Tower jumps on Korean deal

The Israeli foundry will supply Dongwoon Anatech with power management process technology for LEDs.

South Korean analog semiconductor provider Dongwoon Anatech Co. Ltd. has chosen speciality foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Nasdaq: TSEM; TASE: TSEM) to be its sole manufacturing partner for high-volume, energy-saving LEDs for households and industry. Tower will supply its 20-60-volt LDMOS power management process technology which provides design optimization and the lowest die size at any given breakdown voltage.

Financial details of the contract were not disclosed, but market sources estimate it to be worth several million dollars a year.

Tower's share rose 17.3% on Nasdaq yesterday to $0.88, giving a market cap of $140 million. The share rose 18.1% by midday on the TASE today to NIS 3.79. This is the third contract the company has announced in the past month. It's share price has risen 700% so far this year.

Dongwoon Anatech is expanding Korea to China, US, and Japan. Its major customers are Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (KRX: 005930) and Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE; TSE:6758) to which it has shipped 155 million LED units since 2006. Samsung and Sony's set the technical standards for the LED lighting market.

Tower cites report by iSuppli that LED lighting market growth is greater than overall semiconductor market in 2009. Tower also cites Strategies Unlimited as predicting that LED market will grow by 28% a year to over $5 billion in 2012.

Dongwoon Anatech president and CEO Dong Cheol said, “We chose Tower’s power management platform for our LED lighting devices because it fully satisfied our requirements for quality, price, die size and best chance of design success."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 5, 2009

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2009

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