Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the ACM Research Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at 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 turn the call over to Mr. Stephen Pileo, Managing Director of Blue Shirt Group. Stephen, please go ahead.

Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 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 relations section of our website that we will reference during our prepared remarks. On the call with me today are our CEO, Dr. David Wong, 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 the 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 financial results that we provide on this call will be on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation and unrealized gain or 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 to slides 14 and 15. Also, unless otherwise noted, the following figures refer to the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025, and comparisons are going to be with the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024. I will now turn the call over to David Wang.

Thanks, Stephen. and hello everyone and welcome to ACM's first quarter and the physical year 2025 earning conference call. I'm pleased with our first quarter results which capped off a solid year of execution. Revenue grew 9% in the first quarter and 15% for the full year. We continue to execute well across our core business. We made a lot of progress with new product platforms and we strengthen our position in China and globally. Investment in AI and data center infrastructure is reshaping the global semiconductor demand, shifting capital towards advanced logic, memory, and advanced packaging. The industry is looking to key supplier for new technology, many of which have not yet been invented. ACM's differential technology portfolio has been aligned well with these high-value process steps, and now the market is coming for us for solutions. A good demonstration is recent momentum with several key global customers outside the mainland China market. That we announced in today's press release. First, we announced that we have delivered multiple single wafer cleaning tools to Singapore facility of our Asia-based fundraisers customer. This marks ACM's first tool in relation to Singapore, a key milestone for ACM. Second, we announced that we are receiving multiple orders for our advanced packaging tool from three global customers. This includes orders for multiple wafer-level advanced packaging system from a leading global OSAT customer based in Singapore, with a delivery schedule for the first quarter of 2026. A panel-level advanced packaging vacuum cleaning tool from a leading global semiconductor packaging manufacturer based outside mainland China. Also scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 2026. And multiple wafer-level packaging system from a leading North America-based technology customer with a delivery schedule later this year. Long on to our business results, please turn to slide three. For the fourth quarter of 2025, we delivered $244 million in revenue, upper 9%. For the year 2025, we delivered $901 million in revenue, upper 15%. Top-line growth of 15% was better than growth for the overall China WFG market, which third-party estimate as January flat for 2025. We consider this good result, especially since our 2025 revenue includes very little contribution from our new products. We expect a strong product cycle in 2026 from SPM cleaning and our furnace product as we made a very good technical progress for this new product across our customer base. We also made a good progress with our supercritical CO2 joint, track, panel level plating, and PCVD, which we expect to contribute more in 2026, but more in 2027 and beyond. Sheetmen for 2025 were $854 million versus $973 million. Remember, 2024 shipment increased 63% over the year, so we had a tough compare. We also had some shipment for new product pushed into the 2026. Importantly, we expected 2026 shipment growth to be higher than our 2026 revenue growth. Growth margin was 41% for the fourth quarter and 44.5% for the full year. Q4 growth margin was slightly below our long-term target range of 42 to 48%. We attribute the Q4 level to product mixing, including a few semi-critical products with a lower margin due to the competitive pressure, and also higher seasonal inventory provisions. We expect lower growth margin to be temporary. we believe our new product ramp combined with the product design and supply chain initiative will enable us to deliver the best product at a low cost. There's no changing to our long-term target model range of 42 to 48%. Moving on, we ended the year with a net cash of $845 million versus $259 million at the year end of 2024. This balance sheet provides the foundation to continue our effort to develop world-class tools for the leading global semiconductor manufacturers. Before I review our product, I will provide a view on competitive dynamics in China and how we will win in this environment. We have recently seen a flood of new local entrants to the China capital equipment industry. In many cases, there are five or more players going after a single point product, all with very similar design and performance. We believe we will compete and win in China market because, number one, we have