Nova Ltd.

Good day, and welcome to NOVA's fourth quarter 2021 results. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Miri Segal of MSIR. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good day, everybody. I would like to welcome all of you to NOVA's fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. With us on the line today are Mr. Eitan Oppenheim, President and CEO, and Mr. Dror David, CFO. Before we begin, may I remind our listeners that certain information provided on this call may contain forward-looking statements, and the safe harbor statement outlined in today's earnings release also pertains to this call. If you have not received a copy of the release, please view it in the investor relations section of the company's website. Eitan will begin the call with a business update, followed by a drawer with an overview of the financials. We will then open the call for the question and answer session. I'll now hand over the call to Mr. Eitan Oppenheim, NOVA's president and CEO. Eitan, please go ahead.

Thank you, Miri, and welcome everyone to our quarterly financial results conference call. I will start the call today by speaking about our fourth quarter and full year performance highlights. Following my commentary, Dror will review the quarterly and annual financial results in detail. The agility we have developed during the COVID period drove NOVA to another robust quarter, concluding the best-performing year in our history. Our success in adapting to the dynamic environment and evolving demand resulted in record growth across product lines, financials, and business achievements in 2021. During the year, we successfully continued to modify our working models to navigate through unprecedented supply chain disruptions while we continued to rapidly expand our production capacity to fulfill record demand across all our technologies and markets. Company performance at the end of the year drove our fourth quarter revenues to a new record high with results at the high end of the guidance, making it the seventh consecutive growth quarter. As a result, our annual revenues grew at 54% year over year, reflecting our continuous innovation, our resiliency in the face of constant challenges, and the strength of our global teams. Our record annual performance is also plainly apparent in our financial results, pushing our non-GAAP earnings per share to a record high with 87% growth year over year. Combined with our positive guidance for the first quarter of 2022, it is evident that we are successfully realizing our NOVA 500 strategy and continue our trajectory to double the company revenue every five years. As we continue to grow and diversify our technologies and markets, we recently announced the acquisition of ANCOSYS, a leading provider of chemical analysis and metrology solutions for advanced semiconductor manufacturing, mainly utilized for deposition and CMP. The transaction is valued approximately at 90 million U.S. dollars, all cash, and includes and includes a performance-based earn-out of approximately 10 million. The deal was signed during the fourth quarter of 2021 and was closed in the first quarter of 2022, solidifying our strategy to keep investing in the growing materials engineering market, where new materials and compositions are introduced frequently to improve chip performance in all semiconductor segments. In today's complicated production environment, the number of interconnects requiring plating and different organic alloys and compounds has tripled over the last few years. This directly translates into growing demand for a tight in-line chemical process control with increasing intensity. ANCOSYS enables manufacturers to increase yield by controlling the organic and inorganic materials at the front-end process as well as in packaging and back-ends. NOVA's goal during 2022 is to expand ANCOSY's served markets by utilizing our position and growing leadership in the materials metrology segment. ANCOSY's progress was evident by our recent press release that detailed a new front-end customer that adopted ANCOSY's solution. To date, AncoSys Ancolizer has been selected by five leading front-end wafer manufacturers, including the world's leading foundry. Following the AncoSys acquisition, our product strategy for the next coming years will continue to be built around expanding our product offering in three main categories, materials methodology, dimensional methodology, and advanced process control software. One of the more notable achievements of this strategy is the record revenue contribution from our materials metrology portfolio in 2021. We are striving to lead this market segment with a highly differentiated and unique set of solutions. 