Qnity Electronics, Inc. (Q) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Qnity Second Quarter 2026 Conference and Webcast Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Meg Miller, Vice President of Global Communications. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm joined by Jon Kemp, Qnity's Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Goss, Qnity's Interim Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, we issued our earnings release along with a supplemental slide presentation, which can be found on our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion will include some forward-looking statements. These statements represent our best view of predictions and expectations for the future, but numerous risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for a discussion of these risks. We'll also be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, and I refer you to our earnings materials for information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measure. And now it's my pleasure to turn it over to Jon.

Thank you for joining our call this morning. Last quarter, we talked about how the fundamental shift from shrink to stack is becoming the driving force behind technological advancements in the semiconductor industry. Innovation is spanning well beyond transistor shrink to focus on connecting chips in new and innovative ways that will unlock the next frontier of computing. As the stack is taller and layers multiply the journey every chip must take lengthens and materials innovation become the hidden hero, quietly powering performance, yield and reliability. Qnity sits at the center of this trend with one of the broadest portfolios of end-to-end solutions across the stack. On the front end, our suite of CMP pads, claims and slurries and lithography materials are essential for patterning and polishing leading-edge chips. In the middle, we provide comprehensive advanced packaging solutions from both business segments to enable next-generation architectures and support chip-to-chip connections. Finally, on the back end, our dermal materials move heat across demanding full system workloads like data centers and other AI applications. When you combine the breadth of our portfolio across the semiconductor stack with decades of innovation alongside our customers and a local promote model for manufacturing and technical support, it's clear why Qnity is uniquely positioned for the opportunities ahead. were aligned with the industry's most groundbreaking technology roadmaps, embedded in our customers' next-generation platform and able to deliver the materials and solutions they need at scale. As AI, high-performance computing and advanced connectivity continued to reshape the industry. These advantages position us to create significant long-term value. The best proof of this differentiated position is our performance. Looking at our second quarter results, we delivered our ninth consecutive quarter of strong profitable organic growth. Organic sales increased 22% year-over-year with another quarter of double-digit growth across both segments. Adjusted operating EBITDA increased 24% and adjusted EPS grew by 53% as we continue to demonstrate our ability to drive strong operating leverage in the business. In Semiconductor Technologies, we grew organic sales 17% year-over-year, led by AI-driven solutions as our advanced nodes portfolio grew more than 20% during the second quarter. We've seen broad-based improvement in fab utilization across the industry. Advanced logic is now tracking to the mid-80% range, while mainstream logic is in the low 80s. In memory, we continue to see healthy utilization levels with DRAM in the high 80s and NAND in the low 80s. As customers move to increasingly advanced nodes, every wafer requires more layers more processing complexity and more packaging steps. All of this translates to more volume and to more Qnity content. We're seeing that with continued growth at 3-nanometer, the emerging activity at 2-nanometer and increasing engagement around future Angstrom Era technology platforms. And that combination of improving utilization and rising content intensity continues to support our confidence in the long-term growth outlook for our semi business. In Interconnect Solutions, our team continues to deliver exceptional results, with 28% organic growth year-over-year, again led by content and share gains across our key growth platforms of advanced packaging and interconnect, AI PCBs and thermal management. Collectively, these platforms again grew more than 50% year-over-year during the second quarter. One of the biggest engineering challenges in next-generation AI system isn't simply building smaller and faster chips. It's enabling those chips to reliably communicate with one another. As architectures become more complex, challenges around signal integrity, power delivery and heat dissipation become increasingly difficult to solve as we partner with customers to overcome these increasingly complex system-level