Onto Innovation Inc. (ONTO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Onto Innovation Second Quarter Earnings Release. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Sidney Ho, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Rachel, and good afternoon, everyone. Onto Innovation issued its 2026 second quarter financial results this afternoon shortly after the market closed. If you did not receive a copy of the release, please refer to the company's website where a copy of the release is posted. Joining us on the call today are Michael Plisinski, Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Roberts, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to remind you that the statements made by management on this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Those statements are subject to a range of changes, risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to vary materially. For more information regarding the risk factors that may impact Onto Innovation's results, I would encourage you to review our earnings release and our SEC filings. Onto Innovation does not undertake the obligation to update these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Today's discussion of our financial results will be presented on a non-GAAP financial basis unless otherwise specified. As a reminder, a detailed reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP results can be found in today's earnings release. Before we begin, I have a calendar announcement. On December 17, we plan to host an analyst meeting at the New York Stock Exchange to discuss our market strategies and updated financial model. We hope you'll save the date. Let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Mike Plisinski. Mike?

Thank you, Sidney. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our call today. The Onto Innovation team delivered an outstanding quarter with revenue, gross margin, operating margin and earnings per share all exceeding the high end of our guidance range. We set new quarterly revenue records with advanced nodes growing 50% quarter-over-quarter, and our inspection business dominated by Dragonfly systems growing by 30% on strong execution across both 2.5D Logic and HBM applications. Our outlook is equally exciting as increasing levels of visibility from our customers is driving a record backlog surpassing $1.1 billion. . With this favorable backdrop, we're raising our second half revenue growth outlook to 25% or more over the first half, up from our previous expectation of 15% with Q4 revenue expected to be higher than the Q3 revenue. Looking deeper into our advanced packaging and specialty device markets. The quarter highlighted several important trends from which we benefit. First, the recognition of advanced packaging as a technology enabler continues to grow and is contributing to significant advances in AI and enterprise server performance. This, in turn, affords our customers greater visibility into the market than what has traditionally been seen from consumer-driven end market demand. Now with the successful launch of the Dragonfly G5, we're experiencing unprecedented demand across an expanding set of customers, leading to an increase in our full year outlook for advanced packaging growth to approximately 80%, up significantly from the 50% growth we projected last quarter. The increase in demand is strongest from HBM manufacturers and OSAT supporting heterogeneous packaging primarily for AI applications. For example, in the quarter, we were pleased to have won orders totaling over $200 million for Dragonfly technology from a single OSAT partner. The majority of these orders will be delivered in 2027, underscoring both the magnitude of the demand and customer confidence extending into the new year. A second example is the adoption of silicon photonics in new device designs. These new designs are expected to improve device performance while reducing environmental concerns such as heat generation and power consumption which impacts both data center operations and the communities hosting them. Although a nascent market, we've received over $50 million in orders to support this inflection with roughly 2/3 to be delivered in 2027. We estimate our served addressable market in silicon photonics will grow to over $500 million by 2030. The opportunity spans several critical manufacturing applications across light guides, light generation and detection. The trends above intersect to fuel growth in panel-level packaging as the adoption of heterogeneous packaging increases and includes more die such as silicon photonics package sizes are getting larger. In this dynamic, panel-level packaging delivers advantageous processing scale, especially for larger package sizes. Our combination of JetStep lithography, Firefly process control and Discover software provide compelling value to our customers with market strengthening, we expect our panel-level packaging revenue to more than double year-over-year with further growth in 2027. Of course, innovation in the advanced nodes, particularly new and smaller transistor geometries is also increasing demand for new process control solutions from the Onto Innovation team. As I mentioned, revenue from advanced nodes grew -- from Advanced nodes customers grew 50% sequentially surpassing the record previously set in 2022. We are seeing broad-based strengthening across memory and logic segments, including expanded adoption of our Atlas G6 platform, which is being used for transistor metrology at several nodes below 20-nanometer where smaller spot sizes and increased precision is difficult to achieve, but vital to ensure high yield. So in addition to the Logic customers, we discussed last quarter, we expect to ship multiple systems to a major DRAM customer in the second half of the year to support their next-generation memory devices. And rounding out our optical portfolio, both Iris films and integrated metrology product lines are also on track to achieve record revenue levels in 2026. Complementing our optical metrology, we see new applications for our fast technology to help predict device performance earlier in the fabrication process, thereby saving production costs. Taken together, we're confident that advanced nodes revenue will grow more than 35% in 2026, continuing to outpace the latest WFE growth expectations. And lastly, we're looking forward to expanding on our successful collaboration with Rigaku to deliver powerful new process control solutions for our customers. Customer response to our partnership has been very positive, and we're confident that together, we will provide compelling value to our customers. Estimates of the size of the market today for x-ray technology used in semiconductor applications is approximately $1 billion. We expect the growing adoption of more complex 3D transistor and packaging technology over the next several years will result in accelerated adoption of this X-ray technology and above-average market growth in the years ahead. And with that, let me now turn the call to Brian to review our financial highlights and provide third quarter guidance. Brian?

