After taking Applied Materials”™ crown as the largest maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment in the world, ASML Holding NV is readying systems to produce far smaller circuitry that it hopes will boost further sales in the near future.
The Netherlands-based company makes systems to print circuitry on chips, flat panel displays and other devices. A half-dozen of ASML”™s new extreme ultraviolet lithography systems are now being used in factories.
ASML”™s largest U.S. plant is in Wilton, where the company has the largest high-tech workforce in Fairfield County at more than 900 employees. ASML picked up its Wilton plant via its 2000 acquisition of SVG Lithography, with the plant originally built 50 years ago by PerkinElmer.
ASML was launched in 1984 in the Netherlands as a joint venture between Philips and Advanced Semiconductor Materials International, creating a North American headquarters the following year in Tempe, Ariz.
In the first quarter, sales were down 14 percent from a year ago to $1.6 billion, with U.S. system sales totaling about $210 million. ASML had a $369 million profit and its sales marked an improvement from a relatively anemic fourth quarter.
ASML said it expects revenue to come in slightly lower for the current quarter, but sees a pick-up after that. Last year, the company caught Applied Materials to become the world”™s top maker of chip equipment, according to VLSI Research.
At ATMI Inc. in Danbury, whose canisters are used to pipe gases into chip-production chambers, revenue was down 8 percent to below $93 million, with executives similarly citing softness in the semiconductor sector that they expect to dissipate.
“Our microelectronics revenues were consistent with the industry bottoming during the quarter, particularly with certain foundry customers,” ATMI CFO Tim Carlson said.
Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $307 billion last year, according to Stamford-based Gartner Inc., up 1.8 percent from 2010, with Intel Corp. holding a 16.5 percent market share, its highest mark ever. Intel recently included ASML on a list of its top suppliers from a quality perspective.
Gartner analyst Peter Middleton said the growth has occurred despite an “inventory correction” that companies are completing that should bolster demand in the current second quarter. He projects a 4 percent growth rate for this year from 2011”™s sales levels.
Longer term, ASML is working to sell equipment capable of producing circuits measuring less than 20 nanometers in diameter, with a human hair measuring anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 nanometers, with CEO Eric Meurice saying the smaller systems will be driven in part by emerging mobile technologies.
“There are certain numbers of phases when you introduce such a technology,” Meurice said during a mid-April conference call. “The first phase is to have some R&D tools to do some recipes and confirm the technology ”“ that”™s what we”™ve been doing. And although there have been delays, ”¦ by the end of the day, the recipes are being made.
“If you talk to foundry customers, you will see a lot of exciting products getting into mobile applications which requires power,” he said.
