ACM Research, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ACM Research Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Currently, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructors will find that time. As a reminder, we are recording today's call. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Now, I will now turn the call to Mr. Stephen Plale, Managing Director of the Blue Shirt Group. Stephen, please go ahead. Great.

Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 results, which we released before the U.S. market opened today. The release is available on our website, as well as from Newswire Services. There's also a supplemental slide deck posted to the investor section of our website that we will reference during our prepared remarks. On the call with me today are our CEO, David Wong, our CFO, Mark McKechnie, and Lisa Fang, our CFO of our operating subsidiary, ACM Shanghai. Before we continue, please turn to slide two. Let me remind you that remarks made during this call may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements represent ACM's current judgment. Those risks are described under risk factors and elsewhere in ACM's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please do not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect ACM's opinions only as of the date of this call. ACM is not obliged to update you on any revisions to these forward-looking statements. Certain of the financial results that we provide on this call will be on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation and an unrealized gain and loss on short-term investments. For our GAAP results and reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP amounts, you should refer to our earnings release, which is posted on the IR section of our website, and the slides 14 and 15. Also, unless otherwise noted, the following figures refer to the fourth quarter and full year of 2024, and comparisons are with the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. With that, I'll now turn the call over to David Wong.

Thanks Steven. Hello everyone and welcome to ACM Research fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. Before I review the results, I will address recent regulatory update from U.S. government. On December 2nd, the U.S. Department of Commerce added 140 companies to its entity list. Two of our subsidiaries, ACM Shanghai and ACM Korea, and other entity under their structure were added to the entity list. As we have noted, we are one of many that were added and we are not notified of any specific wrongdoing. To be clear, ACM Research, Inc., the U.S. company, we were founded in California in 1998. It is our subsidiary that were added to the entity list and not ACM Research, Inc. Move on. regarding the operation of ACM Shanghai in mainland China. The new regulation will make it difficult, if not impossible, to ACM Shanghai to obtain components from the U.S. On that note, we have been working to localize our supply chain for some time. Events of the past few years, including the U.S. restriction of 2022, have made it even more important for ACM Shanghai to localize its supply chain. Thus, we have reduced our US source components to just a small subset. And with our status on the end list, we are working quickly to complete the transition. Bottom line, we remain committed to support our customer and comply with all global regulations. We think the impact to our production is manageable and we do not expect a significant interruption of our business. Regarding our global customer outside of mainland China, the new Department of Commerce rule mainly restrict the U.S. export to ACM Shanghai and ACM Korea. They do not directly affect U.S. company buying tool from us. We are therefore confident we can continue our effort to expand our business to global customers. Now onto our business results. Please turn to slide three. I'm pleased with our fourth quarter results, which capped with a strong year. For the first quarter of 2024, we delivered $223 million in revenue, up 31%. For the 2024 fiscal year, we delivered $782 million in revenue of 40%. Gross margin was 49.8% for the first quarter and 50.4% for the full year. Operating profit increased 46% in the first quarter and 63% for the full year. We ended the year with $259 million of net cash and time deposits, compared to the $212 million at the end of 2023. Shipments for the first quarter was $264 million, up 88%. Shipments for the full year were $973 million, up 63%. We believe this strong growth reflects ACM's expanding market presence and the momentum gained from the new product cycle. Now I will discuss the key growth drivers, both for the market and specific to ACM research. Turn to slide four for our product, SAM. We now estimate our product portfolio address $18 billion global market opportunity. Our current business is primarily driven by three major product groups, cleaning, plating, and advanced packaging. We anticipate continual growth in this category and look to incremental revenue contributions from our newer products. starting with Tahoe, SPM, Furnace, followed by Track and PCVD. Third-party sources estimate that global semiconductor WFE grow by 4% in 2024 to $107 billion. Based on this global WFE, we now estimate that our product address a survey available market, or SEM, of about $18 billion in total. For mainland China WFE industry, Analysts estimate the market growth by 12% to $38 billion. Our growth rate, 40% revenue, and 63% shipping was much higher than China WFE growth. We attribute our stress to market share gain from the current product, new product cycle, and the new customer. We also had a good execution from our production and service teams. Our success started with our customer. Please turn to slide six. For 2024, we had four customers that individually accounted for 10% or more of our revenue. The Hua Hong Group was our top customer at 15% of the sales. SMIC was second at 14%. And 1TC and PXW were third and fourth at 12%. Now I will provide the detail on product presented to slide seven. Revenue from single wafer cleaning, town hall, and the semi-critical cleaning product growth 43% in the 2024, and represent 74% of the total revenue. Our growth was driven by a significant increase in ultra C, D, backside cleaning tool, and good growth from our SAF table tools. We also had a contribution from our Tahoe and Bevel Edge tool. Looking ahead in cleaning, we expect to see several significant product cycles, including high temperature SEM, Tahoe, and other tools from continued growth in mainland China. We offer a comprehensive top to bottom cleaning portfolio. We estimate the global total available market or 10 for the cleaning is close to 6.5 billion. And our product supports more than 90% of all cleaning process steps. If we take 6.5 billion, 10, and the ACM 579 million in cleaning revenue for 2024, it puts ACM global market share of cleaning at about 9%. We believe that our completed a portfolio of Canadian tools, including SAP, Thibault, Tahoe, Semicritical, SDM, Bevel Etcher, and others, put us in a strong position to take more share in China and the global market. Revenue from ECP, Furnace, and