The company's shares rose 3.5 percent to $17.10 in extended trading on Thursday.

Applied Materials has been benefiting from higher demand for equipment used for making 3D NAND chips, which can hold more data and are used in smartphones and solid-state drives.

New orders in the company's Silicon Systems Group, which sells manufacturing equipment used to make semiconductor chips, rose about 8 percent in the fourth quarter ended Oct. 25

Revenue in the unit increased 4 percent.

Net income rose to $336 million, or 28 cents per share, from $256 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, the company earned 29 cents per share, in line with analysts' average estimate.

Total net sales rose 4.6 percent to $2.37 billion.

Analysts on average had expected revenue of $2.40 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Up to Thursday's close, the Santa Clara, California-based company's shares had fallen about 33 percent this year.

(Reporting by Kshitiz Goliya and Alan John Koshy; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)