Thursday, January 12, 2017

Axcelis Following A Different Plan As Semiconductor Tool Spending Ramps Up

Relative to the other semiconductor tool companies that I follow, Axcelis's (NASDAQ:ACLS) basic operating plan and drivers seem a little different than most. While the company is not unaffected by the drive toward new architectures in logic and memory chips, it's not as core to the story as it is for companies in other areas of the tool market like thermal processing, metrology, and packaging.

For Axcelis, the story is about carving out more share against Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT), better addressing the full range of customers' ion implant needs, and exploiting growing investment in equipment for memory and "non-leading edge" chip types like sensors. Although I don't think Axcelis will achieve the same sort of margins I expect from Ultratech (NASDAQ:UTEK), Rudolph (NASDAQ:RTEC), or Nanometrics (NASDAQ:NANO), the market doesn't expect that either and there may still be some upside as the company heads towards a revenue peak in the next couple of years.

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Axcelis Following A Different Plan As Semiconductor Tool Spending Ramps Up

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