a differential technology with many products, almost the best in the world. Two, we have a deep portfolio of IP with strong protection in China, and three, our local customers demand the best technology in order to compete in a global market. Now I will provide detail on product. Please turn to slide four. Revenue from single wafer cleaning, Tahoe, and semi-critical cleaning tool was $626 million, up 8% in 2025, and represented 69% of the total revenue. We now estimate our cleaning portfolio addresses 95% of the application and process step, and we are working on developing the remaining solution that will bring us to 20% in 2026. We believe ACM now has the widest coverage of cleaning tool, far more extensive as compared to all competitors. Their 8% year-over-year growth in 2025 includes very little contribution from our newer cleaning line. We expect this new product, including single vapor SPM, Tahoe, and N2 bubbling wet edge to contribute more meaningfully to our 2026 revenue. As industry moves to more advanced nodes, we expect the increased demand for high-performance cleaning tools. The increased adoption of multiple patterning is driving higher layer counts, potentially impact yields, and it demands more cleaning steps with a higher cleaning efficiency. We believe this is a place right into HCM strength. For example, our proprietary N2 bubbling etching technology is uniquely positioned in the market. We are seeing growth interest for advanced 3D NAD application, where larger bubble size and the uniformity control would become more critical as industry moves to 300 layers and above. In SPM cleaning, customers recognize the advantage of our proprietary nozzle and the chamber design. We believe our platform outperforms leading competitors in small particle cleaning performance. We made a significant technical progress at the end of 2025 with our new SPM nodule design. We achieved a 15 nanoparticle size count of under 20, which we believe is the best-in-class performance for the industry. Our unique nodule design does not require any routine chamber DL water cleaning. This is a big deal for customers because it not only delivers a better cleaning environment for the chamber, but it also increased uptime of our equipment. As a result, I'm pleased to report today that we have received a strong repeat order for our SPM cleaning tools from major customers for delivering to Module 5 in 2026. We are also seeing very strong interest for our unique SPM technology from numerous global customers because they are not satisfied with the performance of their current plan of the record tool. Our supercritical CO2 dry tool integrates ACM proprietary cleaning IP while reducing CO2 consumption by approximately 40% as compared to their competitors. This results in process efficiency with lower operation cost. we made a successful in-house demo for the multiple logic and the memory customer at end of 2025. we have already received a demo po for evaluation tools from two customers for delivery middle of 2026. and we expect to deliver additional tools to multiple customers later this year in mainland china alone we estimate the incremental market opportunity for this next generation cleaning product is nearly 1 billion U.S. dollars. We remain confident in our long-term objective to achieve approximately 60% of the market share in China's cleaning market, and we expect cleaning to outgrow the China WFE this year and in the year ahead. We estimate our market share for ECP in China is now more than 40%, and we remain confident in our long-term goal to achieve 60% or more. Front and the tool represent about 70% of the mixing for a year, including our MAP, MAP+, ECP 3D, ECP G3 products. ECP back-end tool were about 30% of the mix, including our ECP AP product line. In Q4, we delivered our first Ultra-ACP APP horizontal panel level electroplating tool to an industry-leading large panel fabrication customer. Our customers prefer a horizontal plating solution versus competitive vertical plating approach due to the much better plating film uniformity and much less cross-contamination between multiple plating chemicals. We expect a growing customer interest in our panel-level solution, as industry looks for higher throughput and low cost to support advanced packaging solution for multiple large die-size and HBM AI chips. As discussed earlier, we receive order from three global customers for both wafer-level and panel-level packaging tools. Our furnace tool is under various stages of evaluation of many customers. Revenue from furnace was relatively small in 2025, and we expect a more meaningful contribution in 2026. We made several technical breakthroughs for LPCVD and ALD and P-ALD in 2025. We see good demand across multiple applications, including high-temperature, new, especially 1,350-degree version, LTCDD, ALD, and PLD. We believe ACM's essential design positions us to capture meaningful market share. Revenue from advanced packaging, which is good ECP, but including service and the SPEL was up 45% in 2025 to $76 million and represents 8% of revenue. This includes coder, developer, etcher, stripper, scrubber, and vacuum cleaning tools. We believe HCM is the only company to offer a full portfolio of web process tool and water-class plating product for the advanced packaging. We think the combination is very