Rudolph Acquires 450mm Metrology Firm NanoPhotonics
The company is advancing its edge and backside wafer inspection technologies to meet growing demands for silicon wafer fab and advanced packaging process requirements
Rudolph Technologies, Inc., a provider of process characterisation
equipment and software for wafer fabs and advanced packaging facilities, has
acquired the assets of NanoPhotonics GmbH, Mainz, Germany.
Rudolph believes the addition of NanoPhotonics' inspection technology and its substantial intellectual property portfolio will strengthen its presence in the high-growth advanced packaging market.
Paul F. McLaughlin, chairman and chief executive officer of Rudolph, said, "The acquisition of NanoPhotonics significantly expands Rudolph's portfolio of intellectual property, which in turn expands our product offerings into unpatterned wafer and mask blank inspection markets. This acquisition enhances our capabilities in all-surface inspection, which we believe will be critical in meeting the emerging requirements in advanced packaging markets. We are adding a highly-skilled team to our organisation, and expect to quickly integrate the NanoPhotonics operations into our existing inspection business."
Founder and president of NanoPhotonics, Dr. Michael Abraham commented, "We believe our products and technologies are a good complement to Rudolph's current inspection suite of customer-focused offerings, and our team is looking forward to ensuring a smooth transition. Rudolph's competencies in all-surface defect inspection are well known and will be a key asset as our technologies are integrated into their portfolio. Additionally, we believe Rudolph's worldwide service and support infrastructure will contribute to the success of these complementary businesses."
McLaughlin added, "Rudolph has extensive experience in the back-end manufacturing environment. We are taking NanoPhotonics' sub-micron resolution capability and applying it to a market that we know very well to deliver an unmatched solution for our customers."
This is one of several planned steps Rudolph is taking to expand the Company's portfolio and drive its long-term growth strategies in both front- and back-end manufacturing environments. Regarding this, McLaughlin said, "The integration of additional inspection and metrology capability which is the integral part of this acquisition is driving new customer insertion points for Rudolph solutions while enhancing the overall value proposition of our cluster platforms."
He continued "NanoPhotonics is profitable and the acquisition is expected to be accretive within the first 12 months. It will add approximately $2 million per quarter to our overall revenues and will not have a material effect on our second quarter results."
While terms were not disclosed, Rudolph said that this all-cash transaction used less than five percent of the company's overall cash. The firm plans to maintain and expand a technology center in Mainz, Germany as operations are integrated into the company.
Products included in the acquisition are all-surface inspection systems (wafer edge, backside and front side) for 200, 300 and 450 mm wafers, as well as mask blank inspection systems. Primary customers for unpatterned wafer inspection are semiconductor manufacturers who use these tools for quality assurance and yield improvement purposes, silicon wafer manufacturers and substrate suppliers for compound semiconductors. Mask blank systems are sold to mask shops, manufacturers of process tool equipment and mask blank manufacturers.
The company will provide more information on this acquisition in
its 2nd Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call scheduled for July 30th,
2012.
