I think we're live. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Toshiya Hari. I cover the semiconductor space at Goldman Sachs. Very excited, very delighted to have Bertrand Loy, President, CEO, and Chair of the Board, from Entegris with us this morning. I do have a list of questions, but I think, Bertrand, you wanted to kick us off with some opening remarks.
Well, Toshiya, thank you first for having me. I think, just looking at your notes here, I know you have a lot of questions, so I'm not sure I need to maybe do a very, very long introduction just to say that, you know, Entegris has emerged as the leading electronic materials company. Just to size the company, we reported our Q2 results recently with revenue just, in short, in excess of $290 million, an EBITDA of close to 27% of revenue. We obviously are very focused on integrating the CMC Materials platform, which we acquired about a year ago. I'm sure you will have many questions around that, Toshiya, so I'm not gonna elaborate too much.
You know, this downturn, this industry downturn that we've been facing at some level has been a blessing in disguise when it comes to, you know, executing on the integration activity and really positioning the company for future growth. So I'll stop here and let you fire away your questions, Toshiya.
Great. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Bertrand. So before we dive into some of the market questions and business questions specific to Entegris, I wanted to start off at the high level. You know, as the CEO of the company, Bertrand, obviously, you're pulled into all sorts of directions, but what are some of your top priorities as you think about your business for the next 12, 18 months, and how are you spending your time?
Yeah. So there are a number of different priorities for us right now. I mean, obviously, it's about really managing the short term with keeping an eye on the long-term prospects for the industry and for Entegris. And I think that we've done well in managing those competing priorities. So at one level this year, what we want to demonstrate to all of you is that Entegris has a very resilient business model. You are all aware that we've been able to sustain a very compelling level of growth well in excess of the industry for the past many years when the industry was in full upswing.
I know that many of you had questions about whether we could deliver, similar levels of outperformance in a downturn, and I think we're in the process of proving that point, this year. On the top line, on the bottom line, as I was saying, you know, close to 27% EBITDA in a year where there's still a lot of inefficiencies related to the integration of CMC Materials, in particular. So that's one big priority for us. Another big priority coming with the CMC acquisition was the commitment that we made to delever the balance sheet very rapidly. We set a very aggressive objective of being at 3.5 times gross leverage by the end of 2024.
A big component of that has been a number of divestitures that we have announced, and we are obviously very busy, you know, completing those transactions, getting the regulatory approvals, et cetera, et cetera. But very intense focused on that. And then the third part is really getting ready for the future, right? At some point, this, this industry will resume growth and will ramp, again. And now is the perfect time to be ready for that. And what I mean by that is being very actively engaging with our customers, finding ways to help them accelerate their, their roadmaps. Another area of focus is also qualifying our new manufacturing center in Taiwan. We made a big investment in Taiwan, in Kaohsiung.
You know, there's no better time than a downturn to really get your customers to qualify those new manufacturing lines so that we are, you know, ready for the ramp in Taiwan and on a global basis next year.
That's great. Thank you. Maybe one question on the market. I think you expressed, you know, your, your view on, on the most recent earnings call, but how are you thinking about the, the CapEx environment? How are you thinking about the wafer start environment? And for, for the latter, for the wafer starts, if you can differentiate between, you know, DRAM, NAND, leading-edge logic foundry, and trailing edge, that would be, that would be helpful.
Yeah. So let's start with CapEx, which is the smallest part of our business. 20% of our revenue would be driven by the level of industry CapEx. We don't expect really any recovery for the balance of the year. That's really what we indicated on our recent call. And again, as I said, about 20% of our revenue is driven by the industry CapEx. The more important part for us to keep an eye on would be wafer starts. Most of our revenue are unit-driven. They are consumable products that are used in the daily production cycles of you know, the semiconductor fabs. And there, the picture is, it's contrasted.
We are seeing some signs of life in advanced logic, and we expect, you know, this part of our business to do better in the second half of the year. We're also expecting to see some improvement in DRAM, but that has to be contrasted with continued pressure in 3D NAND, in particular, as well as certain parts of mainstream. Mainstream being the, you know, the trailing edge fab customers that we serve as well. So that's why, you know, if I want to summarize what we expect from an industry standpoint, I think that the second part of the year is not gonna be very, very exciting from an industry standpoint.