challenges. We're seeing demand broaden across our portfolio and additional opportunities to increase content throughout the AI ecosystem moving forward. This combination of strong platform growth, expanding content opportunities and deepening customer engagement reinforces our confidence in the durable long-term growth outlook for our ICS business. As the technology for both shrink and stack accelerates, we advanced our own innovation progress during the quarter, extending our leading technology position from front to back through both new products and broader industry engagements. At the front end, we announced an expansion of our CMP offerings with the launch of Optivision Max polishing pads. Our newest commercial soft polishing pad delivered superior performance in critical CMP steps to enhance surface quality, process stability and reliability for advanced architectures and nodes. We're already seeing adoption across both leading-edge nodes and advanced packaging applications, including emerging AI and HBM driven architectures. At the same time, we continue to gain traction in next-generation logic securing multiple POR wins at 16 and 14 during the first half of the year as we advance towards angstrom-level nodes. Beyond semi fab materials in AI PCBs, we are winning new business in pulse plating, a key metalization technology for the most advanced high layer count printed circuit boards used in AI applications. For customers post-plating helps deliver the precise reliable interconnects required to support higher density designs stronger signal integrity and more dependable power delivery in next-generation AI systems. Shifting to back-end assembly materials thermal management is becoming a critical performance enabler as AI systems push higher power densities across chips, packages, boards and data center infrastructure. We further strengthened our broad thermal portfolio in the first half of the year, which now spans liquid thermal interface materials, base change materials, thermal pads, gas fillers and other advanced solutions that help customers move heat more efficiently, improve reliability and accelerate deployment of next-generation AI systems. These latest materials offerings demonstrate how we're innovating against the industry's most complex technical challenges. Just as importantly, we're backing that innovation with the targeted capital investments required to scale alongside our customers. Over the past several years, we've executed a disciplined, sustained investment in capacity deployed in step with our customers' technology road maps. Since 2022, we've deployed approximately $600 million in growth investments across the business. with a focus on expanding capacity and enabling the next generation of technologies aligned to our local for local operating model. Combined with our innovation efforts, these investments position Qnity to support the accelerating demand we continue to see from our customers. It also strengthens our ability to capture long-term growth opportunities across our end markets. Pulling this all together, our innovation isn't happening in isolation. We're pairing technology leadership with disciplined capital investment to expand the capabilities, capacity and customer proximity required to support the industry's most important road maps. That combination is translating into stronger customer engagement today and positioning community to capture the long-term growth we see ahead. Before I turn it over to Mike, I want to touch on the end market trends that we're seeing. As customers allocate capacity to the highest value applications, our portfolio mix continues to evolve. Over the past 6 months, we've seen end market composition shift driven by the rapid growth in data centers steady growth in automotive and other industrial markets and slower growth in consumer electronics. With that said, our consumer Electonics portfolio continues to prove resilient with positive growth given our outsized exposure to premium devices and continued content gains. Increasingly, we see AI moving from the cloud into the physical world of devices, vehicles and machines. If the cloud is where AI learned to think, the physical world is where AI will learn to do. This presents another exciting long-term growth opportunity for Qnity, where we are well positioned across the industry through our existing relationships with both OEMs and the broader fab and foundry landscape. While these chips are often less complex than data center class processors, the market needs dramatically higher quantities of them produced efficiently and reliably. The physical world demands chips that deliver targeted AI inside strict thermal power and size envelopes. This means a fundamental re-architecture of how AI gets built, deployed and scaled and progress will depend in large part on materials innovation to make it happen, and that plays directly to Qnity's advantages. Let me now hand it over to Mike to step through our financial results and guidance in more detail.

