ASM International (OTC:ASMIY) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
ASM International reported Q1 2026 revenue of 863 million euros, a 16% increase year-on-year and 26% quarter-on-quarter growth, driven by strong performance in logic foundry and memory segments.
The company's gross margin remained robust at 53.3%, supported by a favorable product mix and cost reduction initiatives, with expectations for margins to remain at the higher end of the 47-51% target range for the year.
Strategically, ASM International is focusing on AI-driven semiconductor demand, with plans to expand in advanced packaging and maintain strong momentum in advanced logic foundry and memory sales.
The company anticipates revenue growth in Q2 2026 to approximately 980 million euros, with the second half of the year expected to be stronger than the first.
Management highlighted ongoing supply chain challenges but expressed confidence in managing these issues while also benefiting from increased demand, particularly in China and the advanced logic foundry sector.
Victor Barinho (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you Victor and thanks to everyone for attending our first quarter 2026 results conference call. We'll follow the usual agenda for today's call. Paul will begin with a review of our first quarter financial results. I will then discuss market trends and our outlook, followed by the Q and A session. I will now turn it over to you, Paul.
Paul Hagen (Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you, Hisham. Let's now move on to the Q&A and A session to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate. Please limit your questions to no more than two at a time. Operator, we are ready for the first question please.
Thank you. This is the Chorus Call conference operator we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press N1 on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press N2. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press N1 at this time. We will pause for a moment as participants are joining the queue. First question is from Andrew Gardiner, City
Thank you. And just a clarifying question, the point you were making on China in the second half. So that China down second half on first half or down year on year or perhaps it's both?
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Next question is from Nigel Van Putten, Morgan Stanley.
Got it. That's, that's really helpful. Then now maybe switching to the advanced logic customers which I understand are providing increased visibility maybe, you know, eight quarters on a rolling basis. Question would be do you see any sort of broadening on the horizon? Sort of cleared out? The main customer remains very strong. But how are the other two doing maybe today and how do you see that developing into the second half of the year?
Next question is from Didier Shema, bank of America.
Okay, thank you. And for my follow up for Q2, would you expect China to be up sequentially or flat or how should we
think about that relative to your overall sequential growth guidance what we've said indeed is that for next quarter we expect 980 million euros, plus or minus 5%. We also said that for H1 we see an accelerated demand for China coming in for various reasons, what I just discussed in the call before. So I think it's reasonable to assume that also Q2 China will be pretty good.
Thank you so much. Very clear.
Next question is from Francois Bovinier, UBS.
Good to know. Thank you for the call up, Paul. And maybe, you know, item you didn't address, maybe the memory layers and maybe 2027 and then you mentioned market share higher in a 14. So can you maybe explain, you know, a bit the higher share here? I mean, is it because just your time is getting higher than the others or you just, you know, have more layer than you expected or more than that before?
Great, thank you very much.
and about the lead time. Sorry.
Okay, and that's exactly my follow up. I mean you're going to be at at least 1 billion per quarter in the, in the second half run rate and there's probably some additional growth coming in 2027 given what you said and what we see in the market. So at what point Will you reach capacity at your plants, especially in Singapore, requiring a capital expenditure increase?
Okay, thank you very much.
Next question is from Sandeep Deshpande, JP Morgan.
Next question is from Aditya Metuku, hsbc.
Okay, no worries. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. And the second one is last quarter we discussed that the 1.4 nanometer is mainly driven by one customer versus others. Have been having discussion with you but still a bit distant away from pilot production, etc. I'm just wondering where is the status of those remaining customers? Are they getting closer to make the decision on pilot production or they still further down the line?
Just to confirm, have you seen any progress during the quarter? All of them have moved forward or just one of them moved forward comparing to last quarter.
Can you repeat your question please?
So basically the timeline of the 1.4 nanometer transition last quarter you mentioned that 1 is active preparing for pilot production. Remaining 2 is still in discussion only at this stage. I'm just wondering, this is three months is after have you actually seen other customer together with a leading customer or moved forward in a timeline for 1.4 nanometer or just one customer has moved forward instead of all three of them?
I'm going to repeat my answer. We see 1.4nm strengthening broadly with some strengthening marginally in some customers and significant increase in other customers.
Next question is from Jacob Bluestone, BNP Pariba. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to come back to Adi's question around your ability to sort of take part in growth in memory. And my question is when do you anticipate the transition to 4F squared and FinFET for the cell periphery in DRAM to impact your revenues? So is this something that would impact in 27? Is it 28 or do you think it's further out?
Yeah, I think it's really broad based. That's really broad based. It's not only one customer, it's very broad based.
Next question is from Ruben Davos. Kepler Schuber.
Yeah, good afternoon. I just had one on EPI in hbm. I believe you talked about significant AP engagements with another HBM customer and expect good news this year. So of course curious whether two months on has anything firmed up on that additional qualification and would that be let's say fully incremental to your memory plan in 26?
Okay, so to answer your question, yes, we talked about that and we are, we are engaging with other customer on Epitaxi. There's really nothing else to say right now but we'll let you know if there's any news from that point of view. It's really working with customer on a couple of customers on Epitaxi and hopefully we can share some good news with you in the next investor call meeting.
And then second one really to just get a feel of maybe the aftermarket sales.
Thank you, Tim. We still have a number of participants in the queue, but we are running out of time. So let's take one final question. Operator, can we have the last caller. Final question is from Javier Coronero, Morningstar Equity Research.
Thank you. Okay, that concludes the Q and A. Thank you all for attending our call today. Also on behalf of Hisham and Paul, thank you. Goodbye