Got it. That's helpful. And then, you know, shifting gears a little bit and, and talking about sources of outperformance. As you pointed out, you've consistently outperformed your, your markets, during upturns and now during this downturn. I think your current full year revenue guide implies about 6-7 percentage points of outperformance, and I know the sources are, are broad in, in nature, right? You don't focus on one or two things. But if you were to, you know, highlight a couple of tr-- technology transitions or market share expansion opportunities, what would they be? What are you most excited about?
Yeah. Yeah, so first of all, all four divisions, we have four divisions. All four divisions are expected to outpace the industry in different ways. But the areas where we see the most compelling growth will be, you know, Microcontamination. We are seeing a constant push for miniaturization in this industry, a greater focus on not just yield optimization, but also a focus on achieving better long-term reliability for the chips, right? I mean, when you hear semiconductor manufacturers talking about the growing importance of semiconductors in the automotive bill of materials, well, that translates into not just requirements for faster compute and power efficiency, but also, you know, long-term reliability.
We've been able to correlate long-term reliability of the chip with the absence of latent defects created by very, very small contaminants. So we are seeing increased demand for our advanced filters, both in advanced semiconductor manufacturing, but also in trailing edge semiconductor manufacturing, in order to achieve those higher reliability levels. So that is obviously very visible in the results of our Microcontamination division. Another bright spot for us this year will be power electronics. We are seeing obviously significant investments in SiC, you know, fabs. We are very involved in providing the right level of polishing for the substrates, and we are seeing that part of the business growing very rapidly.
It's still small today, but it's been doubling pretty much every year now for the last several years, and we expect that to continue in the foreseeable future. So again, a few bright spots in, you know, in a sea of fairly depressed news from an industry standpoint.
Got it. As a quick follow-up, I think in your long-term financial model, you're assuming 3-6 percentage points of outperformance, and this is on a through cycle basis. Some years you'll be better, some years perhaps not. But given your recent track record over the past couple of years, I feel like you've consistently outperformed the upper end of that. Is 3%-6% still the right outperformance range in your view? Obviously, you're probably not going to update us here, but any thoughts on that?
Yeah. Well, I know you like, you like to push us, Toshiya, and I appreciate the encouragement here. It's true that if you look at the last three, four, five years, actually, we've done consistently more than that. But I don't want to get carried away, right? I think that. I mean, the way, first of all, we've been having enough conviction to commit to that 3-6 points of outperformance is really looking at our pipeline of opportunity, risk adjusting it, and then again, seeing a path to this steady outperformance for the next 3-5 years, right? So it's essentially defying gravitational forces for many years.
You know, implied in the, in my comment when I said that we are risk adjusting the pipeline, it means that if everything goes well, yes, there's a pathway for us to do more than that. But we know from experience that, you know, we don't control everything. You know, we don't control exactly the timing of adoption of a particular, you know, new material or a particular new solution that we're developing for our customers. We don't control sometimes the commercial success of their own chipset. So, again, it's easy to get carried away, but I think we want to, you know, maintain a little bit of cushion so that if things don't go perfectly right, we're still gonna be within the commitment that we're making to you.
Because at the end of the day, you know, we take those commitments very seriously. And so 3-6, we of course will try to do better than that, but 3-6 is a good proxy for what you can expect from Entegris.
Got it. Given the increase in process complexity and given the critical role you play in your customers achieving some of their important targets from a purity perspective, I know you're being pulled into customer projects earlier than perhaps previously. Can you sort of share maybe some anecdotes where you are seeing that? And Dry Resist might be a good example for you to touch on.