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone. As Mike noted, the Onto Innovation team delivered an impressive second quarter exceeding our previous guidance across key financial metrics. These results reflect our strong positioning with customers across both front end and advanced packaging in support of the surge of AI demand and other applications. Revenue of $343 million increased 18% sequentially and 35% year-over-year. Our advanced nodes business increased by 50% from Q1 to approximately $120 million. Memory, which comprises about 60% of the total, grew at a sequential rate of approximately 60%. Logic also was strong in the quarter with more than 40% sequential growth. Advanced Packaging and Specialty device comprised nearly half of the revenue in Q2. As Mike noted, inspection highlighted by the Dragonfly product family was strong with 30% quarter-over-quarter growth driven by 2.5D and HBM. Other packaging and specialty device, including power and SDI, declined sequentially as expected, but will rebound back to Q1 levels next quarter. Software and services comprised the remaining second quarter revenue. We have consistently discussed our push towards improved profitability this year through our move to extended factories, our focus on driving operational productivity and our improved forecasting capabilities. The results of these efforts to date are evidenced in the second quarter as we achieved a gross margin of 57% representing an increase of 250 basis points from Q4 2025 and 130 basis points from the first quarter. This is a level of performance that has already surpassed our initial expectation for 200 basis points of gross margin expansion in 2026. Importantly, we're also gaining additional leverage across our operational teams as we delivered a 30% operating margin in Q2 an increase of nearly 500 basis points from the beginning of the year. As of June 30, we have nearly $1.9 billion of cash and short-term investments on hand. In the second quarter, we generated $62 million of cash from operations or slightly over 100% of our second quarter net income. While we are in a cycle of increasing inventory to ensure continuity of supply chain, and to support the revenue acceleration in the business, we remain committed to strong cash generation and active working capital management. In May, we completed a $1.5 billion 0% interest convertible debt offering maturing in 2031, which generated about $1.2 billion in net cash to the company. The remaining $300 million was used to repurchase shares, totaling approximately $200 million of our common stock and to purchase cap call, which increases the strike price for dilution purposes, to $509.06 per share and for professional fees related to the transaction. For Q2, we reported earnings of $1.93 per share, reflecting a $0.20 increase over the high end of our previous guidance range. Now let me provide some forward-looking thoughts for the second half of the year. With the surging demand environment, coupled with strong operational execution, we are raising our revenue, margin and earnings per share expectations for the second half of 2026. Building off our strong first half results, we are expecting revenue to grow more than 25% in the second half of the year. Specifically, we expect Q3 revenue in the range of $380 million to $400 million with an additional uptick in Q4. While Cognizant of continued headwinds, for example, around certain material input costs, fuel surcharges and freight expense, we anticipate additional gross margin expansion in the second half of 2026 of an incremental 50 basis points per quarter in Q3 and in Q4. We expect operating margins to increase by 200 basis points to 32% in the third quarter and to exit the year at an operating margin of 33% or higher. Earnings per share at the midpoint of the Q3 guide would approximate $2.28 per share. This assumes a non-GAAP tax rate of 15% and slightly more than 50 million shares outstanding. And with that, let me turn it back to Mike for some closing thoughts before we take your questions. Mike?

