Categories of investor
relations activities
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☐ Specific object survey ☐ Analyst meeting
☐ Media interview √ Performance briefing
☐ Press conference ☐ Roadshow
☐ Site visit ☐ Others
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Date
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May 10, 2024
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Venue
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Conference call
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Participants of the
listed company
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Chairman: HUI WANG
General Manager: JIAN WANG
Person in Charge of Financial Matters: LISA YI LU FENG
Board Secretary: MINGZHU LUO
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Summary of investor
relations activities
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I. Company Introduction: Leaders of ACM Research (Shanghai), Inc. (the "Company") gave a brief introduction to the Company's performance and financial position in Q1 2024 and responded to concerns of investors.
II. Q&A
1. Q: What is the expected acceptance progress of electroplating and cleaning equipment at the client side and the trend of gross margin in Q2 this year?
A: The Company expects that the acceptance of electroplating and cleaning equipment at the client side will gradually be reflected in Q2, Q3 and Q4 of 2024. The Company expects gross margin for 2024 to be at the upper end of its 40%-45% target range.
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2. Q: What about orders for the Company's high-temperature single-wafer SPM equipment and its proportion in cleaning equipment this year and next year?
A: The Company's SPM tools include Tahoe, low-temperature single-wafer SPM, and now, high-temperature single-wafer SPM tools. Tahoe is beginning a ramp up phase. Until now, we believe there has been only one major supplier of high-temperature single-wafer SPM tools. We believe the Company has recently made great technical progress with our high-temperature tools, and with independent global intellectual property rights, we believe the Company can participate as an alternative supplier. We estimate the total available market for SPM tools is 25%-30% of the total front-end cleaning market, and we believe the differentiated competitive advantage of our products will also help the Company gain domestic and international market share.
3. Q: The Company has now completed client-side verification of the first SAPS cleaning equipment with a U.S. customer. Will the Company be able to receive repeat orders from this customer?
A: With the first SAPS cleaning tool now qualified by such customer, the Company expects to receive repeat orders in the future. The Company is focused on multiple U.S. customers and believes that its differentiated cleaning tools are gaining recognition among other U.S. chipmakers. In addition, its advanced packaging equipment is expanding into the U.S. and Korean markets. In the future, the Company plans to leverage the competitive advantage of its differentiated equipment to actively explore overseas markets and provide more valuable products to customers.
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4. Q: The Company's products have already been verified at the SK Hynix's Wuxi plant. If the Korean plant expands production in the future, will the Company's products have to go through verification repeatedly? What is the pace of subsequent deployment in the Korean market?
A: The acceptance standards of SK Hynix's Wuxi plant and the Korean plant are unified, so there is no need for repeated verification. The Company has increased its resources in Korea to promote differentiated products to Korean customers.
5. Q: Based on the newly signed orders announced by peers, the industry as a whole appears to be in a state of differentiation. Is the number of the Company's newly signed orders growing rapidly or remaining steady?
A: We believe the Company's revenue growth has been good for the past several years. As per usual practice, it expects to disclose its orders at the end of Q3 in 2024.
6. Q: This year sees an expansion of domestic advanced packaging fabs. With the Company's rich product portfolio and the customers' need for expansion, what size of orders can the Company reach?
A: The Company has a comprehensive range of advanced packaging equipment. With the growth of domestic packaging factories' demand for 2.5D and 3D packaging, we believe that there is a great potential for increased domestic orders for the Company's equipment. Meanwhile, the Company also intends to develop markets in Korea, the U.S., and Taiwan, aiming to obtain overseas orders.
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7. Q: From the perspective of the entire industry, what will be the trend of future capacity expansion for advanced processes and mature processes?
A: As we see from the Chinese market, we believe major domestic fabs are still in a period of continued capacity expansion. We expect that the capacity for domestic mature processes will continue to expand.
8. Q: Is this year a year of rapid domestic verification and introduction? What is the overall growth rate of the Company's equipment this year?
A: The Company is continuously promoting the introduction of different types of tools and customer verifications this year. We believe the Company's cleaning and copper-plating products have achieved a good footprint amongst our mainland China based customers, and the number of customers for furnace equipment has also expanded. We expect the number of customers for furnace equipment to increase to 17-18 this year, indicating the gradual adoption of furnace equipment among customers.
9. Q: Compared with front-end equipment, what is the expected growth rate of orders for back-end advanced packaging equipment? Will the sales revenue proportion increase?
A: Based on the demands in both the domestic market and the overseas market, we believe that the advanced packaging market has great room for growth, and we expect its sales revenue to account for about 10%-15% of total revenue in 2024.
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10. Q: Can the Company's equipment be applied to the HBM production line, and what is the progress of related equipment?
A: We believe the Company's entire line of wet cleaning equipment and copper-electroplating equipment can be applied to the DRAM (High Bandwidth Memory, HBM) process. The SAPS megasonic single-wafer cleaning equipment can be applied to deep-via cleaning of TSV, reducing its leakage current by 2-3 orders of magnitude. The Company's copper-plating equipment is also adopted by multiple major customers for TSV copper-plating. In the future, we expect the HBM market to be a growth point for the Company, with the application of our PECVD and furnace ALD equipment to HBM production lines.
11. Q: The revenue in 2024 is expected to be RMB5-5.8 billion. What is the revenue proportion of each product category, such as electroplating equipment and advanced packaging? What changes will occur to the revenue proportion of each product category in the future?
A: The sales mix of the cleaning equipment is currently growing significantly and is expected to remain at about 70% of revenue. The Company now covers around 90%-95% of cleaning steps. This year, the revenue mix of copper-plating and furnace equipment is expected to be around 15%-20%, while that of advanced packaging and other back-end equipment is expected to be around 10%-15%.
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12. Q: What is the current progress of the Company's new PECVD equipment products?
A: The Company expects 2-3 customers for PECVD this year. Meanwhile, the Company's Lingang Research Laboratory is also expected to open between May and June 2024, which we expect will accelerate the R&D progress of PECVD, cleaning equipment, and furnace equipment. We expect that the differentiated design of our PECVD products will meet the high requirements of customers in the future.
13. Q: What is the current progress of the Track product, and what is the plan for developing future customers?
A: The front-end coating development Track equipment is a natural result of the Company's accumulated expertise in cleaning, advanced packaging coating, and development over the past 10+ years. We expect the first batch of process results for ArF coating and development to be produced in mid-2024, and additional products to be launched at the end of this year, featuring a higher capacity architecture design that applies to the KrF process. Based on the back cleaning technology, the immersion ArF coating and development process is also expected to be launched simultaneously. In the future, differentiated product designs are expected to generate greater value and benefits for customers.
14. Q: What is the approximate process coverage of PECVD?
A: We expect it to be about 50% this year.
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ACM Research Inc. published this content on 17 May 2024 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 17 May 2024 20:07:57 UTC.