Thanks, Jon, and good morning, everyone. We sustained our strong momentum in the second quarter, performing better than our expectations across both segments. We delivered net sales of $1.4 billion, up 22% year-over-year and 9% sequentially. On an organic basis, sales were up 22% versus the same period last year. Adjusted operating EBITDA for the quarter was $431 million, up 24% year-over-year. Adjusted operating EBITDA margin was 30.2%, reflecting our resiliency while continuing to invest for growth. Adjusted EPS for the quarter increased 53% to $1.19. Taking a closer look at each of our business segments, Semiconductor Technologies net sales were $744 million up approximately 3% sequentially. Organic sales grew 17% year-over-year, driven by continued demand strength, especially for advanced logic and HBM chips. Semi gross margins were steady at approximately 49% and adjusted operating EBITDA margin was approximately 34%, both down a bit year-over-year and sequentially, in line with our expectations driven by product mix in the quarter and continued investments to support advanced node growth. ICS delivered another exceptional quarter with net sales of $685 million, up more than 30% year-over-year and 16% sequentially. Organic sales grew 28%, led by our AI and data center platforms, advanced packaging, AI PCBs and thermal management. ICS gross margins were approximately 44% and adjusted operating EBITDA margin was approximately 29%, an improvement of 290 basis points year-over-year and roughly flat sequentially. This was driven by sustained operating leverage on higher volumes and favorable mix. We generated adjusted free cash flow of $259 million, reflecting strong operational performance and continued execution against our cash priorities. This performance reinforces the confidence reflected in the higher guidance that we are providing today. Capital expenditures totaled $90 million in the quarter and remain on pace with our planned investments to support capacity expansion transformation initiatives and future growth. We continue to anticipate elevated CapEx investment for the full year driven by these initiatives. Over the longer term, we expect CapEx to return to the 6% of net sales range. We also continue to deliver strong capital returns for shareholders through our quarterly dividend. And during the quarter, we repurchased $25 million worth of shares to partially offset normal equity dilution. We're well positioned from a liquidity perspective with approximately $960 million in cash and short-term investments at the end of the second quarter. Total debt outstanding is $4 billion with net debt leverage of approximately 2x. Immediately after quarter end, we successfully repriced our senior secured term loan facility to further enhance our free cash flow profile, resulting in an annualized benefit of approximately $6 million. Looking forward, we are a few months into our multiyear transformation plan and are beginning to see tangible benefits from our efforts with productivity and throughput improvements, creating additional operating flexibility and supporting growth. Let me share just a couple of examples of our program in action. In our [indiscernible] business, which has seen strong growth in the first half of the year due to accelerated demand for wafer fab equipment. We're executing targeted productivity, capacity release and automation initiatives. These actions position the business to better convert strong demand into growth. Additionally, to advance our local-for-local model, we continue to optimize our distribution footprint through targeted warehouse consolidations that simplify our network, improve service levels and reduce operating complexity. These actions are expected to deliver approximately 10% logistics cost savings while improving warehouse efficiency and operating leverage over time. We also continue to make meaningful progress towards IT independence. We're on track to migrate about 2/3 of our sites to our own systems by the end of this year. Each site migration reduces our reliance on transition services and gives us more direct control to run our business. Overall, we're pleased with the steady progress on the transformation plan and are confident it will unlock operating flexibility and build a stronger, more agile operating model required to support Qnity's next phase of growth. Before I hand it back to Jon for closing comments, let me walk through our updated guidance. For the third quarter, we expect sequential net sales growth in the low single digits range. The strength is broad based across the same secular drivers we highlighted earlier in the year, namely AI-drivative applications, high-performance computing and advanced connectivity, along with the muted seasonal peak in consumer electronics that typically characterizes our third quarter. As a reminder, the third quarter of 2025 included approximately $40 million of net sales that have accelerated into the third quarter ahead of our pre-spin IT systems go-lives, roughly $25 million in semiconductor technologies and $15 million in ICS. This created an elevated prior year comparison base that does not recur in 2026, modestly tempering the year-over-year growth in the third quarter for both segments, even as underlying demand continues to remain strong. In Semiconductor Technologies, we expect sequential net sales growth in the low single digits range with an adjusted EBITDA margin profile in the mid-30s. For ICS, we expect sequential net sales growth in the mid-single digits range, with adjusted EBITDA margins in the high 20s. Overall, we're watching industry supply chain dynamics closely including memory and other materials and are working with customers to meet their needs. The modest upward pressure we flagged earlier in the year of approximately $20 million is largely playing out as we expected, and the mitigation playbook we put in place coupled with our local-for-local model is doing its job, where isolated input or logistics costs have moved higher, our targeted pricing actions are in place and we see no near-term risk to supply or output. With our strong first half momentum and improved visibility into the second half, we're raising our full year outlook. Net sales is now expected to be $5.55 billion to $5.65 billion. Adjusted operating EBITDA is now expected to be $1.675 billion to $1.725 billion. Adjusted EPS is now expected to be $4.40 to $4.60. And finally, adjusted free cash flow is now expected to be $600 million to $700 million. At the midpoint of our updated guidance, we now expect to deliver 18% net sales growth, over 20% adjusted EBITDA growth and adjusted EPS growth of 35% for the full year. Lastly, we'll continue investing with the strong customer ramps we're seeing, while maintaining the cost discipline that supports our results. Jon, back to you.

