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TWST: ASM International (Nasdaq: ASMI) have just released Q2 results. What were the highlights and salient points?

Mr. de Bakker: To summarize: sales in the quarter were one hundred and forty million euros, which was up forty percent from the previous quarter. We unfortunately still have a loss in the second quarter -- a loss of 6.4 million euros -- but that is substantially less than the twelve million euro loss we had in the first quarter. So it was essentially a reduction of the loss in the second quarter. Bookings were up by about fifty-six percent from the previous quarter and reached a level of 169 million. And as a consequence, our backlog at the end of the second quarter was 168 million euros, which is up twenty percent from the last quarter, and we had a book to bill ratio of 1.2 over the quarter

TWST: How does that performance compare to your peers?

Mr. de Bakker: I think certainly, for the second quarter, we were above average, if you look at the overall space. Some of our competitors had a better first quarter, so growth slowed down for them in the second quarter. For us, our first quarter was relatively modest, so we had an opportunity to ramp up quickly in the second quarter, and we did. Overall, we are performing better than average in the industry, and we see that as a confirmation of our technology position.

TWST: What's the outlook? What are you saying to the investment community?

Mr. de Bakker: What we are saying is that we feel confident that the growth will continue in the second half of this year, and that, in fact, we will continue to grow further into 2003 -- and that is growth in both sales, as well as continuous improvement of the bottom line.

TWST: How should investors appropriately gauge your progress? Is it enough to look purely at new orders on the books?

Mr. de Bakker: If you don't take the period too narrowly, yes, orders are a good indicator. Obviously, you cannot increase your sales and profitability if you don't have the orders. But it's not very useful to over stress the importance of a particular month, or small hiccup in the trend. It's the longer trend that's important. We are confident that in the second half of this year we'll grow as we're indicating.

TWST: If I were briefing the balance sheet and the financial reports, what specifics would you draw my immediate attention to?

Mr. de Bakker: I would answer that in two different parts. One, if you look at back-end, the fact that the company has such a flexible cost structure that it maintained profitability, albeit of course at a very low level, but still profitable throughout the downturn. So there is every reason to assume that with the market picking up again, it will ultimately go back to the profitability levels of about twenty-five percent after tax, as it did at the peak of the last cycle. Second, on the front end, if you again start to look at the last cycle where it was profitable, but not tremendously so, we have since then gained a lot of additional customer acceptance and a lot of additional technology. So I feel that from the front-end peak of the last cycle, we can grow much further in sales and in profitability. If you add the two up again, I think it would be a very compelling investment proposition.