MKS Buys Yield Dynamics

MKS Instruments Inc. announced today that it has acquired privately held Yield Dynamics, a provider of yield management technology based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

According to an MKS quarterly report filed today with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the purchase price for Yield Dynamics consisted of $24 million in cash and $300,000 in acquisition-related costs. MKS may pay an additional $10 million over the next three years if Yield Dynamics meets certain performance goals.

MKS, which is based in Wilmington, makes monitoring and process control products used in the manufacture of semiconductors and thin-film coatings for markets including flat-panel displays and electro-optical products. It also provides technologies for medical imaging equipment, and energy generation and conservation.

Yield Dynamics designs yield management and advanced process control software for semiconductor and flat-panel display manufacturers and fabless chip design companies.

"Semiconductor fabs need to improve yield to meet production cost targets as they transition to smaller device geometries. We see opportunities to increase our sales to semiconductor fabs with a total solution for managing and correlating process data to improve process yield. We also see long term opportunities for our yield management solution in flat-panel display, solar cell, and other markets that use thin-film manufacturing processes," said MKS CEO and President Leo Berlinghieri in a prepared statement.

"By correlating real-time process chamber information with offline production analysis on wafer yield, fabs could achieve higher yield. We believe we can help fabs identify additional information from our sensors that, when integrated with fault detection and classification and yield management software, could allow fabs to take a step closer to predicting process excursions before they happen and improve yield while reducing cost," Berlinghieri said.

MKS said the acquisition is expected to be slightly accretive, and is not expected to materially affect the company's near-term financial results.

For more information, visit: www.mksinst.com