Lam Research - Q4 2024
July 31, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good evening and welcome to the Lam Research June Quarterly Earnings Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Please note this call has been recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ram Ganesh, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Ram Ganesh (VP of Investor Relations)
Thank you and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the Lam Research Quarterly Earnings Conference Call. With me today are Tim Archer, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Doug Bettinger, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During today's call we will share our overview on the business environment and we will review our financial results for the June 2024 quarter and our outlook for the September 2024 quarter. The press release detailing our financial results was distributed a little after 1:00 P.M. Pacific time.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
The release can also be found on the Investor Relations section of the Company's website along with the presentation slides that accompany today's call. Today's presentation and Q and A include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties reflected in the risk factors disclosed in our SEC public filings. Please see accompanying slides in the presentation for additional information.
Today's discussion of our financial results will be presented on a non-GAAP financial basis unless otherwise specified. A detailed reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP results can be found in the accompanying slides in the presentation. This call is scheduled to last until 3:00 P.M. Pacific time. A replay of this call will be made available later this afternoon on our website and with that I'll hand the call over to Tim.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Thanks Ram and good afternoon everyone. In the June quarter, Lam delivered another set of solid results with revenues, profitability and earnings per share all coming in above the midpoint of our guidance. Our CSBG business posted strong growth with revenues up 22%, sequentially led by Reliant and Spares. On the manufacturing side, we achieved a key milestone in the quarter with our Malaysia factory shipping its 5,000th chamber.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
This is the fastest ramp of a new manufacturing facility in Lam's history and we remain on track to achieve our long term cost reduction goals through an expanded global manufacturing and supply chain footprint. As previously communicated, 2024 is a year of strategic investment for Lam where we are prioritizing product development for key technology inflections, global R&D infrastructure close to our customers and digital transformation for operational efficiency at scale.
We believe these investments will put Lam in a position to outperform as the industry moves into a period of multi-year WFE spending expansion. Now turning to WFE, we expect this year's spending to be in the mid-$90 billion range. Our customer investment profile is generally unchanged from our prior view. Apart from slightly stronger domestic China spending and additional demand related to the ramp of high bandwidth memory or HBM capacity, we see foundry logic, DRAM and NAND investments all up on a year-on-year basis. Global spending on mature node technologies is expected to be roughly flat year-on-year. Looking ahead to 2025, we see a positive environment for continued growth in WFE spending. The power of AI as a transformative business tool is still yet to be fully realized.
Today the focus on AI model training is driving strong demand for GPUs and HBM. However, as AI use cases expand, we believe inferencing at the edge will spur consumption growth of low-power DRAM and NAND storage in enterprise PCs and smartphones. Investments for AI-enabled edge devices play particularly well to Lam's strengths. We anticipate that memory customers looking to scale capacity and lower bit cost will bias WFE spending toward technology upgrades of the installed base for NAND. The etch and deposition intensity of upgrades is significantly higher than in a greenfield investment when you consider Lam's sizable installed base in memory including roughly 7,500 high-aspect-ratio dielectric etch chambers for NAND alone. We are positioned to outgrow overall WFE when customers upgrade existing memory production lines to next-generation nodes.
Longer term etch and deposition are set to play an increasingly vital role in the industry's efforts to develop faster, more power efficient and lower cost semiconductors to serve AI related applications. By delivering critical solutions for atomic level device scaling, new materials innovation and advanced packaging integration, we see tremendous opportunity for Lam to expand our served market and increase our share at each successive process technology node. To this end, our R&D focus is yielding exciting new products including this year our first direct power coupled conductor etch tool with matchless power source and bias. Known as DirectDrive, this new power source uses solid state drivers to stabilize the plasma in the etch chamber 500 times faster than current industry standards.
By combining direct power coupling with Lam's unique plasma pulsing capabilities, our latest conductor etch systems are delivering best-in-class performance for newly emerging 4F squared DRAM applications. In 4F squared devices, the nature of the bit line placement requires precise etching of ultra small high aspect ratio silicon structures to avoid device shorts or leakage.
With direct power coupling and plasma pulsing, Lam connects the vertically oriented 4F squared transistor architectures with unprecedented depth, uniformity and profile control. Similarly, conductor etch is becoming a critical enabler for EUV patterning for gate-all-around and DRAM. Due to the need to reduce edge placement error for nodes below 2nm, the requirement is for roughly 40% tighter control than at 5nm. Our new conductor etch tool delivers a 30% reduction in feature roughness, which is one of the main contributors to edge placement error.
In addition, we can achieve 1-2 orders of magnitude improvement in defectivity for a given EUV dose, further helping customers reduce the overall cost and improve the capability of the EUV patterning process. Turning to NAND, AI applications are driving demand for faster, higher-capacity enterprise SSDs. NAND makers are pursuing both vertical and lateral scaling of NAND arrays as well as increasing bits stored per cell through implementation of QLC and PLC technologies. In support of these efforts, Lam is developing new dielectric etch and deposition capabilities. Earlier today we announced Lam Cryo 3.0, Lam's third generation of cryogenic etch technology. Building on our learnings from nearly 1,000 cryogenic etch chambers running in NAND fabs worldwide, this new patented cryogenic etch process delivers industry-leading control of the NAND memory channel hole profile.