powerful. It provides HCM with valuable insight into the challenging of next-generation packaging as AI drives industry towards 2.5D and 3D integration. We are making solid progress with our new track and PCVD platforms. Last September, we delivered our high-throughput 300 WTH KF track tool for evaluation of the key customer. We expect a mass production qualification in 2026 for the tool. And we anticipate this will lead to demand from additional customers, including both standalone and full integrated system in line with the historiography tool. We believe our high-throughput design positions this platform to compete effectively with the current supplier. In Q4, we delivered our first ultra-liso BK system. This milestone represents the first customer deploy of our track series following early demonstration and validation. It also marked our entry into the display panel market. a new segment that requires high-volume manufacturing and strong performance stability. We anticipate to develop our proprietary PE-CVD platform. Our design has three charts per chamber, which we believe is the only one in the world. This provides flexibility for wide range of our process with the same hardware. We feel good about our positioning. As the team works through the technical detail with a field tool in our Lingang mini lab, running wafer tests, and a custom demo wafer, we expect to ship multiple EVA tools in the near term. In summary, our innovation engine contributes to drive differentiated solutions across a broader growing portfolio. As AI drives a more complex semiconductor process, customers are turning into ACM as a trusted partner to help solving their increasing challenges. Next, let me provide an update on our production facility. First, on Lingang, please turn to slide 8. Our Lingang Production and R&D Center is now our primary production center. The first building is in volume production, and the second provides capacity for the future expansion. Together, the two facilities can support up to $3 billion in annual output. During 2025, we made good progress on our MiniLine and Lingao. We have enhanced our process development capability and now support on-site customer evaluation in fab-like conditions. Our mini-line, including ACM tools and tools from other players and metrology tools, we believe the mini-line will accelerate our internal product validation, shorten R&D and qualification cycle, and strengthen collaboration with the key customers as we introduce next generation platforms. Next, our Oregon facility, please turn to slide 9. We are accelerating investment in Oregon, with the operation expected beginning in the second half of 2026. This facility will allow customers to evaluate our technology and to test their wafer locally, and it will serve as our initial base for production in the United States. Our global customers are encouraging by our commitment, which we believe will help them to choose ACM as a key supplier to scale production. We remain very pleased by the success of ACM Shanghai team, which continues to be a key supplier to the semiconductor industry in Asia. ACM Shanghai has also proven to be a great source of capital and financial flexibility for ACM. In September 2025, ACM Shanghai completed a private offering of an ordinary share, generating approximately $623 million in net proceeds. In February 2026, we complete the sale of approximately 4.8 million AECM Shanghai share at R&B, at 160 R&B per share, generating approximately $111 million in gross proceeds. AECM Shanghai also has been a good source of dividends in 2023, 2024, and 2025. We received a dividend net of tax of $19.2 million, $28.5 million, and $29 million, respectively. Our major ownership in Shanghai, ACM Shanghai, remains a strategic asset. It enhances our financial flexibility and supporting disciplined execution as we continue expanding globally. Taking together, our expanding product portfolio, increased manufacturing capacity, and the strengthening capital position give us confidence in our long-term strategy. Now turn to our outlook for the full year, 2026. Please turn to slide 10. In middle January, we introduced our 2026 revenue outlook in a range of $1.08 to $1.175 billion. This implies 25% year-over-year growth at the middle point. We reiterate this outlook today. Since our founding in California in 1998 and the establishment of ACM Shanghai in 2005, we're building a globally competitive semiconductor equipment company grounded in innovation and differential technology. Our leadership in cleaning and electroplating created a strong foundation, and we are now expanding across furnace, track, and PCVD as we broaden our multiple product portfolio. In Asia, we are recognized as a leader in wafer cleaning and plating, and we are engaging with a global customer across the U.S. and Europe. With continual progress across SGM, Tahoe, supercritical CO2 dry, furnace, track, PCVD, and panel-level packaging, we believe we are entering a new phase of the product cycle that we are driving for standard growth. We have the customer, the product, the capacity, and the capital to execute our global business plan, and we remain committed to our long-term target of $4 billion in revenue. Now let me turn the call over to our CFO, Mark, who will review details of our first quarter and full-year result. Mark, please.

