Lam Research Reports September-Quarter Records, Sees 2027 WFE Above $200 Billion

Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX ) reported first-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below. APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit to learn more.

View the webcast at Summary Lam Research Corporation reported record revenue and profitability for the September 2026 quarter, with gross margin, operating margin, and EPS reaching new highs; operating margin exceeded 40% for the first time. The company anticipates over 40% year-over-year growth in systems revenue for 2026, driven by rising demand in AI-related semiconductor markets and increased deposition and etch intensity. Lam Research provided an initial 2027 WFE outlook of more than $200 billion, expecting growth led by DRAM, followed by foundry logic and NAND.

Significant growth opportunities are seen in NAND due to AI-driven demand for various storage tiers, and in foundry logic and DRAM due to advanced patterning and backside power innovations. The Customer Support Business Group (CSBG) is expected to grow over 30% in 2026, driven by upgrades, spares, and services, with continued momentum into 2027. The company is managing supply chain constraints actively and expects these to be resolved in the near term, ensuring continued strong demand fulfillment. Lam Research plans to continue its strategy of outperformance, with ongoing investments in R&D and infrastructure to support future growth.

A strategic focus on advanced packaging, including panel-level technologies, is expected to drive significant future growth and market share gains. The company returned approximately 41% of free cash flow in the September quarter through share repurchases and dividends, maintaining a long-term goal of returning 85% of free cash flow to shareholders. Full Transcript OPERATOR Good day and welcome to the Lam Research Corporation September 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode.

Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two.

We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and a single follow-up. Please also note today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ram Ganesh, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Ram Ganesh (Vice President, Investor Relations) Thank you and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the Lam Research quarterly earnings conference call. With me today are Tim Archer, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Doug Bettinger, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, we will share our overview on the business environment and we'll review our financial results for the September 2026 quarter and our outlook for the December 2026 quarter.

The press release detailing our financial results was distributed a little after 1 p.m. Pacific time. The release and the accompanying presentation slides for today's call can also be found on the Investors section of the company's website. Today's presentation and Q&A include forward-looking statements based on our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions.

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. For a discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, please refer to the risk factors in our most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K, on Form 10-Q and subsequent filings with the SEC and the cautionary statement in the accompanying presentation slides. Today's discussion of our financial results will be presented on a non-GAAP financial basis unless otherwise specified. A detailed reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP results can be found in the accompanying presentation slides.

A replay of this call will be made available later this afternoon on our website and with that, I'll hand the call over to Tim. Tim Archer (President and Chief Executive Officer) Thanks Ram and thank you to everyone joining us today. In the September quarter, Lam again delivered record revenue and profitability. Gross margin, operating margin and EPS all reached new highs with operating margin topping 40% for the first time.

Our performance throughout the year reflects the broad strength of our product portfolio and a relentless focus on operational execution. As AI continues to drive unprecedented semiconductor demand and increasing device complexity. Including the midpoint of our December quarter guidance, we expect calendar year 2026 systems revenue to grow well over 40% year on year. Rising deposition and etch intensity across all device types in advanced packaging solutions is continuing to drive greater opportunity for Lam.

Over the past few years, increasing device complexity and a push towards greater 3D scaling have driven a four point expansion of our served available market, or SAM, as a percentage of WFE. When combined with share gains from products addressing this growing SAM, we expect 2026 to mark our third consecutive year of WFE outperformance. For calendar year '26, we expect WFE in the mid $150 billion range. Our preliminary 2027 WFE outlook is for more than $200 billion of spending with percentage growth led by DRAM followed by leading-edge foundry logic and NAND.

As we move into calendar year 2027 we see clean room space availability and supply chain constraints for certain components continuing to limit chip makers' and equipment companies' ability to fully meet end demand. We are actively working with our suppliers to accelerate their capacity expansion plans and are confident Lam is well positioned to deliver on the strong demand we see ahead. Underpinning our outlook for WFE growth is the continued rapid adoption of AI by enterprises and consumers. It is reported average weekly token usage is up roughly 250-fold in the past 18 months.

As AI moves increasingly towards autonomous agentic workflows, demand for compute, memory and storage solutions continues to expand. For example, in NAND, AI performance and economics are driving demand for multiple tiers of storage, each optimized for different workloads. QLC today provides cost-effective storage for rapidly growing AI data volumes. TLC storage is used as a high-bandwidth tier for context memory, KV cache workloads and SLC-class NAND is emerging for low-latency high-speed access in agentic AI.