When Lam Cryo 3.0 is deployed on our Vantex system, the etcher delivering the industry's highest available ion energy, we can create a 10 micron deep channel hole that has a top to bottom profile deviation of less than 10nm or less than 0.1% relative to its depth. Such tight profile control allows customers to increase bit density by packing more cells per layer while also having the flexibility to add more layers per tier. Lam Cryo 3.0 also addresses our industry's need for more sustainable solutions, delivering a 40% reduction in energy consumption per wafer and a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per wafer compared to non cryogenic etchers. Deposition technology is also advancing quickly to support increased bit density and lower cost through multi tier stacking. Polysilicon and tungsten gap fill materials have typically been used to enable tier stacking in high layer count.
NAND integration of these materials, however, has resulted in poor control of critical dimensions and overlay, negatively impacting yield and performance. Lam's innovative PECVD-based pure carbon gap fill process provides an attractive alternative material with a unique combination of high etch selectivity, superior mechanical properties, and simplified dry post-process removability. It also reduces the number of process steps required in some cases by approximately 50% compared to traditional approaches. Overall, etch and deposition are becoming increasingly critical to addressing the complex semiconductor requirements of a growing AI environment.
We are excited by the breadth of opportunities we see ahead for the company, especially those created by technology inflections to gate-all-around backside power delivery, advanced packaging, and dry EUV resist processing. All of these are etch- and deposition-intensive, and each represents a billion-dollar or higher growth opportunity for Lam. We look forward to sharing our progress on these fronts as well as our long term financial model at our next Investor Day, which we are planning to hold in February 2025. With that, I'll turn it over to Bill. Great.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Thank you, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. We executed well in the June 2024 quarter. Our June quarter results came in above the midpoint, or exceeded our guidance ranges for all financial metrics. We were pleased with the company's strong execution for fiscal year 2024. We achieved the highest gross margin percentage since the merging of Lam with Novellus in 2013, coming in at 48.2%, and we generated quite strong free cash flow of approximately $4.3 billion for 29% of revenue. Let's look at the details of our June quarter results. Revenue came in at $3.87 billion, which was an increase from the prior quarter and over the midpoint of guidance.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
Our deferred revenue balance at the end of the quarter was $1.55 billion, which is a decrease of $194 million from the March quarter related to revenue recognized that was tied to customer advance payments. As we sit here today, I believe deferred revenue will remain stable at these levels for the foreseeable future. Let's turn to the revenue segment details. June quarter Systems revenue in memory was 36%, which was a decrease from the prior quarter level of 44%. The decline in the memory segment was mainly attributable to DRAM. DRAM came in at 19% of systems revenue, compared with 23% in the March quarter as investments in mature nodes declined in the June quarter. DRAM revenue reached a new record in fiscal year 2024 with spending focused on DDR5 and HBM enablement as well as on the 1Y node.
Non-volatile memory came in at 17% of our system's revenue, which was down from the March quarter level of 21%. Just a reminder, we are characterizing one customer's investment in specialty DRAM as a non-volatile investment since it has a non-volatile component in the device. NAND revenue was at a low point for this year and I expect NAND investment to gradually improve as utilization rates return to more normal levels and our customers slowly increase spending in conversions to 2xx and 3xx layer devices into the next year. The foundry segment represented 43% of our systems revenue, which was roughly flat with the percentage concentration in the March quarter of 44%. Growth in shipments for gate-all-around nodes was offset by a decline in mature node spending.
The Logic and other segments were 21% of systems revenue in the June quarter, up from the prior level of 12%. The increase was driven by strength in mature node spending in China. With respect to the regional composition of our total revenue, the China region came in at 39%, down slightly from the prior quarter level of 42% and a little bit higher than our expectation from the previous earnings call. This was driven by domestic China spending. The next largest geographic concentration was Korea at 18% of revenue in the June quarter versus 24% in the March quarter. Taiwan was 15% of revenue in the June quarter, which was an increase from 9% in the March quarter. The Customer Support Business Group revenue in the June quarter totaled approximately $1.7 billion, an increase of 22% from the prior quarter level and 14% higher than the June quarter.
In calendar 2023, CSBG revenue represented 44% of our June quarter revenues and reached the highest point since the end of calendar 2022, driven primarily by an increase in Reliant systems followed by growth in spares. Our Reliant systems revenue benefited from strength in domestic China spending for specialty and mature nodes. Spares revenue increased largely due to continued improvement in utilization at our memory customers as well as a little bit of inventory stocking. I do now think CSBG will grow modestly in calendar year 2024. Let's look at profitability. Our June quarter gross margin came in at 48.5% at the top end of our guided range and slightly down from 48.7% in the March quarter. June quarter gross margin benefited from continued improvement in factory efficiencies, which largely offset the headwind we saw in customer mix that we talked about on the last earnings call.
Operating expenses for the June quarter were $689 million, down marginally from the prior quarter amount of $698 million. As Tim mentioned, we continue to prioritize spending in research and development to extend our technology differentiation as well as expand our product portfolio. I'd just point out that more than 70% of our total operating expenses were concentrated in research and development. The June quarter operating margin was 30.7% above the guidance range, mainly because of that strong gross margin performance. Our non-GAAP tax rate for the quarter was 11.5%. We estimate the tax rate for the remainder of the calendar year 2024 to be in the low- to mid-teens level and this rate will fluctuate from quarter to quarter. Other income and expense for the June quarter was approximately $19 million in income compared with $10 million in income in the March quarter.