Thank you, David. Good day, everyone. Please turn to slide 11 and 12. Unless I note otherwise, I'll refer to nine gap financial measures, which exclude 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 2025, and comparisons are with the fourth quarter and full year of 2024. I will now provide financial highlights. Revenue was $244 million for the fourth quarter, up 9.4%. For the full year, revenue was $901.3 million, up 15.2%. Full year revenue was in line with our original guidance set a year ago and slightly above the updated range announced on January 22nd. Fourth quarter revenue for single wafer cleaning, Tahoe, and semi-critical cleaning was $159.9 million, up 3%. For the year, this category grew by 8.1%. Fourth quarter revenue for ECP, front-end packaging, furnace, and other technologies was $64.1 million, up 23.9%. For the year, this category grew by 32.1%. Fourth quarter revenue for advanced packaging, excluding ECP, services, and spares was $20.5 million, up 23.8%. For the year, this category grew by 45.3%. I will now provide revenue mixed by customer type for 2025. Starting this year, rather than disclosing specific customer names, we are now disclosing revenue by customer type once a year. For each customer type, this includes products, services, and spare parts. We've included the mix table on slide 7 of our presentation. For 2025, our revenue mix by customer type was split among foundry, logic, and other 59%, memory, 27%, packaging, and wafer processing, 14%. For 2025, we had four 10-plus percent customers, including our top customer was 16.9%, next was 13.5%, then 11.6% and 10.2% for an aggregate total of four customers representing 52.2% of total sales. For 2024, we had four 10% customer, also for a total of 52.2%. Total shipments were $228 million for the fourth quarter, down 13.5%, and $854 million for the full year of 2025, down 12.2%. David noted we had a tough compare versus a strong 2024 when shipments increased 63% year-over-year. We also did have some shipments for new products pushed into 2026. We expect 2026 shipment growth rate to be higher than our 2026 revenue growth rate. gross margin was 41.0% for the fourth quarter in 49.8% for the full year gross margin was 44.5% versus 54.4% in 2024. Q4 gross margin was slightly below our long-term target model adding to David's earlier remarks gross margins were down 8.8 percentage points year-over-year on a quarterly basis this was due to product Product mix and margin pressure concentrated on a few semi-critical products, which contributed about five points to the headwind, and a higher level of inventory provisions that contributed about four points negative impact. As David noted, we expect the lower gross margins to be temporary. We believe our new product ramp combined with supply chain initiatives will enable us to deliver the best products at a low cost, and there is no change to our long-term target model range of 42 to 48 percent. For modeling purposes, we expect gross margins to be at the lower end of this longer-term target range for the first half of 2026 with an anticipated lift in the second half, due in part to contribution from newer products which generally have higher gross margins. Operating expenses were $70.6 million for the fourth quarter of 21%. For the full year, operating expenses were $258.4 million of 34%. For 2025, R&D was 15.1% of sales, sales and marketing was 7.8% of sales, and G&A was 5.8% of sales. For 2026, we plan for R&D in the 16% to 18% range, sales and marketing in the 7% to 8% range, and G&A in the 6% range. Operating income was $29.5 million for the fourth quarter versus $52.8 million. Operating margin for Q425 was 12.1% as compared to 23.6%. For the full year, operating margin was 15.9% as compared to 25.6%. Long term, we look to grow our R&D spending in line with revenue, but we expect to show operating leverage in SG&A with spending growth below our revenue growth level. Income tax expense was $6.6 million for the fourth quarter versus $17.3 million. For the full-year income tax expense was $13.3 million versus $35 million in 2024. For 2026, we expect our effective tax rate in the 8% to 10% range. Net income attributable to ACM research was $17.3 million for the fourth quarter versus $37.7 million. For the full-year net income attributable to ACM research was $110.2 million versus $152.2 million. Net income for diluted share was $0.25 for the fourth quarter versus $0.56. For the full year, net income for diluted share was $1.61 versus $2.26. Our non-gap net income excluded $6.4 million of stock-based compensation expense for the fourth quarter and $33.6 million for the full year. We'll now review selected balance sheet and cash flow items. Cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and time deposits for $1.13 billion versus $441 million at year-end 2024. Net cash, which excludes short-term and long-term debt, was $845.5 million versus $259.1 million at year-end 2024. $585.4 million increase in net cash for 2025 included $623 million net raised in the private offering by ACM Shanghai in 2025. Total inventory at year end was $702.6 million versus $676.4 million at the end of the third quarter. Raw materials were $349.7 million, up $23.5 million quarter over quarter. We made additional strategic purchases to support production plans and to mitigate any potential supply chain risk. Work in process was $61.4 million, up $1.9 million quarter over quarter. Finished goods inventory was $291.6 million, up $0.9 million quarter over quarter. Finished goods inventory primarily consists of first tools under evaluation at our customer sites, along with finished goods located at ACM's facilities. Cash provided by operations was $33.9 million for the fourth quarter. For the full year cash 2025, cash used by operations was about $10 million. Capital expenditures were $58 million for the full year 2025. For the full year 2026, we expect to spend about $200 million in capital expenditures. This includes continued investments in Lingong, including the mini line and the second production facility fixed assets for the business and investments in Oregon along with other items that concludes our prepared remarks now let's open the call for any questions that you may have operator please go ahead thank you to ask a question please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced to withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again one moment while we compile our Q&A roster our first question will come from the line

