Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the ACM Research Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Yea r 2025 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, we are recording today's call. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Now, I will turn the call over to Mr. Steven Pelayo, Managing Director of The Blueshirt Group. Steven, please go ahead.
Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 results, which we released before the U.S. market opened today. The release is available on our website as well as from Newswire Services. There's also a supplemental slide deck posted to the investor relations section of our website that we will reference during our prepared remarks. On the call with me today are our CEO, Dr. David Wang, our CFO, Mark McKechnie, and Lisa Feng, our CFO of our operating subsidiary, ACM Shanghai. Before we continue, please turn to slide two. Let me remind you that remarks made during this call may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements represent ACM's current judgment for the future. They are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.
Those risks are described under the risk factors and elsewhere in ACM's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please do not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect ACM's opinions only as of the date of this call. ACM is not obliged to update you on any revisions to these forward-looking statements. Certain financial results that we provide on this call will be on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation and unrealized gain or loss on short-term investments.
For our GAAP results and reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP amounts, you should refer to our earnings release, which is posted on the IR section of our website, and to slides 14 and 15. Unless otherwise noted, the following figures refer to the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025, and comparisons are gonna be with the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024. I will now turn the call over to David Wang. David?
Thanks, Steven. Hello, everyone. Welcome to ACM's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. I'm pleased with our fourth quarter results, which capped off a solid year of execution. Revenue grew 9% in the fourth quarter and 15% for the full year. We continue to execute well across our core business. We made a lot of progress with new product platforms. We strengthen our position in China and globally. Investment in AI and data center infrastructure is reshaping the global semiconductor demand, shifting capital towards advanced logic, memory, and advanced packaging. The industry is looking to key supplier for new technology, many of which have not yet been invented. ACM differentiated technology portfolio has been aligned well with these high-value process steps. Now the market is coming to us for solutions.
A good demonstration is recent momentum with several key global customer outside the Mainland China market that we announced in today's press release. First, we announced that we have delivered multiple single-wafer cleaning tools to Singapore facility of our Asia-based foundries customer. This marks ACM's first tool installation to Singapore, a key milestone for ACM. Second, we announced that we are receiving multiple orders for our advanced packaging tool from three global customers. This includes the orders for multiple Wafer-Level advanced packaging system from a leading global OSAT customer based in Singapore, with the delivery scheduled for the first quarter of 2026. A Panel-Level advanced packaging vacuum cleaning tool from a leading global semiconductor packaging manufacturer based outside mainland China, also scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 2026.
Multiple Wafer-Level Packaging system from a leading North America-based technology customer, with delivery scheduled later this year. Now on to our business result. Please turn to slide three. For the fourth quarter of 2025, we deliver $244 million in revenue, up 9%. For the year 2025, we deliver $901 million in revenue, up 15%. Top-line growth of 15% was better than growth for the overall China WFE market, which third party estimate as generally flat for 2025. We consider this good result, especially since our 2025 revenue include very little contribution from our new products.
We expect a strong product cycle in 2026 from SPM cleaning and our furnace product as we made a very good technical progress for this new product across our customer base. We also made a good progress with our supercritical CO2 dry, Track, Panel -Level plating, and PECVD, which we expect to contribute some more in 2026, but more in 2027 and beyond. Shipment for 2025 were $854 million versus $973 million. Remember, 2024 shipment increased 63% over the year. We had a tough compare. We also had some shipment for new product pushed into the 2026. Importantly, we expect the 2026 shipment growth to be higher than our 2026 revenue growth.
Gross margin was 41% for the fourth quarter and 44.5% for the full year. Q4 gross margin was slightly below our long-term target range of 42%-48%. We attribute the Q4 level to product mixing, including a few semi-critical product with a lower margin due to the competitive pressure, and also higher seasonal inventory provisions. We expect lower gross margin to be temporary. We believe our new product ramp, combined with the product design and the supply chain initiative, will enable us to deliver the best product at a low cost. There's no changing to our long-term target model range of 42%-48%. Moving on. We ended the year with a net cash of $845 million versus twenty-five nine million at the year end of 2024.
This balance sheet provides the foundation to continue our effort to develop world-class tools for the leading global semiconductor manufacturers. Before I review our product, I will provide a view on competitive dynamics in China and how we will win in this environment. We have recently seen a flood of new local entrants to the China capital equipment industry. In many cases, there are five or more players going after a single point product, all with very similar design and performance. We believe we will compete and win in China market because, number one, we have a differential technology with many products, almost the best in the world. Two, we have a deep portfolio of IP with strong protection in China. Three, our local customer demand the best technology in order to compete in the global markets. Now I will provide detail on product.