We believe adoption of an SLC storage tier could become a meaningful driver of NAND wafer capacity. Converting from TLC to SLC-class devices reduces bits per device by roughly three times. Said differently, for each percentage point mix shift of NAND bits to SLC-class devices, approximately 2% more installed wafer capacity will be needed to support the same bit demand. Incremental growth in bit demand would further amplify wafer capacity requirements.

We expect all three storage tiers to grow, increasing the value and strategic importance of NAND. We believe Lam is best positioned to benefit from this inflection. We have the industry's largest installed base of NAND systems and a comprehensive product portfolio spanning all critical deposition and etch steps. Any increase in NAND bit demand, whether satisfied through installed base upgrades or capacity addition, will generate additional need for Lam's tools and technology.

Foundry logic and DRAM are seeing a similar device-level evolution to satisfy AI's emerging performance requirements. From advanced patterning and backside power to next-generation packaging, we see billions of dollars of potential SAM expansion and share gain opportunities for Lam in the years ahead. We are seeing the impact of our targeted investments in foundry logic and DRAM products in our calendar year 2026 results. These two market segments have accounted for approximately 80% of Lam's systems revenue growth year to date.

A good example is our focus on advanced patterning requirements for foundry logic and DRAM, with each technology node bringing more stringent EUV pattern fidelity and defectivity requirements. Lam's Acara etch, conductor etch and Ether dry resist tools are being paired to deliver unprecedented scaling capability. Importantly, these tools are also helping improve the productivity of DRAM scaling at a time when maximizing fab output is a critical priority for our customers.

Multiple chip makers are adopting Acara for its ability to etch very high aspect ratio features with exceptional profile control while at the same time delivering up to a 50% reduction in wafer-to-wafer and lot-to-lot variability and up to a 50% gain in wafer output per fab footprint. Similarly, Lam's Ether dry resist solution has demonstrated sub-10 nanometer resolution at the highest pattern density and fidelity with High-NA EUV. It helps achieve this result while requiring 10% lower exposure dose, improving scanner productivity and reducing pattern cost per wafer.

Ether solutions are already ramping in HBM high-volume manufacturing with Low-NA EUV and we see additional insertion opportunities ahead across both DRAM and foundry logic customers. As a result, we now expect cumulative Ether-related revenue to reach approximately $2.5 billion by the end of the decade, roughly $1 billion above our prior expectations. Backside power is another example of where Lam's strength in deposition and etch is evident. Separating power and signal routing allows for thicker backside metallization to reduce resistance and improve power efficiency.

Implementation increases process complexity, driving the need for more deposition, plating and etch steps as customers ramp backside power at 2 nanometer and below. Our production-proven Vector, Sabre and Flex tools are well suited to the task. Vector provides industry-leading footprint density and wafer-to-wafer repeatability. With its unique core architecture, Sabre is the global industry benchmark for electroplating due to its high productivity and superior on-wafer performance.

Flex delivers high-throughput dielectric etch with low defect levels leveraging its differentiated small-volume chamber design and confined plasma. New materials such as molybdenum are also being introduced to enable more efficient electrical connections between the backside and front side of the wafer. For this emerging application, our Halo tool is gaining traction by enabling both plasma and thermal processes within a single chamber while delivering industry-leading productivity. We are gaining share in this expanding backside power SAM opportunity and recently secured pool of record wins for all four products at a leading customer in advanced packaging.

Our market-leading Syndian product is winning advanced logic in HBM TSV applications. Syndian's differentiated hardware design enables rapid process switching to deliver highly uniform TSV profiles, smooth sidewalls and high-volume productivity. Recently we attained four new positions across multiple customers. Our Stryker ALD product also achieved multiple TSV liner wins due to the film's superior step coverage and low etch rate.

Beyond TSV applications, we secured additional Vector and T0 3D wins for high-energy bonding films and inter-die gap fill applications by delivering lower defectivity for thick film deposition. With its high deposition and etch intensity, advanced packaging has become a major growth driver for Lam for next-generation AI and high-performance computing devices. Customers are increasingly turning their sights towards panel-level packaging to scale manufacturing. Our panel-level packaging portfolio continues to gain momentum across fan-out packaging, glass core substrates and emerging substrate and interposer architectures.