Well, I think broadly, if you look at, the semiconductor industry, the reason we are excited for the future is that the roadmaps of our customers are becoming increasingly ambitious, increasingly complex. And that complexity is really the source of the opportunities that will fuel that outperformance, right? So how do we define complexity? Well, complexity is a function of the types of architectures that our customers are trying to enable. It's a function of the number of process steps required to enable those architectures, and finally, it's also the desire to push for more miniaturization. So the compounding effect of all of those forces, you know, create the need for our customers to move away from the traditional materials that they've been using, and to migrate to, you know, new materials with better electrical properties.
Those materials typically are harder to handle, they are less stable, they're more expensive. So it requires all sorts of solutions to be able to deposit those materials with the right cost of ownership. And then again, with the push for further miniaturization, there's a constant fight to get to, you know, acceptable yields, and a lot of that is really enabled by higher levels of purity. And Entegris is uniquely positioned to escort our customers through their journey, right? We are the only company in the world having both leadership position in material science and leadership position in contamination control. And the combination of those capabilities makes Entegris very, very unique. And that's, you know, on that basis that we get invited to contribute to their roadmaps, you know, more often than before and earlier than before.
It's, again, it's a question of the value that our customers see in our offering. It's also, you know, a virtuous cycle, right? I mean, the more value you contribute, the more trust you build with your customers, the more they will open up to you. In terms of things that you are known for, and in some cases, like in the case of dry resist, you know, sometimes, you know, their traditional suppliers are not able to develop what they're looking for, and they come to us because they know that we have some of the best material scientists in the industry. And then usually, when we make a commitment to develop solutions, you know, we will do everything to do that within a very, very short time frame.
So that's another way we've been able to sustain the level of growth outperformance. It's not just improving on the known platforms, platforms known to you, but, but also adding new, you know, new slivers, if I could call them that way, of, of addressable markets, new applications that historically we have not been serving.
Right. And the Dry Resist case, not only are you partnering with your customers, but you're also partnering with an OEM, an equipment OEM as well, right? So-
It's actually mostly always the case, right? I mean, materials need a tool, a piece of equipment to be-
Right
...deposited on the wafer. And the level of precision expected by our customers are such that a lot of the joint developments are really done in a three, you know, three-way agreements, including-
Right
... the end user and equipment maker and, and us.
Got it. That makes sense. In terms of all the, you know, potential technology inflections, I think Gate-All-Around and backside power are two that come up very frequently in our conversations with people like yourselves, with investors. From your vantage point, where are your customers in that transition, and what do you enable, and what's sort of the opportunity set for Entegris?
Yeah, I think it's a good example of the types of complexity we're seeing on the roadmap. So you're calling out specifically, you know, the logic roadmap, but we're seeing similar types of exciting opportunities with, you know, the multilayer architectures in 3D NAND, et cetera. But to stay with your question, you know, on the backside power delivery, I mean, the rail will be buried and will be, you know, expected to withstand very high temperature. Copper as a material won't be able to withstand the types of temperatures, so the industry will need to move to a different material. Which material remains to be seen. It could be tungsten, it could be molybdenum, it could be ruthenium. But that will open up-...
A number of opportunities for us. Opportunities in terms of, you know, if it's tungsten, it's opportunity in terms of slurries, in terms of post CMP cleaning. If it's molybdenum, the same would be true, but the opportunity could extend to the deposition material itself. So again, the architectures are still being finalized, but it's coming at us really quickly. I think within a year or so, I think all of those process recipes will be finalized. And then, as you probably know, I think there will be also some wafer thinning requirement, which will be accomplished by the traditional wafer grinding, but also will most likely require some CMP polishing. So opening up new opportunities for us, opportunities with the through-silicon vias.
The diameters of those TSVs are becoming smaller, so there again, the material of choice will evolve, opening up new opportunities and so on and so on. So, you know, if you think about Entegris, we are really providing a lot of small, highly engineered solutions, right? So sometimes that's what makes our story hard to follow, is that we don't have a big product platform that will generate, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. We are extremely good at identifying small niches, small needs by our customers, and we're willing to deploy R&D resources to, again, enable those very precise point solutions. But that's really what makes our products so sticky, right? We are very much embedded into the process recipes of our customers.
It's true for our materials, it's true for our chemistries, it's true for our filters, it's true for, you know, the 50,000 products that we develop and sell to our customers.