2021 has been a record year for our VERIFLEX XPS platform, which provides ultra thin film thickness and composition capabilities. Veriflex has now been adopted by every leading manufacturer in the world, including a recently announced Global Logic customer. To that segment, we can add also the recent rollout of the Ellipson product that utilizes Raman spectroscopy to extract unique materials property information. The platform has already gained repeated orders, and it is evaluated by additional customers. On top of that, and in order to provide a wide range of inline materials capabilities, we have also launched the Matrion, our secondary ion mass spectrometry platform. Matrion has already been purchased by a couple of customers and is evaluated by others. To complete our holistic materials metrology portfolio, we now have the AncoSys Ancolizers products to provide better process insights to the materials flowing into the process. With this advanced offering, we now cover a wide range of materials production challenges, from ultra-thin film to composition to material stock profile, stress, strain, and chemical analytics. In 2022, our goal is that revenue contribution from this part alone will reach 40% of our product's revenue. The second element in our strategy is the dimensional portfolio. Along with the company record growth, the optical CD product line reached a new record high, outperforming the market and industry by growing at 63% year over year. This outstanding result is driven by a new generation optical offering which was introduced in both standalone and integrated OCD platforms, market share gains, and extensive growth in China and US. Our synergetic portfolio is currently adopted by all leading customers for the current technology nodes, as well as for the next generation device in both logic and memory. The third element in our strategy is the software offering. Our distinguished hardware portfolio is complemented by our market-leading machine learning, modeling, and fleet management solutions. During 2021, we were able to prove clear benefits of our software and algorithms advantages, enabling our customers to reduce time to solution and increase yields. The completely innovative software ecosystem for metrology, which includes an internal cloud-based environment to handle big data, and mass communication between hundreds of tools combined with advanced physical and mathematical models provides the customers with cutting-edge metrology performance for yield ramping efforts. As a result, this year we have hit our strategic goal of roughly 10% coming from software sales out of our overall product revenue. Another notable achievement this year is the company's diversification over different geographical regions. As part of our revenue growth, all three major territories grew significantly. Taiwan's revenue contribution grew due to elevated investment by the leading foundry, but also by the investment of other customers in training nodes for common applications. In Korea, our memory revenue grew significantly due to our increasing position in this segment across all our products. Our China revenue grew tremendously where local manufacturers have been working around the clock to meet the exploding demand for mid-range and legacy logic and memory devices. Our growing reputation and customer base drove our sales in China to a record high with more than 15 active customers. NOVA's strategic focus in China led us to establish a new Chinese branch and open a new facility in Shanghai to support our growing activity and further improve the service we provide directly to our customers. Finally, on this front, we are also excited by the growing revenues from North America this year, a trend we believe will continue also in 2022. Finally, to summarize the year, I would like also to refer to another strong milestone, the service sales growth. Revenues from the service business increased more than 30% this year to a record high, with contracts, upgrades, and evaluated services contributing to the continuous utilization of the growing install base. Let me turn now to our industry current fundamentals and their relevancy to NOVA. The demand environments continue to demonstrate accelerated adoption of a broad range of applications and devices. The ongoing digital transformation is propagating blistering demand drivers such as 5G communication, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, gaming, data center, and other end-market applications. driving investment in both memory and logic semiconductors, as well as new complex advanced packaging technologies. Additionally, across the industry, we see multiple investments in building new FABs globally, which requires massive capex. And on top of that, we see additional investments as a result of the geographical environment, geopolitical situation, that drive for semiconductor independency. We believe that this trend will keep pushing the industry forward in 2022 as well. Before I hand over the call to draw, let me briefly summarize. We have had an incredible record year, and I'm immensely proud of our team for rising to the challenge and maximizing the business and technology potentials. Although we are not immune to the growing challenges in the supply chain and the chain reactions they have on the industry, Nova succeeded in outperforming the market, demonstrating the agility and efficiency of its operational model. Given our innovative portfolio, new product rollout, and growing exposure to a broader opportunity range, we believe that Nova is well-positioned to continue its solid growth in 2022 as well. Now, let me hand over the call to Dror to review our financial results in detail. Dror?

