Baron Funds Comments on Cymer Inc.

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May 24, 2012
From Baron Funds' first quarter letter: Cymer, Inc. (CYMI, Financial) manufactures and sells highly engineered laser products into the semiconductor capital equipment (SCE) industry. The ultra-violet (UV) lasers that Cymer sells are used for photolithography which effectively prints circuits on substrate wafers to produce computer chips. Roughly twothirds of the company's business is in recurring revenue services and parts. This is the reverse of Cymer's SCE competitors. The service segment is integrated into Cymer's customers' work processes, which allows for increased system utilization and creates a stickiness for Cymer's products. The company is also developing an important new UV laser product called EUV which we believe has the potential to double Cymer's revenues over the next few years. As the EUV technology is proven out, we believe that Cymer's earnings will increase dramatically. (Randy Gwirtzman)