Got it. That's helpful. Shifting gears a little bit, I, I think it's been a little more than a year since you closed the CMC acquisition. I think it's the first transformational deal for you since ATMI.
Yes.
Can you describe to the audience, you know, what kind of progress you've made in terms of the integration? Any surprises, positive or negative, and what's still on your to-do list as it pertains to the integration process and delivering on the synergy targets and so on and so forth?
Yeah, it's right about a year since we closed. Time flies. It's... Yes, indeed. But it's been great. It's been really good. So we have three major work streams, if I can call them that way. I mean, the first one would be about, you know, systems and processes and integrating two companies into one, and we're making fast progress. I'll come back to that. The second work stream is really about improving the balance sheet and putting us on the path to deliver 3.5 times gross leverage by the end of 2024. And then the third one is really getting ready for the future, reignite growth within the CMC platform, and there again, we're making progress.
So on the first one, we actually completed the ERP migrations. CMC Materials was actually never fully integrated, so they had six ERP platforms. That's not our philosophy. Our philosophy is to run our global business on one SAP platform, common processes, common systems, not just for SAP, but for our stage-gate process that we use to manage innovation at Entegris. So we've been completing all of those steps, literally a few weeks ago. We are in a position now to finalize the legal entity consolidation, which will be the final key to, you know, to unlock the $75 million of savings that we have committed to.
Completing the legal entity consolidation, by the way, we'll have another benefit, which is, you know, we're gonna be able to fold the CMC Materials into our business model, and that's gonna have some good positive effect from a, from a tax planning standpoint, and you're starting to see some evidence of that as well in our recent results. So going well, that's the first work stream. I couldn't go into a lot of details, but second work stream is really around deleveraging the balance sheet. Key to that has been a number of divestitures that we have announced. And there again, we're making a lot of progress. So the last two for us to do, one is closing the sale of the Electronic Chemicals business to Fujifilm.
We are well on our way to collect all of the required regulatory approvals. Still hope to close that deal before the end of the year, and with that will come $700 million of proceeds. And there's another piece of the CMC platform that we have earmarked for divestiture. That's the drag-reducing agents or the oil and gas business of CMC Materials. I don't have any specific updates that I'm ready to share with you, but just, just want to say that, you know, that's another piece that we expect to sell. So, so essentially, you know, give or take about a $1 billion worth of proceeds that we expect, you know, to collect within the next several months.
And then the final work stream, which is really the most exciting part of it, is the revenue synergies and really starting to reignite the growth mindset within the CMC platform. And actually, the positive surprise, if there was any, is that the organization is responding really, really well. I think CMC is very excited about the way we think about innovation, the way we manage our pipeline, the willingness to invest in R&D at a level that CMC historically was not willing or able to do. And, you know, so a lot of time spent with customers, again, understanding areas in their roadmaps where we could contribute new value and, you know, in committing new development work with those customers.
So again, I cannot talk too much about that at this point, but I like what I'm seeing. And most of all, I like the way the heritage CMC team is reacting to those new objectives.
Bertrand, based on what you said, is it fair to say that the 2025 and 2028 revenue synergy targets that you had, you know, presented at the analyst day, you're still very comfortable with those targets?
Yes.
Okay. Got it. The competitive landscape, I wanted to ask about. And I think this is sort of an underappreciated part of the story, where you, in most cases, either compete with a business unit within a large conglomerate that lacks focus, or a very small-scale company or business that lacks the financial resources to compete with you. And I guess we all need to be careful with what we wish for, but during downturns, there are opportunities where potentially competitors underinvest in the business, and you guys continue to invest and you gain share. Is that something that you feel like is happening or is on the come? Is there an opportunity for you to gain share across your businesses?
Yeah, I mean, we have been gaining share, and we expect to continue to do so. And you're right in characterizing the competitive landscape. We compete with very different types of competitors. On the one hand, you would see business units of very large chemical platforms. On the other extreme, you would see small regional competitors. And our strength is that I think that when compared to business units of large chemical companies, we are, you know, we have a much greater level of focus on the customer, a much greater application knowledge, a speed that our larger industrial competitors don't have. We are also willing to do a lot of customization.