Thanks, Eitan. Good day, everyone. And thank you for joining our 2021 fourth quarter and full year conference call. Total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2021 reached a record of 121 million. This represents 59% growth compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 and 8% growth compared to the third quarter of 2021. Product revenue included record quarterly revenues from the company's optical CD standalone platform and record revenues from software. In addition, product revenues included for the first time revenues from the newly introduced Metreon product. Product revenue distribution was approximately 65% from logic and foundry and approximately 35% from memory. Blended gross margin in the fourth quarter was 56% on a gap basis and 57% on a non-gap basis, lower than previous quarters, mainly due to higher supply chain costs, some of which were specific to this quarter. Operating expenses for the quarter significantly increased to 38 million on a GAAP basis and 34 million on a non-GAAP basis. This increase was attributed to the acceleration of product development projects, end-of-year activities, and G&A costs. We expect operating expenses to reduce and normalize in the first quarter of 2022. Operating margins in the fourth quarter were 25% on a GAAP basis and 29% on a non-GAAP basis, which is at the high end of the company target model for non-GAAP operating margins. The effective tax rate in the fourth quarter increased to 22%, higher than a model of approximately 15%, mainly due to an elective one-time tax settlement executed in Israel. This elective tax settlement released the tax-related restrictions on usage of cash reserves for out-of-Israel activities. The net cost of this settlement in the amount of $3.7 million was adjusted as a one-time event for non-GAAP purposes. Earnings per share came in at $0.73 per diluted share on a GAAP basis and $1.08 per diluted share on a non-GAAP basis. On an annual basis in 2021, total revenue grew 54% year over year. Product revenue grew 56% and were distributed approximately 65% from Logic and Foundry and 35% from memory. Service revenue grew 32%, significantly higher than the relative install-based growth and included high portions of professional services, upgrades, and time and materials revenues in parallel to the industry high FAB utilization rates. Blended gross margins for the year came in at 57% on a gap basis and 57.6% on a non-gap basis at the midpoint of our non-gap target model of 56% to 59%. During 2021, the company saw and is expected to continue to see cost pressure in all supply chain elements. However, the company was successful in mitigating this pressure through higher business volumes and through sales of higher value products, such as new technologies and software. Operating expenses in 2021 significantly increased and came in at $125 million on a gap basis and $113 million on a non-gap basis. This reflects an approximate 30% increase year-over-year as the company made efforts to align its infrastructure, development, and sales efforts to meet the current and expected business levels and opportunities. During 2021, the company opened a new subsidiary in China with central offices located in Shanghai. And in addition, the company opened or expanded its offices in Ireland and the U.S., following its penetration into a new customer operating in these regions and to the expectation for capacity expansions in these regions by this and other customers starting 2022. Operating margins for the year came in at 27% on a GAAP basis and 30% on a non-GAAP basis, above the company non-GAAP target model of 26% to 29%. The evolution of the company non-GAAP operating margins over the past few years from 21% in 2019 to 24% in 2020 to 30% in 2021 is evidence of the leverage built into the company's operational and financial model. Actually, the nominal profit of the company grew twice as much as revenues in the last two years. Earnings per share on an annual basis grew significantly and came in at the record level of $3.12 on a GAAP basis and $3.85 on an all GAAP basis. During 2021, the company generated $127 million in free cash flow, reflecting a very high level of more than 30% of the company revenues in 2021, relative to an average of approximately 15% in the previous three years. This high level of cash generation is again a testament to the leverage in the company financial model, as well as to highly effective working capital management in 2021. During 2021, the company saw improvement in the main parameters related to working capital management, with day sales outstanding decreasing to 57 days and inventory returns increasing to 2.5 times a year. Moving into 2022, I would first like to share some insights on our expectations for the year, as well as the expected combination with ANCOSYS and its financial impact. NOVA paid approximately $18 million in cash for the acquisition of ANCOSYS at the end of January and is expected to pay additional 10 million in the third quarter of 2022 for a performance-based earn-out. Following these payments and with our expectation for additional healthy cash generation in 2022, we