other technology grew 46% in 2024 and represented 90% of the total revenue. In the fourth quarter, the segment achieved a record quarterly revenue of more than $50 million, which will contribute to more than $150 million for the year. We continue to see momentum for our plating tool for both front-end and back-end applications. We are excited about the initial response to our new horizontal plating tool for panel-level packaging, where we believe our unique approach is opening the door to more global customers. In Q4, we announced that our thermal and plasma income ARD furnace tools have achieved product qualification to mainland China semiconductor customers. Chipmakers are increasingly relying on the presentation of the high-quality ultra-thin film with excellent step coverage. We believe ACM's proprietary ARD furnace design differentiate from the other suppliers and enable us to address challenges facing the advanced 3D structure manufacturing. Our furnace product cycle is also gaining traction with both memory and logic customers. Overall, we had 17 furnace customers in 2024, up from 9 at the end of 2023. We expect the revenue contribution from furnace to accelerator in 2025 versus a small amount for 2024. Revenue from advanced packages, which exclude ECP but include service and spare parts, grow 3% in 2024 and represent 7% of revenue. This category including a range of packaging tools, including coater, developer, scrubber, and wet etcher, and also service and spare parts. We believe ACM is one of the only companies that offer a full set of web tools, cover plating tool, and apology tool for advanced packaging. We had a new notable development for this category in 2024, including orders for the four wafer-level packaging tools, which are on track to ship to USA in the first half of 2025. And we announced three panel-level packaging tools, including vacuum flux cleaning tool for chiplet, horizontal plating tool, and the bevel edge tool, which we see as especially relevant for packaging of GPU and high bandwidth memory HDF. We are making good progress with our new track on the GCPT platform. Both of these products come with the ACM innovative and differentiated platform. design and allow for process flexibility and high throughput. We have a solid list of ongoing demonstration and evaluation for both TRAC and PECVD. For TRAC, we plan to deliver a 3mm WPH inline careful beta tool in the middle of 2025. We expect some initial revenue contribution in later 2025 with more in 2026 and beyond. Next, let me provide an update on our production facility. First, on Lingang, please turn to slide eight. In the first quarter of 2024, we had grand opening ceremonies for our Lingang production and R&D center. I'm pleased to report that we have begun initial operation and expect the site to play a key role in production development and efficiency. high-volume manufacturing. We expect most of our production to shift from our transom-leased facility to our company-owned in-ground facility by the end of Q2. We are proud of our 2,300 square meters plus 100 clean room, which we expect will accelerate our product development speed and in-house demonstration capability. Next, our Oregon facility, 3102 Slide 9. In October 2024, we complete the purchasing of our new 40,000 square foot Oregon facility. It includes a 5,200 square foot cleaning room, which will support advanced tool demonstration and R&D. The rest of this space will be for manufacturing for our global customers. We see this as a great opportunity to further expand our customer base in the U.S. Before I review our outlook, I want to share some thoughts regarding our ownership in ACM Shanghai's stock. We are very pleased by the success of ACM Shanghai team, which has now become a key supplier to the Asia semiconductor industry. ACM Shanghai has also proven to be a great source of capital to us in the form of a dividend. In 2023 and 2024, As a major shareholder of ACM Shanghai, we received dividend net of tax of $19.2 million and $28.5 million, respectively. And we expect the dividend to continue. In fact, ACM Shanghai has formally announced its intention to pay a dividend of 25% to 30% of net earnings over the next three years, subject to normal shareholder approval. We are using dividend to accelerate our global business development. ACM Shanghai stock, which is now traded at 6.3 billion market cap on the Shanghai stock market, is also a key strategic asset for us and our global shareholders. In fact, our 81.5% ownership is now worth about 5.2 billion, which is more than three times ACMR's current market cap. of $1.5 billion. This gives us some unique advantage. In 2021, ACM Shanghai raised $575 million in IPO, enabling us to scale our business and expand our product portfolio. ACM Shanghai is now in the process of another raising of up to $600 million to make the company to the next level. I will clarify a few points that might be helpful for the market to evaluate our options. Our three-year lockup on our ACM Shanghai stock expired last quarter, and we now have additional flexibility to sell shares. We're very comfortable that ACM can sell some share of ACM Shanghai stock and repatriate the cash back to US. The timing of any sale, of course, will depend on pricing, market condition, and our own cash needs and other factors. We believe a combination of ACM world-class technology and customer supporting and access to their substantial capital market make us unique position to become a world-class global WFC supplier. Now I will provide our outlook for the full year 2025. Please turn to slide 10. In early January, we introduced our 2025 revenue outlook in a range of 850 to 950 million. This implies 15% of year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We are re-irritating this outlook today. I'm pleased to announce today that we have adjust our gross margin target upwards. We now target a range of 42% to 48% versus the prior range of 40% to 45%. I'm proud of the strong growth our company has achieved since our foundation, our funding in California in 1998 and the establishment of ACM Shanghai in 2005. We have built a global competitive business. Our success has been built on innovation and differential technology, particularly in cleaning and electroplating, addressing evolving needs of semiconductor manufacturing. From this foundation, we have expanded our market reach and gained international traction while building strong partnership with a key industrial player. In China, ACM is recognized as a leader in advanced wafer cleaning and the front-end electroplating solution. and is preparing for new product ramp in the furnace, track, and the PCBD. Outside China, we are engaging with the multiple customer with the operation in US, Europe, and Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. The global interest is a broader base across our entire product portfolio from the front end, the wafer fab, to the back end, the advanced packaging. including our innovative cleaning and plating offering for next-generation panel-level packaging. Now, let me turn the call over to the CFO, Mark, who will reveal detail of our fourth quarter result. Mark, please.

