Lam Research Corporation (LRCX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
March 3, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Shane Brett
AnalystsI guess we'll get started. Hi, I'm Shane Brett, U.S. semiconductor equipment analyst. I'm honored to host Doug Bettinger, CFO of Lam Research. Before we kick it off with questions, I'd like to pass it to Doug for a safe harbor.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes, I need to keep my attorneys happy. So let me read the safe harbor real quick and then we can get into the meat and potatoes here. Today's discussion may include forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. That's all I'm going to read. Please have a look at the website for the complete safe harbor, and it's up there on the screen. So with that, we can jump into the Q&A.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGreat. Let's get started then. I actually want to start with some longer-term questions about strategy. Just going back to your 2018 Analyst Day, it's -- it's a while back, but that was when you first laid out the sort of etch and deposition intensity thesis. Fast forward 8 years and 2 Analyst Days, it really seems like that thesis has came into fruition now. Just can you walk us through the journey that Lam has taken over the last 8 years and where we are today in that etch and deposition story?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. I mean, I'll take you back to the messaging that we reinforced about a year ago at the most recent Investor Day, but it's the same thing we've been saying since 2018. And in fact, even if you go all the way back to the first one I did, I think, in 2014, the messaging was consistent. Architectures are evolving in the third dimension, right? If you look at it, it's pervasive everywhere in the industry. And I think the first one that happened was 3D NAND. I think that story is well understood, and I'm looking around the room, everybody knows what happened there. When that transition happened, our addressable market per wafer doubled. Our SAM per wafer doubled. That was the first example of an evolution that we see happening everywhere. So the messaging we brought out about a year ago, numerically, it was -- in foundry and logic, our addressable market per wafer is doubling between 5-nanometer and CFET. And the journey along the way has incremental steps. Gate-all-around is showing up right now in the industry. When we see gate-all-around happening, our SAM grows by $1 billion for every 100,000 wafer starts of capacity the industry puts in place from gate-all-around because of etch and deposition intensity. It's a 3D structure, the sheets. If you look at the representation of it, and it's all over the place, you can see it on our website. It grows in a meaningful fashion. What's coming in after that is backside power. You have a similar step up. In fact, the numbers are exactly the same. For backside power for every 100,000 wafer starts capacity the industry puts in place. Again, it's an incremental $1 billion of SAM and so forth. These are steps along the journey to get to the CFET. In both NAND and DRAM, you have a similar story, where our addressable market per wafer grows by 1.7x or 1.8x in this similar journey because of the evolution in DRAM is another example, right? 6F squared steps to 4F squared, it eventually goes to 3D DRAM. The industry is working on this all. Everybody is working on it. These opportunities are showing up. And when you look at the outperformance of Lam Research over the last several years, it is because of this. Advanced packaging is another example. And I know you're going to ask me about that later, so I'll save that. But all of these things play to the strength of what we do. We deposit films on the wafer, and we remove them, etch and deposition, the intensity is growing. So we're in a great spot. I'd like to tell people we live in a good neighborhood, and we're building the best house in a really good neighborhood because in this case of the strength of our product portfolio. We have the strongest portfolio right now of products, I think, that we've ever had because we've meaningfully increased the spending in R&D and brought some great new products to market. And so how that then shows up is last year, our addressable -- our SAM as a percent of overall WFE investment was in the low 30s. Actually, in '24, it was in the low 30s. In '25, it approached the mid-30s. When we look over the next several years, that moves to the high 30s as a percent of overall spending. So that's the -- we live in a good neighborhood. When we look at that growing SAM, we believe we win half of it because of the product portfolio. So when you put it all together, that's the story of Lam Research. It has been over the last several years, and it will be into the future. So thanks for starting there.
Shane Brett
AnalystsYes, of course. I guess another kind of -- I mean, you sort of alluded to it, but when I think of Lam, people tend to associate it with NAND, but something that you've kind of laid out since, I guess, 2018 was this beyond NAND strategy where you're sort of aiming to better balance the company across all 3 device segments. Can your end -- today, your end market exposure is as close to WFE as probably it's ever been.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesI think that's true. Yes. I think that's right, Shane.
