Golden Valley Optoelectrionics Co.,Ltd.—

Harvatek & Formosa Epitaxy in Taiwan LED News

September 21, 2004...In a report today from Commercial Times and confirmed by DigiTimes Harvatek says it expects to ship 170 million units this month, representing an increase of 40% over August shipments of LEDs. In addition, Formosa Epitaxy says it is shipping flip chip packaged LEDs to South Korea and Taiwan customers and that it will be installing another MOCVD platform this fall, adding to its ramp of flip chip components.

TIR and Canlyte Boost Each Other's Brand Names in Lighting with Solid State LEDs
LIGHTimes Staff
September 21, 2004...TIR Systems of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada has signed an agreement that forms a partnership with Canlyte, the Canadian Division of The Genlyte Group (GG), one of the largest lighting manufacturers in North America with annual revenues of over $1 billion. The partnership appears general in scope, aiming at advancing the change to solid state lighting (SSL) by the North American general lighting market. The agreement between TIR Systems Ltd., which trades over the Canadian exchange (TSX: TIR), and the Canlyte division of GG, which trades over the USA's Nasdaq under the symbol "GLYT" is to jointly develop SSL products that take advantage of TIR's enabling technologies and GG's extensive design, manufacturing and distribution capability. LIGHTimes second page members can access more about the agreement...

OptiLED to Enlighten at Entertainment Industry Show in Las Vegas
September 21, 2004...If you haven't yet heard of OptiLED, you likely will. It's one of the more colorful systems integrators of advanced LEDs, and OptiLED's President/CEO, John Nylander, is a great industry spokesperson for advanced LEDs. This upcoming Irvine, California USA based company will be exhibiting at the upcoming "Entertainment Technology Show" LDI 2004, which will appropriately held in the city chock full of bright lights and leading entertainment, Las Vegas, Nevada. The meet is from October 18-24, with the exhibits at the Sands Convention Center going on from Oct 22-24. OptiLED will be in booth #624 and will be involved in a seminar on the fast-growing LED industry. LIGHTimes second page members can links to the show and details of its LED industry seminar...

Agenda Set for Bright Ideas Meet
September 16, 2004...PennWell's Strategies Unlimited, with the help of Adams Harkness, has come up with yet another good idea. A very bright one, as a matter of fact, and it's a one day meet for finance industry professionals, introducing them to the Solid State Lighting field. Bright Ideas Conference 2004
is slated for November 16th at the Langham Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts USA. The purpose of the get-together is to primarily inform the institutional investor community about the growth potential, business outlook and investment opportunities offered by the SSL industry. Strategies' Bob Steele and Adams Harkness' Jed Dorsheimer have put together an impressive and intense one-day agenda that kicks off with Bob's latest market numbers. With the current 31% per year market growth, slated to reach a whopping $3.6 billion in revenue this year alone, it's no wonder institutional investors are starting to take notice.

Addressing that audience are names familiar to those of us helping drive this exciting industry, and include: Chris Moffitt, President and CEO, Rubicon Technology; Steve Cummins, Marketing Manager, Veeco TurboDisc; a spokesperson for Nichia; Ellen Sizemore, Director, LED Products, OSRAM Opto; and a panel made up of our own Robert Walker, Principal of YEBY Associates (and co-chair for our annual Blue event in Taiwan); Dr. John C.C. Fan, President and CEO, Kopin Corporation and Chuong Tran, President of Highlink Technology Corporation. After lunch the systems integrators take the podium, leading off with Brad Weimann, Sr. Manager, Transportation Business, Daktronics; and George G. Mueller, President & CEO, Color Kinetics. The OLED side of the street finalizes the presentations with Scott Brown, R&D Director, CDT and Sidney Rosenblatt, Chief Financial Officer, Universal Display Corporation, plus an representative from Osram Opto's OLED group. Cost to attend (unless you're a Adams Harkness institutional client) is $495 and you can register by simply clicking on this link.

Cree Scores Nice Writeup in Forbes
Jo Ann McDonald
September 21, 2004...Cree Inc. of Durham, North Carolina USA continues to be one of those "go figure" stocks. It just keeps getting stronger, recently hitting the magic $30/share price point when so many other compound semi industry leaders are lucky to be priced in double digits. Cree also is one of the few that scores mainstream financial news coverage on a regular basis, and mainly because it keeps defying the odds and outperforming others in its league... if there are others. Cree plays in a lot of courts, simultaneously, with everything from SiC crystals as gems and substrates, electronic devices, and their mainstay product line, blue spectrum LEDs. If they ever get their blue laser product up to par with Nichia, they'll likely dominate that field as well. There's no stopping Cree once they get a foothold in a given area. They tend to dominate out of sheer internal energy and zeal.

