Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. (KLIC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

The meeting will please come to order. I'm Peter Kong, Chairman of the Board of Directors of K&S. I would like to welcome you to our 64th shareholders' meeting as a public company. We're excited to be hosting this meeting virtually, which will allow us to be more inclusive and reach a greater number of our valued shareholders. Before proceeding with the business of the meeting, I'd need to make a few administrative announcements. I would like to point out that the audio portion of this meeting is being broadcast live over the Internet at our website, www.kns.com. We have shared meeting the URL as printed on our proxy statement. As is our custom, we will conduct the business portion of our meeting first and answer questions nearer to the end of the meeting. In addition, an audio recording will be made of the entire meeting, including any questions or comments that you may have. The audio recording will be available at our website for a limited time during this meeting. I also want to point out that in addition to historical statements, remarks and comments made today may include forward-looking statements, which are covered by the safe harbor provisions of the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Actual results may turn out significantly better or worse than indicated by any forward-looking statements made this afternoon. For a more complete discussion of the risks associated with the operations of K&S, please refer to the company's SEC filings especially to form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 4, 2025. I would now like to introduce the other members of the Board of Directors of the company. Mr. David Jeffrey Richardson; Ms. Mui Sung Yeo, Ms. Denise Dignam; Mr. Gregory F Milzcik. and Mr. John A. Olson, I'll now call on Mr. Zi Yao Lim, the Corporate Secretary of the company for the required formal announcements. Mr. Lim will record the minutes of today's meeting.

Mr. Chairman, I present a copy of the notice of Internet availability of the notice of meeting, the proxy statement, proxy card and the annual report. I also present an affidavit as to the mailing list on January 26, 2026 of the notice of Internet availability to each person who was a shareholder of record on December 8, 2025, being the record date for the meeting. . The notice of meeting call this meeting to be conducted virtually on March 4, 2026 at 1:00 p.m. Singapore time for the purposes of electing directors, ratifying the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as independent registered public accountants for the 2026 fiscal year, a nonbinding vote on executive compensation and transacting such other business as may properly come before this meeting. I have a complete list of shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting.

The affidavit of mailing and the attachments thereto will be filed with the minutes of the meeting. As Chairman of the meeting, I appoint Peter Deskovich as judge of election. The judge of election has informed me that there is a quorum present. Our custom has been to dispense with the reading of the minutes of the last annual meeting. Accordingly, I will move on to the 3 matters submitted to a vote of the shareholders as outlined by Ms. Lim. We defer voting until all the matters are properly tabled before the meeting and ready for voting. The Board of Directors has nominated Mr. Peter T Kong and Mr. John A. Olsen for reelection at the annual meeting to serve until the 2027 Annual Meeting and until their successors have been duly elected and qualified. The second order of business is the appointment of PricewaterhouseCooper LLP as the company's independent registered public accountants. The other committee of our Board appointed PricewaterhouseCooper LLP as the company's independent registered public accountants for fiscal 2026. As you know, PricewaterhouseCooper LLP has served as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the past several fiscal years. I would like to introduce Mohd Saiful Saroni on of PricewaterhouseCooper LLP. If any shareholder has any questions for PricewaterhouseCooper LP, they can be raised during the question-and-answer period. The third order of business is the advisory vote to approve on a nonbinding basis, the overall compensation of the company's named executive officers. If there is no discussion, we can now proceed to the voting on the matters before the meeting. As has been customary, we will vote on all matters by ballot. While we are waiting for the report of the judge of election, I would like to ask Mr. Lester Wong, our Interim Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer to make a few comments.

