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The major earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan in March 2011 and the severe flooding in Thailand in late 2011 were prime examples of such unexpected events, in which our global supply chain capabilities enabled us to proactively address the needs of our customers and suppliers to assist them during those difficult times. We believe that our ability to address our customers’ concerns with openness and speed reflects the strength of our customer relationships and their trust in us as a global supplier and business partner.
Leveraging Our Expertise into New Markets— Engineered Surface Finishes Business
In addition to strengthening and growing our core CMP business, we continue to pursue development of our ESF business. We believe we can leverage our expertise in CMP consumables for the semiconductor industry to develop products for demanding polishing applications in other industries that are synergistic to our CMP consumables business. Our primary focus, in this regard, is on opportunities in precision optics and electronic substrates. Our QED subsidiary continues to be the technology leader in deterministic finishing for the precision optics industry. QED’s polishing and metrology technology enables customers to replace manual processes with automated solutions that provide more precise and repeatable results. Another focus of our ESF business is the polishing of electronic substrates, including silicon and silicon-carbide wafers. A key step in the production of these wafers is CMP, which is utilized to ensure that wafers meet the stringent specifications required by IC manufacturers.
through the first half of our fiscal 2012. We saw strengthening in demand during the second half of fiscal 2012, which was led by growth in Korea as well as higher capacity utilization at certain foundries, where companies can outsource some or all of their manufacturing to reduce their fixed costs. Late in our fourth fiscal quarter of 2012, we saw some softening of demand, which appears to be due to decreased demand for DRAM memory, possibly due to softer demand for personal computers (PCs). We believe that semiconductor industry demand will grow over the long term based on increased usage of certain types of IC devices in existing applications, as well as an expanding range of new uses of these types of devices. This trend of increased usage of IC devices is most evident in the area of mobile connectivity, including mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. However, there continues to be uncertainty regarding macroeconomic factors and the outlook for the global economy. Therefore, we believe the near-term outlook for the semiconductor industry is also uncertain. We believe that our Company is well positioned to operate successfully over a range of demand environments as we have successfully navigated our business through industry and macroeconomic cycles in the past. As the demand for more advanced and lower cost electronic devices grows, there is continued pressure on IC device manufacturers to reduce their costs. Many manufacturers reduce costs by pursuing ever-increasing scale in their operations. Manufacturers also try to reduce costs by migrating to smaller technology nodes, particularly in the production of memory devices. In addition, manufacturers seek ways to increase their production yield while reducing their production costs regardless of the number of units they produce. They look for CMP consumables products with quality and performance attributes that can reduce their overall cost of ownership, pursue ways to use lesser amounts of CMP materials, and also aggressively pursue price reductions for these materials. The pressure on IC device manufacturers to reduce costs has led a number of them to increase their use of foundries, which also leads to increasing scale and lower costs for these foundries. The larger semiconductor manufacturers are generally growing faster than the smaller ones, and we have seen a decline in the number of companies that manufacture semiconductor devices both through mergers and acquisitions as well as through alliances among different companies. The costs to achieve the required scale in manufacturing within the semiconductor industry are
Industry Trends
Semiconductor Industry
We believe the semiconductor industry continues to demonstrate several clear trends: the semiconductor business is defined by cyclical growth; there is constant pressure to reduce costs while advancing technology; and, the customer base continues to consolidate. The cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry is closely tied to the global economy as well as to supply and demand within the industry. Following approximately two years of significant growth in the semiconductor industry, we began to see some softening of demand within the industry during the second half of fiscal 2011 which we attributed to general uncertainty in the global economy and a modest correction of IC device inventory. This softness in demand continued
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