Thank you, Brian. Our record quarter and improved outlook for the second half of 2026 reflect deepening customer engagements across several of the most important technology trends shaping this new era for semiconductors. With industry analysts forecasting hyperscale capital expenditures in 2027, north of $1 trillion, it's clear that demand throughout the semiconductor value chain remains high and gated by new fabrication facilities coming online. We believe our customers are confident in their visibility and in turn, continue to provide us exceptional insights into their multiyear capacity plans. In response, our team is focused on enhancing the level and pace of innovation as well as our delivery of that innovation through global operations and support excellence. As a result, our metrology suite is expanding across both logic and memory customers, setting new records in OCD films and integrated metrology. Demand for our Dragonfly inspection led by the significant performance improvement of our new Dragonfly G5 is increasing rapidly across a broadening set of heterogeneous packaging applications. New market opportunities in silicon photonics, surface charge metrology and an X-ray solutions for 3D and exotic materials in partnership with Rigaku will only expand our opportunities as we look into 2027 and 2028. And as we grow, we continue our relentless focus on identifying and realizing efficiency gains across our global team. We are starting to see the results. And as Brian noted, we are on track to deliver 350 basis points of gross margin expansion more than 750 basis points of incremental operating margin in 2026 with continued advances expected in 2027. A large driver of these improvements is the significant enhancements to our operational foundation with the successful ramp of our extended factories in Asia. These partnerships provide us with increased operational flexibility at a significantly reduced level of capital expenditure allowing us to lower cost and focus investments on the technology and application expertise our customers depend on, adding fuel to our engine of growth. And now, Rachel, let's open the call for questions from our covering analysts.

[Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities.

And congratulations on the very robust execution team. Mike, I wanted to start with you. We've got a number of financial records that we're talking about today. So I'll focus a question on one of them. Of the $1.1 billion backlog, can you provide some color on some of the mix dynamics that you see in that backlog and some of the duration dynamics that you see? And where I'm headed is, can you help us understand the confidence that large backlog gives you, as you look at 2027 and the levels of revenue and the year-on-year growth potential.

Sure. I think the backlog is a strong indicator of our customers' confidence more than anything else. They're confident in their expansion plans. They want to secure supply they need from their critical suppliers such as us. And so they're confidently issuing purchase orders well in advance of the historical norms. So I think that's a great takeaway and that's why we shared it. As far as the mix goes, I think, obviously, we still have several months left, several -- well, many months, 4 or 5 months left in this quarter. Probably 60%, 70% of it is tied to this year, but 30%, 40% is covering 2027, and it's still early. So I think it bodes well for another year of strength in 2027, the discussions we're having with our customers is quite constructive for 2027 growth and growth dynamics. As far as what's in the backlog, I think it's just a continuation of the trends we're seeing, relatively strong packaging across both memory and logic. Basically HBM and 2.5D Logic as well that includes OSATs and a broadening customer list there, as well as the advanced nodes where we expect to see the meaningful continuation of the growth that we've had the last 2 years really.

That's very helpful. And Brian, I wanted to ask a follow-up to you, if I could. As Mike noted, stellar gross margin progress this year tracking to 350 basis points, the question not looking for guide, just looking for some color is that as we look beyond this year, from these last year levels than we thought we were going to have starting the year. Is there still gross margin expansion potential when we get into 2027 and at the current pacing, it seems like we could get to a level that starts with a 6. I'm just wondering if you have some comments on those prospects.

Sure, Craig. Thanks. I mean one of the things that gives us a lot of confidence as we look into '27, even though we haven't put together a formal plan yet is the contribution from Dragonfly G5 is still a smaller portion, a smaller proportion of our overall revenue for 2026. And as we've talked about, as the G5 continues to ramp up and becomes a bigger percentage of our business, there's an average selling price lift that goes alongside that, that helps give us a lot more fuel for our gross margin. So certainly, in 2026, a lot of the growth has come from the move to the extended factories and all of those things that we've talked about there around the localization of supply chain, saving freight costs, lower labor costs that we've been able to tap into, '27, I think, will be a combination of that continuing to scale along hopefully, with some ASP growth as the mix changes in the business. .