expect the company to hold approximately 500 million in cash reserves. We plan to use this cash for the following. First, a security cushion to support the expected business growth in 2022 and the integration process of ANCOSYS into NOVA. This security cushion should be approximately 20% of the company fluent revenues or approximately 100 million. Second, support capital investments in 2022 and 2023, which are aimed at upgrading the company infrastructure and aligning it to the current and expected business levels. These investments include expansion of the US main facility in Fremont, California to increase manufacturing and development capacity of the X-ray and SIMS technology-based products. This facility is expected to be operational in the first half of 2022. Completion of the new clean room in Israel, which is expected to be operational by the end of 2022. New and expanded facility in Germany to be built on real estate, which was bought as part of ANCOSYS acquisition and is expected to be operational in 2024. And finally, IT investments related to cybersecurity and global information systems. Overall, we expect these investments to accumulate to approximately 35 million across 2022 and 2023, and they are on top of the company Fluent Capital investments of five to 10 million a year. Third, the cash is going to be targeted for additional acquisitions. And fourth, shareholders return programs as will be approved by the Board of Director of NOVA from time to time. From margin perspective, 2022 is expected to be impacted by several main factors. First, the ANCOSYS business combination. ANCOSYS results will be combined with NOVA starting February 2022 and will be reflected in our results for 11 months in 2022. ANCOSYS margins at its current business levels are lower than the NOVA target model and are at the 50% level for gross margins and 15% level for operating margins on a non-GAAP basis. Second, we expect the continued pressure on supply chain costs and global employment costs, as well as unfavorable exchange rates in Europe and Israel to continue well into 2022, which will burden the company cost of goods sold and operating expenses looking forward. Taking into consideration all these elements, together with the overall expected business growth in 2022, we believe that in 2022, the company will be able to maintain its existing non-GAAP target model of 56% to 59% in gross margins and 26% to 29% in operating margins. On the tax front, the corporate effective tax rate for ANCOSIS operations in Germany is approximately 30%, higher than the tax rate in other main regions such as the U.S. and Israel. Looking forward, we expect the combined effective tax rate of the company to be approximately 16%. In terms of share count, starting the first quarter of 2022, the company will be required to implement the updated accounting standard for debt instruments, which include conversion options. This new standard requires the use of the as-if-converted method and therefore reflects the full potential dilution as a result of the potential conversion of the convertible debt into share. As a result of this implementation, we expect the share count for diluted earnings per share to increase to approximately 32 million shares in the first quarter of 2022. On a gap basis, in 2022, we expect to see an increase in stock-based compensation expenses to a level of 4 million to 5 million per quarter. In addition, on a gap basis, we expect to account for additional intangible amortization expenses resulting from the ANCOSIS acquisition. The purchase price accounting numbers and calculations are not yet final, and we will share the exact numbers once they become available, most probably during the financial reports release of the first quarter of 2022, which is expected in May 2022. Finally, I would like to share the details of our guidance for the first quarter of 2022. Currently, we expect revenues to be between $122 million to $132 million, gap earnings per diluted share to range from $0.78 to $0.96, and non-gap earnings per diluted share to range from $0.96 to $1.14. As ANCOSY's closing was done at the end of January, these results include ANCOSY's expected contribution only in February and March. At the midpoint of our first quarter 22 estimates, we expect the following. Gross margins to be approximately 57%, operating expenses on a GAE basis to come in at approximately 39 million, including an assumption-based amount of approximately 1 million for amortization of intangibles related to ANCOSYS acquisition. Operating expenses on a non-GAE basis are expected to be approximately 34 million. It is important to note again that the mentioned operating expenses include ANCUSY's contribution for two months only as the acquisition closed at the end of January. Looking forward into the rest of 22, we expect operating expenses to grow in the second quarter by an additional one million to absorb ANCUSY's consolidation for a full quarter and gradually grow from there quarter of a quarter. The effective tax rate in the first quarter of 2022 is expected to be approximately 15%. With that, I will turn the call back to Eitan. Eitan?