To date we have shipped panel plating systems to more than 20 customers worldwide across panel sizes ranging from 300 by 300 millimeter to 600 by 600 millimeter. Customers continue to select our Callisto platform for its differentiated coplanarity and plating uniformity performance across bumps, pillars and redistribution layers. Callisto is also well positioned to benefit from increasing adoption of glass core substrates through emerging through-glass via applications.

Given our customer engagement, installed base growth and technology leadership, we expect to achieve panel-level packaging market share that surpasses the strong position we already hold in current wafer-level packaging. And finally turning to CSBG, we are set to exit calendar year 2026 with solid momentum with annual revenue expected to grow more than 30% year over year. This is more than twice the rate of our long-term target set at our last analyst day. Growth is broad-based across upgrades, spares and services supported by high fab utilization and customers' continued focus on installed base efficiency.

The value we are delivering with equipment intelligence and Dextro cobots recently helped us secure performance-based service contracts with multiple memory manufacturers. We expect CSBG momentum to continue in calendar year 2027 with revenue growing over 15% year over year. So to wrap up we believe the industry is in the early stages of a multi-year investment cycle with customer visibility extending through 2028. Increasing manufacturing complexity, new materials integration and advanced packaging are driving higher deposition and etch intensity across device segments.

Our technology leadership, growing base and strategic investments in product innovation and manufacturing capacity position Lam to capitalize on these inflections and drive sustained outperformance. Thank you and here's Dave. Doug Bettinger (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer) Thank you, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today during what I know is a very busy earnings season.

We were pleased with our continued strong execution in the September quarter, resulting in our fifth consecutive quarter of record revenue as well as record gross margin, operating margin, and earnings per share. September quarter revenue was $8.22 billion, which was up 22% sequentially and up 54% from the same period in 2025. The deferred revenue balance at quarter end was $2.66 billion, which was an increase of $227 million from the June quarter. This grew primarily due to increased sales volume and it was partially offset by a decrease in customer down payments.

From a market segment perspective, September quarter systems revenue in memory was 46%, which was consistent with the prior quarter on a dollar basis. This represented a record level for memory and it was up 120% from the same period in 2025. Within memory, non-volatile memory accounted for 26% of our systems revenue, up from the June quarter's level of 23%. On a dollar basis, NAND revenue increased approximately 40% sequentially as the industry continued spending on conversions to 256-layer and above class devices.

We are seeing initial spending on 384-layer class devices. DRAM revenue reached a record, growing sequentially on a dollar basis, but down a little bit on a percentage basis from 23% of systems revenue in the June quarter to 20% in the September quarter. DRAM spending remained focused on technology additions and upgrades across the 1-alpha, 1-beta, and 1-gamma nodes, that is enabling DDR5, LPDDR5, and more importantly, high-bandwidth memory. Foundry also achieved record revenue.

Its share of systems revenue increased to 46% from 44% in the June quarter. Strength in the quarter was driven by investment in leading-edge nodes, including advanced packaging, as well as mature node spending in China. And finally, logic and other were 8% of our systems revenue in the September quarter, slightly down from the prior quarter's level of 10%. Most of the spending here was targeted at leading-edge process nodes.

Let me now discuss the regional composition of our total revenue. China contributed 35% of revenue, up from the June quarter level of 26%. We saw strong investments here by both domestic and multinational customers. In the December quarter, we expect China will represent a significantly lower percentage of our total revenue compared with the September quarter.

Korea's contribution to revenue in the September quarter remained unchanged from the June quarter level at 20%. The Taiwan region contributed 18% of revenue, down from the June quarter at 27%. The Customer Support Business Group generated a fourth consecutive quarter of record revenues at nearly $2.5 billion in the September quarter. This was up slightly from the June quarter and 40% higher than the same period in 2025.

Each component of CSBG remains strong with the prior quarter. Turning to the gross margin performance, the September quarter came in at an all-time record of 52.4%, improving from the June quarter level of 52% due to favorable customer and product mix. Additionally, we continue to balance our cost and pricing postures. Operating expenses for the June quarter were $1 billion, up from the prior quarter amount of $916 million.

The increase was primarily driven by higher incentive compensation due to our increased profitability levels. We are also investing incremental resources to support growing programs like Acara, Halo panel form factors, and Dextrose. R&D accounted for approximately two-thirds of our total operating expenses. Operating margin for the September quarter was another record at 40.2% compared to the June quarter level of 38.4%.

This movement reflected stronger gross margins and continuing operating leverage as our business scales. The non-GAAP tax rate was 16.5% for the quarter compared to 11% in the June quarter and in line with our expectations.