Please turn to slide four. Revenue from single-wafer cleaning, Tahoe and semi-critical cleaning tool was $626 million, up 8% in 2025, and represent 69% of total revenue. We now estimate our cleaning portfolio address 95% of the application and process step, and we are working on developing remaining solution that will bring us to 100% in 2026. We believe ACM now has the widest coverage of cleaning tool, far more extensive as compared to all competitors. The 8% year-over-year growth in 2025 include a very little contribution from our newer cleaning line. We expect this new product, including single- wafer SPM, Tahoe, and N2 bubbling wet etch to contribute more meaningfully to our 2026 revenue.
As industry moves to more advanced nodes, we expect increased demand for high performance cleaning tools. The increased adoption of multiple patterning is driving higher layer counts, potentially impact yields, and it demand more cleaning steps with a higher cleaning efficiency. We believe this plays right into ACM's strengths. For example, our proprietary N2 bubbling etching technology is uniquely positioned in the market. We are seeing growth interest for advanced 3D NAND application where larger bubble size and uniformity control will become more critical as industry moves to 300 layer and above. In SPM cleaning, customer are recognized advantage of our proprietary nozzle and the chamber design. We believe our platform outperforming leading competitors in small particle cleaning performance. We made a significant technical progress at the end of 2025 with our new SPM nozzle design.
We achieved a 50 nano particle size count of under 20, which we believe is the best-in-class performance for the industry. Our unique nozzle design does not require any routine chamber DI water cleaning. This is a big deal for customer because it not only deliver the better cleaning environment for the chamber, but it also increase uptime of our equipment. As a result, I'm pleased to report today that we have received strong repeat order for our SPM cleaning tools from major customer for delivering to modular fab in 2026. We are also seeing very strong interest for our unique SPM technology for numerous global customer because they are not satisfied with the performance of their current plan of r ecord tool.
Our supercritical CO2 dry tool integrate ACM proprietary cleaning IP while reducing CO2 consumption by approximately 40% as compared to their competitors. This result in process efficiency with lower operating cost. We made a successful in-house demo for the multiple logic and memory customer at end of 2025. We have already received a demo PO for evaluation tools from two customer for delivery middle of 2026. We expect to deliver additional tools to multiple customer later this year. In mainland China alone, we estimate the incremental market opportunity for this next generation cleaning product is nearly $1 billion. We remain confident in our long-term objective to achieve approximately 60% of the market share in China cleaning market, we expect the cleaning to outer grow the China WFE this year and in the year ahead.
We estimate our market share for ECP in China is now more than 40%, and we remain confident in our long-term goal to achieve 60% or more. Front-end tool was represent about 70% of the mixing for year, including our MAP Plus, ECP 3D, ECP GIII products. ECP back-end tool were about 30% of the mix, including our ECP ap product line. In Q4, we deliver our first Ultra ECP ap-p horizontal panel-level electroplating tool to an industry-leading large panel fabrication customer. Our customer prefer, ACM prefer a horizontal plating solution versus competitive vertical plating approach due to the much better plating film uniformity and much less cross-contamination between multiple plating chemicals.
We expect a growing customer interest in our panel-level solution as industry looks for higher throughput and lower cost to support advanced packaging solution for multiple large die-size and HBM AI chips. As discussed earlier, we receive order from three global customer for both Wafer-Level and the Panel-Level Packaging tools. Our furnace tool are under various stage of evaluation on many customer. Revenue from furnace was relatively small in 2025, we expect a more meaningful contribution in 2026. We made several technical breakthrough for LPCVD and ALD and PALD in 2025. We see good demand across multiple application, including high temperature anneal, especially 1,350 degree version, LPCVD, ALD and PALD. We believe ACM differential design position us to capture meaningful market share.
Revenue from advanced packaging, which is good ECP, but including service and the spell was up 45% in 2025 to $76 million and represent 8% of revenue. This includes coater, developer, etchers, strippers, scrubber, and vacuum cleaning tools. We believe ACM is only company to offer a full portfolio of wet process tool and world-class plating product for the advanced packaging. We think the combination is very powerful. It provides ACM with valuable insight into the challenging of next generation packaging as AI drives industry towards 2.5D and 3D integration. We are making solid progress with our new track on the PECVD platforms. Last September, we delivered our high throughput 300 WPH KrF track tool for evaluation at key customer. We expect a mass production qualification in 2026 for the tool.