Thank you, David. Good day, everyone. Please turn to slide 11. Unless I note otherwise, I'll refer to non-GAAP financial measures. which excludes stock-based compensation, unrealized gain loss on short-term investments. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures is included in our earnings release. Also, unless otherwise noted, the following figures refer to the fourth quarter and full year of 2024. Comparisons are with the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. I'll now provide financial highlights. Revenue is $223.5 million for the fourth quarter, up 31.2%. For the full year 2024, revenue was $782.1 million, up 40.2%. Revenue for single wafer cleaning, Tahoe, and semi-critical cleaning was $155.2 million, up 26.9%. For the full year 2024, this category grew by 43.3%. Revenue for ECP front-end packaging, furnace, and other technologies is $51.7 million, up 60.9%. For the full year 2024, this category grew by 46.2%. And revenue for advanced packaging, excluding ECP services and spares, was $16.6 million, up 4.2%. For the full year 2024, this category grew by 3.3%. Total shipments for $264 million for the fourth quarter versus $140 million in Q4 of 2023. For the full year 2024, shipments were $973 million, up 63.1%. Gross margin was 49.8% for the fourth quarter versus 46.8%. For the full year 2024, gross margin was 50.4% versus 49.8% in 2023. We have updated our long-term business model to a gross margin target range of 42% to 48% versus the prior range of 40% to 45%. We do expect our gross margin to vary from period to period due to a variety of factors such as sales volume, product mix, and currency impacts. Operating expenses were $58.4 million for the fourth quarter, up 34%. For the full year 2024, operating expenses were $193.4 million, up 25.2%. Revenue grew faster than OpEx for the year, demonstrating a solid operating leverage in our model. We invested in research and development to expand our product line, and we invested in sales and marketing to reach new customers around the world. For 2025, we planned for research and development in the 12% to 13% range, sales and marketing in the 7% to 8% range, and G&A in the 5% to 6% range. Operating income was $52.8 million for the fourth quarter, up 46.4%. Operating margin increased to 23.6% from 21.2%. For the full year 2024, operating margin increased to 25.6% from 22.1%. Income tax expense was $17.3 million for the fourth quarter versus $8.1 million. For the full year 2024, income tax expense $35 million versus $19.4 million in 2023. 2025 we expect our effective tax rate in the 12 to 15 percent range net income attributable to acm research was 37.7 million for the fourth quarter versus 28.7 million for the full year 2024 net income attributable to acm research was 152.2 million versus 107.4 million in 2023 net income for diluted share was 56 cents for the fourth quarter versus 43 cents For the full year 2024, net income per alluded share was $2.26 versus $1.63. Our non-GAAP net income excluded $8.8 million in stock-based compensation expense for the fourth quarter and $49.6 million for the full year. For the full year 2025, we expect stock-based compensation to be in the $35 million range. I will now review selected balance sheet and cash flow items Cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and time deposits were $441.9 million at year end versus $369.1 million at the end of the third quarter of 2024. Net cash, which excludes the short-term and long-term debt, was $259.1 million versus $198.5 million at the end of the third quarter of 2024. Total inventory at year end was $598.0 million versus $628.7 million at the end of the third quarter of 2024. This included raw materials and work in process, $304.9 million, and finished goods inventory of $293.1 million. Finished goods inventory primarily consists of first tools under evaluation at our customer sites, together with finished goods located at ACM's facilities. Cash flow from operations was $88 million for the fourth quarter and $152 million for the full year 2024. Capital expenditures were $12.3 million for the fourth quarter $85.3 million for the full year 2024. For the full year 2025, we expect to spend about $65 to $75 million in capital expenditures. That does conclude our prepared remarks. Now let's open up the call for any questions that you may have. Operator, please open up the floor for questions.

