KLA

KLA-Tencor is the world's largest supplier of inspection and metrology equipment to the semiconductor industry, and it has been able to achieve this position through hiring top-tier talent, consistently innovating to develop the highest-performing products, and developing and leveraging excellent engineering, product-development, manufacturing, and business processes.

The resulting work environment is technically challenging, intellectually stimulating, and generally satisfying, and KLA-Tencor colleagues are some of the smartest anywhere. These are things that have driven KLA-Tencor's past performance and growth.

KLA-Tencor's past performance and growth have been very strong. Nearly all of this growth, however, has been organic growth aligned with the semiconductor industry itself. And, most of that organic growth has been in KLA-Tencor's "traditional" product lines for reticle/mask inspection, wafer inspection, and overlay/film metrology. KLA-Tencor has been less successful diversifying into other areas in order to drive future growth. And, since the semiconductor industry's growth has slowed and Moore's law node cycles have lengthened to ~2.5 years, KLA-Tencor's growth has slowed/flattened as well and will continue to do so. All of this means that KLA-Tencor may remain a good place to work but might have fewer professional growth opportunities for employees going forward.

KLA-Tencor has extremely strong core competencies in many engineering disciplines and in its engineering, manufacturing, and business processes.

Management should look for new, diversified growth opportunities that would uniquely benefit from the use of these competencies.