We anticipate this will lead to demand from additional customers, including both standalone and full integrated system in line with the lithography tool. We believe our high throughput design positions this platform to compete effectively with the current supplier. In Q4, we deliver our first Ultra Lith BK system. This milestone represent the first customer deploy of our track series following early demonstration and the validation. It also marked our entry into the display panel market, a new segment that require high volume manufacturing and strong performance stability. We anticipate to develop our proprietary PECVD platform. Our design has three chuck per chamber, which we believe is only one in the world. This provides flexibility for wider range of our process with the same hardware.
We feel good about our positioning as the team works through the technical detail with a field tool in our Lingang mini lab, running wafer tests and a custom demo wafer. We expect to ship multiple EVA tools in the near term. In summary, our innovation engine contribute to drive differentiated solution across a broad of our growing portfolio. As AI drives a more complex semiconductor process, customer are turning to ACM as a trusted partner to help solving their increasing challenges. Let me provide update on our production facility. Our Lingang. Please turn to slide eight. Our Lingang production and R&D center is now our primary production center. The first building is in volume production, and the second provides capacity for the future expansion.
Together, the two facility can support up to $3 billion in annual output. During 2025, we made a good progress on our mini line and the Ningbo. We have enhanced our process development capability and now support on-site customer evaluation in fab-like conditions. Our mini line, including ACM tools and tools from other player and metrology tools. We believe the mini line will accelerate our internal product validation, shorten R&D and qualification cycle, and strengthen collaboration with the key customer as we introduce next generation platforms. Next, our Oregon facility. Please turn to slide nine. We are accelerating investment in Oregon with the operation expected beginning in the second half of 2026. This facility will allow customers to evaluate our technology and to test their wafer locally, and it will serve as our initial base for production in the United States.
Our global customer are encouraged by our commitment, which we believe will help them to choose ACM as a key supplier to scale production. We remain very pleased by the success of ACM Shanghai team, which continue to be a key supplier to the semiconductor industry in Asia. ACM Shanghai has also proven to be a great source of capital and financial flexibility for ACM. In September 2025, ACM Shanghai complete a private offering of ordinary share, generating approximately $623 million in net proceeds. In February 2026, we complete the sale of approximately 4.8 million ACM Shanghai share at a RMB 160 per share, generating approximately $111 million in gross proceeds. ACM Shanghai also has been good source of dividends in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
We received dividends net of tax of $19.2 million, $28.5 million and $29 million respectively. Our major ownership in ACM Research (Shanghai) remain a strategic asset. It enhanced our financial flexibility and supporting disciplined execution as we continue expanding globally. Taken together, our expanding product portfolio increased manufacture capacity and strengthening capital position give us confidence in our long-term strategy. Turn to our outlook for the full year 2026. Please turn to slide 10. In middle January, we introduced our 2026 revenue outlook in a range of $1.08 billion-$1.175 billion. This implied 25% year-over-year growth at the middle point. We reiterate this outlook today.
Since our founding in California in 1998 and the establishment of ACM Shanghai in 2005, we're building a globally competitive semiconductor equipment company grounded in innovation and differential technology. Our leadership in cleaning and electroplating created a strong foundation, and we are now expanding across furnace, track, and PCVD as we broaden our multiple product portfolio. In Asia, we are recognized as a leader in wafer cleaning and plating, and we are engaging with a global customer across U.S. and Europe.
With continued progress across SPM, Tahoe, supercritical CO2 dry, Furnace, Track, PCVD, and Panel-Level Packaging, we believe we are entering a new phase of a product cycle that will driving sustained growth. We have the customer, the product, the capacity, and the capital to execute our global business plan, and we remain committed to our long-term target of $4 billion in revenue. Now let me turn the call over to our CFO, Mark, who will reveal details of our first quarter and full year results. Mark, please.
Thank you, David. Good day, everyone. Please turn to slide 11 and 12. Unless I note otherwise, I'll refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which exclude stock-based compensation, unrealized gain loss on short-term investments. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures is included in our earnings release. Also, unless otherwise noted, the following figures refer to the fourth quarter and full year of 2025, and comparisons are with the fourth quarter and full year of 2024. I will now provide financial highlights. Revenue was $244 million for the fourth quarter, up 9.4%. For the full year, revenue is $901.3 million, up 15.2%. Full year revenue was in line with our original guidance set a year ago and slightly above the updated range announced on January 22nd.
