Topic: How To Invest

Q: Hello, Pat and team. Could I get your opinion of Photon Control? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

A: Photon Control, $1.86, symbol PHO on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 104.6 million; Market cap: $192.5 million; www.photoncontrol.com), designs, makes and distributes a wide range of optical sensors and systems to measure temperature and position. These products are used by the world’s largest semiconductor (computer chip) makers, as well as end users in the semiconductor and solid-state industries. The company is headquartered in a manufacturing facility in Vancouver, B.C., and has a sales and engineering office in San Jose, California. In addition, it has a sales distribution network across Asia. The manufacture of silicon wafers—the material used to make computer chips—involves complex processes. Most notably, maintaining the correct wafer position and wafer temperature during production is crucial to meeting output and productivity targets. Photon’s sensors are used to meet those targets. The measurement accuracy required of the company’s equipment is more and more challenging as semiconductor devices become smaller and smaller. Today’s computer chips are increasingly scaled to atomic-level dimensions and they are more…