of Charles Shai with Needham & Company. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I believe you gave a pretty good color shipment versus revenue growth this year. So I have a question. Since you mentioned about new products, probably going to be a bigger driver this year for growth. And I wonder if you can give it some color let's say excluding the new products what's the uh growth either shipment or or revenue uh is expected to be uh excluding all the new products uh for the maybe i'm i think maybe i'm talking about the existing product lines in cleans plating etc thank you okay uh okay thank And actually, you know that is we, as we said, we made quite a big progress, right, in the SPM process.

In general speaking, SPM, hot SPM, represent 25, 30 percent of the Canadian market. And this market, you know, last couple of years, we're not in touch so much. As I said, last 2025, we made a very good progress, and both into their special model design for the high temperature and also a powerful product. So we're getting very aggressively into this market. And, again, this is a very high-margin product, and also a lot of customers, both, you know, in their mainland China or outside China, they have suffered a particular issue with this high-temperature SPM process. And we think with our proprietary design model, we can control a very good environment, So, therefore, it can be, you know, really reduced particle size. So, that can be really enhance our market growth in cleaning. Secondly, I want to say that is our end-to-bobbling, proprietary bubbling wet-etched technology is really critical for the 3D net, 3D nitrate etching process, which we believe our proprietary technology not only cover today's demand for 300 layers, layer, we believe as people moving to 400 or even 500 layer will suffer this kind of ununiformity on the veer top or veer bottom, right? So we're using large bubble and size, also with our proprietary technology, we can make a very uniform large bubble distribution in a tank. That will be really enhanced, the etching uniformity from the top or bottom for the So, we believe that's not only, you know, demand in the market in China, we also see that demand outside the global market, too. And third one I want to mention that is our supercritical CO2 try. We also made a lot of progress, right, and which is, you know, past customer demo. We have two tools, you know, scheduled to be delivered, you know, in the first or second quarter of this year. We have additional interest in coming. Again, since the supercritical CO2, with our provider design, we've got our capacity or our CO2 chamber is about 40 percent smaller. So we believe that we're really providing customer a 40 percent reduction of the consumable cost. And that really also, again, driving this product now in the local, I call it China market, but also getting to the outside China market. So with all this cleaning, I call it, together, we believe it was expansion in the future. This will probably represent, even in China, almost a billion-dollar market potential for us to get in. So we're very, you know, exciting about our continuing expanding our cleaning product, you know, in the China market, plus also give us a really strong differential technology in the global market, right? So that's for cleaning, and again, for cover plating, as I mentioned, you know, we have a full set of the cleaning product, you know, front end, TSV, back end, advanced packaging, including also, you know, this I call the compound semiconductor. Plus, recently we just, you know, announced our panel horizontal plating, which we believe is very, very key technology to driving for the panel size plating. This moment, everybody using vertical and cover plating for panel, we're the first one in the world so far doing horizontal plating, right? With our differential technology, we believe probably most likely we're the only one in the market to drive another horizontal cover plating. So this is also we see the bigger interest, you know, not only in the China market. We see also a lot of interest, you know, coming in for us to deliver, you know, this tool. So, with that, all new product, you know, in our existing cleaning carbon plating can drive a lot of revenue this year, including next year, right? And then, plus, as I said, our other furnace and PCVD and also truck business were developing for the last four or five years, really made a lot of technology breakthrough, too. So, believe those technology getting this year started in market, and we're really sustaining our next three to five year growth, and which you know that last three, four year, our major growth is coming from cleaning the copper rating. And next few years, we see this new product coming with definitely strengthening our high growth profile in next few years. So we're very, you know, exciting, very, you know, trying to, I was executing our strategy to continue to grow our revenue.

Thanks David, maybe a question on profitability. So you reported the last year, you get some color about this year, but I believe if my math is right, your operating margin will compress the last year from maybe close to 26% in 24 to 16% in 25. But this year, based on your – what you guided about growth margin, what you guided about R&D, SG&A, doesn't look like operating margin can rebound, feels like operating margin probably more or less the same or even coming down a little bit depending on how the growth margin trends for the remainder of the year. So, I want to get some sense, what's the reason for operating margin being under pressure for almost two years, and how do you plan to address this, and maybe try to expand the operating margin from here?

