MKS Inc. (MKSI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. I'm Shane Brett [indiscernible] from Morgan Stanley. Joining me at MKS are John Lee, CEO; and Ram Mayampurath, CFO; and we also have Paretosh Misra from Investor Relations in the audience. Before I start my questions, I'm going to hand it over to John for a quick introduction to MKS.

Yes. Great. Thanks, Shane. So maybe I thought I'd start with a little introduction for some of you who may not know the MKS story as well. So MKS is a 65-year-old company. We started with one product. That product was an instrument that measures the pressure inside a vacuum chamber. And from that, we were able to move into the semiconductor industry, as you probably realize, semiconductors has a lot of vacuum chambers. And that one product has taken very high market share. And after 55 years, it's still #1 market share. But from that one product, we were able to organically and inorganically build a strategy of surrounding the chamber with all other types of critical subsystems. So valves, RF Power, plasma, mass flow controls, et cetera. So that was the strategy up until 2015. At that point, with semiconductor only in terms of the market but only the vacuum equipment of semiconductor. In 2015, we bought a company called Newport Corporation. Newport had about 20 product lines, lasers, optics, motion. We had 20 product lines, vacuums, critical subsystems. Two things happened with the Newport acquisition. One is it brought to us the missing components of the rest of semiconductor equipment, lithography, metrology and inspection. So with that acquisition, we now address 85% at every piece of equipment in every fab in the world with multiple subsystems. No one else is even close to that market share. And we can say that because the big 5 are Applied Materials, Lam, Tokyo Electron, ASML and KLA. And together, they're about 85% market share. The second thing that Newport acquisition did was it brought to us new markets. And one of those new markets was the application of lasers to manufacture precise things. One of those is drilling holes and PCBs. And that led us to the acquisition of Electro Scientific Industries. And that was the first time we actually bought a systems company. And what that allowed us to do is to talk to another layer in the food chain. So not just the OEMs, but the customers of the OEMs that allow us to understand their structure and the ecosystem much better. And then from that, we did the acquisition of Atotech, which is chemistry and chemistry equipment for PCB manufacturing. And the strategy behind all of this is we want to be foundational to everything that makes advanced electronics advanced, not just the semiconductor but the packaging of semiconductors together. In the past, if you wanted to be critical or foundational to electronics, all you had to be was a great semiconductor equipment company. That was all that mattered, and that was -- semi was the only thing that drove the advanced electronics to be better. Over time, that was Moore's Law. Over time, Moore's Law wasn't as relevant anymore, it started slowing down. And so what did people do where they started putting chips together and packaging them together such that they behave like one big chip. And because of that, we can actually continue extending that Moore's Law concept of everything is twice as good every 2 years for the same price. That's now true for 70 years in a row. That's why things like AI are possible. And a lot of folks think, oh, AI, that's going to change the world, and it might."The way we look at AI is it's just a great thing and a list of other great things such as the PC, such as the smartphone, such as data centers, this was all driven fundamentally by Moore's Law and now more than Moore's Law. And we want to be foundational to that. And from a shareholder standpoint, we think that foundational technology provider status is a sustainable long-term investment. It's not about the fad of the day. It's about an infrastructure builder that is critical, and it's an infrastructure that continues to grow over time. And you can argue it's even more important now than it was even 10 years ago, right along 50 years ago. So that's a quick introduction to MKS.

Got it. Thanks, John. I'll kind of talk through the questions by segment. And I want to start with Electronics and Packaging, E&P. So your Q4 guide implies about 20% growth for the full year, which is pretty good. Just could you talk about what has drove this really strong growth this year?

Yes, 2 factors. So chemistry, we provide a lot of chemistry to the PCB industry. A lot of that is driven by AI. So AI, as I said, is about packaging chips together. And so a lot of the AI customers, the guys that are buying our chemistry to build AI boards, they're growing for sure. But in addition to that, we're seeing chemistry equipment. So we're the only provider of chemistry that also provides chemistry equipment in the PCB industry. We decided to do that strategically because we think that if you can bring more tools to the game, you can provide solutions to your customers faster. If you can bring chemistry tools, if you can bring equipment tools, you can actually come to an optimized solution faster. And so the last 4 quarters, we've seen strong equipment bookings and revenue for chemistry equipment. And that's also been a significant driver of the year-over-year outgrowth in E&P.

