Veeco: Fiscal 1Q10 Financial Results

Veeco Instruments, Inc. announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2010. Veeco reports its results on a GAAP basis, and also provides results excluding certain items.
                                                                    
John R. Peeler, Veeco’s Chief Executive Officer, commented:" We are pleased to report these excellent first quarter results, with record revenue of $163 million, an increase of 160% from last year and 12% sequentially. We are executing well, with revenues and profitability increasing sequentially in all three Veeco businesses. EBITA was a record $32.8 million, or 20% of sales, resulting in record quarterly GAAP EPS of $0.62 per share and non-GAAP EPS of $0.49 per share. Veeco generated $42 million in cash from operations during the first quarter."

"Veeco’s first quarter bookings were $268 million, another record for the Company," continued Mr. Peeler. “LED & Solar orders were a record $212 million, up 20% sequentially, driven by accelerating orders for TurboDisc Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) Systems. We continued to see strong MOCVD demand as an expanding LED customer list ramps production for laptop and TV backlighting, as well as for general illumination. Data Storage and Metrology orders were $26 million and $30 million respectively, each significantly better than the same period a year ago but down on a sequential basis."

Veeco’s Q1 ’10 book-to-bill ratio was 1.64, with a record backlog of $502 million at the end of the quarter.

Outlook
Regarding Veeco’s outlook, Mr. Peeler commented: "We continue to see strong momentum in our LED business. We believe our TurboDisc K465i MOCVD System has hit the market at the right time, offering high productivity and best-in-class yields. As a result, Veeco has been gaining share and winning business at many of the world’s top LED manufacturers. To date, second quarter business patterns remain extremely strong, with multi-tool system orders being quoted at a large number of customers. In fact, several key Asian customers have already booked sizeable orders in April. We continue to increase our MOCVD manufacturing capacity, with a goal to ship more than 75 systems this quarter. We are currently planning to further build capacity to ship more than 100 and 120 systems in the third and fourth quarters, respectively. Our highest priority is to satisfy our customers with on-time deliveries and world-class customer support of their manufacturing ramps."

Mr. Peeler concluded:" In 2010, our Data Storage business will perform well as customers invest in capacity additions and next-generation recording head technology. In Metrology we are winning in the market due to our new AFM products such as Dimension ICON, BioScope Catalyst and the MultiMode 8, and our recently introduced NPFlex Optical Profiler. In the first quarter we also introduced another new optical profiler, the NT9080 and the Dimension Edge AFM. We currently expect both of these businesses to gain share and grow revenue and profits in 2010."

Q2’10 Guidance
Veeco’s second quarter 2010 revenue is currently forecasted to be between $220 to $240 million. Earnings per share are currently forecasted to be between $1.02 to $1.20 on a GAAP basis and $0.78 to $0.90 on a non-GAAP basis.