The increase in OI&E was primarily the result of fluctuations in the fair value of our venture investments and as we've talked about in the past, you will see variability in OI&E quarter-to-quarter. Let's pivot to capital return. We allocated approximately $382 million to share repurchases and we paid $261 million in dividends in the June quarter. During the quarter we announced that our Board of Directors approved a $10 billion share repurchase authorization. We have $10.8 billion remaining in the plan at the end of the June quarter. For fiscal year 2024, we returned $3.7 billion or 88% of free cash flow, which was in line with our long-term capital plans of returning 75%-100% of free cash flow. June quarter diluted earnings per share were $8.14, close to the high end of our guidance range.
The diluted share count was 131 million shares, on track with our expectations and down from the March quarter. Let's look at the balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents totaled $5.9 billion at the end of the June quarter, up a little bit from $5.7 billion at the end of the March quarter. Day sales outstanding were 59 days in the June quarter, a slight increase from 57 days in the March quarter. June quarter inventory turns of 1.9 times compared with 1.8 times in the prior quarter. We are making progress in bringing inventory levels down and we'll continue to work on this throughout the rest of calendar year 2024. Our non-cash expenses for the June quarter included approximately $79 million for equity compensation, $74 million in depreciation and $14 million in amortization.
Capital expenditures were $101 million flat with the March quarter level, with spending mainly centered on lab investments in the United States and Asia as well as manufacturing facilities in Asia, supporting our global strategy to be close to our customers, development and manufacturing locations. We ended the June quarter with approximately 17,200 regular full-time employees, which was flat with the prior quarter. Let's turn to our non-GAAP guidance. For the September 2024 quarter, we're expecting revenue of $4.05 billion ±$300 million. Gross margin of 47% ±1 percentage point. This gross margin decline is reflective primarily of an unfavorable quarter-to-quarter change in customer mix. I expect this change to continue to be a slight incremental headwind in the December quarter.
Operating margins of 29.5% ± 1 percentage point, gross margin and operating margin, including impact from ongoing transformation costs related to projects to improve our systems and operations. As we communicated at the beginning of the year, we're focused on re-engineering our business processes and systems to drive operational efficiencies and to implement AI at greater scale. Finally, we're forecasting earnings per share of $8 ± $0.75 based on a share count of approximately 131 million shares.
Let me wrap up. As we finished the first half of calendar year 2024, I was pleased that we were able to execute to the objectives we shared at the beginning of the year. We prioritize investment to extend our technology differentiation while driving operational improvements. We're encouraged that the spares business recovery is beginning and upgrade activity should improve as we exit the calendar year.
Longer term, Lam is well positioned to capitalize the increase in etch and deposition intensity by delivering new capabilities at multiple new manufacturing inflections that we see ahead. We look forward to talking to you in February at our planned investor day about the long term opportunities for Lam to continue our outperformance in the semiconductor industry. Operator, that concludes our prepared remarks. Tim and I would now like to open up the call for questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Your first question comes from Tim. Please go ahead.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Thanks a lot, Doug. I wanted to ask about the service. System mix in the guidance. So you said that the service. I thought you said that you now think it's going to grow modestly this year, but if I flatline service in September and December, it's up 8% year-over-year. So can you just clarify what you're thinking for service and the guidance? Thanks.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Yeah, Tim, we don't decompose the individual components of the guide. I was clarifying we now expect CSBG to be up a little bit for the year. It was particularly strong in the June quarter. Whether it is up, down or sideways from that as we go forward, I'm not going to give you individual components of the forecast, but I do think for the year it's going to grow a little bit.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Okay, great, Doug, thanks. And then can you talk a little? Bit about. Just in DRAM? I think, I think there's generally more excitement, Tim, about DRAM WFE than NAND WFE among most investors out there about where it could go during this next peak. Obviously you do very well in NAND, but in DRAM you did talk about a lot of the investments that you're making. Can you just talk about, I know you're leveraging the advanced packaging part of the HBM dollars being spent, but that's still a pretty small piece of it. So can you just maybe give a chance to kind of dispel some of the view that you're not very levered to DRAM and give us a sense of maybe where you're investing and where you think you can gain share in DRAM? Thanks.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Sure. Thanks Tim. And as you said, we do very well in NAND and we still think NAND day is coming. As I said, we've seen some of those commentaries around enterprise SSDs et cetera. But on the DRAM side, the reason we highlighted the progress we're making especially in this conductor etch one, it's a new tool we've introduced, it's new capabilities that are very exciting for the industry and really targeted towards the types of ultra small structures that are going to exist in future DRAM nodes going forward. Lam is the global leader in conductor etch and so we're applying all of that expertise and learning we have towards future DRAM challenges and I think there's tremendous opportunity for us on those applications.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
As I pointed out the other side of it, you know, a lot of the excitement around DRAM is related to HBM and there, as you commented, we play extremely well with our strong position in both TSV etching as well as the TSV electroplating. And I think that we don't see any change in that strong position going forward. So we get the benefit both from the scaling and architectural changes that are occurring in DRAM going forward and from the advanced packaging and HBM related expansion. And all of these on both of those sides are multiplied by the fact that you get fewer bits per wafer. And so everybody recognizes you're going to need a lot more DRAM wafers processed going forward. And ultimately that translates into more equipment from Lam. Thank you, Tim.
