Advanced Energy Industries CFO Richard Beck Talks to The Wall Street Transcript

Business Wire, August 3, 1999

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 3, 1999--

The Wall Street Transcript has published an in-depth interview with Richard Beck of Advanced Energy Industries, Inc. (Nasdaq:AEIS), in which he talks at length about his company's future.

He says, "The company was started in 1981 by Doug Schatz, who continues to be our CEO. We manufacture power conversion and control systems primarily for semiconductor equipment companies, but also for companies that manufacture equipment for data storage, manufacturing things like digital videodisks, compact disks and thin film heads."

He explains, "In the semiconductor equipment area, we provide solutions to Applied Materials, to Novellus Systems, to Lam Research, to a small extent to a subsidiary of Tokyo Electron Limited, to Eaton and some others. But certainly all of the major semiconductor equipment companies are customers of ours."

He asserts, "In 1996, we set a revenue objective for the company to be a billion-dollar company in 10 years. And what that meant was that we were going to have to grow from our 1996 revenue base at a 26% compounded growth rate to get to that billion-dollar level. We believe that we'll probably see about $350 million of that billion coming from acquisitions and the balance from organic growth. With the 1997/1998 turn down in the industry, it shifted that compounded growth rate up a little bit to about 30%, but that's still way under the traditional growth rate that we enjoyed, which has been 51% compounded since the company started. We believe that we can achieve that $1-billion revenue number through organic growth and through some acquisition opportunities."

Looking forward, he states, "We'll continue to work on our technology as we go forward because that's going to allow us to continue to gain market share."

To read the complete interview, go to http://www.twst.com/ceos.htm. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations. Read hundreds of free excerpts from our Q&A Interviews of analysts from top brokerage houses, money managers and CEOs at http://www.twst.com.

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