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Last week Aviza Technology sold the majority of its assets to Sumitomo Precision Products for not a lot of up-front cash and mostly in promissory notes that will take 18-months before maturity. After Chapter 11 protection and automatic de-listing, Aviza failed to do what Tegal had done years ago and shift market emphasis that resulted in survival on the NASDAQ.

That is until now as Tegal is now looking for a buyer as cash is low and losses are ever present due to the massive cut in capital expenditure. Although Tegal is cutting the cash burn levels, CapEx isn’t expected to return to meaningful levels until 2011 and beyond, so finding a buyer before Chapter 11 looms is a wise move.
 
Maybe Sumitomo is interested as it seems the only company buying assets at the moment other than Semilab on the metrology side of the equipment market?
 
Aviza in the end couldn’t do what Tegal had achieved (for a while) but it looks promising that Tegal will follow Aviza.
 
Another equipment supplier still with its stock price below the NASDAQ US$1 value for more than six months is Axcelis. Cash burn isn’t good, despite workforce reductions and other cost cutting measures.
 
Although Axcelis received desperately needed cash from an asset sale to Sumitomo the cash burn numbers suggest that financial problems could materialise in 2H10 if cash burn isn’t reduced further and/or sales don’t pick-up sufficiently to slow the burn.

Delisting is still very much on the cards.
 
My de-listing watch list has been also been ravaged by Chapter 11 and fire sales. Aviza and Asyst are both gone from the list last mentioned in this blog in March  2008. Electroglas also went the way of the dodo at that time.

FSI hasn’t popped back over the dollar threshold either. Photronics isn’t looking good at all and UCT even worse!
 
Nova, Entegris and Aehr are still below the line but PDF Solutions and EMCORE are out of the drop zone at the moment.