Fourth quarter revenue for single-wafer cleaning , Tahoe and semi-critical cleaning was $159.9 million, up 3%. For the year, this category grew by 8.1%. Fourth quarter revenue for ECP, front-end packaging, furnace, and other technologies was $64.1 million, up 23.9%. For the year, this category grew by 32.1%. Fourth quarter revenue for advanced packaging, excluding ECP, services, and spares, was $20.5 million, up 23.8%. For the year, this category grew by 45.3%. I will now provide revenue mix by customer type for 2025. Starting this year, rather than disclosing specific customer names, we are now disclosing revenue by customer type once a year. For each customer type this includes product services and spare parts. We've included the mix table on slide seven of our presentation.
For 2025, our revenue mix by customer type was split among foundry, logic, and other 59%, memory 27%, packaging and wafer processing 14%. 2025, we had four 10+% customers, including our top customer was 16.9%. Was 13.5%, then 11.6% and 10.2%, for an aggregate total of four customers representing 52.2% of total sales. For 2024, we had four 10% customer also for a total of 52.2%. Total shipments were $228 million for the fourth quarter, down 13.5%, and $854 million for the full year of 2025, down 12.2%. David noted we had a tough compare versus a strong 2024 when shipments increased 63% year-over-year.
We also did have some shipments for new products pushed into 2026. We expect 2026 shipment growth rate to be higher than our 2026 revenue growth rate. Gross margin was 41.0% for the fourth quarter and 49.8%. For the full year, gross margin was 44.5% versus 54% in 2024. Q4 gross margin was slightly below our long-term target model. Adding to David's earlier remarks, gross margins were down 8.8 percentage points year-over-year on a quarterly basis. This was due to product mix and margin pressure concentrated in a few semicritical products, which contributed about 5 points of the headwind and a higher level of inventory provisions that contributed about 4 points negative impact. As David noted, we expect the lower gross margins to be temporary.
We believe our new product ramp, combined with supply chain initiatives, will enable us to deliver the best products at a low cost, and there is no change to our long-term target model range of 42%-48%. For no- modeling purposes, we expect gross margins to be at the lower end of this longer-term target range for the first half of 2026, with an anticipated lift in the second half, due in part to contribution from newer products, which generally have higher gross margins. Operating expenses were $70.6 million for the fourth quarter, up 21%. For the full year, operating expenses were $258.4 million, up 34%. For 2025, R&D was 15.1% of sales and marketing was 7.8% of sales, and G&A was 5.8% of sales.
For 2026, we plan for R&D in the 16%-18% range, sales and marketing in the 7%-8% range, and G&A in the 6% range. Operating income was $29.5 million for the fourth quarter versus $52.8 million. Operating margin for Q4 2025 was 12.1% as compared to 23.6%. For the full year, operating margin was 15.9% as compared to 25.6%. Long term, we look to grow our R&D spending in line with revenue, but we expect to show operating leverage in SG&A with spending growth below our revenue growth level. Income tax expense was $6.6 million for the fourth quarter versus $17.3 million. For the full year, income tax expense was $13.3 million versus $35 million in 2024.
For 2026, we expect our effective tax rate in the 8%-10% range. Net income attributable to ACM Research was $17.3 million for the fourth quarter versus $37.7 million. For the full year, net income attributable to ACM Research was $110.2 million versus $152.2 million. Net income for diluted share was $0.25 for the fourth quarter versus $0.56. For the full year, net income for diluted share was $1.61 versus $2.26. Our non-GAAP net income excluded $6.4 million of stock-based compensation expense for the fourth quarter and $33.6 million for the full year. I will now review selected balance sheet and cash flow items.
Cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and time deposits were $1.13 billion versus $441 million at year-end 2024. Net cash, which excludes short-term and long-term debt, was $845.5 million versus $259.1 million at year-end 2024. $585.4 million increase in net cash for 2025 included $623 million net raised in the private offering by ACM Research (Shanghai) in 2025. Total inventory at year-end was $702.6 million versus $676.4 million at the end of the third quarter. Raw materials were $349.7 million, up $23.5 million quarter-over-quarter. We made additional strategic purchases to support production plans and to mitigate any potential supply chain risk.