Got it. And with this equipment growth, so the flex PCB drilling has been a pretty good driver for you guys this year. Just can you talk about the trends you're seeing with kind of your customers for these flex PCB drilling tools? And also, you've kind of talked about you're adding some capacity to your [indiscernible] factories. Just could you kind of talk about how that sort of ties in with your growth outlook for this equipment portion?

So in our E&P market, we have equipment, and we have 2 types of equipment. The chemistry equipment that I just talked about, driven a lot by AI, but also laser drilling equipment. So these are tools that are actually drilling holes, thousands of holes per second. So think about that. I'm going to drill a few thousand holes in one second. That's how fast these laser tools are. And we are the market share leader in flexible PCBs versus rigid PCBs. Flexible PCBs, what are they used for? Well, think about phones. A lot of the circuitry inside phones, connecting the camera to a microprocessor and other things, these are flexible circuits. They're actually quite complex. AirPods. So all of these wearables have tiny flexible circuits in them. And we're a market share leader there. We also have laser drilling tool for rigid PCBs, There, it's an opportunity for us. We don't have the #1 market share there. We have some technology there that we think is unique, and we've already demonstrated some wins there.

I guess if I just take a step back on the E&P segment, if I'm correct, it's 2/3 chemistry, 1/3 sort of equipment and tooling. How would you sort of characterize the growth profile between the 2/3 chemistry business versus kind of the 1/3 of equipment?

Yes. So that's right. 1/3 is equipment that includes the chemistry equipment and laser equipment. And that can be lumpy, right, because it's CapEx. The 2/3 is chemistry, and that's more -- it is a consumable kind of market. And so that's been growing probably about 10% year-over-year this year and likely about 10% year-over-year last year. And so this is driven by a lot of the volume of AI. So many of our customers are building more complex layers of PCBs for AI servers. And that chemistry is coming through to the growth that you see in our chemistry revenue.

So when I sort of think about your 20% growth this year, it's been kind of -- you were 2/3 that's growing 10% and then the equipment growth is sort of layering on top of that?

Exactly.

And when I think about kind of the durability of that equipment growth that's been going on for 4 quarters right now, sort of how do you kind of see an early setup into '26 or kind of...

Yes. So 4 quarters of great equipment orders for chemistry. We're booked through the first half of '26, and we continue to have discussions with customers about beyond that. So, so far, so good. equipment continues to be a strong part of our potential growth in 2026. It is a CapEx environment. So it will turn over at some point. But the most important part is when we sell equipment for chemistry, the chemistry is ours. And our chemistry gross margins are above 55%. Equipment is lower, right? And so if you think about that equipment revenue, it is going to drive annualized year-over-year chemistry revenue for decades. And that's been the history of our equipment sales.

So I guess I was probably going to ask this a little bit later on the financial portion, but gross margin has been a little bit lighter, I would say, just given just so much equipment sales going on. But equipment may roll over at some point, but chemistry is more utilization based. How would I kind of think about maybe the attach rate between equipment and chemistry and how better equipment -- I mean better chemistry may also feed into the financial model?

Yes, that's true. So after 5 years, the attach rate drops to about 85%. So we have very high attach rate when we get out of the gate on and you're right, the chemistry sales that follow the equipment sales are very higher than our corporate average gross margins. In the future, mix will be a big part of our gross margin play. If you look back into Q4 -- sorry, 2024 up to Q1 of this year, we were running gross margins well above 47%. We finished Q1 at 47.4%. Since then, we had 2 headwinds to deal with. One is the impact of equipment sales and the tariff impact that hits in Q2 and Q3 in particular. Q2, we had 115 basis points from tariffs. Q3, we had 80 basis points. By Q4, we will offset the impact of that tariff dollar-for-dollar. However, from a gross margin point of view, we will still have a 50 basis points impact going forward because we are not marking up the pass-throughs. It's a dollar-for-dollar. So the math will be against us. In the long term, we are confident that we can offset that 50 bps through just efficiency and manufacturing excellence programs. And as the mix gets back to more normalized levels, we will get back to the 47-plus percent gross margin that we have targeted.