Shane Brett
AnalystsWhat's gone right beyond just these architecture transitions? Like is the R&D put in the right place? What went right for Lam?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. No, thanks for asking that question. I think that's important to understand it. Everybody historically has thought of us as the memory equipment company. So if you go back 4 years ago, when you look at our equipment -- just the equipment portion of the business, 60% of our sales went into memory. Fast forward to 2025, that flipped. 59% was in foundry and logic last year. So what's happened? We put investments in place to grow the footprint in foundry and logic to broaden things out. Now listen, I still love our memory exposure. NAND is still our strongest end market. But the reason in the last several years, we've outperformed was because of how we deployed those R&D dollars. Super excited about that, right? Gate-all-around, we're doing extraordinarily well. Backside power, we're going to do extraordinarily well. Advanced packaging, we're doing extraordinarily well. And so when you look at that, it was a conscious focus on where we put the R&D to take advantage of the growth that we saw, and we delivered on this. So we feel great about kind of what we've done, how we've succeeded and it's because of how we've invested.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI guess let's start on the foundry/logic portion is -- I feel like the results are self-explanatory. You guys -- the foundry/logic revenue is up 49% in 2025. As you sort of talk about your SAM going from -- SAM increasing 2x from 5-nanometer to CFET. Where are we in that journey? And...
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesEarly.
Shane Brett
AnalystsEarly, okay.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesThat was only a year ago, right? CFET is still late decade kind of profile, right? People are moving it around. But the evolution, like I described, it steps with gate-all-around, and then backside power helps advanced packaging also contributes to this, and that's growing in a meaningful way. And then CFET shows up later in the decade.
Shane Brett
AnalystsAnd I guess to put it in a different question, your outperformance in 2025, I think we have you guys increasing share by about 250 basis points. How much of that was expected? How much of that was sort of Lam's internal developments kind of falling into the right place? Or how much of that was kind of the external environment leading you to that outperformance?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesSo a little bit of both. But important was, like I said, when we're coming through COVID, we doubled down on R&D investment because we saw these things. That's what's contributed more than anything to it, right? The products that we have in the markets that are growing.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it. Got it. Then as I think about foundry/logic this year, how should we think about your foundry/logic growth this year? I know you're very excited about leading edge logic growth this year, but can you level set us on what you expect for foundry/logic in 2026?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes, it's going to be strong. It's going to be very strong. I mean I think everybody understands it's going to be strong, driven by these big compute die in AI. Equally important, though, is the investment in DRAM, right? These 2 things kind of have to go together if you look at system architectures and they are, right? When you look at the growth in WFE this year, those are the 2 biggest contributors to it, followed by NAND, right? Also storage is being invested in. But I think everybody in the room kind of understands what's going on. I mean, that's what's driving the growth this year. We think WFE goes -- last year, it was $110 billion. This year, we think it's $135 billion. The biggest contributors are leading-edge foundry and DRAM.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI guess then let's talk about 2026. You've spoken about 23% industry growth. It's somewhat higher than peers. But how would you sort of characterize the risks to the upside and the downside relative to that 23%?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. No, that's a great question. Right now, our assessment, I think you're hearing everybody in the industry describe it this way, the industry is cleanroom constrained, right? There's just not enough cleanroom to supply the growth in demand that's out there. And so when we look at $135 billion, our assessment is -- it's constrained by cleanroom. Demand is stronger than that. And so when you think about what that might mean going into '27, it probably means '27 is going to be a pretty darn strong year also. In fact, I know it's going to be because the industry is undersupplying demand this year.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI guess is that sort of confidence towards 2027 sort of your customers giving you that visibility? And how has that visibility that your customers have given you extended relative to where we're at, let's say, this time last year?