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This interview is a small excerpt from a comprehensive interview published in The Wall Street Transcript as part of the Technology Sector, available at (001-212-952-7433) or http://www.twst.com/sectors/techno.html

TWST: Shall we start with a quick overview and historical sketch of STEAG HamaTech?

Mr. Eppinger: STEAG HamaTech is an equipment supplier for two major industries. The first is the optical disc industry, which is a 600 to 800 million per year market. Here STEAG HamaTech is one of the leaders in this industry and supplies production equipment for producing compact discs and DVDs. The second market is the Photomask market which is a sub-segment in the semiconductor industry and we are supplying equipment to the semiconductor industry or to the mask manufactures.

TWST: What is the revenue breakdown in percentage terms?

Mr. Eppinger: About 80% of our revenues come from the optical disc industry. As I said we are number two in this market and there are basically four or five big players, which account for about two-thirds of all the revenues. The Photomask Industry itself is a 40 million market. We are the market leader in that business and in 2001 we had revenues of some 24 million.

TWST: Has there been any significant shift in those percentages?

Mr. Eppinger: We definitely had a shift over the last 3-4 years. In 1999 the Photomask industry was only some 4-5% of our total revenues while today it’s 20%. We anticipate that those ratios will remain for the years to come so which means 80% optical disc and 20% Photomask.

TWST: Are you a strongly R&D focused company?

Mr. Eppinger: Yes, we are a technology driven company with about one fifth of our workforce in the R&D area and a spend of some 5% per year of our total revenues.

TWST: How do you feel about investor and analyst reaction to the corporate story? Is there anything you feel is being missed?

Mr. Eppinger: The last two years have been very hard for the company. Financial results had been disastrous. But the management implemented appropriate measures last summer and now we are seeing the first results of these measures. We had a press release at the end of March saying that the first quarter should be the first quarter in which we will break even or better and we are expecting further improvements in the quarters to come.

TWST: Is the balance sheet in shape?

Mr. Eppinger: We still have a very strong balance sheet. We basically have no loans from the banks and we still have pretty high equity base of more than 60% of the balance sheet total.

TWST: Where do you see STEAG HamaTech 5 years from now?

Mr. Eppinger: In 5 years, we will still be in the optical disc business and in the Photomask business, but we are scouting for new possibilities. We are looking for growing markets in order to dilute the risks and I see a third division emerging over the next 2-3 years. And we would expect growth of some 15-20%.