Mar. 28, 2016

Nanometrics Incorporated (NASDAQ:NANO), a leading provider of advanced process control systems, today announced record 3D-NAND bookings totaling over $38 million for the first quarter of 2016. The record achieved was in aggregate bookings for the quarter as well as for three 3D-NAND customers individually. Strong follow-on orders by a key customer account for its next phase of 3D-NAND build-out drove a large portion of the overall record, while the announcement and rapid ramp of a 3D-NAND fab from the newest entrant to the sector, along with orders from a key memory customer for Nanometrics, each represented all-time high 3D-NAND bookings for these customer accounts.

The orders span the product portfolio with Atlas II+, IMPULSE, and Trajectory systems along with the NanoDiffract suite of analysis software and hardware to support optical critical dimension and thin film thickness measurements. The systems will be used to support all key and critical areas of 3D-NAND device manufacturing including control for the demanding tier-stack multilayer processes used for NAND memory cells including deposition, etch, clean, and CMP processes. Systems are expected to ship through mid-year 2016 principally to factories in Singapore, China, Korea, and Japan.

"We are very pleased to announce this record bookings quarter for our systems and solutions serving the important and growing 3D-NAND market," commented Timothy Stultz, president and chief executive officer of Nanometrics. "Over the past few years, we have worked hard to establish significant tool-of-record positions among every leading semiconductor manufacturing company in the world, with particular success in enabling the latest generation of 3D-NAND processes. This announcement, reflecting record orders for our systems driven by strength across multiple companies, is an indicator of the capability of our systems and our team. Our customers have adopted our automated metrology, integrated metrology, and suite of software solutions to support the ramp of their 3D-NAND devices in 2016 as the industry continues its shift toward higher-endurance, lower-cost-per-bit memory solutions."