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesProbably as good as it's ever been. I mean, here's the nature of the conversations that's going on between us and our customers, which is, we don't want to be what constrains their ability to output. And so the conversation we have with everybody is, tell us what you need. What's the plus and minus, right? Where is this going this year as well as, okay, you're building all of these new facilities or expanding or what have you? Tell us what that looks like from a timing standpoint because we don't want to be the constraining item. We don't want to not be able to supply the customer base what they need. And so the nature of the conversation is pretty robust because everybody is trying to figure out how to supply the demand that looks very strong.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI guess as we think about kind of your initiatives to not be the bottleneck in this industry, but your revenues essentially doubled from 2024 from -- I mean, I guess, your revenue could double from '24 to '27. That probably takes a lot of building up supply to do, like you're probably kind of running around the entire world, probably trying to bring up supply. How much effort has gone in to sort of make sure that you guys are ready to sort of meet this demand?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. I mean, that is a huge effort at the company right now, right? And the people that manage our supply chain, obviously, are talking to all of our suppliers to make sure they understand what does the road map look like? What could it look like? They all need to be ready and prepared. And we're making sure that they understand where we're going, like we're doing with our own customers, right? All this has to be consistent. Also in our own internal manufacturing capability, we're expanding, we're expanding everywhere. The good thing about us expanding is the lead time for us to expand our footprint isn't as long as our customers is to expand theirs. So like I said, our goal, and I think we will succeed in this is not to be the constraining item for where our customers are trying to go.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it. So thousands of suppliers are made ready for this title we have there.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesEverybody gets a demand signal from us like we get from our customers, and then you try to make sure you know kind of min-max, right, where it might go. And then you have to understand your own lead time to make decisions to be prepared as well as where are your suppliers so that we're all ready.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it. Got it. Before I kind of touch on sort of your end market-specific initiatives, I want to just go into gross margin because I think it's really interesting how from my perspective, it almost feels like a once-in-a-generation opportunity to maybe be a bit more aggressive in pricing given everyone wants your tools. How should we think about your gross margin, especially in the context of you're spending $2.5 billion of R&D per year. That's a lot. And I really hope you guys get paid for it a lot more than we should. But -- yes, just how should we think about your current gross margin of 49%, the 50% you laid out in 2028 for this opportunity as well?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. Listen, at the end of the day, you're always trying to get paid fairly for the value that you're delivering. We're doing that this year. We did it last year. We do it every year, right? I mean it's just running the business. There's some pluses and minuses in gross margin for us this year. There's a little bit of a headwind from customer mix, meaning smaller customers are becoming a smaller percentage of the overall revenue profile, right? The big guys are growing, and they tend to get the most favorable pricing. So we're managing through that. Obviously, pricing is always a conversation. You're managing your cost structure all the time to optimize that. And obviously, we're expanding there everywhere. So all of this kind of goes together to get us to that financial model of roughly 50% gross margin. I feel pretty comfortable with where that is right now.
Shane Brett
AnalystsRight. But I think it's going back to where we -- last February, some of that 50% did include some sort of internal efficiencies. How is that progressing relative to kind of the road map that you laid out?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesSpot on, extraordinarily well. Yes. And what Shane is asking about is we've developed this close to customer manufacturing strategy to try to be as close to where the customers' fabs are building tools as we possibly can be, right? So your lead time then shortens a little bit. And what that's meant for us is we've grown our footprint in the Asia region, which is where all the fabs in the world are. We've always had U.S. capability. We still do in California, in Oregon, in Ohio, and that stuff is comfortable right now. But the growth right now we're seeing is globally, and we're trying to expand globally to support it. It's just -- it's better for the customer interaction. It's also better from a cost standpoint.
Shane Brett
AnalystsAnd you're sort of front and center of this evolving manufacturing cluster in Malaysia now.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesWe are. Our biggest factory in the network is in Malaysia.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it. I guess when you spoke about 2026, the kind of growth drivers you've laid out were leading-edge logic, DRAM and advanced packaging. I want to talk about DRAM as one of the kind of areas that I feel is underappreciated about Lam is your position in the back end, particularly the HBM specific steps -- specific steps with Syndion and SABRE. You've kind of guided for 40% growth in advanced packaging. .