Thanks, Mike. Before we open the call to Q&A, I want to provide updates on 2 critical leadership roles. First, I want to officially welcome Kate Dei Cas who started yesterday as President of our Semiconductor Technologies business segment. Kate brings more than 25 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, and a proven record of driving growth, managing global supply chains and delivering operational excellence. We're thrilled to welcome her to community. I also want to recognize Sam Ponzo for his leadership through this transition as he returns to his role as Kenody's Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer. Second, on our search for a new Chief Financial Officer. We've been really pleased with the strong candidates we've seen and are in the final stages of our search. I look forward to sharing an update soon. To close out our remarks, I want to briefly recap the highlights from our call. Qnity delivered another strong quarter with broad-based growth across both segments and continued momentum across the secular drivers reshaping our industry. We are benefiting from the powerful combination of both shrink and stack, where more process complexity and more layers are increasing materials intensity across the semiconductor value chain. Our portfolio breadth, customer intimacy and disciplined investment strategy position us well to capture these opportunities and deliver durable long-term growth. As we look ahead, we remain focused on disciplined execution, enhancing value for customers and delivering long-term growth for our shareholders. With that, operator, we can now open the call to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Jim Schneider with Goldman Sachs.

I was wondering if you could maybe comment on how you're seeing sequentials play out, especially into Q4? It seems like at the -- even towards the upper end of your guidance, the Q4 sequential will be very muted and potentially even down a little bit sequentially. Just wanted to make sure that I understand is driving that? And is there any pull-in that you're seeing in Q3? Or do you expect that you could actually see a little bit of headwind in any of the areas maybe just talk about sort of the Q4 implied sequential relative to normal seasonality?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Yes, from our updated guidance perspective, we're really putting in a combination of the first half momentum that we saw better second half visibility and including customer ramp timing and industry supply dynamics. At the midpoint of that guidance that we put out today has us at 18% sales growth for the year. and over 20% EBITDA growth for the year as well. As far as pacing through the back half of the year, from a third quarter perspective, that does include a seasonal peak around consumer electronics that we typically see. And we expect that to be consistent in the third quarter as well. With that, now we do expect semi to be in the low single digits range with EBITDA margins still in the mid-30s. And then ICS in the mid-single digits range with EBITDA margins in the high 20s. And as a reminder, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we did have a prior year $40 million move between third quarter and fourth quarter that was tied to our pre-system IT go live, but that's just from a year-over-year perspective. At a headline level, order books do remain healthy. Our customer engagement remains really strong, and we're seeing inventory move across the value chain as we'd expect. As from an overall perspective though, a couple of variables we are watching in the back half of the year, ongoing developments in the Middle East as well as timing on customer ramps and trends and utilization rates that we mentioned in the prepared remarks, to the extent that those items resolve or improve, we would expect we'd have an opportunity to do better.

Yes, Jim, maybe to offer a little bit of historical context. Typically, we'd see a small seasonal peak in the third quarter that's generally tied to consumer electronics. We're still consumer electronics has been fairly resilient for us this year because of our exposure to premium devices. Nonetheless, we typically would expect a little bit of a sequential deceleration third quarter to fourth quarter consumer electronics standpoint. And then usual, typically, we see customers do a little bit of inventory control in the fourth quarter as well.

