ACM Research, Inc. Q4 FY2024 Earnings Call

Good day, everyone. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the ACM Research Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are currently in listen-only mode. We will have a question-and-answer session later, and we'll provide instructions for that. As a reminder, we are recording this call. If you have any objections, you may disconnect now. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Steven Pelayo, Managing Director of The Blueshirt Group. Steven, please proceed.

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 is 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 Wang, our CFO Mark McKechnie, and Lisa Feng, 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 for the future. However, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. 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 in comparisons with the fourth-quarter and full-year of 2023. With that, I'll now turn the call over to David Wang. David?

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 a recent regulatory update from the U.S. government. On December 2nd, the U.S. Department of Commerce added a 140 company to its Entity List, including our subsidiary ACM Shanghai, ACM Korea, and other entities under their structure. As we have noted, we are one of many that were added, and we were not notified of any specific wrongdoing. To be clear, ACM Research, Inc., the U.S. company, founded in California in 1998, is the entity that is listed, while it is our subsidiaries that were added to the Entity List. Moving on regarding the operations of ACM Shanghai in Mainland China, the new regulation will make it difficult, if not impossible, for ACM Shanghai to obtain components from the U.S. On that note, we have been working to localize our supply chain for some time. The events of the past few years, including the U.S. restrictions of 2022, have made it even more important for ACM Shanghai to localize in the supply chain. Thus, we have reduced our U.S. sourced components to just a small subset. And with our status on the Entity List, we are working quickly to complete the transition. Bottom line, we remain committed to supporting our customers and complying 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 customers outside of Mainland China, the new Department of Commerce rule mainly restricts U.S. exports to ACM Shanghai and ACM Korea. They do not directly affect U.S. companies buying two automation. We are therefore confident we can continue our efforts to expand our business to global customers. Now, on to our business results. Please turn to slide three. I'm pleased with our fourth quarter results, which capped a strong year. For the fourth quarter of 2024, we delivered $223 million in revenue, up 31%. For the 2024 fiscal year, we delivered $782 million in revenue, up 40%. Gross margin was 49.8% for the fourth quarter and 50.4% for the full year. Operating profit increased 46% in the fourth quarter and 63% for the full year. We ended the year with $259 million of net cash and time deposits compared to $212 million at the end of 2023. For shipments, shipments for the fourth quarter were $264 million, up 88%. Shipments for the full year were $973 million, up 63%. We believe the 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 addresses an $18 billion global market opportunity. Our current business is primarily driven by three major product groups: cleaning, plating, and advanced packaging. We anticipate continued growth in this category and look to incremental revenue contributions from our newer products starting with Tahoe, SPM, furnace, followed by track and LPCVD. Third-party sources estimate that global semiconductor WFE will grow by 4% in 2024 to $107 billion. Based on this global WFE, we now estimate that our product addresses a Serviceable Available Market or SAM of about $18 billion in total. For Mainland China WFE, industrial analysts estimate the market growth by 12% to $38 billion. Our growth rate of 40% in revenue and 63% in shipments was much higher than the China WFE growth. We attribute our strength to market share gains from the current product, new product cycles, and new customers. We also had good execution from our production and service teams. Our success starts with our customers. Please turn to slide six. For 2024, we had four customers that individually accounted for 10% or more of the revenue. The Huahong Group was our top customer at 15% of sales, SMIC was second at 14%, and YMTC and PXW were third and fourth at 12%. Now I will provide detail on products. Please turn to slide seven. Revenue from Single Wafer Cleaning, Tahoe, and Semi-Critical Cleaning products increased 43% in 2024, representing 74% of total revenue. Our growth was driven by a significant increase in the Ultra C backside cleaning tool and good growth from our SAPS and TEBO tools. We also had a contribution from our Tahoe and Bevel Etch tool. Looking ahead, in cleaning, we expect to see several significant product cycles, including high-temperature SPM, 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 TAM for cleaning is close to $6.5 billion, and our products support more than 90% of our cleaning process steps. If we take $6.5 billion TAM and ACM's $579 million in cleaning revenue for 2024, the post-ACM global market share of cleaning is about 9%. We believe that our complete portfolio of cleaning tools, including SAPS, TEBO, Tahoe, semi-critical, SPM, Bevel Etch, and others, places us in a strong position