Work in process was $61.4 million, up $1.9 million quarter-over-quarter. Finished goods inventory was $291.6 million, up $0.9 million quarter-over-quarter. Finished goods inventory primarily consists of first tools under evaluation at our customer sites, along with finished goods located at ACM's facilities. Cash provided by operations was $33.9 million for the fourth quarter. For the full year 2025, cash used by operations was about $10 million. Capital expenditures were $58 million for the full year 2025. For the full year 2026, we expect to spend about $200 million in capital expenditures. This includes continued investments in Lingang, including the mini line and the second production facility, fixed assets for the business and investments in Oregon, along with other items. Concludes our prepared remarks. Now let's open the call for any questions that you may have. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. One moment while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question will come from the line of Charles Shi with Needham & Company. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I believe you gave a pretty good color on shipment versus revenue growth this year. I have a question. Since you mentioned about new products probably gonna be a bigger driver this year for growth, and wondering if you can give some color. Let's say, excluding the new products, what's the growth, either shipment or revenue, is expected to be, excluding all the new products, for the... I think maybe I'm talking about the existing product lines in cleans, plating, et cetera. Thank you.
Okay. Okay. Thank you, Charles. Actually, you know that is, as we said, we made quite a big progress, right, in the SPM process. General speaking, SPM, hotter SPM represent 25%-30% of the cleaning market. This market in the last couple of year were not much touched so much. As I said, last 2025, we made a very good progress and both into their special model designs for the high temperature and also powerful product. We're getting very aggressively into this market. Again, this is a very high margin product. Also a lot of, customer both, you know, in the mainland China, also outside China, they have suffered a particle issue with this high temperature SPM process.
With, we think with our proprietary design model, we can control a very good environment, so therefore can be, you know, really reduce particle size. That can be really enhance our market growth in cleaning. Secondly, I wanna say that is our N2 bubbling proprietary bubbling wet etch technology is really critical for the 3D NAND silicon nitride etching process, which we believe our proprietary technology not only cover today's demand for 300 layer, we believe as people moving to 400 or even 500 layer will suffer this kind of uniformity of the via top or via bottom, right? We're using large bubble and size. Also, with our proprietary technology, we can make a very uniform and large bubble distribution in a tank.
That will be really enhance the etching uniformity and from the top to the bottom for the via. We believe that's not only, you know, demand in a market in China. We also see that demand outside the global market too. 3rd one, I also mentioned that is our supercritical CO2 dry. We also made a lot of progress, right? Which is the, you know, past customer demo. We have two tools, you know, scheduled to deliver, you know, in the 1st or 2nd quarter of this year. We have additional interest in coming in. Again, since the supercritical CO2 with our proprietary design, we got a capacity or cavity. Our CO2 chamber is about 40% smaller. We believe that we're really providing customer a 40% reduction of the consumable cost.
That really also again, right, driving this product not in the local, I call it, China market, but also getting to the outside China market. With all this cleaning, I call the, together, we believe also expansion in the future. This will probably represent even China over a $1 billion market potential for us to get in. So we're still very, you know, exciting about our continued expanding our cleaning product, you know, in the China market. Plus, also give us really a strong defensive technology exposure to global market, right? So that's for cleaning. Again, for copper plating, as I mentioned, you know, we have a full set of the cleaning product, you know, front-end, TSV, back-end, advanced packaging, including also, you know, this, I call the compound semiconductor.
Plus, recent, we just, you know, announced our panel horizontal plating, which we believe very, very key technology to driving for the panel size plating. This moment, everybody using vertical and copper plating for panel. We're the first one in the world so far doing horizontal plating, right? With our differential technology, we believe probably most likely we're the only one in the market to drive another horizontal copper plating. This also we see the bigger interest, you know, not only in the, in the, in the, in the China market. We see also a lot of interest, you know, coming in for us to deliver, you know, this tool. With that all new product, you know, in the, our existing cleaning copper plating can drive a lot of revenue this year, including next year, right?
As I said, we, our other furnaces and PECVD and also track business we're developing for last four, five years really made a lot of technology breakthrough too. Believe those technology get in this year, start getting market and will real sustaining our next three to five year growth. Which you know that last three, four years, our major growth is come from cleaning the copper plating. Next few years, we see this new product coming in. We're definitely strengthening our high growth profile in next few years. We are very, you know, exciting, very, you know, I was executing our strategy to continue to grow our revenue. Charles?
Thanks, David. Maybe a question on profitability. You reported the last year, you gave some color about this year. I believe if my math is right, your operating margin will compress the last year from maybe close to 26% in 2024 to 16% in 2025. This year, based on your what you've guided about gross margin, what you've guided about R&D, SG&A, doesn't look like operating margin can rebound. It feels like operating margin probably more or less the same or even coming down a little bit, depending on how the gross margin trends for the remainder of the year. Want to get some sense how what's the reason for operating margin being under pressure for almost two years? How do you plan to address this and maybe try to expand the operating margin from here? Thank you.