Ram Ganesh (VP of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Tim.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from Krish Sankar with Cowen and Company. Please go ahead.
Krish Sankar (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. My first one is for Doug. I think, Doug, you gave some color on China. Kind of curious how to think about China into the back half of this calendar year and into calendar 2025. And along the same path you kind of mentioned that December quarter there could be a slight more gross margin headwind. Is there a way to quantify how? Many basis points that headwind would be in December compared to the 47% in September? Then I had a follow-up with Uncertain.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Yeah, sure, Krish. I'll just remind you what we said last quarter. It hasn't really changed from this quarter, and what that statement was that for the year 23-24, China is up. However, it is a somewhat first half weighted year. This year, as opposed to last year, it was somewhat second half weighted. I'm not communicating, "Hey, it's going away." It's not going away. It's showing just the spending because sometimes these customers are a little bit bigger than a breadbox. It can be a little bit lumpy, and that's very much what we're seeing in China. I'm not ready to tell you exactly what next year looks like from the China region, but I do think it's going to be a pretty solid year. Again, it's not going away. It's too soon for us to quantify things for next year. 2025 should be a pretty decent year in China. Krish.
Krish Sankar (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Doug, any color on the December quarter gross margin?
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
You know, I'm not going to give you a number, Krish, but I've been signaling for a while that because of customer mix margin will have a little bit of some headwind going into the second half of the year. I just guided you to 47 in September and suggested that there might be a little bit of incremental headwind into December because it could customer mix is what I said in the script.
Krish Sankar (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Got it, got it. Thank you for that, Doug. And then Tim, just a quick follow-up. You know, when I look at all the upcoming tech inflections like Gate-All-Around, Backside Power Delivery, maybe down the road, 3D DRAM, you spoke within that the transition to 4F Squared DRAM from 6F Squared, I'm kind of curious, is that really that material and if so, is there a way to size the opportunity for Lam at 4F Squared? You spoke a little bit about conductor etch. Just kind of wondering if you could give some more color around how to quantify that number for the 4F Squared architecture transition.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Thank you. Sure. Well, I don't think we're prepared to quantify it for you today, but I think that my comment was we see each of these inflections, and 6F squared to 4F squared is a technology inflection that brings with it some important changes. I mean, one, the architectural layout of the device itself puts additional requirements on etch, which I think we're very well suited to serve. And that's why we've been developing new conductor etch capabilities to target those new requirements. So there is some incremental opportunity there. Clearly the jump to 3D NAND is a much bigger step up in etch depth intensity. But you know, our goal is to increase our SAM and grow our share at every technology node. So we look at whatever is the new requirement and how we can best address that.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
You also look as you look at DRAM going forward. Another thing that's happening, whether it's 6F squared as you move to 4F squared, is the implementation of more EUV layers and how LAM plays in EUV. Again, anything where effectively pattern transfer, etches, the feature sizes are getting smaller, precision is required. These are the kinds of high tech that LAM excels at. And so we look at participating in those. And then on the deposition side, of course, we talked about things like our dry EUV resist process and how that plays into EUV as DRAM and foundry logic transition from EUV to high-NA EUV. And so we're just looking at every technology node as an opportunity for us to gain.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Thanks, Chris.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Srini Pajjuri with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Srini Pajjuri (Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst)
Thank you. Tim, I have a question on DRAM. Obviously the recovery has been ongoing and HBM is a secular driver that you talked about and you do have a very strong position in that market as well. Then I look at your revenue. I think it peaked around December 2023 and it's been kind of declining on a sequential basis. I'm guessing some of that is maybe mature node DRAM. Just wondering if you're kind of at the bottom. And then given all the talk about HBM spending, I would think that it's going to kind of shoot at some point come back strongly. So I just want to hear your thoughts on why it's been declining and how should we think about in particular in DRAM revenue.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Yeah, I think you generally have it pretty correct. We had talked about the fact that some mature node DRAM spending was a little bit heavily concentrated in the second half of last year through early part of this year even. And as that came off, there was some of a reset in what we would call kind of traditional or the conventional DRAM that is being picked up at some rate by the growth in HBM. But HBM itself is still in its ramping phase. And I think that as we look into 2025 becomes an even bigger driver of wafers in DRAM. And so I think that explains probably the profile.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
I think that as we look forward, the secular driver of HBM, the impact on wafer, effectively, how many wafers requires to produce that number of bits due to the die size and due to the complexity of stacking these DRAMs, means that we see DRAM demand for DRAM equipment continuing to grow through 2025 and probably well beyond that.
