Global Semis and Semicap: Notes from the road - Takeaways from meetings at SEMICON West

Bernstein hosted meetings with management teams from Applied Materials, Lam Research, PDF Solutions, Soitec, Nova, FormFactor and Advanced Energy at SEMICON West. AMAT sees unprecedented AI-driven demand in leading-edge foundry-logic, DRAM and advanced packaging, expects WFE spending through 2030 to grow faster than in the prior decade, targets more than 2ppts of WFE share gain from 2025-2030 and 2030 gross/operating margins of about 54%/40%. Lam expects strong 2027 WFE, has visibility several quarters out and remains confident in its mid-50s gross margin target. PDF Solutions is expanding its analytics model across the value chain, with eProbe a meaningful growth opportunity. Soitec expects photonics-SOI to grow about 2.5x-3x and is capacity constrained, with a EUR750M two-year capex plan. Bernstein rates AMAT, LRCX, PDFS and Soitec Outperform.