That's helpful. And then maybe as a follow-up, you cited some of the headwinds to gross and EBITDA margins in the quarter, and I think they came in a little bit below where we were modeling. I'm just sort of curious, I think you called out specifically mix and investments. Can you maybe unpack those a little bit I know ICS has lower margins, but I'm curious whether there's any like-to-like mix that was dragging on margins in the quarter? And maybe could you talk a little bit about the prospects for gross margin improvement over the next, say, 2 to 3 quarters in light of some of the pricing actions you mentioned to offset the input cost pressures. Any other color on that would be helpful.

Yes. Thanks. So from a margin perspective in the quarter, as a reminder, we did have some nice product mix take place in the first quarter. And so coming off of that into the second quarter it included a combination of that as well as the growth investments that we mentioned. From an example perspective, the timing in any given quarter can have some variability in it from R&D efforts as well as product qualifications and that can weigh in on any given quarter. But from a -- stepping back from a perspective of the half -- first half of the year, semi had margins right around 35% for the first half -- and I'd expect that to continue into the back half of the year. I think from a headwinds perspective, we mentioned the $20 million of costs are really logistics and energy type costs. we've seen half of that already come through in the first half and expect the remainder to come through in the back half. But like I said in my prepared remarks, our playbook is working, and I expect we'll be able to offset that throughout the year. There's going to always be a little bit of variability from quarter-to-quarter. But I think the margin profile is constructive, and I expect that to continue into the back half of the year.

Maybe going the other thing I would add there, thanks, Mike. As we start to see the benefits of some of the transformation program, and I think Mike gave a couple of nice examples from plant productivity as well as kind of a footprint optimization point of view. We're starting to see some of those opportunities kick in. Most of that will be weighted towards the back half of next year. But as we start to see both the increases in volume that help with factory loading as well as some of those transformation programs. There is an opportunity for nice incrementals to increase with both gross and EBITDA margin expansion.

We'll move next to Melissa Weathers with Deutsche Bank.

I think I want to touch on the Interconnect Solutions business. You guys had another really nice quarter of sequential growth in that business. And it seems like it's growing a lot faster than maybe, I don't know, even from your Analyst Day last September, it seems like you've seen a nice acceleration in that business. So any updated thoughts on like how you guys are thinking about the long-term growth profile of that business given AI and given the shift from shrink to stack?

Yes. Thanks, Melissa. It's a great question. Obviously, we're really pleased by the continued strong performance of the ICS segment, 28% organic growth. That growth in the first half of the year that we've seen has really been powered by our 3 key growth platforms. of advanced packaging and interconnect, AI PCBs and thermal management. And I think what's fundamentally different from maybe what we talked about at our Investor Day, is the pace with which advanced packaging and thermal has really accelerated due to the adoption of AI-based applications. And so that's really created this nice trajectory for the ICS business because of how well positioned we are on the shrink and stack inflection that is necessary as we go forward. What I would say is the business is still fundamentally a consumable-based business that's tied to volume. And so when you think about PCB area volumes or advanced packaging volumes, thermal volumes, I think the broader market is still trying to get the handle around third-party data, and we're working with some of those third parties to try and figure out how to model that a little bit more accurately. I think everybody would like a little bit of help in that area, that's included. But we're really thrilled with the continued outperformance of both content gains and new application wins that we're seeing broadly across the interconnect segment. And maybe what I would -- just pointing to the future a little bit, we're excited by the customer expansions that are taking place as particularly in advanced packaging that are adding that capacity to the highest-value areas, which give us confidence in the long-term durability of the growth profile of the interconnect business.

Alright. And then maybe for my second question, on the capacity side of things, I know you guys have been working over the last couple of years to add capacity. Clearly, things are off to a strong on a strong ramp, it seems like the semi technologies business that's starting to ramp to industrial semis are getting stronger and that spending cycle is getting stronger. So are you capacity constrained anywhere? And like how are you thinking about your ability to supply with both of these businesses growing pretty nicely.