Srini Pajjuri (Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst)
Okay, got it, thank you. And then on the CSBG business being up 20% sequentially, 22%. I know you don't want to give us guidance going forward, at least for next quarter. I'm just curious about the sustainability of some of the trends that you're seeing, Tim. And then what does that mean for the overall WFE? Is this a prelude to something? And is this just the utilization improving? And then does this usually follow in terms of WFE increasing, in terms of new tech migrations or capacity additions? So any color on that would be helpful.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Sure, it's a good question. And I guess again, reminding people that the CSBG business includes our Reliant business, which sells into mature nodes, it includes spares, it includes upgrades and services. And so each of those components move somewhat differently. And we talked about this quarter particularly being strong as a result of Reliant and spares. We are starting to see a pickup in utilization in the memory fabs as we've talked about. And I've talked a little bit about the fact that as we look forward, we think that upgrades will begin to become a much more prominent part of our customers WFE spending as they look to upgrade memory fabs that really haven't been upgraded in quite some time because of the severe downturn that we've seen in those markets over the last few years.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
And so I do think going forward you see a little bit more of a balance between those different segments. Upgrades coming up stronger and spares continuing to grow simply because our installed base itself continues to get bigger. Traditionally we would have always said that we would expect the CSBG business to grow every single year. And that's simply a fact of every year we ship more tools and those tools then require services and spares and basically present new opportunities for Lam to capture revenue from those systems. So I think long-term CSBG will be returning back to that growth and next year probably much more biased towards the upgrades business as customers start to do memory fab upgrades. Thanks Srini.
Srini Pajjuri (Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst)
Thanks Tim.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from C.J. Muse with Cantor Fitzgerald, please go ahead.
C.J. Muse (Senior Managing Director)
Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. I guess first question was hoping to focus on gross margins. A couple quarters ago, Doug, you talked about kind of looking back to the June kind of 2023 quarter as normalized, but given the guide today, it sounds like that was conservative and it's a higher number. So just as you think about calendar 2025, as you get to kind of a normalized China mix and you normalize to Reliant what would be kind of the base level we should be thinking about for gross margins and then can you talk to, you know, what kind of accretion we should be thinking about related to Malaysia and or some of these higher margin upgrade drivers?
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
C.J., I mean you've alluded to some of the things that move gross margin obviously. Yeah. I had previously anchored you and others back to that June quarter before the China mix improved or strengthened, I guess, maybe not improved, as the baseline and guided it down a little bit in September, described customer mix softening a little bit relative to moving that, and I'm not suggesting, hey, a little bit more in December. Potentially it's all about customer mix, too soon for me to guide you for next year. But the things you should be thinking about is what does that customer mix look like next year.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
I'm not sure yet, and I'm not ready to point you to numbers. But what will begin to show up in a more significant fashion is the accretion from those Asia factories as we ramp output, that will be a benefit to gross margins. So those are the moving pieces to be thinking about, the customer mix. I'm not entirely sure. But as we see a likely WFE environment next year that's somewhat stronger, increasingly the incremental volume will be supported from those Asia factories which should be beneficial to gross margin. C.J.
C.J. Muse (Senior Managing Director)
Very helpful. Then I guess as my follow up, you know, in your prepared remarks you spoke to the 7,500 high aspect ratio etch chambers installed in the NAND industry and just curious. As you see upgrades there, what kind of growth could that add to, you know, overall NAND WFE, you know, specifically to you guys, is there kind of a percentage we should think about? Any help there would be great.
Tim Archer (CEO)
We haven't quantified that, but the reason I included it was simply to point out the install base itself becomes a powerful driver of revenue during those upgrade cycles. And we do think that the next phase we've seen higher memory fab utilization particularly we talked about NAND beginning to improve last quarter and that seems to be continuing as we move through the remainder of this year, we get to next year and the upgrades start in earnest. Those tools represent opportunities for Lam to help our customers achieve both a technology upgrade and a bit cost reduction as they move forward and accrues quite a lot of revenue for Lam relative to the amount of WFE spend. I'll remind people the WFE Lam's capture rate of spending in an upgrade is significantly higher because etch and deposition represents so much of the upgrade. That was the reason we pointed out the size of our installed base.
C.J. Muse (Senior Managing Director)
Thanks so much
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
. Thanks, C.J.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein Research. Please go ahead.
Stacy Rasgon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. First, I wanted to ask if the. NAND business next year is primarily driven by upgrades. What does that imply for growth? Like, would it be conceivable that NAND WFE could double year-over-year net in calendar 2025 if it was purely upgrade driven? Or would you need capacity additions to get there? And are you seeing any signs at all of capacity additions right now?
Tim Archer (CEO)
Doesn't sound like it. Well, Stacy, what I would say is that obviously we're not going to guide what NAND WFE is next year. Frankly, I think it's still a developing story. But what we're trying to say is that as customers move to upgrades, whatever WFE is spent, LAM will be the primary beneficiary of that WFE spend.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
And so that's a year in which my comment was we would be confident that we would outgrow WFE in the NAND space if it was primarily upgrade spend, and upgrades represent a tremendously efficient way for customers to essentially advance their technology and lower their costs. And so we do think that will be the next phase of NAND investment based on our thoughts.
Stacy Rasgon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Got it, got it. I mean, maybe to follow up on. That's just a little bit, I mean. If you look at your current like NAND outlook for this year, would you say that that outlook has gotten better? Or worse or stayed the same versus like 90 days ago.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Probably hasn't changed much. Stacy, this is Doug. Maybe a little bit better. We're starting to see a little bit of an uptick in utilization, but I don't think it's meaningfully different, Stacy.