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesWe did.
Shane Brett
AnalystsHow should I think about your kind of position around HBM? Can you talk a little bit about Syndion and SABRE's role there?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. We have a very strong footprint in the through silicon via process steps. I call it the drill and fill, and it's what you just mentioned. It's the silicon etching, which is the tool we call Syndion. And then it's an electroplating process that puts down the conductive material. That's our SABRE 3D tool. We have very strong market share in these steps. We own nearly the entirety of the market in the TSP. And we do other things in advanced packaging as well. But when you look at where that is growing, it's in high-bandwidth memory, right? You've got HBM3E going to 4, going to 4E, the stack gets bigger, the etching gets more technically demanding. That plays to what we're really good at doing. By the way, it also shows up in advanced packaging in foundry and logic as well. It's not just HBM. And those 2 things kind of go together from a what's driving demand standpoint. It's all the AI compute requirements. And so both of those are growing in a pretty significant way this year for us such that we describe it as 40% growth this year. So advanced packaging is doing really well. It is very etch and deposition intensive.
Shane Brett
AnalystsAnd I guess, I mean, it's not a small portion of your business anymore as well because back in 2024, it was $1 billion.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesThat was $1 billion. You've done your homework.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI've done my homework, yes. And I guess we're guided for 40%-plus growth. But like how good can this advanced packaging portion of your business be as we sort of look out to '27 and '28?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesI think this is a secular grower in the foreseeable future, right? Those large compute die are pretty much as big as they can get. They're at the reticle limit. They can't get any larger. And so to drive performance then, you need to put all of these die as close together as possible on a packaging structure, right? The electron path is shorter. That's what's happening. Advanced packaging is enabling this, and our TSV is, like I said, extremely strong across the totality of the industry.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it. And then I guess moving on to the front end for DRAM. Just -- you've highlighted 4F squared and vertical scaling as a significant opportunity. And I think your SAM -- you've laid out a 1.7x increase for DRAM. Just where are we in that journey? How are you positioned to kind of win these 2 tool of records for 4F squared and future DRAM nodes?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes, we feel really good about it. The strength of our product portfolio is extremely well positioned. The tool that we call Akara, which is our new conductor etch platform, we believe, is going to be very strong -- in these very challenging high-aspect ratio etching around the cell. Yes, I feel good about how we're set up. 4F squared is still a node or 2 away for the industry, but decisions have already been made, and we've talked about some of these.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI guess, you mentioned Akara there. So conductor etch, I think you have a bit more than 50% market share there. Just -- how are you thinking about kind of your market share gains with Akara? I know you called out some leading-edge logic and DRAM share kind of wins at your earnings call, but how good can this kind of tool in this segment be for you guys?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes, it's a key contributor to when we look at that growing SAM, our ability, we think, to win half of that growing SAM, Akara is a strong contributor to it.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it. And I guess I think about the other areas of your DRAM share gains, you've also called out dry resist. Can you sort of talk about how that kind of plays into that 1.7x SAM increase in your market share gains within that?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. It's a part. Yes, thanks for asking about dry resist. Listen, this is ramping into production this year with one of our largest DRAM customers. So it's something we've been talking about for years. We've been investing in for years. This is an expansion of our market. It's hard in this business to find market expansion opportunities, meaning to get into a new segment of the business. We've never put -- we've never been in the photoresist, the track equipment business until now. And what we identified, and I give 2 CTOs ago the credit for seeing this, it was a unique idea where we said, hey, if we put the photoresist down using a deposition type process, we can do it more efficiently. We can figure out how to help ASML be more productive with their EUV tool by more efficiently absorbing the photon energy. That's essentially the simple way that I think about it. It's much more economically or ecologically friendly as well. It's -- you're not spinning wet chemistry off the wafer. And so when we look at it, it's an opportunity from technical differentiation. That's what's driven the decision, right, from one of our largest DRAM customers. We've talked about another tool of record decision with another one. So the fact that this is ramping into production basically tells you there's real value here, right? And we're extremely optimistic about the opportunity for this to continue to grow over time.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it. I want to move over to NAND. At your 2025 Analyst Day, you outlined the $40 billion upgrade TAM opportunity, but that was based on a...
