Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brice Hill: Okay. Thanks, C.J. Maybe I’ll start with the 2024, because I think you were embedding a question there on, in ’23, how much did we benefit from unserved orders in ’22? We think that’s about $0.5 billion to $1 billion. All of that was served in the first half of the year. So, what you’re seeing from us in ’23 besides that $0.5 billion to $1 billion is largely tracking with the business that we see, the WFE business that we see during the year. So, there shouldn’t be an overhang. There shouldn’t be a benefit from any previously booked business that we see now or going forward. And, as far as sustainability, that’s one question we get regularly. The second question that we get regularly is just about ICAPS and the sustainability from China.

And well, that’s the most the largest country in ICAPS for China. It’s not the fastest growing. That’s sort of a — that’s a global trend and a global demand function. We see that as very sustainable. We think Gate-All-Around will start shipping in earnest in ’24. We think our Services business will grow in ’24. We think that the Display business will be a little bit better in ’24. So those are kind of the bits that we’ve given for ’24. Otherwise, we’re not going to give a specific forecast yet for ’24 or for the January quarter.

Gary Dickerson: C.J., this is Gary. Maybe I’ll add a little bit more color. On the leading-edge foundry logic, what we see is more of that spending moving to materials-enabled technologies, which is the sweet spot for Applied. So, if you look at, again, the nodal spending more is shifting to materials engineering. Gate-All-Around, we’ve talked about, that’s a $1 billion opportunity for us. Backside Power, when that comes in, that really leverages all of our strength in interconnect. And that’s probably the same zip code in terms of size of opportunity for Applied. ICAPS, we’ve talked a lot about, formed the organization four years ago. We’ve introduced 20 major new products since we formed the organization. And we still have room to grow in ICAPS share.

DRAM, I talked about. I think people really maybe don’t understand the strength we have there. I talked about those big inflections in gaining 10 points of overall DRAM WFE share over the last 10 years. Packaging, that’s a $1 billion business for us now, and we see an opportunity to double that over the next few years. And as Brice said, Services, we’re going to be up in Services in a relatively weak memory market in terms of utilization, and we’re still on track for low-double digit growth. So, again, those are some of the things that really will help us outperform over the longer term.

Michael Sullivan: Yeah. Thanks, C.J.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vivek Arya of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Vivek Arya: Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to understand what measures do you have in place to ensure that there isn’t a pull forward of your mature technology shipments because of geopolitical reasons or because of take or pay arrangements? Do you have ways to measure the utilization of what you are shipping? And if I kind of just ask that same thing in a different way, do you think Applied will grow in line, above or below whatever WFE does in 2024?

Brice Hill: Hi, Vivek. Thanks for the question. I’ll answer the second part first. So, we do think Applied will grow faster than whatever the WFE is for the market. And that’s a good way to think of it, because we think of — we think and plan for long-term secular growth, and we think we’ll grow faster. On the question of pull forward, in specific to China, we’ve got many ways to test that equation. One of the things that we do is we look at the amount of local capacity relative to local consumption. We think that there’s strategic direction in the country and strategic incentives in the country to make the investments that will at least equal local consumption. And we think those things are tracking together and can rationalize what they’ve put in place from that perspective.