Got it. Thank you, Ram. And before I move over to semi, I have to mention, so you're awarded the Optica i4 Individual Lifetime Achievement Award, the Global Photonics Economic Forum in October. Just -- could you remind us about MKS' sort of position like MKS' optical businesses and how -- kind of what part of the supply chain you guys play a part in there?

Yes. So that was a great honor, but it was really a reflection of MKS actually. And it was a recognition that MKS is one of the leading players in the optics industry, the photonics industry. And the areas that we work in, in photonics are not just lasers and industrial type of applications, but also in semi. And so when we thought about areas for growth or outgrowth, semiconductor equipment for lithography, metrology and inspection was something we were under indexed to. And so 5 years ago, we decided to change that. We hired more people. We added more CapEx, develop new processes so that we can do more complex things, optical subsystems and optics for the lithography, metrology and inspection customers. So that revenue 5 years ago was $150 million. Now it's $300 million. And we're still in early innings of that area of the semiconductor WFE market.

Got it. That kind of ties us into talking about semi. So you've seen a nice year in semi. Q4 guide implies about 10% growth for the full year. So your customers have talked about kind of a big second half 2026 ramp. Could you kind of talk about what your sort of early expectations are kind of, I guess, what you're sort of expecting for your semi business in '26? And also it would help with kind of what drove the sort of 10% growth this year as well?

Yes. Well, so this year, 10% growth. A lot of it is -- part of it was inventory being burned off -- our inventory being burned off for NAND, and we saw some upgrade patterns there. So that was helpful. And it's also a lot of in-quarter terms because our lead times are very short, back to normal now. I would say pick your favorite WFE model for 2026, but people are saying it can go up 5%, 10%, 15% now, incrementally better as the year has gone on. And a lot of it is driven by logic, DRAM and HBM, not so much NAND yet. And so as I said earlier, we are addressing 85% of WFE. So when logic goes up, we go up. When DRAM goes up, we go up. When HBM goes up, we go up. NAND is potentially an upside to all that. If there were more NAND upgrades there. I think the industry is worried about capacity in terms of clean room space for all the equipment. So that's a great problem to have. People are going to fix that as fast as they can. But right now, as we look at the industry view of equipment in 2026, it's very robust. Our lead times are short now back to normal. Our inventory is -- we're shipping to demand. So I think 2026, if that holds, will be a great year for MKS.

Got it. We're at 11% growth for '26, so a pretty good setup for you guys. I guess just in terms of that lead time. So you guys are at 4 to 8 weeks right now. I guess what does a more normalized lead time look for MKS? And sort of what sort of visibility would you ideally like your customers to provide you?

Yes. Well, so I think 4 to 8 weeks is kind of normalized and there's ranges, right? There's some complex subsystems that might be a few months. But that's kind of normalized. Now during a ramp, things extend and that's normal. Our communications with our customers are very, very close. There's only 5 big customers in the semi. So we talk to them all the time. We also talk to the end users, the chip companies as well to try to get as much insight as possible. So I think no one wants to be supply chain constrained. And so our customers are going to tell us as soon as they know what is their needs for the next quarter or 2. And I would say, when I think about what's being said nowadays versus a quarter ago, it's incrementally more positive.

Got it. Got it. And I just want to touch back on the NAND portion. So when I look back at '21 and '22, you guys had did really well in hand and WFE kind of disappeared for 2 years to start to come back this year. But how would this sort of a recovery in NAND WFE layer on to kind of your outperformance versus WFE if we think about '26 and '27 seeing hopefully a bit more better NAND WFE?