Thank you, Dror. With that, we will be pleased to take your questions. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question is from Jamie Zakalik of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the question. My first one is on supply. So quite a few of your peers saw pretty meaningful supply constraints at the end of Q4 and into Q1. And you clearly have handled the supply challenges very well. But was there any sort of supply headwind baked into the Q1 outlook? And I guess the second part of that question is, because so many of your peers saw shortages in Q1, they're expecting 22 to be back half-weighted. Do you think your revenue trajectory could be somewhat different since you were less impacted in the start of the year?

Thanks, Amy, for the question. So first of all, regarding the supply chain, we are, of course, facing the same problems as everyone. I think that the basic strategy that we took one year and a half ago to take in inventory to cover at least 18 months of delivery is staying off today. But as the time goes by, some suppliers are getting to some problems. Either it's a shortage of materials or problems with manpower due to the Omicron. But nevertheless, when we're looking right now on Q1, we could commit to our customer to supply every demand that they ask. And we don't see a problem in Q1. And actually, we don't see also a problem in Q2 unless something unforeseen will happen. So this is regarding the supply chain, but definitely the issue with supply chains are becoming tougher and tougher. The second issue regarding the question of the revenue and how it's distributed over the quarter. So we don't give an yearly guidance on a yearly... but definitely when we're looking on the first and the second quarter, we're expecting it to be flat quarter over quarter. And looking on the yearly revenues, we're definitely looking on a growth here. Estimation in the market right now is talking between 10% to 20%, and we are supporting that.

Great. Thanks. That's helpful. And then my second question is, If you look historically, you guys have always kept OpEx growth below sales growth. And just based on your guidance for Q1, Q2, and the rest of the year in terms of OpEx, you're looking at, you know, 24%, 25% OpEx growth. Should we read into anything about, you know, expectations for sales growth this year in terms of, you know, your ability to outperform the broader WFE industry?

Thanks.

So in terms of the OPEX, obviously the level of OPEX has grown a lot in recent quarters, and with the combination with ANCOSYS, we are starting the year with the level I mentioned, and this will gradually grow across the year. I think that the fact that OPEX has grown so much in 2021, given more than 50% increase in revenues, is starting the year at a relatively high level, and this will remain with us across the year. In terms of the annual performance, obviously, during 2021 and also in recent years, Nova was able to outperform the market. And given the acquisition with Ankosys, the new product, and our new products, which were announced in existing platforms, We hope to continue and outperform the market also in 2022.

Great. Thanks.

The next question is from Quinn Bolton from Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Let me offer my congratulations. I just wanted to follow up on that last question just about the 2022 outlook. I know you're not giving formal guidance, but You've announced, you know, Ellipson, Prism, and most recently Metreon. So lots going on on the new product front. WFE is looking to grow, you know, by a high teens percentage. I'm just kind of wondering if I exclude the Oncosys acquisition, do you think the core business driven by new products, you know, keeps pace or outperforms WFE? Because I would think Oncosys obviously would be additive to, you know, the core organic business.

Yeah, OK, Quinn, thank you very much for the question. So I I want to start from a very general answer saying that and what I said in my prepared remark that the two things one is that we we our prediction is that in 2022 we are going to fulfill the Nova 500 plan. This is the first thing that that I said in my remark. The second one was that. We are starting actually the strategic planning for the next few years and our target as usual is in five years to double the revenue. If the revenue in 2022 will be somewhere around 500, we can calculate what it will be in five years. So this is the two general comments about the strategic growth and how we see the next few years. Now, if we dive into the specific year, 2022, we do see, as the other peers, that the market is still positive, exiting 2021, going in 2022, mainly driven by continuous growth demand in logic, accelerated demand in VNAND, and also continuous demand in DRAM. So all front. And we do see that trailing nodes for common application as well as advanced nodes for advanced applications continue in its space. I'm not so sure that it will be in the same pace as 2021, but definitely higher than a normalized level of 5% to 10%. Coming from that, as I said in one of my answers, is that When we're looking right now, if the market is predicting something like 10% to 20% in 2022, we definitely want to outperform that.