Cree is doing so well lately that they scored a very nice writeup in Forbes, titled Cree Set To 'Reap Significant Gains'. Nice titled. Intriguing. It turns out that the gist of the article is that Wells Fargo Securities raised the price target and 2005 earnings estimate for Cree based on the "continuing strength" in the company's handset market as well as further growth in the light-emitting diode (LED) market, according to Forbes. What the Wells Fargo researcher said was what caught our eye. They looked at the recent upside guidance from Nokia and interpreted that as an "indication that consumers' purchasing behavior is favoring branded leading handsets..." which says to us that "knock offs" (cheap imitations) aren't where the real market is headed. Name brands are. And Cree evidently sticks to the name brand leaders.

The other eye-catching line in the Forbes article was where Wells Fargo researchers said "Cree is the only pure play for investors seeking exposure to the LED market and, ultimately, to solid state lighting." That phrase, "pure play" hasn't been leveled at an LED maker to date. What Wells Fargo means by that is up to speculation. When our field uses the term "pure play" it's generally meant that that's the only business a company is in. In this case, that would indicate that Cree's only business is blue spectrum LEDs, which it isn't. It's a highly eclectic company. The common denominator is their wide bandgap prowess, which is significant, especially in SiC and GaN technologies, with wide applications for both, either, and a combination.

Wells Fargo was quoted as going on to say that, "Based on Cree's technological innovation, leading LED product line, current strength in revenue and earnings, and multiple significant market opportunities, we believe that Cree shares merit a premium of 22 to 25 times our fiscal 2006 earnings-per-share estimate of $1.40." Well that much we understand. And it probably helps account for how come Cree broke into that magic $30 range. As we noted in our July 29th McDonald Report editorial, "Never Underestimate Cree." It's one of the most successful and intriguing of our compound semi industry companies, and a major USA success story when looking at any industry. And that's why Cree continues to capture the attention of the mainstream press and why its stock has remained relatively healthy since 2001 (ref: Yahoo Finance 5 year chart) when so many others have suffered.

Buckyball Nanotubes Could Be Right for Visible Light
CompoundSemi Research Staff
September 21, 2004...In a preview by Phil Schewe and Ben Stein of the upcoming Sept. 27 issue of Applied Physics Letters, titled: An Antenna for Visible Light, the APL writers reviewed an article by Yang Wang of Boston College that talks about an antenna for visible light that's analogous to antennas for radio waves, only these can be made with carbon nanotubes, which are the bundle form of "buckyballs" or "Buckminister Fullerenes" (named after the famed architect, Buckminister Fuller). Carbon nanotube development has done even better than conventional "buckyballs" (which aren't in the least conventional. Reference article picture and description). Realizing antennas are the backbone of radio and TV, a rudimentary antenna effect for visible light has been observed by the BU team, and they're using an array of carbon nanotubes to accomplish the task. The nanotubes use infalling light to excite miniature electrical currents. The goal is to measure these electrical excitations directly, which means the components must process electrical pulses oscillating at optical frequencies (1015 Hz), which isn't doable as yet, so the next best goal is to observe the secondary radiation emitted by the faint excitations. The nanotubes used in the experiment were essentially tiny metallic antennas measuring 50 nm wide and hundreds of nm long.

The carbon nanotubes responded like dipole radio antennas would to incoming light, and also exhibited a polarization effect which meant that when the incoming light is polarized at right angles to the orientation of the nanotubes, the response disappears. What are the possible applications for visible light antennas? Something the compound semi industry has talked about in the past, optical television, or all-optical "appliances" of the future, with a TV signal superimposed on a laser beam and then sent down an optical fiber, which can be demodulated at the viewer/user end by an array of nanotubes, which are driven by a really fast diode (which is something else our world knows how to do). Another application is in the case of efficient solar energy conversion where incoming light is turned into charge which is stored in a capacitor. If you want to kick around some ideas with the inventors, contact Yang Wang via email at wangyq @ bc.edu, or call direct to 617-552-3436. Another contact conduit is Zhifeng Ren at Boston College, at tel 617-552-2832 or via email at renzh @ bc.edu.

Densen Cao
CAO Group, Inc.
8683 South 700 West
Sandy, UT 84070
801-256-9282 (tel)
801-256-9287 (fax)
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