Yes. So NAND is pretty much in a historic low. So if upgrades happen, we get -- we participate in that because one of the components of that upgrade RF power and we're market share leader there. If new greenfield as we'll certainly get the RF power, but also the surround the chamber portfolio as well. So I think NAND upgrades as well as greenfields are going to be extra tailwinds to the 2026 WFE. I think it feels like it's going to be constrained by the amount of clean room space at this point because people are shifting even NAND clean room to HBM and DRAM because there's an even stronger pull there, even higher pricing there driven by AI.

Got it. And even though that kind of NAND WFE dropped off in 2022, you guys had some nice kind of revenue ramps in the metrology and inspection side. You're talking about kind of your exposure to ALD to me a little bit earlier. Could you talk about kind of the more idiosyncratic sort of MKS initiatives that should lead to sort of WFE performance over the next 2 years?

Yes. The last earnings call, we talked about the concept of 2-nanometer and the gate-all-around that goes with it and a lot of the deposition processes that are new like atomic layer deposition. So we provide some key critical subsystems there that we're pretty unique in. But I think if I were to step back and think about how does MKS outgrow the WFE market over time, I think that our strategy has been, if we can manage a broad portfolio we have a better chance of outgrowing the market because I can't tell you which inflection is going to cause which critical subsystem to be more critical. But I can guarantee you, it will change. And if I have all -- or most of the critical subsystems, I can actually do something about it. So the best example was then, right? NAND went vertical, who would have thought of that? And then we acquired a lot of RF power. Well, I have RF power, so I just got to decide whether I want to invest in it more. If I was a single product category, and I didn't have RF power, I'm kind of stuck, right? If I extrapolate that to a higher level. Well, so in 2010, EUV wasn't ready. So what does the industry do? We double pattern. And we triple pattern. Well, it's a lot of dep etch steps. Well, we enjoy that overgrowth or your outgrowth of WFE. Then EUV happened and litho became a little more important. That's why we did WCO, world-class optics to increase our share in litho metrology inspection. So now we can do that. In the next 5 years, a lot of industry folks are thinking it's back to dep etch. The point is, these things change all the time, had a broad portfolio, if you can manage that well, allows you a better chance of outgrowing the industry sustainably over decades.

I guess what also helps is just the scale of MKSI and the ability to do kind of R&D through cycle. And even the scale, I think you previously mentioned that metrology and inspection was, I think, $150 million 5 years ago, now closer to $300 million. But that's -- that growth is also driven by your customers kind of telling you that if you do more R&D, you can get more business.

Right. Yes. Exactly. So many of our customers are looked for partners that can actually give them gifts of technology as we look to our suppliers. And that's how the ecosystem works. And so when you have scale, you have a better advantage of being able to satisfy some of the customers' ask of high technology that requires multiple years of investment. So in the 1990s, when I started, you could develop something and have it in production in 12 months. Now everything is a lot harder to do. Those easy things have been done. It takes years. RF power has developed over years before we saw a nickel. We put in a lot of investment for multiple years before we saw any revenue from that investment. But that's the way the game is played now. EV in our industry is the biggest example. 20 years of investment finally is paying off for ASML for sure. So I think size does matter in an industry where the technology becomes more complicated, more difficult to do and the R&D investment requires a longer duration.

Right. Ram, I want to pass it over to you for a few financial questions. But the first one, just on the near term, you kind of talked about it earlier, but gross margin has been weighed down by tariffs and sort of product mix. But could you kind of talk about -- so how have these tariffs impacted your business and sneak peek into what gross margin could look like in 2026 and kind of what the puts and takes might be?

Yes. So the tariff had an impact on our gross margin. It did not have any impact on the top line. And the highest impact was in Q2, and we had 115 basis points of impact. Our gross margin for the year after including the tariffs was 46.6%, would have been well above close to 48% if we didn't have that tariff impact. That dropped to 80 bps in Q3 and our gross margin was 46.6%, including that, would have been above 47% without that tariff impact. And it's dropped to 50%. And like I said, we have matched dollar-for-dollar. We are recovering 100% of our tariff cost. But since we are not marking up the tariffs, we'll continue to see a 50 basis points impact on the gross margin which we will -- we are confident we will overcome with the operational excellence programs going on in just manufacturing excellence and procurement activity primarily. We'll also have more design savings coming in the future years that will help with the margins. With a normalized mix, we are very confident to get back to the 47-plus percent in '26.