And again, that's organically, or does that commonly include oncosis?

So we need to be careful when we count oncosis because we didn't close yet one quarter with them. We need to understand also that Q1 will be marginal because there is a lot of financial elements been considered when you're moving a private company to a public company. Also, it's only two months. So therefore, when we talked about the acquisition of revenue of around 25 to 30 million, so the contribution for the first quarter is marginal. So if we're looking right now on the organic growth only, the company continues to grow and it will continue to grow in the next few quarters as well. As you said, There is a traction in the market. There is a reception of the new product. And definitely, when we're looking right now on the next few quarters, we want to keep the organic growth outperforming the market without adding anchors.

Thank you, Eitan. I wanted to ask just a follow-up question on the SIMS tool. You mentioned a couple of customers have now adopted that platform. Wondering if you could give us any idea of the applications. Is this mostly advanced logic gate all around architectures? Are you seeing memory either being and or DRAM manufacturers also starting to use the tool for those applications?

Actually, the tools that were recognized are coming for both applications, both the memory and logic. Definitely, the architecture is not relevant to the Potential market for the Matthew on the Metro and actually is very good in detecting stock profile of materials in Vinon then it's also very good in in Profiling metal layers in logic. So when you're looking right now on the range of application that the Matthew on can address It's definitely in both. Okay The reason by the way that the material is so appealing in the market right now because customers now understand they cannot any more control of such a complicated stack of materials by sending wafers to the lab. That takes them hours and days to characterize, so they need it in the fab. And definitely, this is a tool for advanced nodes, okay? So advanced node in NAND, advanced node in logic, this is where we're targeting currently.

Thank you, Eitan.

Thanks.

The next question is from Atif Malik from Citi. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions. First, Etan, you spoke about China being an area of strength for you last year in the mid-range and legacy logic devices. I'm curious to know what are your expectations for domestic China demand this year? We've heard from some suppliers that there may be some sort of deceleration happening in that area after the strength last year. So thoughts on China domestic demand this year.

So when I'm looking right now on China, actually this is the most extended territory that we handle right now with 15 active customers that kept on buying in 2021. And as we do see 2022, it will be the same. So we see the same customers keep on buying. um we do see that the the the process to go from development and r d to production was shortened because of the because of their strive to be independent and not count on other supply of chips from other continents so therefore they are starting to be fast in moving from development to to production and therefore we do see more equipment coming into China next year to those fobs that started the development. Additionally to that, when you're looking right now on China, there are at least four to five customers that are in heavy investment for, uh, for, for ramp. Uh, we do see two to three logic, uh, customers that are expanding and we do see a big memory customer that is expanding as well. So the overall momentum in China, As we see that, and our expectation is to continue in 2022 and keep going.

Great.

And as my follow-up for Dror, I looked at the breakout of the sales expectations for two months for AnchorSafe in the first quarter, if you can provide that. And are there any revenue synergies between AnchorSafe and your other metrology or optical products. And then lastly, I also didn't catch what's offsetting the gross margin dilution from ANCUS this year. Are those the new products that are going to offset the gross margin dilution? Thanks.

So obviously on the gross margin front, it's several elements, but I think that the same as in 2021, the fact that the company is growing including with the new products and software products, is offsetting this impact of ANCOSYS, which is not huge in its essence, and it's anyway at 50% and higher blended gross margins. In terms of the revenue contribution in Q1, the deal just closed in the end of January, and obviously this is a private company working based on German GAP, So the revenue recognition aspects are still under review. Either way, our assumption for Q1 was really marginal contribution of ANCOSYS to the revenues of the overall company.