to take more share in China in the global market. Revenue from ECP, furnace, and other technology grew 46% in 2024 and represents 90% of total revenue. In the fourth quarter, the segment achieved a record quarterly revenue of more than $50 million, contributing 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-enhanced ALD furnace tool has achieved product qualification at two Mainland China semiconductor customers. Chief makers increasingly rely on the position of high-quality ultra-thin film with excellent step coverage. We believe ACM's proprietary ARD furnace design differentiates us from other suppliers and enables us to address challenges faced in 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 nine at the end of 2023. We expect the revenue contribution from the furnace to accelerate in 2025, in contrast to a small amount for 2024. Revenue from advanced packaging, which excludes ECP but includes service and spare parts, grew 3% in 2024 and represented 7% of revenue. This category includes a range of our packaging tools, including a colder, developer, scrubber, gas sweeper, and wet hatcher, as well as service and spare parts. We believe ACM is one of the only companies that offers a full set of web tools covering plating tools and furnace tools for advanced packaging. We had notable developments for this category in 2024, including orders for four wafer-level packaging tools, which are on track to ship to the USA in the first half of 2025, and we announced three panel-level packaging tools, including a vacuum, flux cleaning tool for chiplet, horizontal plating tool, and Bevel Etch tool, which we see as especially relevant for the packaging of GPUs and high-bandwidth memory HBM. We are making good progress with our new track and feasibility platform. Both of these products come with ACM's innovative and differentiated platform design and allow for process flexibility and high throughput. We have a solid list of ongoing demonstrations and evaluations for both Track and LPCVD. For Track, we plan to deliver a 30 millimeter WPH, inline careful beta tool in mid-2025. We expect some initial revenue contribution in late 2025 with more in 2026 and beyond. Next, let me provide an update on our production facility. First, Lingang. Please turn to slide eight. In the fourth quarter of 2024, we had a grand opening ceremony for our Lingang Production and R&D Center. I'm pleased to report that we have begun initial operations and expect this site to play a key role in production development and efficient high-volume manufacturing. We expect most of our production to shift from our Zangjiang leased facility to our company-owned Lingang facility by the end of Q2. We are proud of our 2,300 square meter class 100 clean room, which we expect will accelerate our product development speed and in-house demonstration capability. Next, our Oregon facility. Please turn to slide nine. In October 2024, we completed the purchase of our new 40,000 square foot Oregon facility. It includes a 5,200 square-foot clean room that 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 Stock. We are very pleased by the success of the 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 dividends. In 2023 and '24, as a major shareholder of ACM Shanghai, we received dividends net of tax of $19.2 million and $28.5 million, respectively. 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 dividends to accelerate our global business development. ACM Shanghai Stock, which is now traded at a $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 a unique advantage. In 2021, ACM Shanghai reached a $575 million 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 take 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 shares of ACM Shanghai stock and repatriate the cash back to the U.S. The timing of any sale, of course, would depend on pricing, market conditions, and our own cash needs and other factors. We believe the combination of ACM's world-class technology, customer support, and access to substantial capital markets uniquely positions us to become a world-class global WFE 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 the range of $850 million to $950 million, implying 15% year-over-year growth at the mid-point. We are reiterating this outlook today. I'm pleased to announce today that we have adjusted 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 founding in California in 1998 and the establishment of ACM Shanghai in 2005. We have built a globally competitive business. Our success has been built on innovation and differential technology, particularly in cleaning and electroplating, addressing the evolving needs of semiconductor manufacturing. From this foundation, we have expanded our market reach and gained international traction. We're building strong partnerships with key industrial players. In China, ACM is recognized as a leader in advanced wafer cleaning and front-end electroplating solutions and is preparing for new product ramps in the Furnace, Track, and PECVD. Outside China, we are engaging with multiple customers with operations in the U.S., Europe, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. The global interest is broad across our entire product portfolio from the front-end wafer fab to their back-end advanced packaging, including our innovative cleaning and plating offerings for next-generation panel-level packaging. Now, let me turn the call over to the CFO, Mark, who will review the details of our fourth-quarter results. Mark, please.

