KLA-Tencor Corporation is the world's leading supplier of process control and yield management solutions for the semiconductor and related microelectronics industries. The company's comprehensive portfolio of products, software, analysis, services and expertise is designed to help IC manufacturers manage yield throughout the entire wafer fabrication process-from R&D to final yield analysis. Since yield improvements are key to increasing manufacturing productivity and profitability, the yield management market that KLA-Tencor leads has outperformed the semiconductor capital equipment market segment as a whole.

Ranked among the world's top ten semiconductor equipment manufacturers, KLA-Tencor offers a broad spectrum of products and services that are used by every major semiconductor manufacturer in the world. These customers turn to KLA-Tencor for in-line wafer defect monitoring; reticle and photomask defect inspection; CD SEM metrology; wafer overlay; film and surface measurement; and overall yield and fab-wide data analysis. These advanced products, coupled with the company's unique yield management consulting practice, allow KLA-Tencor to deliver the complete yield management solutions customers need to accelerate their yield learning rates, reduce their yield excursion risks and adopt industry-leading yield management practices.

Competing in rapidly expanding markets where its leading-edge technology and comprehensive solutions provide a significant competitive edge, KLA-Tencor's primary market remains the semiconductor industry. In recent years, the company has also increased its focus on the rapidly growing data storage industry.
To support its growing, global customer base, KLA-Tencor maintains a significant presence throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, with local sales and applications engineers, customer and field service engineers and yield management consultants. The company counts among its top customers leading semiconductor manufacturers from each of these regions, and derived approximately 70 percent of its 1997 revenues from outside the U.S.