Mattson Technology (MTSN) Q1 2012 Earnings Call April 25, 2012 5:00 pm ET Executives Laura Guerrant-Oiye - David L. Dutton - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director J. Michael Dodson - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President of Finance and Secretary Analysts Edwin Mok - Needham & Company, LLC, Research Division Patrick J. Ho - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division Christian D. Schwab - Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC, Research Division Benedict Pang - Caris & Company, Inc., Research Division Graham Yoshio Tanaka - Tanaka Capital Management, Inc. Amit Dayal - Rodman & Renshaw, LLC, Research Division Presentation Operator Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Mattson Technology's First Quarter Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Laura Guerrant. Please begin. Laura Guerrant-Oiye Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Mattson Technology's financial results for the 2012 first quarter, which ended April 1, 2012. In addition to outlining the company's financial results for the first quarter, we will also provide guidance for the second quarter of 2012. On today's call are Dave Dutton, Mattson Technology's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Dodson, the company's Chief Financial Officer. Before turning the call over to Dave, I'd like to remind everyone that information provided in today's conference call contains forward-looking statements regarding the company's future prospects including, but not limited to, anticipated market position, revenue, margins, earnings per share, tax rate and fully diluted shares outstanding for future periods.
Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to a number of risks or uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those described in today's news release and in the company's Forms 10-K, 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. The company assumes no obligation to update the information provided in this conference call.
And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Dave. Dave? David L. Dutton Thank you, Laura, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2012 financial results conference call. In today's call, I will give you an overview of the business. Then Mike will provide the financial results and progress to our cost improvement program. And last, I will close with our business outlook and guidance. The first quarter of 2012 was a solid start for Mattson Technology as we delivered results that were at the top end of our guidance. Our revenue grew 21% versus the fourth quarter of 2011. In the first quarter, we saw a strong demand from foundry and demand customer. We are currently expecting 2012 wafer fab equipment CapEx spending to be flat to slightly down. In 2012, foundry spending is forecasted to remain strong due to the 20-nanometer capacity build up. We expect our NAND business to soften in Q2 as our customers digest recent capacity adds with a return to more aggressive spending later in the year. With this current view, we are expecting our revenue growth to be above the industry average for the year. With our revenue growth and our cost reduction programs, we expect the end result will be a profitable 2012. I will now review our progress in each product area starting with our Etch products. Etch grew stronger in 2011, and according to Gartner, an independent research firm, Mattson Technology moved up from #8 to #5 in the Etch market with a market share of 1.2% in this $4 billion market. Our paradigmE Etch recently won an acceptance at a leading semiconductor manufacturer for production at their advanced foundry facility, and at a major CMOS image center manufacturing in Asia. The paradigmE is now in volume production in foundry, NAND, DRAM, packaging and image sensor. Looking further in 2012, we plan to add at least 2 new Etch applications to the paradigmE portfolio for sub 20-nanometer manufacturing capability. This should further extend our third available market, which we'd expect to drive incremental revenue gains going forward.In strip, we gained 5% market share in 2011, garnering 24% and the #2 position in this little [indiscernible] market. Our Suprema system delivers a broad capability to our customers from bulk strip to the demanding special strip in processes required for advanced high-K metal gate and three-dimensional structures. This broad application capability based on a context flexible low cost platform is the reason why Mattson Technology has the widest established customer base in strip as compared to any other competitor.
As we have previously discussed, our RTP business has historically been dominant in the DRAM sector and the reduced DRAM spending in 2011 affected our overall results. During the last 2 years, our RTP has gone through a complete transformation expanding into the NAND and foundry areas. This strategic shift is led by the introduction of our Millios millisecond annealing tools and the Helios XP, both of which are targeted at the leading edge of the foundry/logic market, where we previously have negligeable position. In the first quarter of 2012, we shipped the Millios millisecond annealing system to our third customer for this foundry's leading edge production ramp. In just the last month, we shipped a follow-on Millios for a major customer for its advanced foundry manufacturing line. In our Helios product line, we shipped a third Helios XP rapid thermal annealing system to a leading foundry customer for their advanced production line. Note that Helios XP and the Millios combined are now positioned at 5 major foundry/logic customers for the most advanced application and we expect this new RTP product portfolio to drive our renewed growth in this market. Read the rest of this transcript for free on seekingalpha.com