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesFor NAND, for NAND, yes.
Shane Brett
AnalystsThat was based on 20% industry bit growth. And I feel every person in this room probably has had an opinion around that 20% industry bit growth after...
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesThat's probably higher. By the way, if you think back a year ago, it wasn't quite 20%. It was mid-high teens.
Shane Brett
AnalystsReally, okay.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. Yes. And so I think I'm not going to give you a number. You can ask my NAND customers what they think it is. But I think everybody believes it's decently stronger. So yes. So what we described a year ago was a view that in NAND over the next several years is what we said, that investment would largely be characterized by upgrading the installed base, and we thought over the next several years, it would be $40 billion. That's still what's happening, but that $40 billion is going to get spent sooner and will eventually get supplemented by wafer capacity.
Shane Brett
AnalystsFrom your perspective, so you kind of called out the high-teens bit growth that you outlined that $40 billion TAM, but clearly, the NAND market has seen kind of a pretty big inflection over the last few months. How has that inflection sort of changed your view about this NAND market?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesWell, I think everybody -- and I'm not going to give you a number, but I think everybody believes bit demand is stronger than high teens, certainly.
Shane Brett
AnalystsStronger than 12 months ago.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes, stronger than 12 months ago, driven by the need for storage. KV cache is driving this. If you haven't seen Jensen's CES speech, you should go look at it because he laid this out, and it's very much what is going to drive the incremental demand, certainly, that's where it's showing up. Now when we look at the industry in '26 this year, NAND investment is going to grow unquestionably. But a lot of our customers have the opportunity to either invest their constrained cleanroom in DRAM or NAND. And when we look at it this year, more of it is going to go to DRAM because there's more profitability there right now. So NAND is still undersupplied. And it's still very much -- it's going to grow this year for sure, but it's still very much on the come line relative to the investments that likely occur into next year.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesAnd so here's one thing I think I'm really proud of Lam Research about, which is we're outperforming the industry. And our strongest end market is probably growing the slowest, NAND. And what does that tell you? You've already asked about it. We are meaningfully gaining footprint in foundry and logic. We're doing extremely well in DRAM. But our strength, if you look at all 3 of the segments of the business, is very much -- we're very strong in NAND. And the growth there is still into the future. So our ability to continue outperforming, I feel really good about.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI want to just ask one more question about NAND, but you kind of share specifically is a number that sort of stayed with me for 6 years was -- for your 2020 Analyst Day, you commented that you had cumulatively processed 26 million more wafers than your competition across the 3 most critical applications. Just how do the learnings from your installed base translate into wins at future node and just make Lam's market share within NAND just creep up generation by generation?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. Just maintaining the positions we have and the stack grows, our business grows. And because we are in the 3 -- I described 3 critical applications, we put that stack down. We pretty much own that. We own the most critical etches down through the stack, the channel whole etch, everybody kind of talks about that a lot. And we own all of the metallization, which today is tungsten, but it's moving to molybdenum, just say moly, it's hard to say molybdenum, moly. We're in a very strong position to do extraordinarily well with the transition to moly. Those are the 3 critical steps in NAND. And so just the fact that those are your positions, you see everything going on in the structure. And so there's incremental stuff that's showing up all the time because we are the ones that see the challenges our customers have, and they come to us and talk with us about it, right, some of the stresses in the stack, right? We brought a tool out called Vector DT that does back of wafer stress management because we saw that, and we knew we could actually help our customers with that challenge. So that's an example. There's lots of other things like that as well.
Shane Brett
AnalystsSo I guess from 3x, you have moly, 4x, you have merged steps, those 2 -- like with the kind of increase in layer count, your SAM only gets bigger, and you're very well positioned to continue gaining share there.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYou've got it exactly right.