We will take our next question from Melissa Weathers with Deutsche Bank.

Thanks for having me on the call and congrats on the nice results. I guess when we look at the results you guys are seeing and some of the backlog you're seeing, is there any way you can help us parse out how much of this is just a faster TAM or SAM growth in the industry getting better? And how much of it could be share gains or new product wins. Just any way to think about how much of this is industry-wide versus you guys gaining some incremental share?

Sure, Melissa. I think it's a little of both, right? So of course, the industry is growing aggressively. But if you look at our peers. I think we're growing above that. And then you can start playing some games around the base and this and that. And so I'll leave that all that tough math to you. But from what we see, customers are adopting, finding new applications and adopting the Dragonfly in new areas at a much stronger pace than even we expected 3 months ago. We're adding new customers. Those customers are adopting the products in a broader way. So that's a mix of both their demand as well as share gain opportunities. . I think the metrology business is also doing a great job expanding their footprint in the factories, some of those records we talked about, whether it's Iris films or in the integrated side, there are new applications in there, for instance, in logic, that are all share gain. We didn't -- a year ago, we wouldn't have had hardly any, maybe 0 logic for integrated metrology. So I think it's really a mix. It's both, I'd say.

Great to hear. And then as we think about your capacity to support this growth into next year, it seems like momentum is building. So any guardrails you can help us around like what is your revenue capacity? What kind of steps are you taking to expand capacity? Just anything we should be thinking about on the supply side?

Well, in the past, we've said that we had the capacity for $2 billion with our in-house factories. Since then, since that time, we've now added essentially the equal capability with our extended factories. And in fact, what we're seeing is those factories are reducing cycle times, adding second shifts with the capability of even third shifts so that capacity is actually much higher than our factories here in the U.S. So we're not capacity constrained, supply chain constraints, that's always a concern. We've done a great job managing supply chains throughout both the COVID time frames where we met all shipments and commitments to customers. We're continuing to do that now even as we see quite strong phenomenal growth. We're working closely with our supply chains. We're leveraging our balance sheet a little bit, and we're making sure that we can meet our commitments to customers. .

We will take our next question from Brian Chin with Stifel.

Nice results. Maybe first, in terms of the increase to -- I think it was 80% or at least 80% growth in inspection this year. Mike, can you outline a few of those drivers that have filled in or picked up for you across packaging in the back half of the year. Are you beginning to ship some follow-on systems against the HBM and 2.5D Logic wins that you announced earlier in the year? Or maybe Gen 5, as you mentioned, is that big a driver this year, but should be next year. Can you also lay out maybe take a guess that with that Gen 5 versus Gen 3 mix could be for Dragonfly in '27.

Yes. We won't -- the Gen 5 mix is going to increase. That's kind of obvious, but we're not going to quantify that just yet because I think even our customers are working on that for themselves. So I think the Gen 5, the excitement around Gen 5 is the new applications it opens up with its higher resolution and opportunities to grow into segments where we perhaps weren't as well suited before. So that's super positive. As far as the mix of the growth now, it's essentially an expansion of the 2.5D, so that's the OSATs picking up more volume. It's new innovative packaging technologies that some of the customers are adopting that we've already been well positioned for. But driving growth. And for sure, it's HBM, where we've seen really phenomenal growth in both 2.5D -- sorry, both 2D inspection as well as 3D metrology. So there is some pickup from our 3DI as well as new applications for our subsurface inspection, where we've seen very strong growth this year as that product becomes more critical for 3D or heterogeneous packaging applications. So the reasons are varied. But at the bottom -- at the end of the day, it boils down to really strong demand for the flexibility and value proposition that the Dragonfly offers our customers.

Great. I appreciate that. Maybe for the follow-up question. Specialty, I think you came into the year expecting that to be maybe down a little bit year-on-year. Can you kind of outline how that's improved? And kind of if you expect that to be sort of contributor to growth next year? And also for silicon photonics that you referenced, are you -- is that -- you put that more in specialty? Or is that really advanced packaging relative to the application?

