FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
READ-RITE'S FREMONT FACILITY QUALIFIED ON QUANTUM'S
ATLAS(tm) 10K II 10,000 RPM ENTERPRISE DRIVE; VOLUME ORDERS RECEIVED-PRODUCTION STARTED
FREMONT, CA - August 24, 2000 -- Read-Rite Corporation (Nasdaq: RDRT) today announced that Quantum Corporation's Hard Disk Drive Group (HDD) has qualified Read-Rite's Fremont wafer facility for its high-end 10,000 rpm Atlas(tm) 10K II enterprise disk drive and has placed volume purchase orders with the company. The Atlas(tm) 10K II is Quantum's 7.7GB per platter 10,000-rpm enterprise disk drive which utilizes up to 20 heads per drive. Read-Rite, already in volume production on the Atlas(tm) 10K II with wafers produced by its former joint venture in Japan, is Quantum's major supplier on this drive.
"Having received Quantum's qualification of Read-Rite's Fremont facility on the Atlas 10,000 rpm enterprise drive and the volume production orders for the Fremont facility is a milestone occasion, as this is the first product that we have ever had qualified by Quantum out of this facility. This is a significant acknowledgement of our Fremont facility's reliability and performance," said Alan S. Lowe, president and chief executive officer. "Our customers expect quality, and that's what the Fremont facility has and will continue to deliver."
Read-Rite Corporation is one of the world's leading independent manufacturers of magnetic recording heads, head gimbal assemblies (HGAs) and head stack assemblies (HSAs) for disk drives and tape drives. The company is headquartered in Fremont, California and has operations in California, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan and Singapore. The company's website is located at http://www.readrite.com.
Read-Rite is also the majority shareholder of Scion Photonics, Inc. which designs, develops, manufactures and sells both custom and standard Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexers (DWDM) and other optical communication components to address the rapidly growing worldwide fiber-optic network expansion. The company is well funded by the backing of Read-Rite Corporation, Tyco Ventures and Integral Capital Partners. Scion's website is located at http://www.scionphotonics.com.
This news release contains statements which include forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934, as amended, and is subject to the "safe harbor" created by those sections. These statements include, but are not limited to, the company's anticipation that the date of the automatic conversion will be no later than October 19, 2000; the company's expectation that there will be a charge of approximately $29 million in the current quarter for the interest premium Read-Rite will incur due to the conversion; and the company's expectation that this conversion will have a positive impact of $80 million over the next four fiscal years on the financial results of the company. The company's actual results for future periods could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to the factors described in the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, its Annual Report on Form 10-K for fiscal 1999 and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the first, second and third quarters of Fiscal Year 2000 ended December 29, 1999, April 2, 2000 and July 2, 2000, respectively. Read-Rite undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of such statements.
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