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News

NEWARK, NY -- IEC Electronics, an EMS firm traded over the counter, reported a first-quarter net loss of $48,000 on revenue of $3.6 million.

For the quarter ended Dec. 30, earnings were down 158% from a year ago, and sales fell 42%. The company cited last minute customer changes and technical isues for the downturn.

NEW YORK -- Huntsman Corp., a major supplier of soldermasks and conformal coatings for electronics, is rumored to be the object of a buyout.

The Wall Street Journal today reported that the chemicals company, whose 2005 sales were nearly $11.5 billion, was in serious discussions to be bought out for more than $4.3 billion.

PENANG, MALAYSIA -- VS Industry Bhd., a manufacturer of components and electronics assemblies, is expected to see strong earnings growth for the foreseeable future, a local analyst said today.

VS reported pretax profits fell 11% to RM12.7 million on a 18% drop in sales to RM155.2 million for the quarter ended Oct. 31. VS reported a pretax profit of RM14.3 million on RM188.2 million in sales last year.

However, said RHB Research, VS Industry, which mainly supplies Asia and Europe, is set to see gains from its major customer, Dyson, a maker of vacuums. Dyson aims to double its sales within three years, the report said.

VS, which has operations in Malaysia and China, is not expected to expand the latter, where plant utilization is about 60%. However, the EBIT of the China plant was 6.3% for the most recent quarter, well above the 3.4% posted in Malaysia, RHB said.

NEENAH, WI -- Plexus Corp. turned in a sterling fiscal first quarter, with sales jumping 14% year-on-year to a record $328.3 million.

For the period ended Dec. 31, the EMS firm reported net income of $12.6 million, up from $3
million last year, which included a $900,000 restructuring charge. Both figures exceeded previous company guidance.

President and CEO Dean Foate guided for second quarter revenues of $330 million to $345 million. “Although we anticipate modest sequential revenue growth in the second fiscal quarter, we are encouraged by recent new program wins,” he said, especially within the defense, security and aerospace sector. He reaffirmed full-year revenue growth guidance of 15 to 18%."

Cash flow from operations was $19.5 million, and cash and short-term investments increased $11 million from the fiscal 2005 year-end balance to $119.7 million.

For the quarter, wireline and networking sales were up 5 points year-over-year and made up 42% of sales. Wireless infrastructure was 8% of sales, down 1 point. Medical was down 5 points to 28%, industrial and commercial was up 1 point to 17%, and defense/security/aerospace was flat at 5%.

Plexus’ top 10 customers comprised 61% of sales during the quarter, the same as in the previous quarter.
Juniper Networks, with 22% of sales, and General Electric, with 15% of sales, were the only customers representing 10% or more of sales for the quarter. Sales to Juniper were also up 22% sequentially.

Operating margins improved 50 basis points for the quarter and the firm projected further improvement of 70 basis points in Q2. That would bring Plexus' operating margins to 4.6%, up 250 basis points year-over-year.

PALO ALTO, CA -- Agilent Technologies and the Advanced Development Group of Speedline Technologies are conducting joint research on the implementation of closed-loop process control for paste printing PCB assemblies. The research will use Agilent's post-print inspection systems and Speedline's Accela printer to measure process performance in Pb-free manufacturing.

Based on a recent joint Pb-free study, Agilent and Speedline determined that the positional accuracy of the paste deposit relative to the pad is a key element to ensure quality in fine-pitch and small-device Pb-free assemblies. This suggests that closed-loop process control could be advantageous for quality during the transition to Pb-free manufacturing.

In follow-up testing still under way, the companies have demonstrated the potential to establish a closed-loop control method between the AOI system and the printer to manage positional accuracy of the pasted deposits.

Further details will be discussed during a session at the upcoming Apex show entitled, "Closed-Loop Process Control in the Solder Paste Printing Process." A preview of this technology and discussion of the research project will be available at Speedline’s booth, #1207.

NEW YORK -- Dover Corp. reported fourth-quarter sales rose 19% to $1.61 billion over last year. For the period ended Dec. 31, earnings from continuing operations rose 30% to $125.1 million, while net earnings were $116.1 million.

For the year Dover had revenue of $6.08 billion, up 17%, and earnings from continuing operations of $474.5 million, up 21%.