Yeah, actually, let's say, you know, looking at growth margin, right, where they're probably top of the company in China, right, for growth margin, right, for the last few years. And as you said, Q4 of our inspect Q4 last year, we do see our, you know, first-time gross margin is, you know, lower than our range, 40% to 48%, right? As we're explaining maybe three factors, one is the product mixing. We have, you know, one or two product, which is a semi-critical tool. Do have, you know, pressure from the competitor for pricing, you know, there. The next one is really our, you know, this inventory provision. But we think this year as we are new product coming, as I mentioned this, you know, three Canadian products coming, we're definitely in council margin. And also our inventory provision, we believe will be also greatly reduced too. So with that, we still have a confidence working in the 40 to 48, you know, gross margin in this And more than that is, as you said, we put quite a bit of R&D last year, right? It used to be R&D 13%, 14%. Last year, we're getting to 16%. We probably will keep that number in a way. Why? You know, the next few years, AI is driving a lot of demand for the new technology. And everybody else in the first-tier company in China, all people put a lot of R&D. And so, we'll continue to invest that, which we know will impact a little bit, you know, our operation margin, but it's worth spending money now. Why? I said opportunity is there, right? And a lot of customer real demand for the new technology, which I believe a lot of AI technology today have not invented yet. So, it's really give ACM good opportunity without, I call it our innovation, you know, power, artificial technology development capability, we can use this AI as a trend, we'll catch a lot of our new technology and also catch the customer. This is one good example, for example, right? So again, and it's worth to spend more R&D, even get a few percent of the operation margin lower, which is real long run, and we're working for the invest interest and also the growth ACM, you know, market into the next few years.

Hey, David, I might add a few things. I think that was a good overview. But, Charlie, I think kind of summarizing it up, you know, we're spending into the $4 billion market opportunity. You know, there's a number of products that – areas that we've been investing in that haven't scaled yet, but we expect them to scale over the next few years. It's the right thing to do to spend into that. You're right about the operating margin for 2026 kind of comes in at the mid-teen level, you know, similar to what it was here in 2025. You know, you move out a few years, you know, our target is to keep those gross margins at that target range and then, you know, grow our top line faster than our op-ex. I think you can see some leverage in the out years.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, Rob.

Thank you. Charles?

Thank you. one moment for our next question our next question will come from the line of Edison Lee with Jeffries your line is open please go ahead oh hi David and Mark congratulations on the results I just have two quick questions number one is that for the fourth quarter the margin is a little bit low and the revenue growth also is a little bit slow and then your shipment I think declined for on a year-on-year basis so how much of that is just product and when you think these numbers will actually start improving in 2026. And then the second question is about the 111 million U.S. dollars you raised by sending down HCMS. Can you share some light as to how you would actually utilize that proceeds?

Okay, so let's answer your first question, right? I think that you're looking there, I guess I mentioned last couple of years, our major growth engine from cleaning and also cover plating, right? Even the cleaning, as I said, there's one important product, which is SPM process. We're not touched too much. As I mentioned last year, you know, end of last year, you know, Q4 last year, we made a significant progress with this, you know, special model design. We believe our performance and outperforming and, you know, top tier as a tool. So, we see that a growth continuously, right? And so, then I would say our cleaning, cover plating, also horizontal panel continue to expand it too. So, that will keep momentum. Our cleaning market, you know, probably today in China, about 35 range, we're expanding to 50, 60 percent, you know, in the next few years. And the copper right now, the 40, I still say we're trying to cash 60 in China. More than that is those products, different products, we see that very high interest from global, you know, top-tier customer. So that's what we also reinforce our sell outside China. So that's what I see that, you know, impact our revenue, you know, for our existing product. And also I want to see that in the last five years, we are really working the differential, you know, PE, CVD, and track, and then also furnace technology, which, you know, we believe a lot of our new technology we're putting in, and nobody had it before, right? So that's what really reinforced our, I call the market position, and plus, those tools, it really, with our differential technology, we put a lot of time to develop IP, develop the roadmap, and it cost a little bit a long time than, you know, the other guys. So, and now it's come the moment for the market, and plus, I want to see another bigger impact is I call the improvement is the last Q3, we start using Ling Gong or Mini Line, which we do not have before. That was really helping our internal demonstration, internal R&D speed. We see the bigger, you know, impact already, so that will be helping our tool mature before ship the customer. So, with all together, I want to say, you know, this is a new growth, and from the existing and also our new product coming in, we're driving ACM in real high growth profile in the year, and this year, and in the next few years, so we're very confident, plus even I say, you know, WFE market in China is a flat, we can get a higher growth rate because the new product coming in, and plus also, as you say, we've made a lot of progress in a global customer, you know, this news announced, you know, today, we also see a lot of interest in coming into our differential technology from top-tier customer because we have a pattern that has been, you know, locked the technology already. They almost have no choice. They have to come to us. Anyway, so that's really exciting for our technology. We're really trying to push in our, you know, technology will benefit the international global customer for their AI challenges.