Silicon photonics is for sure in the specialty segment, similar with Power. Power would be there as well. We're definitely seeing kind of a little bit better on the Specialty, probably helped by the silicon photonics, where it's more flat versus the down we originally expected at the start of the year. As far as next year grows, I think depending on what Power does, we're certainly seeing and we talked about the silicon photonics, that's a potential for some incremental adds next year. And if Power recovers, as we're starting to see some indications of, we should see the Specialty market start to grow as well. That won't offset -- or that won't be close to the growth we're expecting from the packaging side. .

We will take our next question from Edward Yang with Oppenheimer.

Brian, thanks for the time an impressive quarter. I just wanted to double click on this backlog and also the step-up in revenue growth. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time you mentioned backlog was in fourth quarter. And at that time, it had doubled to about $0.5 billion. So now it looks like it's double again to $1 billion here. So with the step-up in the second half revenue growth to 25% versus 15% previously versus the first half and the backlog above $1 billion, is that still accelerating as revenue steps up or is business now moving into a more stable elevated run rate from these levels?

It's hard to answer that because we don't get steady streams of orders. We'll get a large chunk. We finished negotiating a VPA and then that's followed up by a large chunk of orders and then some fall off mostly in the last month. So it's hard to say, okay, what's the book-to-bill? How are things accelerating? I would say the general feeling is that backlogs are growing. I mean, that's good. So we are seeing strength in the backlog. But we're also shipping more and more products. So what we're seeing really is a confidence from our customers to commit to longer -- to make longer-term commitments so that they can secure their slots in order to meet their ramp plans. And so -- from that perspective, I would say the better indications of where the markets are growing are in the kind of growth plans and the capital expense announcements from our customers.

Okay. And just following up on that, it sounds like the implied revenue for fourth quarter is about 3.5% sequential growth. You're guiding to almost 14% sequential growth in the third quarter. Could we see upside to that? Or is there any sort of seasonality that would imply a slower sequential growth in that quarter?

For Q4, I mean if you just use the midpoint of the revenue guide that we gave at 390, the 25% kind of growth number as a floor would put you somewhere into the low 400s for Q4. So I think the sequential growth continues at a pretty rapid pace as we move from Q3 into Q4. So we'll see exactly as orders come together from a shipment perspective of when things go out the door and sometimes that depends on customers' ability to take something and have it show up on the dock, but we're feeling pretty good about the back half of the year, into the first part of '27.

We will take our next question from Matthew Prisco with Cantor.

I guess, first one to dig into advanced node and kind of product cycle story there. Can you give us an update on traction and customer conversations you're seeing on G5's potential penetration into the front end? And then -- maybe any update on what you're seeing in RSG2 as well.

So with RSG2, we've made several shipments, and we're working through the normal installation, qualification, then performance testing against the specifications customers want to see. So that process is ongoing. And like we've said in the past, generally, these last 6 to 12 months. So hopefully, we'll be able to accelerate some of that, but it's basically going according to plan. And that's similar with the G5 for front-end applications. We've got to basically some delivered. So we're starting to run some samples through the tool and compare against the incumbent. We're also running a lot of samples in the application centers. We've talked about that in the past. So in our application center. So customer interest seems quite high. And again, we'll probably see bigger contributions from that in 2027 not as much in 2026 as we've been consistently reporting.

Helpful. And then maybe can you give some more color on the visibility you're seeing today, maybe how does that vary across end markets, what type of lead time are you seeing? And how do you think that sets you up growth in 2027 maybe versus a WFE market that's now being discussed in $190 billion to $200 billion range for another 30% growth year.

Yes. It's a good question. I would say the biggest change in visibility. Advanced nodes has historically had a better visibility than advanced packaging. So for us, the biggest change or improvement is in the advanced packaging piece, which given the magnitude of advanced packaging revenue for our company, that's a fairly significant improvement in visibility for us, well over half the business tends to be from the advanced packaging markets. So that -- and I explained on the call, the reason for that is it's being driven more from the AI hyperscale demand versus consumer demand, trying to predict if everyone is going to buy new cell phones or not. That was always a much tougher challenge for our customers.