Stacy Rasgon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Sorry. Got it. Kind of in the noise.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Yeah, kind of in the noise.
Stacy Rasgon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you guys. I appreciate it.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Thanks Stacey.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from Harlan Sur with J.P. Morgan, please go ahead.
Harlan Sur (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. You know, given the strength in CSBG, it looks like utilization by your customer base continues to rise. Did that also broaden out to start? To include not just leading-edge logic foundry, DRAM and NAND, but maybe also. Start to include mature and specialty fabs as well? Or at a minimum mature and. Specialty utilizations at least stabilizing in line with some of the cyclical improvements that. We're seeing in the semi industry.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
All-in mature node stuff is still pretty soft frankly. I think you understand what's going on if you just listen to everybody else's earnings calls in the analog industrial automotive space, you know, there's still a lot of inventory out there. It's still relatively soft. The statements we're making around utilization have more to do with what we're seeing in the memory fabs, quite frankly.
Harlan Sur (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
I appreciate that. Then on HBM and Advanced Packaging, I mean last night, you know, we. Heard AMD talk about supply dynamics being. Tight on their AI GPU supply next. year CoWoS and HBM. On the custom ASIC front, we hear companies like Broadcom keep getting upside orders from their AI customers like Google. Last quarter you talked about doing $1 billion in advanced packaging and HBM revenues this year, has that number moved? Higher, and is the team capacity constrained? On Advanced Packaging systems? And are your lead times here for. Those tools starting to stretch out?
Tim Archer (CEO)
Well, it has moved higher and we're not going to requantify it just yet, but it is, you know, we're seeing very strong demand in those areas. You know, I talked about the expansion of our global manufacturing supply chain footprint and obviously that's giving us more flexibility than we had during the last ramp. Our goal through all those investments was.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
To be able to respond in this next few years of expansion better than we did in the expansion that we saw right around the time of COVID. And so I think that that will position us. Sure, you're always a little bit short and customers always drop in tools within your lead time, which keeps you busy. But I think that we're doing quite a nice job responding to the urgent requests from our customers.
We actually like this. I would say that generally from running the business, we like this environment where all parts of our business are a little bit supply constrained. I mean, you hear a lot of our customers talking about being cautious about adding capacity, other customers talking about having a little trouble getting tools. I think that's a good place for us to be because it means that I think we're setting up for a more manageable long term ramp of demand than sort of a short spike followed by again periods of digestion that always create a little bit of chaos in the industry.
Harlan Sur (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you, Tim. Thanks, Doug.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Thanks, Harlan.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from Atif Malik with Citi. Please go ahead.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
Hi. Thank you for taking my question, Doug. If I look at the 2023 year-over-year China sales growth among the big five equipment makers, all of them are up quite well. ASML is up like 250% and the U.S. peers are up teens or 20%. But you guys were down 11% total China sales in 2023 and this year you're expecting China sales to be up. So I'm just trying to understand the dynamics last year were this just a function of maybe NAND spending and the NAND project not being active or are there competitive elements in China that are working against you?
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
If I'll remind you that perhaps our largest customer got restricted when the regulations came out, our NAND customer in China, that customer was pretty strong in 2022, went away in 2023. So the year-over-year comparisons you're making, you've got to factor that in. And then the strength we're seeing 2023 to 2024 is a different mix entirely. Really not any NAND in China to speak of, at least not domestic China. I don't know if that helps you, but make sure you're thinking about that.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
Yeah, it all makes sense. That does. Helpful. Then, on the cryo improvement, Tim, that you mentioned, are those improvements or process rules of record going to solidify your market share next year or the year after?
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Well, I think that all of these. Things, I mean when you introduce something new, I think what people kind of lose sight of is generally we're working several years ahead with our customers on R and D. I talked about the investments we're making where we're building labs close to our customers in different geographies. That's because in many cases we're engaging those customers a good five years ahead of production implementation. Now it's not to say, Lam Cryo 3.0 is going to take five years to get into production. But it's not a technology that's ramping, say this year, but it really is looking out at the needs of our customers one to two generations out and really solving their difficult etch challenges.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
So sometimes when the benefits are so good, and I talked about the fact that we get about 2.5x the etch rate, tremendous profile control, customers will often pull that in sooner. But really this is designed for kind of the 400 layer may ultimately end up being pulled in earlier than that. But that's where you really start to see the needs for this kind of capability.
That's exactly what I was asking about. If it's 400 layers or 200 layers, but it sounds like 400 layers.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Yeah. And I think that what we, you'll see in our press release today, we talked a little bit about, you know, we're trying to chart the path across not only etch, but also our deposition films towards where the industry needs to go to get to 1000 layers. Because we truly see over the next decade that that's where you want to get in terms of satisfying bit density and cost as NAND demand continues to expand with AI.
Krish Sankar (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Great, thank you, thank you.