Yeah. Actually, let's this way, you know, looking at growth margin, right, we are the probably top of the equipment company in China, right, for growth margin, right, the last several year. As you said, Q4 of our, especially Q4 last year, we do see our, you know, first time our growth margin is, you know, lower than our range, 40%-48%, right? As explaining, maybe three factor, one is the product mixing. We have, you know, one or two product, which is a semi-critical tool, do have the, you know, pressure from the competitor for pricing, you know, there. The next one is really our, you know, this inventory provision.
We think this year, as we are new product coming in, as I mentioned, this, three cleaning product coming in, will definitely enhance our margin. Also our inventory provision, we believe will be also greatly reduced too. With that, we still have a confidence we're in a 40%-48% growth margin in this year or beyond. More than that is, as you said, we put quite a bit of R&D last year, right? It used to be R&D 13%-14%. This last year, we're getting to 16%. We'll probably keep that number in a way. Why?
You know, the next few year, AI is driving a lot of demand for the new technology and everybody, you know, else, you know, first-tier company, you know, in outside China, all people put a lot of R&D. We'll continue to invest that, which we know will impact a little bit, you know, our operation margin, but it's worth to spend money now. Why? I said opportunity is there, right? A lot of customer real demand for the new technology, which I believe a lot of AI technology today even not invented yet .
It's really give ACM good opportunity with our I call it our innovation, you know, power, our defense technology development capability. We can use this AI's trend. We'll catch a lot of our new technology and also catch the customer. This panel-level plating is one good example, for example, right? It's worth to spend more R&D, even get a few percent of the operation margin lower, which is real long run, and we're working for the investor interest and also the growth ACM, you know, market into the next few year.
Yeah. Hey, David, I might add a few things. I think that was a good overview. Charles, I think kind of summarizing it up, you know, we're spending into that $4 billion market opportunity. You know, there's a number of products that areas that we've been investing in that haven't scaled yet, but we expect them to scale over the next few years. It's the right thing to do to spend into that. You're right about the operating margin for 2026 kinda comes in at the mid-teen level, you know, similar to what it was here in 2025. You know, you move out a few years, we, you know what? Our target is to keep those gross margins at that target range and then, you know, grow our top line faster than our OpEx. I think you can see some leverage in the out years.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Charles.
Thank you, Charles.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Edison Lee with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, David and Mark. Congratulations on the results. I just have two quick questions. Number one is that for the fourth quarter, the margin is a little bit low and the revenue growth also is a little bit slow. Your shipment, I think, declined for, on a year-on-year basis. How much of that is just product mix and seasonality? When do you think these numbers will actually start improving in 2026? The second question is about the $111 billion you raised by selling down ACMS. Can you shed some light as to how you would actually utilize that proceeds?
Okay. Let's answer your first question, right? I think that you look in the, as I mentioned last couple year, our major growth engine from cleaning and also copper plating, right? Even the cleaning, I said, there's one important product, which is SPM process, we're not touched much. As I mentioned last year, end of last year, Q4 last year, we made a significant progress with this special nano design. We believe our performance is outperforming and they're top tier as a tool. We see that growth continuously, right? I would say our cleaning, copper plating, and also horizontal panel continue to expand there too. That'll keep momentum. Our cleaning market, probably today in China about 35 range.
We're expanding to 50%, 60%, you know, next few year. The copper right now, the 40, I still say we're trying to catch 60 even beyond mark in China. More than that is those product, differential product, we see they have very high interest from global, you know, top-tier customer. That's where we also reinforce our sell outside China. That's where I see the, you know, impact or boost our revenue, you know, for our existing product. But, and also I want to see that in through the last five year, we are really working the differential, you know, PECVD and track and then also furnace technology, which, you know, we believe a lot of the new technology we are putting in and nobody had it before, right? That's what reinforce our I call the market position.
Plus, those two is really with our differential technology, we put a lot of time to develop IT, develop the roadmap. It costs a little long time than, you know, the other guys. Now it's come the moment to the market. Plus, I wanna see another bigger impact is, I call the improvement is, last Q3, we start using Lingang on mini line, which we do not have it before. That was really helping our internal demonstration, internal R&D speed. We see the bigger, you know, impact already. That will be helping our tool mature before ship the customer.
With altogether, I want to say, you know, this is a new growth and from the existing and also our new product coming in, we're driving ACM in real high growth profile in the year, this year and in the next few years. We're very confident. Plus, even I say, you know, WFE market in China is flat, whichever we can get a higher growth rate because of new product coming. Plus also, as you say, we are made a lot of progress in a global customer. You know, this news announced, you know, today.