Certainly, ladies and gentlemen. To ask a question at this time, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, simply press star one, one again. Please stand by while we compile your questionnaire. Now, first question coming from the line of Chelsea with Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Hello.

Hey, morning, Charles. Morning.

Yeah, morning. The line cut up a little bit. Just wanted to make sure it's my turn. So maybe the first question that you guys reiterated, the fiscal 25 revenue outlook, it's the same outlook you provided in January, at the low end, 9% young year growth, at the high end, 21% young year growth. Can you provide a little bit of color on what goes into the assumptions to the low end versus the high end, and what are the scenarios? I think the press release, you did mention that various spending scenarios by your customers this year are baked into the range of the guidance. I want to get a little bit more color on that. Thanks.

OK, Charles. Actually, this prediction of the revenue is really based on the last year, our shipment. which is some of them were reckoned revenue, you know, this year. Obviously, we can see their customer PO, customer, you know, their expansion plan. Probably just a moment, I can say about Q2, Q3. And there's still some Q4. We cannot see that, right? So that's the one really from their early time of the year to give this low-end and high-end projection, right? So a couple of the detail information Assumption there, I cannot elaborate too much detail, but anyway, there's a range you put there. So maybe the time go to the Q2, we're looking for Q4, and that moment maybe more clear in Q4, we can, you know, readjust to our revenue projection. So, you know, that's a typical process, you know, we did every year.

Got it. Maybe a quick follow-up. Sounds like you're saying you have good visibility at least through the third quarter this year. It's only like Q4, a little bit unclear at this point. Is that correct?

Yeah, what you say, some Q3, we're still, you know, maybe add more, right? This moment's still early of the year. But definitely we see the POQ3. But Q4 was still, you know, I said not clear, right? So that will be waiting, say, maybe Q2 timeline or end of the, you know, Q2, we can see that more clearly in the Q4 timeline.

Yeah, Charles, and that's pretty normal visibility at this time of the year.

We go through our year-end planning process and then come back early in the year and kind of, you know, test that. And, of course, we took a look at it before we reported here on the quarter. It's pretty standard visibility going into the year. As David noted, it's based on the POs that we have in hand. It's based on also kind of the forecast of POs that we still would probably get as we move through the year. And then the timing of some of the customer acceptances from First Tools last year.

Yeah. But based on our average, you know, our manufacturer time is about six months right now, five to six. So that will be the right part of their projection, you know, for their, you know, look in their tool quarter, right? Yeah.