Got it. Got it. And I mean, when I kind of compare you guys to what you laid out back in '22 for the Analyst Day, like you're well ahead of where you guys kind of thought you would be in terms of gross margin?

So the cost control side on what we can control has been working well. And the next step change in margins will come with top line growth and the right kind of mix.

Got it. I ask one more question, and then I want to open it up to the audience for a question or 2, but just less interest expenses has been a pretty big driver of net income because you guys have been very proactive with paying down debt. I think exiting Q4, you'd be at 3.9x net leverage. Where would you want to get to in the kind of next year or 2? What's the sort of target net leverage that you guys are eyeing up?

So we're very happy with the progress we have made on managing our debt. And it's a combination of 2 things. One is the cash flow generation that we have had. And the two -- second is the focus on our capital allocation strategy and prioritization of strengthening the balance sheet. Our cash flow -- our free cash flow this year, up to -- in 3 quarters was almost equal to all the free cash flow we generated last year. So we are well on our way to beat our free cash flow generation year-over-year. So we not only have strong cash flow generation, but it's growing. And with our current cost structure, that top line comes back to more normal levels, we can accelerate the debt repayment. With regard to capital allocation priorities, after we invest in ourselves with the CapEx expansion and a little bit of P&L design and R&D improvements, our focus is 100% to pay down our debt. And our goal is to get to 2x to 2.5x net leverage, which will get us more into a more balanced capital allocation strategy.

Got it. I'd like to open it up to the audience if there's any questions. Gentleman in the back.

I'm relatively new to the company, but what's the -- over the last couple of years and going forward, what's the unit volumes versus price equation for you guys? Would you have a lot of pricing power?

Yes. I think we have. We work hard on that every year. It's not an event kind of driven thing. You can see, as Ram said, our gross margin over the last couple of years improving. Remember, in 2022, we gave a 5-year model that said, when our revenue is $5.6 billion, we'd be at 47% plus gross margin as Ram said, at $3.8 billion, we already hit 47% plus in 48 months. So that's an indication of the value and the pricing power we have. So we've held our own. I think there's more opportunity going forward. I think the time to get an improvement in gross margin is the new design wins, right? It's harder to go back, I think, in change pricing. But for sure, a new stuff, if you're unique, then we're getting paid fairly for that.

Any other questions? I guess then I'll ask if you -- so on the semi portion, so for ALD, I guess, the kind of story there is your ozone generators, if I'm correct. Can you just kind of elaborate on that, sort of what makes MKS' solution there kind of differentiated versus competition?

Yes. So ozone is oxygen, 3 oxygen atoms together, and that's needed for every cycle in an atomic layer deposition cycle. And the uniqueness of our ozone generator is that it generates a much higher concentration that's much cleaner than a lot of folks in the industry. And there aren't a lot of left competitors. We talked about our -- at our earnings call that at 2 nanometers and below, there's a lot more ALD, a lot more ozone generation that has to go on that's higher concentration and cleaner. And so that's been the unique features of how we've been winning that share.

So when I think about kind of your content per, I think WFE dollar, it's kind of 1.8% to 2.2%, if I'm correct. Deposition would be probably on the lighter end, but hopefully, ALD kind of drives it upper.

Yes. Yes. So our revenue as a function of WFE varies between 1.8% to 2.2%, kind of depends on cycle, et cetera. But I think on the lower end of it would be our lithography metrology inspection because we're just early innings there. I think on the higher end would be NAND because of our RF power there and then a lot of other things in between. But I think the bigger picture is that whether it's DRAM building fast or NAND or logic or whether it's dep etch or litho, we kind of don't care because we're in 85% of it. So we're going to see most of it. And our job is to try to continue growing that share over time.

Great. So kind of hopefully, the customer is talking about a big second half 2026 comes true and you guys see good '26 then?

Yes. As I said, it's incrementally more positive since 90 days ago, for sure.

Great. That brings us up to time. Thank you, [ Don ], thank you, John. Thank you, Ram.