We also see a lot of interest in coming into our differential technology from top-tier customer because we have a patent has been, you know, locked the technology already. They almost have no choice. They have to come to us. That's really exciting, for our technology. We're really trying to pushing our, you know, technology real benefit in the international global customer for their AI challenges.
Yeah. Hey, David.
Mark, you want to add on that?
Yeah, let me add on to something before you answer his question about our Shanghai stock sales. Edison, for Q4, you probably remember last call, we mentioned that, you know, Q4 in the year. You know, the overall year came in at the midpoint of where we started the year, maybe a little bit better. Don't forget, we had two things. Our newer products didn't kick in, very little in 2025. We did have a customer push out from Q4 into 2026. That was, you know, kind of a, those two things that hit 2024. I'm sorry, the Q4.
When you look out to 2025, you know, we're expecting linearity pretty similar to 20, to... I'm sorry, 2026, we're expecting our linearity to be pretty similar. The first half will be about 42%-43% of revenue. Second half will be, you know, 57%-58%. I would kind of anticipate Q1 at about 18%-20% of the full year mix. Maybe David, if you wanted to take his question, what are we gonna do with the cash that we raised in, or that we sold, you know, the cash that we sold? Yeah.
Sorry. Sorry, Mark. Mark, can you hear me?
Yes. Yeah.
Hey, before we move on to the use of proceeds, can you also comment a little bit on what you said about, I think some products having some pricing pressure, which I think partially account for lower margins in the fourth quarter?
Yeah. There's not much to add to what I said there. You know, we or what David and I both said. You know, there were a couple of semi-critical products that had particularly low margins that hit us in Q3 and Q4. We, you know, David mentioned in the prepared remarks, he talked about the competitive situation in China. You know, we are very focused on developing world-class tools. We think that, you know, there was also a bigger provision in the back half of the year. We think that'll be the overall provision for 2026 probably be smaller than it was in 2025, and it'd probably be more balanced throughout the year. Yeah.
Okay.
You want me to touch there how we're using proceeds, right?
Yes.
Well, obviously, we have a second offering in China, right? Those money will be really focusing on R&D again, our expansion for their manufacturing. We have a second building we'll start, you know, decoration this year. So with that add together, probably we can manufacture CNY 3 billion annually, which would really give us a lot of, you know, room for manufacturing. Plus, we're also putting money in the mini line. As I mentioned, this mini line really speed up our internal R&D and debugging the tool, and also even can do the joint development with the customer process too.
It's really, you know, we're spending for this money. The proceed we got from the, you know, so the 1.3% from Shanghai here, definitely the major purpose for that was spending global, you know, customer, global marketing sale. We see that opportunity, you know, really big in a global market. As I mentioned, we do have some differential and technology might be the only solution for their, you know, AI challenging. Those product we think will be really gather attention from the global customer. We have to spend money and, you know, building the international strongly sales channel. Also we already had a Korea manufacturer base already.
However, you know, with this geographic tariff going on, we have to real minimize the tariff impact, right? That's why we start the assembly tool in the USA. That will be real reduce our concern or any, you know, dynamic changing for those tariff impact our revenue. That's really what will come. Our goal is very simple. We try to working with the, you know, satisfy all regulation and the requirement and maximize the investor interest. We're building a global sales global company. That's our goal. Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Edison. Yeah, I appreciate it. Next question, please, operator.
One moment. Our next question comes from the line of Jimmy Hong with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hi, David. Can you hear me?
Yes, please.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Congrats for the good results. I want to ask about with the diverse single-wafer cleaning tools to a Singapore-based foundry. What would be the potential size of shipments in terms of units or dollars this year or next year? next year, yeah. This is my first question.
Yeah. Good, very good question. Actually, you know, we have a few tool or we're in the installation process right now, right? Those tool, you know, this tool will be qualified and going production, you know, this year. With that, we definitely will introduce more of a cleaning tool. Also we do have a copper plating in the behind. That's really what give us exposure of product, you know, in Asian market. It's already real making more of a, I call it confidence and also get a high interest from other player in Asia in the market too. We see this a really bigger milestone and for us.
Plus, you know, we're not only look at a customer only in Singapore, do have a customer in Korea and also we have customer, you know, potentially in Taiwan. We have really confidence, you know, we should have expanding quickly in Asia market. Plus, again, you know, we're also very focusing on our U.S. market too. We do have advanced packaging tool PO and receiving, and we should deliver by end of this year. We see a lot of potential going on in U.S. market too. Again, because today all the memory, all logic, they're, you know, they're AI-driven for their advanced technology. ACM, you know, I won't say I feel good technology really needed for their production line. We believe that's very beneficial for the customer and also can help expansion our market to global. It's great opportunity.