Now, let me just also complement the questions with synergies with ANCOSYS. So when you're looking right now at ANCOSYS, and we said it in the previous earning calls, There's a lot of logic in buying such a company to Nova. One is an entry point for the advanced packaging, backend, PCB, and everything that we were not strongly present before. And we hope that by this window, we can also enter with our optical and X-ray tool to other places that we were not present before. This is one. Second, as I said in my prepared remark, we are investing heavily to diversify our products, to be a leader in the materials metrology. And the combination of having both the XPS X-ray, as well as the Ellipson, as well as the Metreon, and now the Ancosis product, allow us to actually almost give the full range of measurements for our customers. And I think that the last item in this synergies is the fact that if we'll pay attention, specific attention to the application that ANCOSYS is doing, it's CMP. So NOVA is very strong in CMP by the integrated and the standalone. And in front end, the ANCOSYS product, the ankylizer, is going into the CMP. So if we're looking right now on the overall metrology in the ecosystem of the CMP alone, NOVA is actually having a materials metrology there. We have analytics for chemicals. And we have also the hardware for measuring the dimension. And the last thing is, or the final thing in this synergy, if you're looking right now what we do, so up to now we had only metrology for wafer-based structures. But the fabrication of the chip starting before with the materials that are coming from the materials company and flowing into the process. Over there, It's a total green lens, and we will, together with ANCOSYS now, we control both the fluid as well as the wafer structure. And all of us know that we had with our largest customer or the market had with the largest customer some incidents in the last few months where materials quality were wrongly pured or fluid into the deposition process and damaged a lot of wafers. Our target, together with ANCOSIS and our materials product, is to use those failures in order to provide the market a better control in the fab, not where the materials are being produced and create a large market over there. And I think that incidents like we had just in the last two months can actually increase the need for that.

Very helpful. Thank you. Thanks.

The next question is from Mark Miller from the Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Let me add my congratulations on another record quarter. Memory as percentage sales grew last quarter. Do you expect that in 2022 that memory will continue to grow as percentage sales?

Yes, we do, Mark.

And any feelings? Could it get up to 40%, 45% of sales?

So the answer is yes. So currently when we're looking right now on a strong year for Foundry and Logic in 2021, it was around 30% to 35%. And definitely if we are going to face a strong VNAND year or NAND year in 2022, it definitely can go higher as 40%.

Any indication from your major customers that supply constraints that your major customers might be impacting business for you or they just need equipment as soon as possible?

All the customers that we are talking about currently, which are the leading ones and the trailing node customers, all of them would like to have equipment as soon as possible. We have control tables from now on. for the next couple of months, and some of them even give us more. Of course, this is a very dynamic and dangerous environment if something happens to the supply chain, but nevertheless, if we not have problems with the big ones that supplying equipment like ASML or others in this year, we definitely see a strong demand and we don't see any stop currently.

Thank you.

The next question is from Patrick Ho from Stiefel. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Eitan, you kind of briefly touched on it, but I was looking for a little more color. You talked about some of the advanced packaging opportunities with ANCLSYS. It's early, obviously, in your integration phase, but do you see the potential of revenue synergies of bringing some of your front-end metrology solutions

over into the back-end advanced packaging side of things.

Patrick, you are correct.

And this is what I said when I answered to Atif. It's that one of the synergies that we looked at is that once we are present in the advanced packaging, like Ancofis, which is the market leader in advanced packaging for chemical methodology, once we have this synergy, this reach into the advanced packaging. Also, by the way, to the back end and the PCB, we could start bringing also optical and X-ray metrology to this ground. Obviously, when we're looking right now on high value, high price tools, the place to be after the front end is to be in advanced packaging, and definitely we see Only from just the last few months' integration with ANCOSYS, we definitely see more opportunities in the advanced packaging with our current tools.