Yeah, let me add on to something before you answer his question about our Shanghai stock So, Edison, for Q4, you probably remember last call, we mentioned that, you know, Q4 in the year, you know, the overall year came in at the midpoint of where we started the year, maybe a little bit better. And don't forget, we had two things. Our newer products didn't kick in very little in 2025. And then we did have a customer push out from Q4 into 2026. And so that was kind of those two things that hit 2024. I'm sorry, the Q4. When you look out to 2025, we're expecting linearity pretty similar to 20 – I'm sorry, 2026. We're expecting our linearity to be pretty similar. So the first half will be about 42%, 43% of revenue. second half will be you know 57 to 58 percent but you know I would kind of anticipate Q1 at about 18 to 20 percent of the full-year mix maybe David if you wanted to take this question what are we going to do with the cash that we raised in or that we sold you know the cash that we sold all right sorry mark mark mark can you hear me yes yeah hey before before we move on to the use of Can you also comment a little bit on what you said about, I think, some product setting, some pricing pressure, which I think partially account for lower margin in the fourth quarter? Yeah, and there's not much to add to what I said there, you know, or what David and I both said. You know, there were a couple of semi-critical products that had particularly low margins that hit us in Q3 and Q4. And we, you know, David mentioned in the prepared remarks, he talked about the competitive situation in China. You know, we are very focused on developing world-class tools. We think that, you know, there was also a bigger provision in the back half of the year. So, we think that'll be the overall provision for 2026, probably be smaller than it was in 2025, and it'll probably be more balanced throughout the year.

Okay. so you only touch it there how we use them proceed right yes okay well obviously we have a second offering in China right those money will be real focusing on R&D again our expansion for their manufacturing we have a second building we'll start to you know decoration this year so with that add together probably we can manufacture 3 billion annually and which is really give us a lot of room for manufacturing, and plus, we also put money in the meeting line. As I mentioned, this meeting line really speed up our internal R&D and debugging the tool, and also even can do their joint development with the customer process, too. So it's really, you know, worth spending for those money. And the proceeds we got from the, you know, sold 1.3 percent from Shanghai here, definitely the major purpose for that was spending global, you know, customer, global marketing itself. So we see that opportunity, you know, really big in a global market. As I mentioned, we do have some differential technology might be the only solution for their, you know, AI challenging. So those products, we think, will be really gather attention from the global customer so we have to spend money and you know building the international uh uh strong self-channel and also where you know we already had a korea manufacturer base already and however you know with this uh geographic uh tariff going on where the real uh mini mini minimize the tariff impact right so that's why we started assembly tool in So that would be real, reduce our concern or any dynamic changing for those terrible impact our revenue. So anyway, that's really what we'll come. And our goal is very simple. We try to work in with, you know, with a certified oil regulation and a requirement and maximize the investment interest. We're building a global sales, global company. That's our goal.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks, Edison. Yeah, appreciate it. Next question, please, operator.

One moment, our next question comes from the line of Jimmy Hong with JPMorgan. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Hi, Debbie, can you hear me?

Yes, please.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. Congrats for the good results. I want to ask about we deliver single wafer cleaning tools to a Singapore gas foundry. What would be the potential size of shimans in terms of units or dollars this year or next year? And next year, yeah, please. This is my first question.

Yeah, very good question. Actually, we know we have a few tools, or we're in the installation process right now, right? This tool, you know, this tool will be qualified and going in production, you know, this year. And with that, we definitely will induce more of a cleaning tool. And also, we do have a capability in the behind. So, that's really what gives us exposure of product, you know, in the Asian market. And so it's already real making more of a, I call it confidence, and also get a high interest from other players in Asia and the market too. So we see this is a really bigger milestone for us. And plus, you know, we're not only looking at customers only in Singapore, and we do have a customer in Korea, and also we have a customer, you know, potentially in Taiwan. So, we have really confidence, you know, we should have expanded quickly in the Asia market. And plus, again, you know, we're also very focusing on our U.S. market, too. We do have advanced packaging tool, PO, and receiving, and we should deliver by end of this year. And we still have a lot of potential going on in the U.S. market, too. Again, because today, all the memory, all logic, they're, you know, they're AI-driven for their advanced technology. ACM, you know, I want to say, I feel good technology really needed for their production line. We believe that's really beneficial for the customer and also can help expansion market to global.