Operator (participant)
Next question comes from Toshiya Hari with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Toshiya Hari (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Hi guys. Thank you so much for taking the question. I joined late, so I do apologize if these questions have been addressed just on the third generation cryo tool, Tim, that you spoke about. How is this technology or tool fundamentally different or better than your nearest competitor? I know you just spoke to some of the characteristics, but if you can clarify that for us to the extent you're comfortable, that would be really, really helpful. And then my second question, again on the CSBG side, probably one for Doug. And again, you may have addressed this for the full year, calendar year. I think you previously said flattish plus or minus. Is that still the view or given the strength you saw in June, is that should we be thinking about a higher growth rate for the full year? Thank you.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
That's Tim. Maybe I'll take that one first and then I'll let Tim come in on the 3.0 stuff. Yeah, you might have missed my scripted statements as we sit here today. We now expect that for 2020, the word I used was modestly grow this year versus last year. Part of that is we saw particular strength in the June quarter in Reliant, little bit of improvement in spares. As we think about the utilization trends that are likely occurring with our memory customers. I think spares continues to be decent and we're optimistic that we'll start to see some of the upgrade spend that we've been talking about for a while. I'll hand it over to Tim on the 3.0 stuff.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Sure, Doug. I think obviously what I would just start with is the biggest difference between what we're delivering with Lam Cryo 3.0 and what our competitors do is in the results on the wafer, which we talked about: pretty amazing 10-micron deep holes with less than a 10-nanometer taper from top to bottom at etch rates that are 2.5 times conventional etching. So it's the results that are pretty amazing.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
We talked about the fact that this is based on some new surface chemistries that are enabled in our tool, and there's a whole combination of hardware configurations and capabilities in our tool that I think allow us to achieve that result. And I can't go into all of those details today, but it is, I did allude to one of them, which is on our Vantex system. The chamber design allows us to deliver a significantly higher ion energy than what is available from any other system available in the semiconductor industry. That does play some role in etching these very, very deep holes with near perfect verticality. That's about all I can say today.
Toshiya Hari (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you. Appreciate that.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Thanks for.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from Joseph Moore with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Joseph Moore (Managing Director)
Great, thank you. I wanted to ask you, I mean. There's been a number of press concerns about export controls with talking about the Foreign Direct Product Rule, which doesn't seem like it would affect you, but also talking about Entity List and I'm just wondering, obviously we don't know what would happen with any of that, but are you seeing any different behavior from your China customers? Are you seeing them push things in or pull things, push things out because of any of those anxieties?
Tim Archer (CEO)
Yeah, Joseph, I think that obviously we don't know exactly what's going to happen either, just as you said. And so we can't really speculate on that. I have mentioned in the last couple of calls that there are ongoing discussions all the time with the U.S. Government and regulatory agencies where part of those discussions and will continue to be, I think in terms of change in behavior by any of our customers. I don't think it's something that's noticeable nor would it be something that we would be able to easily react to. We've talked about how we deal with some of these new customers that emerge with down payments and other things to make sure that we understand those customers as viable customers. But beyond that, we service them like others at this point as long as we can ship to them. And I would say lead times and responsiveness from our perspective is same as we treat any customers of those size.
Joseph Moore (Managing Director)
Very helpful, thank you.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Thanks, Joseph.
Operator (participant)
Next question comes from Blayne Curtis with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Blayne Curtis (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, thanks for letting me ask a question. Actually, I know you got a couple on this, Doug, on the China business. I was kind of curious. I think you qualified as a solid year next year and I just didn't know what that meant. So I know you've been hesitant to kind of call China. I think you called it like flat plus or minus maybe up or down last time. Do you feel better about it? I guess outside of this June? That's the other kind of part of the question. Just you can qualify a little bit. I mean, you should have some idea of what you're going to ship. They pay ahead. So it's June, kind of a cleanup and it might be a little bit lumpy. Or is China actually trending a bit better for you?
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
I don't know, Blayne, that I'm trying to communicate anything any different than we said on the last call, to be honest with you. We described this year as somewhat front half weighted. Really no change to that. The June quarter was maybe a little tiny bit stronger in China, but only a little tiny bit. It's too soon for us to quantify 2025. But what I would tell you is I expect next year to be a solid year in terms of spending in China. I'm not going to give you a number yet because I'm not completely sure. But what I wouldn't want anybody to think is it's going away because it's not. Gotcha.
Blayne Curtis (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
I'm just kind of curious. The broad strokes was growth for next year. I know you don't want to give a forecast, but in terms of the moving pieces there, I mean it's pretty clear the leading edge is strong. DRAM's been strong. I'm just kind of curious as you look into that forecast, if you're willing to venture kind of a view on the NAND business.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Yeah, I think NAND spending next year has to be greater than it is this year. Right. We're off two years of quite low spending in NAND. I don't know to what magnitude. I expect next year. We expect next year. You're going to see a lot of upgrades in NAND, but too soon for us to give you a number. But I would be shocked if it's not stronger than it is this year. It has to be.
Joseph Moore (Managing Director)
Thanks, Doug.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Yeah, thanks Blayne.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from Joseph Quatrochi with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Joe Quatrochi (Senior Equity Analyst)
Yeah, thanks for taking the question. I wanted to try on the NAND side again. If we just think about your prior peak NAND revenue ex-customers that are obviously now restricted, can capacity upgrades to just higher layer counts support your return to those levels? Just given your higher share and the higher etch and depth intensity for the transitions?