Yes. Thanks, Melissa. So look, as we said in our prepared remarks, capacity -- our strategy has always been anchored in building out that strong local-for-local model aligns to our customer footprint and we've been steadily adding capacity since the 2022 peak. We took a look at our capacity footprint and where we were constrained in 2022, the last time the semi market peaked and we've been steadily adding incremental capacity in each one of our semi businesses since that point in time. And that's really -- most of that was kind of highlighted in that $600 million of investment that we pointed to. Given our well-distributed footprint, what I would tell you is that most of the -- we have existing facilities kind of located in all of the major geographic centers. So most of our investments are high-return, quick modular capacity expansions that are done in step with our customer technology road maps. And so today, we're -- the growth is a bit faster than what we were expecting, but we're able to kind of quickly adjust and bring capacity online to support the ramps that we're seeing. And we're really well prepared going into what we expect to be long-term growth in '27 and '28 from a capacity point of view.

We'll take our next question from Chris Parkinson with Wolfe Research.

Jon, your media relationship has been quite busy throughout the first and second quarter, and you've been launching products or collaborations across EUV, HBM, CMP, NVIDIA [indiscernible] in Taiwan. I mean there's so many things that you track on a weekly basis. May as just when do you think we'll see the vast majority of these benefits? What are you most excited about? And where the vast majority of these announcements that hit our inbox almost on a weekly basis, more or less, were all those basically considered at the time of the spin or are many of those new.

Yes. Thanks, Chris. It's a great question. So really what we're trying to do, I would say is what you're seeing is the benefit of being a pure-play company and able to construct and tell a story that is specific to our customers and our investor base. I think that the track record of continual innovation progress and partnerships with the technology leaders in the industry has long been part of our strategy over the last several years. It's now just more in the spotlight since the separation in the spin as a pure-play company. What I would say just on the -- most of them are really on the innovation point. So maybe just to underscore that a little bit. Our R&D team has done a phenomenal job of really earnings that seat at the design team in the industry. We've had POR wins across every single line of business. really targeting at the most advanced technologies kind of from front end to the stack all the way to the back end of the stack. What I'm most excited about is all of those are they are the fastest-growing parts of the market. It's also the highest value parts of the market. that sets up a really favorable growth trajectory for Qnity going forward as we see that steady drumbeat of innovation wins and POR wins and customer partnerships for the fastest growing, most advanced technologies in the industry.

Got it. And just as a corollary of that question, when you look out 2 to 3 years, do you see Qnity portfolio primarily based just from a distribution perspective across logic, mainstream advanced versus memory, basically the same way that you were assessing that 6, 12, 18 months ago. Is there any difference in how you're evaluating that? What you're hearing from your new shareholder base? I'd love to hear your perspectives on that as well.

Yes, it's a good question. What we're looking at is our customers are allocating capacity to their highest value applications. And so our mix also continues to evolve. In terms of device types, what I could tell you is that advanced logic continues -- advanced logic and logic in general, continues to be the most significant part of our portfolio at roughly 80%, memory is about 20% with HBM and DRAM growing a little bit faster. That's maybe ticked up a couple of percentage points, but it's still kind of roughly in that 80-20, 75-25 mix. From an end market point of view, obviously, the rapid growth in data centers has ticked up a little bit. We've seen nice steady growth from several of our industrial markets in automotive, aerospace and defense and telecom infrastructure. And then consumer electronics is positive growth, but it's growing at a slower pace than some of those other areas. So from an end market point of view, data center is up a little bit, most of the industrial markets are steady and maybe consumer electronics down a little bit. I would come back and take away on this mix from a device mix as well as from an end market mix is our highest growth is aligned to the highest value parts of the market in advanced nodes, advanced packaging interconnects and thermal materials.