WASHINGTON -- December orders for manufactured durable goods rose 1.3%, the U.S. Census Bureau reported. It was the highest mark since Census Bureau began tracking the data in 1992.

Shipments were up 3.5%, the fourth hike in the past five months, also reaching their highest level since 1992.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – The SMTA is accepting applications through April 15 for its $5,000 Hutchins Educational Grant. Established in memory of past SMTA president Dr. Charles Hutchins and co-sponsored by Circuits Assembly, the annual award goes to a graduate-level student doing research in electronic assembly or electronics packaging.

Students can download and submit the entry form (available at smta.org/hutchins/hutchins.cfm), along with current academic transcripts, a letter of recommendation, a resume and a one-page thesis research abstract.

Presented annually at the SMTA International Conference, the grant is intended for the purchase of technical books and research materials, participation in electronics conferences and for living expenses if necessary.

The 2005 recipient was Leila Jannesari Ladani, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, for her project: "Effect of Voids Caused By Manufacturing Variation on the Thermo-mechanical Durability of Sn3.8Ag0.7Cu Solders."

SAN FRANCISCO – Some of the biggest names in computing have committed a collective $10 billion toward standardizing the Itanium platform.

Senior executives from a number of top firms who met yesterday in San Francisco to map out a strategy for Itanium say they are targeting the mission-critical computing market.

The announcement came at the Itanium Solutions Alliance’s first Executive League meeting. Representatives came from Bull, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Hitachi, HP, Intel, NEC, SGI and Unisys.

Itanium platform revenue currently makes up 58% of Sun's SPARC and 33% of IBM's Power2. Over 6,000 applications are said to be running the architecture.

In a statement IDC group vice president and general manager Vernon Turner said, “Itanium solution delivery to mission critical environments represent a new business model for enterprise and technical computing users bringing choice of hardware platform, operating system, and applications to environments which heretofore have been limited by proprietary vertical solution stacks. A change this substantial takes collective industry commitment and investment.”

The investment is comprised of planned funding of research and development, capital expenditures, sales and marketing, and ISV enabling activities.

Itanium application support has doubled within the past 12 months, the Alliance said in a press release.

The Alliance was founded last September, bringing together companies seeking to accelerate Itanium solution deployments.

WILSONVILLE, OR – Mentor Graphics announced record fourth quarter revenue of $221.3 million, up 3% from the prior fourth quarter. Bookings were up more than 5% from Q4 2004.

"We were pleased to see continued growth in bookings in the fourth quarter of 2005, especially considering the tough comparison to last year's fourth quarter growth of more than 35%," Walden C. Rhines, chairman and CEO, said in a press release. "Renewals showed strong growth, with contract values up nearly 30% over prior contract levels. Mentor's book-to-bill ratio was positive for the year, and the fourth quarter was the highest quarterly book-to-bill ratio since 1996."

Three of the four major product categories set quarterly and annual bookings records. Compared to Q4 2004, bookings grew 50% in Integrated Systems Design, 15% in IC Design to Silicon and 20% in New and Emerging.

Mentor's Questa verification platform, launched in May, was installed in over 1,000 seats installed by the fourth quarter. TestKompress bookings more than doubled during the year, while automotive products grew 40%. Strength in FPGA-related products like synthesis and I/O Designer helped increase bookings in the Integrated Systems Design category.

Calibre resolution enhancement technology continued to expand with annual bookings growth of 25%. Calibre DFM bookings grew 1000% over 2004 thanks to two new product launches.

Mentor's automotive solution was adopted at Shanghai Motors. The resulting orders were the largest Mentor has ever received from China.

North America and Europe both saw bookings up 20% over Q4 last year. Japan was weaker with bookings down 35%, while the Pacific Rim bookings dropped 5% over the year ago levels.

FRAMINGHAM, MA — The fourth quarter of 2005 saw new records for mobile phone shipments, largely driven by vendors stocking the channels in time for the holiday season. According to IDC, worldwide mobile phone shipments rose 19.3% year over year and increased sequentially 16.8%, good for reach a quarterly record of 245.2 million units.

An analyst with the firm said the quarter portends solid growth into 2006.

ST. GALLEN, SWITZERLAND – Companies exporting electronics to Switzerland should be advised of a new regulation for chemicals called the ChemRRV. According to a senior engineer at the EMPA Technology and Society Laboratory, ChemRRV bans the same substances outlawed in the RoHS directive.