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Jena, Germany - More than 80 visitors attended the Boundary Scan Days event on May 3-4 sponsored by GÖPEL electronic GmbH (a 50% increase over last year's attendance). According to the company, the presentation of the new Boundary Scan hardware architecture SCANFLEX produced high interest among the attendees.

Many known Boundary Scan users, ATE vendors and chip manufacturers attended, including Siemens, Diehl Avionik, Phoenix Contact, National Semiconductor and Digitaltest. The companies discussed applications, test support and problem solving issues.

Previous Boundary Scan Days were held in Switzerland and Scandinavia, and they will also take place in Italy, the Benelux countries, France, Great Britain, the U.S. and Canada.

PHOENIX -- Hurt by the loss of a key customer, Suntron Corp., a provider of electronics manufacturing services, today reported a net loss of $6.2 million as net sales slipped 18% to $82.7 million in its fiscal first quarter.

The results include $400,000 of restructuring charges related to severance, retention and lease exit costs.

Sequentially, net sales decreased $33.1 million, or 29%.

The decline was primarily due to the loss of Applied Materials, Suntron said.

SAN JOSE -- Michael E. Marks will step down early next year as chief executive of Flextronics International Ltd. He will be replaced by Michael McNamara, the company's chief operating officer.

Marks told analysts in San Francisco on Thursday that he will become chairman of the company on Jan. 31, 2006.

Flextronics, the world's largest EMS provider, also announced several charges associated with restructuring and refinancing the balance sheet.

TORONTO -- SMTC Corp., a global electronics manufacturing services provider, today reported revenue of $49.1 million for the first quarter ended April 3, up 2% from last quarter but down from $69.4 million a year ago.

The net loss was $2.6 million, compared with a net loss of $3.2 million sequentially and a net loss of $47,000 last year.

Gross profit was $2 million, or 4.1% of revenue, compared with $1.5 million, or 3.1% of revenue, for the previous quarter and $6.8 million (9.9% of revenue) for the first quarter 2004. Gross profit was affected by higher costs for training and resource retention as well as freight costs for transferring certain programs to the company's Mexico facility.

In a press release, John Caldwell, president and chief executive, said, "Although overall first quarter results remain below satisfactory levels, the company achieved modest revenue growth in what we believe is a typically soft quarter. Importantly, in the quarter SMTC added several new customers as well as gained a number of new program wins with current customers."

TORONTO -- Coretec Inc. has entered into a nonbinding letter of intent to merge with Unicircuit Inc. in an all stock swap. Coretec, a PCB maker based in Toronto, will issue 6 million common shares in exchange for all of Unicircuit's common shares. Coretec will also issue $3.1 million of a new class of preferred shares in exchange for $3.1 million of preferred shares of Unicircuit as well as assume $3.9 million of Unicircuit's net debt.

The transaction is expected to close by July 31.

"This merger creates opportunities to maximize efficiencies with respect to facility overheads and production. With an estimated capacity of $150 million, the combination of the two companies will provide North American and European electronics OEM and EMS companies with a major alternative for prototype-to-production high reliability PCBs," said Paul Langston, president and CEO of Coretec.

Unicircuit operates plants in Littleton, CO, and Roseville, MN.

"From our discussions with Coretec we have been enticed by the marketing potential of this combination, particularly in light of the fact that our respective customer bases have little overlap. As such, we believe we will be able to achieve a wider and deeper penetration into our mutual account base," said Kerry Bode, president and CEO of Unicircuit. "In addition, the prospects for accessing more meaningful new programs, particularly in the defense sector, are much greater as a combined entity. This merger brings our shareholders a step closer to realizing our strategic objective of playing a leadership role in the North American PCB industry. Coretec has an outstanding executive team that we believe will enable the merged company to more fully and expeditiously realize its potential. Unicircuit is excited about the opportunities that the combined entities bring to our customers, employees and shareholders."

MURRAY HILL, NJ - Is Lucent Technologies readying to cut manufacturing ties with Jabil Circuit?

In a column posted Monday at theStreet.com, a Wall Street newletter, Lucent was said to be preparing to reduce its EMS supply list to two, with Jabil among three EMS companies that stand to be on the outs.

Quoting "people close to Lucent," theStreet.com columnist Scott Moritz wrote that while Lucent declined to comment on any specific changes, the company was looking at its options.