Article Excerpt:
TWST: Please begin with a brief historical sketch of the company and a picture of the things you're doing at the present time.Mr. Grady: Brooks was incorporated in 1978. We've been listed on NASDAQ for 11 years now. The company's core business has been in semiconductor capital equipment automation and semiconductor automation. The business started primarily in the vacuum space and when I say vacuum, I mean vacuum semiconductor tool automation. The company expanded beyond vacuum automation to atmospheric automation and then into full fabwide automation which includes what I would call manufacturing automation software. So it's a very broad-based company. Over the past three or four years, we have focused our efforts on semiconductor capital equipment, our primary business when the company was founded. We are currently the largest supplier of vacuum automation products to the semiconductor capital equipment industry and with the recent acquisition of Synetics, we are the largest supplier of atmospheric automation for semiconductor. The third leg of the stool is our software business where we are one of the largest suppliers of semiconductor fabwide automation software products.
TWST: Does this mean that you have several different kinds of
competitors?
Mr. Grady: Yes. We have competitors in the OEM hardware space that are
primarily Japanese competitors; in the fabwide automation, I would say,
again, both Japanese and domestic competitors; and in the software
space, I'd say largely domestic competitors; however, there are many
emerging smaller competitors mostly in Asia.
Tickers included in this excerpt: BRKS
TWST Newsletter
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.