So it's a great opportunity. because again in innovation is the key and every every customer and every key customer they all demand for innovation technology which will properly fit our you know strategy yeah yeah thank you dr wang yeah so for singapore business has a chance that we penetrate to uh singapore gas memory makers in the next few years and my second question is for We are making great process, but you know for Taiwan, Taiwanese foundries, and also leading the panel-level packaging for AI GPUs and ethics. Can we talk about our POP progress with potential Taiwanese players? Do we have any like order forecasts or purchase orders from Taiwanese potential customers?

Yeah, actually, you know, we are talking to a few key customers, right? even a panel, large size, 515 by 510, and also we're talking about their 310 by 310, right, which is a true vision right now people are trying to push in. So we have very good exposure to those customers. By the way, April 7th, 8th, we're attending the panel conference in Taiwan, and in that conference, we'll do the keynote speaker about the horizontal plating and also our vacuum cleaning technology. So, it's really a lot of exciting, I want to say, interest coming in. And also, you know, I said, I heard everybody say panel product or equipment, they're probably satisfied all other products except their plating. So, plating become the bottom leg for their production expansion. So with that, you know, demand, I said, we are the only one supplying horizontal plating. You probably heard that is the one key player in Taiwan, they said they only want horizontal They don't want vertical. So, our horizontal plating perfect fits their strategy or their demand. So, as I said, really we see the big opportunity and, you know, with our panel product. Actually, we're not only trying to say we do so far three products, right? Panel plating, vacuum cleaning, and also the bevel. We're going to develop also additional, you know, and code developer, web etcher, and cleaning all kind of web tools we're putting in, too. So that's really what we catch the real, this wave of the panel, I call it a shift, right, for the advanced packaging. So we're in a very good position for those coming panel advanced packaging expanding. We're very excited about this opportunity, right?

Yeah, but do you know like in which kind of periods, quarters, it will be more clear that whether we all have any for all the forecasts or purchase orders for these POP equipment?

Well, you know, let's put it through, right? We're announced that we do have also TO from outside mainland China, right? I mean, we said already. So, you know what I mean here. So, and then we're continually expanding more, right? So, again, I want to say this year, we have a confidence catch additional PO for our, you know, for our vacuum cleaning and also for the horizontal copper plating. Not only in Taiwan market, we also see the opportunity in Korea, also in Singapore, by the way. So, it's very exciting.

Thank you. Maybe I can squeeze in my last question about the FAQ. that ACM has disposed a small portion of staff in ACM Shanghai. How do we think about more further staff disposal in the future? You mentioned that U.S. international capacity bills will require more funding. Will we dispose of more staff of ACM Shanghai in the future?

Repeat the question again. Can you repeat again?

He's asking are we going to sell more of our ACM Shanghai?

Ah, I see, I see. Okay, you know we sold 1.3% already, right? and we just get a proceed, you know, about 111 million. And, you know, we do have both arms to raise money. We can raise the U.S., we can raise the Shanghai. We're very flexible for what we were choosing, number one. And this moment, I want to say our Shanghai stock is still, you know, we think it's still undervalued, okay, with our growth. So, we maybe consider what the money demand and timeline, also what's the stock pricing in Shanghai. We decide, you know, where or when, or we should sell additional or not. And plus, as the world has several arms, you know, we can raise the money in the USA. So, it's quite flexible for us to raise the fund. And this moment, you know, I want to say, well, obviously, we'll continue investing more in global market, and we have no concern for those, you know, money where it comes from, right? We're very confident. We also have another knob, another tool, we can get money anyway.

Yep. Thank you so much for all my questions. Thank you, Dr. Wong. I'll be back to the queue.

Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no more questions in the queue, let me turn the call back over to Stephen Palau for closing remarks.

Okay, great. Before we conclude, I just want to give everyone a quick reminder on our upcoming investor conferences. On March 9th, we will participate virtually in Loop Capital Markets' 7th Annual Investor Conference for one-on-one meetings. On March 23rd and 24th, we will present at the 38th 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.

This concludes the call, and you may now just connect. this concludes today's conference call thank you for participating and you may not just connect everyone have a great day