron directed EUR 5.3 million (6.4% of revenue) into R&D. The main focus of this spending included GaN production, high-k dielectrics and organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). An important milestone was reached in this last area with the "proof of concept" of Aixtron s Tricent OVPD technology at Universal Display Corp.
"Simple, conventional materials are increasingly being replaced by complex synthetic materials, and we supply our customers with the technology to manufacture them," said Paul Hyland. "Our chemical vapor phase deposition process is widely acknowledged as the preferred technology in this area."
According to a current publication by market researchers VLSI Research, Aixtron increased its market share by 1% to 58% in 2001, while the market share of its main competitor, Emcore, was about half that figure.