Thank you, Peter. The semiconductor assembly market has faced a series of challenges in recent years, which reduced both technology and capacity-related investments across many of our served markets. Despite this well-known industry headwind, we maintain our commitment to investing in technology opportunities and prioritizing long-term growth. As we move into a new period of growth, technology and capacity-related demand is strengthening and our near-term visibility is improving. . Additionally, we are very pleased to have further strengthened our foundation for growth by ensuring our business remains closely aligned with long-term advanced packaging, advanced dispense and power semiconductor technology transitions. Within advanced packaging, technology transitions are increasing the value of semiconductor assembly, which in turn, directly increases the value we can extend to our customers. This is most evident in our strong market position and expanding thermal compression portfolio, which has enabled the industry adoption of thermal compression. This Flex transition has enabled share gains within leading-edge logic opportunities while also increasing our access to exciting technology transitions affecting the memory market. Beyond TCB, we continue to be engaged with several leading customers on vertical wire opportunities. We are confident our vertical-wide technology provides the most cost-effective solution to extend form factors performance and power efficiency for high-volume and extending stack by applications. In addition to the broadening market demand for advanced packaging, we are also extending technology opportunities within advanced dispense and power semiconductor markets. Similar to the advanced factoring transition, we are addressing customers' requirements for more capable, feature-rich assembly systems and solutions. This past September, we were pleased to address this evolving need with the introduction of the [indiscernible] Advanced Dispense system. The Asalon platform provides superior process capability and precision which addresses the emerging needs of this large adjacent margin. Separately, we are also continuing to deliver new features and capabilities aligned with the evolving need of the power semiconductor market. We continue to support a broad range of global customers throughout our historical leadership in this emerging market. At this point, power semiconductor assembly is becoming increasingly complex due to the higher energy efficiency within areas such as mobility, electric vehicles, sustainable energy transition and also growing data center demand. Through long-term technology collaboration, we work closely with industry leaders to navigate these transitions. These collaborations are critically necessary to drive advanced technologies adoption and also provide a revolving set of growth opportunities for shareholders. As we continue to expand our long-term potential by securing our foundation today, we also immediately focus on aggressively flexing manufacturing capacity in fiscal year 2026 in response to the strong recent rebound in core market. We remain committed to creating value by aligning technology transition with opportunity and also committed to delivering value directly to shareholders through a combination of consistent dividend payments and opportunistic share repurchases. We will continue to take a long concluded approach to both of these important shareholder return initiatives. As our core business returned to a higher demand environment, we are grateful for the past investments and proud of our ongoing progress in advanced packaging, advanced dispense and power semiconductor. While these opportunities leverage our large and dominant core market position, supply chain operation footprint, they also provide additional avenues to create long-term value for our shareholders. Finally, I would like to thank our shareholders for understanding the dynamics of our business and supporting our market expansion efforts. I would also like to thank our customers, external partners, and our committed base of performance-oriented employees who have significantly contributed to solidify our long-term growth prospects. Thank you.

Thank you, Lester. Now as has been customary, we're happy to entertain any questions you might have. Please note that we do not place restrictions on the form of questions asked so long as they relate to the specific proposals on the agenda on which the stockholders are entitled to vote. We also reserve the right to reject questions that are irrelevant to the company's business, repetitious statements or claims by individuals or that are otherwise done in bad taste, matters concerning personal grievances or of individual concern. Relevant questions that we do not get to will be addressed on our company website. If there are no further questions, I'm advised by the judge of election has completed the count of the votes and delivered the report to the Corporate Secretary. The Corporate Secretary will now announce the results as reflected in the judge's report.

The judge's report shows 46,562,655 shares of common stock present in person and/or by proxy which the judge has certified to form the quorum of the outstanding common stock on all matters presented at this meeting. The judge's report further shows that sufficient votes were cast for the election of Mr. Peter T. Kong, Mr. John A. Olsen, for the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and for the approval on a nonbinding basis, the overall compensation of the company's named executive officers. .

In accordance with the results certified by the judge of election, I hereby declare that Peter T. Kong; and Mr. John A. Olson, have been elected as directors for the term for which such individuals were nominated that the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as independent registered public accountants for the 2026 fiscal year has been ratified, and that the shareholders have approved on a nonbinding basis, the overall compensation of the company's named executive officers. The final results of the voting will be included in our reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. I order that the report of the judge of election be filed with the minutes of the meeting. The meeting is now adjourned. On behalf of all the directors, officers and employees, I thank all of you for attending the meeting.