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Joseph, you know, if it's just an upgrade, your spending will be lower than when capacity gets added. Obviously our share of wallet will be greater. You know, the fact that we lost a pretty large NAND customer in the China region, hard to replace that. I'm not ready to tell you what kind of next year is relative to previous peaks, but I know next year is going to be a stronger year in NAND than it is this year for sure.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Yeah. And Joseph, I think that, you know, obviously if we're talking next year, it's very specific to the demand environment and the Upgrade business in 2025. Longer term, I mean we've laid out in our view is that demand spending rises and so it's just a matter of the time frame you're looking at and from the standpoint of Lam's business, the etch and dep components and the complexity of tier stacking, the precision that's required for implementation of QLC and PLC technologies, all of these skewed towards Lam's technical strengths and also spares expansion opportunities. I talked about the PECVD pure carbon gap fill process which is a new addition to the portfolio for NAND scaling technology going forward. And so if I go back and. I look at where we were in.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
The portfolio we had to sell when people used to think of NAND is a very, very strong producer business for Lam. You know, we've expanded that portfolio quite substantially with the gap fill, the backside stress management, the ALD oxide gap fill process, plus the etch and stack depth that we've always had, as well as metallization. So it's one of growth in NAND but also growth in Lam's portfolio and served market as well, opportunities ahead. So I think that bodes well for us once the NAND business itself starts to recover.
Joe Quatrochi (Senior Equity Analyst)
Thanks for that, that's helpful. Color. And just as a quick follow up, you know you talked about global mature node spending being roughly flat this year. Can you just help us understand just kind of how does that break down?
Tim Archer (CEO)
I mean, I think clearly, you know, that the non-China piece is pretty weak, but just any kind of color that you could help us parse that out.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Yeah, you kind of answered your own question, Joseph. You know, China is decent right now. Outside of China it's pretty soft and I think you understand what's going on. There's inventory that's built up four days. Inventories still need to come down in the mature node. Analog, industrial, automotive space and investment won't meaningfully occur until that gets adjusted. So that's kind of what's going on. You sort of answered your own question.
Joe Quatrochi (Senior Equity Analyst)
Fair enough. Thanks.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Thanks, John.
Operator (participant)
The next question is a follow up question from Krish Sankar. Please go ahead.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Hi. Thanks for taking my follow-up, Doug. I just had a quick follow-up. It's a question on inventory. We spoke about bringing inventory turns down. I'm kind of curious how to think about inventory next year, especially if you're planning for a strong WFE year in 2025 or do you think most of this inventory would be in a bin? How to think about inventory next year. Thank you.
Yeah, listen, if you think back to when business declined for us last year, a big part of what fell off pretty rapidly was our NAND business. And so a lot of the inventory that we still have sitting on the balance sheet will support NAND. So when assuming NAND is stronger next year and it will be, we will consume that NAND inventory that's been sitting on the balance sheet for a while. What will offset that to certain extent is growth elsewhere where we'll need to procure new inventory. So I'm not ready to give you an inventory forecast quite yet.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
But we're continuing to work as we go through the remainder of this year to kind of bring it down. And then what we do with next year will depend largely on the timing of business, the mix of business, the geographic distribution of business. But we'd like to get turns back to where they historically have been and they're not there yet. So that's how you should be thinking about it. Krish, thank you very much.
Krish Sankar (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Very helpful. Thanks Gav.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Melissa Weathers with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Melissa Weathers (Research Associate and VP)
Hi there. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask on the leading edge and specifically Gate-All-Around nodes. I don't think I heard an update to your $1 billion Gate-All-Around revenues in 2024 target. So is that still the case? And then as we think about those nodes ramping through next year. Like what's the trajectory of that ramp that we should be thinking about as you move from pilot lines into high volume manufacturing?
Tim Archer (CEO)
Yeah, thanks, Melissa. I mean, we always make choices about what we do and don't include in the prepared remarks. Gate-All-Around fell out this time. Just. No intended message. In fact, if I look at what happened in the quarter, Lam again, as we've talked on previous calls, is really positioned quite nicely with our forward-looking etch in depth portfolios.
Atif Malik (Networking Equipment analyst)
We really targeted those kind of markets with new tools in selective etch, which is a market we hadn't been in before. And in fact in the quarter we had additional selective etch wins for gate-all-around multiple customers. We targeted investment in ALD films that are specifically needed for things like spacers and gate-all-around and we had additional wins in the quarter for those films. You know, often with gate-all-around we think of those technologies, they're obviously different technologies, but kind of occurring at the same node. The backside power delivery, that's an area that is really right in our sweet spot in terms of deposition and etching. In the quarter we had wins in backside power and ALD oxide. So I would say net. Net.
I mean, given, given those wins and what you're hearing from the end markets about the need for high power computing, demand for AI, I think the $1 billion forecast we gave you certainly as we move through next year would be, would be going higher. And so again, that's a combination of rising demand but also a product portfolio that's both expanding and one in which we're winning share. And so there was no message about leaving it off, but thank you for asking the question so we could get that in right at the end.
Melissa Weathers (Research Associate and VP)
Perfect. Yeah, thank you. I'll stop my questions there.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Great.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Okay,
Tim Archer (CEO)
thank you.
Doug Bettinger (CFO)
Awesome operator. I think that concludes our call. I want to thank everybody for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you at a variety of conferences and interactions as we go through the remainder of the quarter. Appreciate it.
Tim Archer (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.