Yeah.
Because again, in innovation is a key. Every customer and every key customer, they all demand for innovation technology, which it will perfectly fit our, you know, strategy.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Wang. Yeah. For Singapore business, how's the chance that we penetrate to Singapore-based memory makers in the next few years? My second question is for advanced packaging. We are making great process. You know, for Taiwan, Taiwanese foundries and also are leading the Panel-Level Packaging for AI GPUs and ASICs. Can we talk about our PLP progress with potential Taiwanese players? Do we have any, like, order forecast or purchase orders from these Taiwanese potential customers? Yeah.
Yeah. Actually, you know, we are talking to a few key customer, right? Even a panel large size, 515 mm x 510 mm. We talk about their 310 mm x 310 mm, right? Which is the two vision right now people are trying to push in. We have very good exposure to those customer. By the way, April 7, 8, we'll have attending the panel conference in Taiwan. In that conference, we'll do the keynote speaker about the horizontal plating and also our vacuum cleaning technology. It's really a lot of exciting, I want to say interest coming in. You know, I heard everybody say panel product or equipment, they're probably satisfy all other product except their plating. Plating become the bottleneck for their production expansion.
With that, you know, demand, I said we are the only one supplying horizontal plating. You probably heard that is the one key player in Taiwan. They said that they only want a horizontal plating. They don't want a vertical. Our horizontal plating perfect fits their strategy or their demand. As I said, it's really we see the big opportunity and, you know, with our panel product. Actually, we're not only trying to say introduce so far three product, right? Panel plating, vacuum cleaning, and also the Bevel.
We will be available also additional, you know, and coat developer, wet etcher, and cleaning, all kind of wet tool we're putting in too. That's really catch the real, this wave of the panel, I call the shift, right? For the advanced packaging. We're in a very good position and for those coming, panel advanced packaging expanding. We're very excited about this opportunity, right?
Do you know, like, in which kind of periods, quarters it will be more clear that whether we'll have any order forecast or purchase orders for this PLP, equipments for. Yeah.
Well, you know, let's put it this way, right? We announced that we do have also PO from outside mainland China, right? I mean, we said already. You, you, you know what I mean here. Then we're continually expanding more, right? Again, I wanna say this year we have a confidence, catch additional PO for our, you know, Bevel. I mean, for our vacuum cleaning and also for the horizontal copper plating. Probably not only in Taiwan market.
Yeah.
We also see the opportunity in Korea, also in Singapore, by the way. It's very exciting.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. maybe I can squeeze in my last questions about investor FAQ. Like, ACM has disposed a small portion of stock in ACM Shanghai. How do we think about more further stock disposal in the future? You mentioned that U.S. international capacity builds will require more fundings. Will we dispose of more stocks of ACM Shanghai in the future? Yeah.
Repeat the question again. I'm sorry. Can you repeat again?
He's asking are we gonna sell more of our ACM Shanghai stock.
I see. I see. Okay. You know, we sold 1.3% already, right? Which got a proceed, you know, about $111 million. You know, we do have a both arm to acquire this money. We can raise in US, we can raise in Shanghai. We're very flexible for what do we were choosing, number one. This moment I wanna say our Shanghai stock is still, you know, we think it's still undervalue, okay, with our growth. We maybe consider what's the money demand and the timeline, also what's the stock price in Shanghai.
We decide there, you know, where or when or we should sell additional or not. Plus, as well as have saleable arm, you know, we can raise the money USA. It's quite flexible for us to raise the fund. This moment, you know, I wanna say, well, obviously we'll continue investing more in global market, and we have no concern for those, you know, money where it comes from, right? We're very confident. We also have another knob, another tool, we can get money anyway.
Thank you so much. That's all my questions. Thank you, Dr. Wang. I'll be back to the queue. Thank you.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Seeing no more questions in the queue, let me turn the call back over to Steven Pelayo for closing remarks.
Okay, great. Before we conclude, I just want to give everyone a quick reminder on our upcoming investor conferences. On March 9th, we will participate virtually in Loop Capital Markets' Seventh Annual Investor Conference for one-on-one meetings. On March 23rd and 24th, we will present at the 38th Annual ROTH Conference in Dana Point, California. Attendance at the conference is by invitation only. For interested investors, please contact your respective sales representative to register and schedule one-on-one meetings with the management team. This concludes the call. If you may now disconnect. Take care.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect, everyone.