Thank you, David. Good day, everyone. Please turn to slide 11. Unless noted otherwise, I'll refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which exclude stock-based compensation and 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, with comparisons to the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. I'll now provide financial highlights. Revenue was $223.5 million for the fourth quarter, up 31.2%. For the full year 2024, revenue was $782.1 million, up 40.2%. Revenue from 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 was $51.7 million, up 60.9%. For the full year 2024, this category grew by 46.2%, and revenue for advanced packaging, excluding HCP services and spares, was $16.6 million, up 4.2%. For the full year 2024, this category grew by 3.3%. Total shipments for the fourth quarter were $264 million 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 operating expenses for the year, demonstrating 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 plan 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 was $35 million versus $19.4 million in 2023. For 2025, we expect our effective tax rate in the 12% to 15% 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 per diluted share was $0.56 for the fourth quarter versus $0.43. For the full year 2024, net income per diluted 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 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 of $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 and $85.3 million for the full year 2024. For the full year 2025, we expect to spend about $65 million 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.

Our first question is from Charles Shi with Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Hello. Yes, just wanted…

Hi, Charles. Good morning.

Good morning.

Yes, good morning. I just want to confirm it's my turn to ask a question. You reiterated your fiscal ‘25 revenue outlook, which remains the same as what you provided in January: at the low end, a 9% year-on-year growth, and at the high end, a 21% year-on-year growth. Could you elaborate on the assumptions that differentiate the low-end from the high-end and what scenarios you considered? I noticed the press release mentioned that various spending scenarios from your customers this year were included in the guidance range, and I'd like more details on that. Thank you.

This prediction of revenue is based on last year’s shipments, which reached record levels. We can observe customer purchase orders and their expansion plans. However, there are still some uncertainties regarding Q4. That’s why, earlier in the year, we provided both low-end and high-end projections. I cannot go into too much detail, but there is a range that we established. As we progress through Q2 and look toward Q4, we hope to clarify our revenue projections and may readjust them at that point. This is a typical process we follow each year.

Got it. And 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?

Yes, I believe we have some visibility for Q3, but it’s still early in the year. We are seeing purchase orders for Q3. However, Q4 remains uncertain at this point. We expect to have a clearer picture by the end of Q2, which will help us better understand the timeline for Q4.

Yes, 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 test that. And of course, we took a look at it before we reported here on the quarter. So 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 the forecasted 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, yes.

Basically, our average manufacturing time is about six months right now, five to six. So that will be the right part of the projection for looking into the two quarters, right? Yes.

Yes. Got it. The other question I think usually before the Chinese New Year, there's a little bit of an 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 controls by the U.S. and obviously a few of your customers were added to the 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 ‘22, it came back to your 10% customer list, but there is another customer that recently got added. So maybe we can get a little bit sense based on what you're seeing right now; the export control rules, do they have an impact, positive or negative, on your customers' spending plans in 2025 and any sort of movement you're seeing at a little bit of a micro-level, customer to customer level, if anything you can provide, that would be great? Thank you.

This is a broad question, and real customers are diverse. Some customers are affected because they are on the Entity List, while others are still expanding. It's difficult to provide a general overview at this time. We are actively working with customers to assess the extent of the impact and are in the process of evaluating it.

Got it. So maybe the last question, looks like the plating furnace product line, you have three segments, and you're reporting that particular segment has done pretty well and probably growing even faster than the wet clean product line. I think you just mentioned plating; you have become a leading supplier in China, and especially for the front-end, I was kind of curious like, what do you see as 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.

Yes. I think our market share is about 30% to 35%. And it actually is almost the same in both the front and back-end, right? It's nearly one-third, 30% to 35% of the market share in China.

Got it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Charles.

Thanks, Charles.

Thank you. Our next question is from Mark Miller with The Benchmark Company. Your line is now open.

Congratulations on a great quarter. I noticed that several equipment companies, particularly those in semi equipment, are forecasting strong growth in their AP-related sales for 2025. What are your expectations for AP sales this year?

Oh, the advanced packaging. You're talking about that…

Okay. Well, yes, I think we do see advanced packaging growing. And, obviously, all this kind of 2.5D and 3D in the proposal is one thing. And there are certainly other advanced packaging developments ongoing here. So we see that expansion basically. I think this year will probably be better than last year in terms of advanced packaging.

Yes, Mark, I want to mention that it can be a bit complicated since our ECP group encompasses both front-end and back-end packaging. Our advanced packaging group, on the other hand, comprises everything except the ECPs. We can provide more details when advanced packaging starts to represent a larger portion of our total revenue, but currently, it is challenging to distinguish this within our back-end packaging group.

I also want to add that Mark is still focused on panel packaging. We currently have three products in the market, and we expect them to begin contributing to our revenue in 2025. This represents a new area of technology we are developing.

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

Yes, Mark, it's tough. We don't generally break that out. I think you can look at our 10% customers and kind of make a guess, right? So we've got four of them that are 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 you on that in the future. But at this point, we don't have the detailed breakdown.

Okay. You mentioned that four customers were responsible for just over 50% of your business. Is that correct?

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

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you. 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, and thank you all for participating in today's call and for your support. Before we close, Steven is going to mention our upcoming Investor relation events. Steven, please.

Great. Thanks, David. Before we conclude, I just want to give everyone a quick reminder of our upcoming investor conferences. On March 17, 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.