Shane Brett
AnalystsAnd it's just a matter of time for when your customers, I guess, pull the trigger on spending.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesThey will. There's business there.
Shane Brett
AnalystsOkay. Great. Great. Great. Before I kind of pass it over to questions, I want to go back to logic actually because you kind of talked about how your foundry/logic SAM per wafer increases 2x, which is -- it's higher than the 1.8x for NAND that you put out and the 1.7x for DRAM.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes.
Shane Brett
AnalystsLike what's going on there that's kind of expanding your SAM so much? How are you kind of positioned to sort of gain that sort of incremental steps or the share gains -- incremental SAM that's emerging?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. Again, it's an architectural innovation going in the third dimension. And we've already talked about all the steps along the way with gate-all-around and backside power and advanced packaging and then the CFET. If you haven't seen what these structures look like, go to the Investors section of our website. We've got some pretty cool slides out there, I think, that lay it out. You can just see it graphically. That's what's happening. To do this, you need to deposit different kinds of material down on the wafer. That's just -- that's our deposition business and then you need to shape it or remove it. That's our etch business. It's just -- this is the evolution of how things are changing.
Shane Brett
AnalystsYes. With that, I would like to open it up for questions, if anyone has any. Charlie?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesI see your hand right here. Can we get a mic up here? Thank you.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsI'm Shane's colleague. I cover Asia SMEs. So my first question is about your China business. For example, first of all, can you talk about the competition from NAURA and AMEC?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesSure.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsI know for some accounts like [indiscernible], probably you cannot supply. But outside of those restricted accounts, how do you comment about the competition and also your business growth in China in the coming 2 years?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. No, that's a great question. Let me step back a little bit. When we look at China WFE this year, we think it's flattish, maybe a little bit of growth. So the growth in the industry is with the global multinationals, largely outside of China, maybe a little bit in China. Relative to the Chinese equipment companies, they are growing quite a bit. They have over the last several years. I would tell you, there's a whole bunch of customers that used to be very big important customers for us that we are prohibited from selling to today, right? There's end use -- end user restrictions that the U.S. government has put in place that we can't sell to any longer. That's where the Chinese guys are doing really well. It's a captive set of customers for them, largely because we can't sell to them any longer.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsOutside of those restriction, I mean, just purely based on the technology performance, where you can still sell your equipment to, how do you see those China's competitors' capability whatsoever or progression?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. Our share where we can still compete in China is very strong, right? And we're winning with old equipment, older equipment, right? The Reliant product line is very strong in China. Last quarter, our China business was 35% of revenue. So you can see how well we're doing there. It's just there's a whole bunch of customers we used to have that we no longer have.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsYes. So very quick, another question. You mentioned about some potential constraint, right? So for example, if TSMC this year, they're going to do [ USD 34 billion ] CapEx.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesAt the midpoint, yes.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsYes. Next year, probably consensus is like USD 60 billion to USD 75 billion. But if TSMC want to do like a full speed expansion, let's say, next year, you want to spend USD 70 billion CapEx. Can Lam or your industry peers can really supply to that CapEx?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes. No, that's a good question, and it's kind of come up already in the Q&A Shane and I have been having, right? Right now, the conversations with every one of our large customers is, tell us where you're going, tell us what your road map looks like. Tell us what you think you're going to need next year so that we can be ready to supply to them. So if they're going to spend whatever they're going to spend, they're going to -- we know or we know what they're planning to do because absolutely, at the end of the day, they don't want us to be a constraining item for them. And so those conversations are pretty robust. You've got pretty good visibility into where everybody's cleanroom footprint is going to be next year. And we're doing everything we need to do to be prepared to supply to them whatever they need next year. So that's the nature of the conversations that's happening. Good question. Thank you for that.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsGustavo here. Just about this demand visibility stuff. How far how far out can you see this going on, the demand?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesLike I said, it's into next year right now. It's into next year.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI guess before we pass it back to the audience, I want to ask one question because you mentioned Reliant, but just the CSBG business. And the reason why I'm asking this is in your last earnings presentation, you kind of released the installed base numbers again and...
