Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

But going forward, we will be improving margins in that business and we’re committed to that low double-digit growth rate for our services business. And again, just the components of that will be a growing installed base, a more intense, tool need for services and spares and information services, and then the ability to have the win-win with subscription agreements with our customers for those services.

Harlan Sur: Great color. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Srini Pajjuri from Raymond James. Your question please.

Srini Pajjuri: Thank you. My question is on ICAPS as well. Gary, I think in the past you talked about ICAPs being about half of your business, and given the slowdown, you’re expecting a couple of things, I guess you talked about China slowing down a bit in the short term. How do you see the non-China ICAPS business over the next 12 months? And where do you see ICAPS versus the other business mix, I guess, exiting, let’s say fiscal ’24. Thank you.

Gary Dickerson: Hi, Srini. Thanks for the question. So ICAPS is half of the total foundry logic business. So historically that’s — it’s been in that zip code. So foundry logic is about a third, ICAPS is about a third, memory is about a third, with the compute memory DRAM being stronger than storage memory NAND. So that’s the mix. And I would expect that that mix will continue going forward. I mean, in any point in time, you could have some small changes in the mix, but we see foundry logic still remaining very strong going forward with that, about two-thirds of our overall business split between the leading edge and ICAPs. If you think about the big inflections, there’s AI for high performance computing, but there’s a lot of growth in edge computing across many different industries.

So when we look at the markets, we think that mix is going to be pretty much similar to what we’ve talked about before, one-third foundry logic leading, one-third ICAPS, one-third memory. And then did you have another question or Brice, did you want to add anything?

Brice Hill: Yeah. I’ll just add on, just, Srini, just a reminder for investors here. Our longer term view is mid to high single digits for ICAPS as well as the whole semi component, but mid to high single digits. And we do expect that to be consistent for China. We do expect that to be consistent for non-China. And we saw — as we communicated in our prior quarter, we did see several geographies growing faster than China. So this is definitely a global market, not just a China market. And China isn’t even, half of the market, as we communicated. And then as far as the slowness goes, or, any lighter year, what I would say is our guide in Q1 includes an ICAPS that’s very strong and continues to be very strong. So the way we’re thinking about it is ’22 was very strong, ’23 was even stronger. We may take a breath here with lower utilization, but we expect this market to continue to grow.

Srini Pajjuri: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Timothy Arcuri from UBS. Your question please.

Timothy Arcuri: Thanks a lot. I know you guys have been pretty reticent to provide a 2023, WFE number. Everyone else’s, first they said 75. Well, first they said 70, then they said 75 and now they’re saying 80. But it really can’t be 80 because if you add up all five suppliers, it’s more like flat year-over-year. So can you give a sense of what you think WFE will be this year? I mean, I do agree, even if it’s $90 billion, you’re going to still gain share this year. But — so I guess the first part of the question is, what is the baseline this year for 2020 — for, WFE? And then I want to find out what’s the message on 2024? I hear the message about mix changing, but are you committing to WFE being up next year or you’re not willing to make that commitment yet? Thanks.

Brice Hill: Hi, Tim. Thanks for the question. So for ’23, we’ve heard all of those numbers also, and we just feel it’s best for us to report what we see from our seat. And for us, ’23 was a growth year. We highlighted as we went through the last few quarters how strong DRAM and ICAPS were and how, having exposure to those two markets and a leadership position in those markets helped us offset weakness that were in some of the other markets, NAND and leading logic primarily. So definitely everybody can do the math. They can see what our numbers will be with the guide. And that should help with your calculation of what the overall market would be. And then for ’24, we’re not calling the total. Again, we’re trying to characterize what we’re seeing in each market.

We do think DRAM will continue to be strong. We think NAND will come up off of a, low position. We think leading logic will grow through the year, especially as Gate-All-Around begins to ship. And we think ICAPS, it’s strong in Q1 still, but ICAPS may take a breath with lower utilization. So we’ll have to see how that plays out. And then packaging was strong in ’23 and we expect that to continue.