Got it. The other question, I think, usually before Chinese New Year, there's a little bit of, I would call, information black hole about the outlook for the new year. But now we are coming out of that, and especially in light of the recent export control by the U.S., and obviously a few of your customers were added to entity list. It's getting a little bit hard to predict what would be the impact of export control because we did see YMTC, which was added in 2022, came back to your 10% customer list, but there's another customer on your 2024 10% customer list that got recently added. Maybe we can get a little bit of sense, based on what you're seeing right now, the export control rules, do they have an impact, positive or negative, on your customer's spending plan in 2025? And any sort of movement you're seeing at a little bit of micro level, customer-to-customer level, if anything, you can provide a big grade. Thank you.

Well, I mean, this is a very broad question. You know, real customers, customers are different, right? And I want to say definitely some customers get an impact, right, because they put it on the end of the list. And some customers, you know, we still see their expansion. So it's really hard to give you the, you know, general description, right? This moment, we're also working with the customer to figure out how much impact, you know, We're still on the process to access and then evaluation this kind of impact.

Got it. So maybe the last question looks like the plating furnace product line, you have three segments in your reporting. That particular segment has done pretty well and probably growing even faster than the work clean product line. I think you just mentioned plating. You've become a leading supplier in China and especially for the front end. I was kind of curious, like, what do you see the market share of plating and especially in the front end versus packaging Can you give a little bit of color on that front-end versus back-end for plating and where the share is and where do you think the trend is going for ACM? Thank you.

Yeah, I think our market share is about 30% by 30 to 35. And it's actually both in the front-end and back-end, right? It's almost like the same. So we're still in the one-third, 35% of the market share in China. Got it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Charles. Thanks, Charles.

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1-1 and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question coming from the line of Mark Miller with the Benchmark Company. Your line is now open.

Once again, congratulations on a very nice quarter. I was just wondering, a number of equipment firms, semi-equipment firms, are projecting strong growth in their AP-related sales for 2025. What are you thinking about in terms of the AP sales you're expecting this year?

Oh, the advanced packaging. You're talking about the packaging, right? Yes. Okay.

Well, yes, I think we do see the advanced packaging growing. And obviously, you know, all this kind of 2.5D and the 3D in the puzzle as one thing. And there's certain, you know, other, I want to say, you know, advanced packaging, you know, going on here. So we see that expansion, basically. And I think this year probably was better than last year in terms of advanced packaging.

Yeah, Mark, one thing I'd point out, it's a little tricky because some of our ECP group includes both the front-end and the back-end packaging, right? And then our advanced packaging group is everything but the ECP. At some point, we can give some more detail when that becomes a bigger percentage of our overall revenue. But at this point, it's hard to kind of see our back-end packaging group.

Also, I want to add to that is markets are also the panel packaging start to play, right? So we do have three products in the market. We see that it will start contributing to our revenue, you know, in 2025 too. So that's another, you know, new, new, new field or new, new part of the technology we're working on.

Okay. I was just wondering if you give us some sort of estimate how your sales breakdown related to say memory logic and electric vehicles, what percent of your sales are related to each of those three areas?

Yeah, Mark, it's tough. We don't generally break that out. I think you can look at our 10% customers and kind of take a guess, right? So we've got four of them that were a little over 50% of our business.

And so, yeah, we generally don't look at it by those end markets like that, and we haven't broken them out. We get that request, though, so we could look into perhaps updating on that in the future. But at this point, we don't have the detailed breakdown.

Okay, you said that four customers accounted for roughly 50% of your business, or over 50% of your business. Is that correct?

I think that's right. Yeah, it was over 52% for the four customers.

Thank you.

Thank you. Again, if you have a question, please press star 1-1. And I see there are no further questions in the queue at this time. I will now turn it back to Mr. David Wang for any closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you, operator. Thank you all for participating on today's call and for your support. Before we close, Stephen is going to mention our upcoming investor edition event. Stephen, please.

Great. Thanks, David. Before we conclude, I just want to give everyone a quick reminder on our upcoming investor conferences. On March 17th, we will present at the 37th Annual Roth Conference in Dana Point, California. Attendance at the conference is by invitation only. For interested investors, please contact your respective sales representative to register and schedule one-on-one meetings with the management team. With that, this concludes the call, and you may now disconnect. Take care.