Nova Ltd.

And welcome to the NOVA Limited fourth quarter 2023 results 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 a touch tone. If you need to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note the event is being recorded. And now I would like to turn the conference over to Mary Segal. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good day to everybody. I would like to welcome all of you to NOVA's fourth quarter and full year 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. With us on the line today are Gaby Weisman, President and CEO, and Rohr 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 the copy of the release, please view it in the investor relations section of the company's website. Gaby will begin the call with a business update, followed by a draw with an overview of the financials. We will then open the call for the question and answer session. I'll now turn the call over to Gaby Weissman, NOVA's president and CEO. Gaby, please go ahead.

Thank you, Miri, and thank you all for joining us today. I will start the call today by summarizing our fourth quarter and full-year performance highlights. Following my commentary, Dror will review the quarterly and annual financial results in detail. NOVA delivered a robust quarter, exceeding the top end of our guidance for revenue and profits, with GAAP and non-GAAP EPS reaching an all-time high. concluding the fiscal year on a higher note than initially expected. NOVA's performance remains steadfast, showcasing the strength of our diversified and agile business model. We persist with our long-term strategic plans to solidify our position and seize new opportunities across customers, markets, and technologies. Nova is uniquely positioned to accelerate its market adoption in hybrid bonding as well as high bandwidth memory and to capitalize on the transition to gate all around for our strong stance in advanced logic manufacturing. Looking forward, we witness encouraging trends across our key growth drivers that we expect to steer us to a path of growth and outperformance in 2024. Our performance this quarter was driven by the continued proliferation of materials metrology and chemical metrology solutions across both front-end and back-end markets and the expanding adoption of optical metrology solutions among multiple DRAM customers. The encouraging results of the fourth quarter and fiscal year are indicative of our aptitude in addressing the myriad needs of process control in IC manufacturing. This proficiency plays a key role in leveraging opportunities as evidenced by the significant expansion of our customer base. Our PRISM standalone optical metrology platforms secured several wins with memory, logic, and hybrid bonding customers. Furthermore, We exit 2023 with a growing adoption of NOVA's Veriflex XPS and XRF, Ellipson Inline Raman, and Ancolizer and Ancocene chemical metrology solutions. Finally, our service business demonstrated consistent growth, reaching another annual revenue record. I want to take a minute and highlight some of the technology inflection points and industry growth drivers that we identify as the propellers of Nova's growth. The surge in AI related demand also drives the need for energy efficient computing power and accelerates demand for advanced processing nodes and memory solutions from the network to the client side. Our customers are spearheading the transition to 3D architectures that enable high bandwidth memory and highly advanced logic integrated circuits, as well as advanced packaging solutions. These evolutions, in turn, translate into larger and more complex dyes that require a growing number of wafers, a higher number of layers, and a leap in the number of process steps at a much smaller tolerance for error. Manufacturers now need high-quality metrology across the entire wafer, from the center to the very edge. They must control highly complex 3D design with high aspect ratios and underlayer structures. They need to monitor new materials, measuring ultra-thin films, composition, and structures on the wafer and in-die. And they must solve manufacturing challenges that arise from gate-all-around transistors, 3D memory architectures, backside power delivery, hybrid bonding, and other methods aimed at generating faster, more efficient, and more powerful devices, all of which translate to a growing need for process controls. NOVA's achievements over the past quarter, coupled with our growth guidance for the first quarter of 2024, reflect our ability to cash in on the opportunities for a strategy of diversified growth. We built a variety of opportunities in 2023 that we expect to capitalize on in 2024. Our chemical metrology division delivered on the promise, growing to a record annual revenues in 2023, fueled by the increasing demand for metrology in packaging production lines. Notably, in Q4, we secured several new packaging customers and received a large order from a leading global memory manufacturer. Our optical metrology expanded into hybrid bonding, high bandwidth memory, and related applications through a dedicated optical metrology portfolio. As a result, we increased our revenues from the advanced packaging domain by approximately 30% year over year. Our portfolio addresses critical applications such as full silicon via essential for the successful manufacturing of AI related devices. We have been collaborating with our customers for several years to develop these dedicated solutions. We are proud to be the first to market with the industry's top five customers having either purchased or engaged in evaluations with Nova. For example, the Nova Prism has already been selected by a leading global foundry and is in evaluation process with additional leading manufacturers. Therefore, we expect our revenues from advanced packaging to grow significantly in 2024. I mentioned earlier the transition to advanced nodes, and here we see our technology growth engines coming into play. The advent of gate-all-around and advanced memory drive the need for our unique materials metrology portfolio, resulting in increased customer traction for Ellipson and Metreon, and wider adoption of our Veriflex platform. Nova Ellipson has been chosen as a process tool of record for advanced DRAM production by a leading global memory manufacturer, who has already placed repeat orders for the tool. We also expect additional evaluations with other customers later this year. Novometreon is also making strides. We recently announced the availability of the platform's second generation, and in Q4, we received evaluation purchase orders from two of the world's leading memory manufacturers. The platform has already been adopted by three other customers, and we expect to expand our footprint by the end of this year. The Nova Veriflex platform proved that it is indeed an industry staple, landing new logic and memory customers in Q4. The newest generation, Veriflex 4, grew approximately 170% year over year and is quickly taking over from previous versions, proliferating in high volume manufacturing. Veriflex 4 offers higher productivity and improved metrology performance that brings true measurable value and expanded application space to our customers. Finally, our service division delivered record performance and increased the share of revenue from contracts by 24%, leveraging the expansion of our install base, which surpassed 5,400 tools, and cementing its importance as one of our growth engines. Beyond our focus on expanding our presence in new market segments and penetration of new technologies, we also dedicated many of our resources this year to building the infrastructure that will support our growth in 2024 and beyond. We opened a new clean room in Israel, we expanded our offices in Korea to provide better support closer to our customers, and we opened an innovation center in the US. In 2024, we plan to invest in building our presence and capacity and in increasing the efficiency and agility of information systems and processes. We also plan to accelerate our investments in research and development in close collaboration with our customers and partners. In summary of my prepared remarks, I believe that our well-established fundamentals will help us increase exposure to additional opportunities in adjacent markets and processes, new customers, and additional critical applications. Our strategic priorities remain intact with continuous investment in our long-term roadmap and by partnering with our customers across all territories. In 2024, we expect to capitalize on the opportunities created by our enhanced market position, resume our growth trajectory, and outperform the markets. Now, for some more detail on our financials, let me hand over the call to Dror.