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes, went to 102,000 chambers in the installed base, up from 96,000 last year.
Shane Brett
AnalystsAnd 75,000 in 2021, which is -- it's a big number. Just how does that kind of increased installed base kind of almost accelerate the CSBG growth?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesThank you for asking about CSBG, right? We've been up here talking for a half hour, and it's the first time it's come up.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI'm sorry.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesThat's okay. 1/3 of the business is what we call the customer support business group. What is it? Four things: spare parts, service, equipment upgrades and then the mature product line that we call Reliant. If you roll all of that together, the R&D intensity of that business is pretty modest. You don't need to invest a ton because the R&D has already been invested in when the equipment was first designed, including all the spare parts specification, everything needed. This is a great part of the business model. When I talk about our business, I often will describe this as my favorite part of the business model. Now listen, I love everything. The etch general manager is going to come yell at me because I'm not loving on his business. I love his business, too. But this is a great part of the business model. If you look at the longevity of our equipment, it runs for decades. Actually, it really never goes away. That's why we report that chamber count at the end of every year. It grows every year. And so the opportunity to sell more spares to upgrade what's there to sell the older equipment, all of this grows quite nicely. And again, if you go back to the collateral from the Investor Day next year, we told you by '28, it was going to grow by 1.5x. And in this mythical, we described the future where it was going to double. It's because the equipment grows every year. Spare parts intensity is growing. Advanced Services, listen, we're really excited about our advanced service portfolio using equipment intelligence, AI algorithms, cobots to deliver service in a more predictable, sustainable way. We are beginning to deliver service in a results-based kind of structure. Service historically has been show up and do a task. You need to do some maintenance. So call Lam, we'll send engineers out and we'll do the task, clean the chamber, open it, put the gel back down, close the chamber, give it -- turn it back over to manufacturing. We're modifying how we do a lot of this to, okay, we know more about the capability of our equipment than anybody in the world. Using the data and the telemetry on the tool as well as cobots to deliver service, we're able to predictably deliver improved performance. And so we're beginning to kind of modify a little bit about how we deliver service to be results based, will be -- is nicely profitable. So that's part of the story in CSBG. It is wonderfully cash generative as well in terms of like the contribution of where profits and cash come from at the company.
Shane Brett
AnalystsI don't want to put you on the spot, but as -- when we kind of think about kind of the services revenue per one tool, would you say that kind of number is kind of steadily increasing given your customers don't want any downtime, you're kind of improving yields for them? There's a lot going on in services.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesYes, our goal with some of this more results-based contract is to grow dollars faster than just that chamber count number. And we've been pretty successful over the years of doing that, and we intend to continue to do that again with some of these results-based contracts.
Shane Brett
AnalystsGot it. We have a minute left. Doug, is there anything that you kind of think that's underappreciated by the investment community about Lam or anything you want to kind of end on?
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesListen, I think we've had a pretty comprehensive set of questions, Shane. Thanks for doing your homework. This last point, I think, is important to understand. Everybody thinks of WFE, and I do too. I love the fact that WFE is growing so much, $110 billion to $135 billion. But I think the underappreciated part of the business is this more annuity-type stream in the customer support business group, CSBG. Don't forget about that. It's an important part about how we deliver profitability, about how we deliver growth, about how we deliver free cash flow. So just don't lose sight of it. And thanks for asking about it at the very end, but people often forget about that. It's a great part of how we do what we do.
Shane Brett
AnalystsAwesome. So increasing SAM, increasing share and you have a nice annuity of business, things are looking great for Lam.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesAnd we live in a good neighborhood, and we're building a wonderful house on the top of the hill. So maybe that's the way I like to think about it.
Shane Brett
AnalystsAll right. Great. That brings us to time. Thanks very much.
Douglas Bettinger
ExecutivesAwesome. Thanks for coming.
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