Great, that's helpful. And maybe as my follow-up question, in terms of the capital intensity trends, we're seeing metrology grow as we go down these advanced foundry logic nodes. Just from a big-picture perspective, from an industry perspective, I should say, how do you see capital intensity trends from materials versus your traditional dimensional OCD metrology platform? Is one from an industry basis outgrowing the other, or are they both growing at pretty accelerated rates?

So when we're looking right now on the material side versus the dimensional side, We are talking about two different phases in the life cycle of the product. When we're looking right now on dimension and OCD products, it's pretty easy to calculate because the intensity is driven by capacity. And as you said, once you're going to advance the nodes, the intensity is going higher. But there's no question that every time that there is investment of capacity, the customer will buy more tools in the dimension. So it's in more mature parts. When you're looking right now on the materials, and you're looking right now on the Ellipson and the Metreon and the AncoSys, it's pretty much in the phase where it's growing from being a lab tool to an inline metrology tool. and therefore the intensity over there is lower because the stage of where the products came into the production is actually later. But definitely when we're looking on the future, both the Ellipson, the Matreon, and the Ancocis should be decided by the capacity and by a touch rate, exactly like the OCD product. It's just a matter of a cycle and a time. Regarding the XPS, that is with Nova for the last six years. The XPS for the last two years moved to be a capacity tool, and every time that a customer is expanding their capacity and moving to a larger facility or expanding the wafer per hour, so therefore the XPS attach rate is increasing. So if two to three years ago, every time that, for example, a customer had the phase, they used to buy two to three tools. Now it's per capacity. It's not per phase. So the XPS is definitely in the right way as the OCD. So this is the three levels. We have the dimensional tools and the OCD that is running by capacity in a touch rate. We have the XPS that is starting to be exactly that. And the materials tool, which is a new market, is in the phase where you are in the fab, but you are not yet per attach rate as the others.

Great. Thank you very much.

The next question is from Krish Sankar from Cowan & Company. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the good results. I have two questions. First one, Clearly, you guys are doing a good job navigating supply chain issues. But I'm just wondering, would your customers moderate metrology tool intake if they're having issues getting depenet equipment? Because the depenet folks seem to have a lot more supply issues with vacuum components versus you folks. I'm just wondering, have you seen that or you don't think that's ever going to happen, not at least this year?

So I need to say that looking right now on the next two quarters, I don't see at least from the demand for metrology a slowdown. Now, again, we need to understand that those supply chains are dangerous and it can happen tomorrow morning. We also don't know what supply chain issues in other suppliers will cause to the overall demand or to the overall chain. But definitely when you're looking right now on the market, where this is every investment in advanced nodes, like five nanometers, three nanometers, the 200 layers in VNAN, the new FAB, the demand for metrology is not slowing down.

Got it. Got it. Very helpful. And then just as a follow-up, you know, three months ago, you folks said that, you know, obviously, foundry logic is going to be strong this year, but at the margin, NAND is going to grow, especially in the first half of 2022. relative to DRAM, and I think you kind of reiterated that. A, is that still the case? The reason I'm asking is some of your peers who were more optimistic on NAND three months ago seem to think actually DRAM might grow this year. So I'm kind of curious, especially in the memory side between NAND and DRAM, what do you expect this year in terms of relative growth, and has that thought changed in the last three months? Thank you.

So let me just answer that. I want to bring it back into context, okay? So what I said was that in 2021, DRAM grew more than VNAND, and in 2022, the phenomena will be the opposite, okay? So VNAND over 2022 will be higher than DRAM, but two of them are going to grow this year, okay? Just one of them will grow more than the others, and we still believe that in 2022, Vinan will grow higher or stronger than Dirham.

Got it, got it. Super helpful. Thanks for the call. Thank you very much.

This concludes the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Eitan Oppenheim, President and CEO, for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining our call today. Good morning, good evening.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.