As I was mentioning earlier, you know, a big product platform for us is $50 million or more, and we don't have that many of those. And this type of business model doesn't really fit very well with the large chemical platforms. On the other extreme, the regional competitors do not have the scale to support the customers on a global basis. And what you're seeing increasingly now is semiconductor manufacturers have global expansion plans. And they expect their suppliers to provide the same level of rigor and support anywhere they decide to build their next fab. And, you know, we have been willing to invest in industry-leading tech centers in Taiwan, in Korea, in the U.S., and Japan. And that has actually allowed us to attract some of the best talent in all of those countries.
We have been willing to invest in local manufacturing as well. So we are completing these, you know, cycles of learning and strengthening the customer centricity model that we have. So I think all of those little things actually is really setting Entegris apart. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, we've been able to compete so effectively on the applications that we choose to serve.
That's great. We have about five minutes left. I'm gonna pause here and see if anyone in the audience has questions. If not, I'll keep going. So maybe a question on sort of the geopolitical landscape and how it's impacting your business. I guess from a... You know, you're well-positioned because to your point, you've got, you know, very strong, robust operations globally. But has this evolution and the geopolitical backdrop impacted your strategy? Obviously, you've got a big, you know, facility in Taiwan ramping. You've made an announcement for Colorado. Again, you're well-balanced, and I feel like you're agnostic to all these things, and you're gonna be successful as long as semis are growing. But how do you navigate this current backdrop, and has your strategy evolved at all?
Yes, so I was mentioning earlier, I think our business model has always been to be close to our customers, and we have made some very steady investments now for the last decade in all of the major semiconductor markets. So that has served us really well, especially at a time when our customers are really increasingly thinking about building different regional clusters for their own you know, business models. So the world is changing, and we're trying to you know stay close to the recent developments. When it comes to our investments, we're gonna continue to be thoughtful and flexible. I think that you know for us investing in Taiwan was a no-brainer for sure.
A lot of people were concerned, and have been concerned about the geopolitical risk, which I think is totally inflated. Probably a discussion for another day. But I think that that investment is just gonna strengthen our relationship with a very important customer, and its ecosystem in Taiwan. The decision to invest in Colorado Springs really was based on the belief that we could potentially qualify for the U.S. CHIPS Act subsidies. It's fair to say that without that belief, we probably would have made the investment, you know, elsewhere. But again, we're gonna continue to try to make sure that we have the right level of development activity as well as manufacturing activity in all of the major markets, and we'll try to continue to be smart about those choices.
Got it. And somewhat related to that, the export restrictions introduced by the U.S. government, I think you talked about... You gave a range initially, and then you sort of landed somewhere else. But in hindsight, what's been the net impact? How should we think about that aspect of the business?
Yeah, so the way we think about it is that we most likely have lost permanently about $80 million of annual revenue. Revenue tied to losing access to a number of customers who are focused on the most advanced nodes in China. When it comes to the rest of our customer base in China, we've been very pleased to see that that business has come back. And actually, you know, you can see that in the results that we published in Q1 and Q2. So, you know, I don't know what comes next, but I think that the impact of the known export restrictions, as I said, are you know, well-sized, and that's about $20 million per quarter.
Got it. Got it. Maybe, in the last 90 seconds, a question on the deleveraging efforts and how you think about capital allocation. Obviously, you're, you're digesting this fairly large acquisition. You've, you've talked about the focus on, on bringing down gross debt to 3.5 times. But outside of that, any thoughts on how you allocate capital? How should we be thinking about that?
So first and foremost, right now, again, it's about getting to that 3.5 gross leverage ratio by the end of 2024. After that, we'll update you. I mean, those of you who know us will probably remember that we've always had a very transparent capital allocation framework. We have had also very transparent target models. We will update all of those early next year. I think that by then, the dust should have settled in terms of some of the divestitures that we've made. Hopefully, we'll have some greater clarity on, you know, which way the industry is going, so it will be a good time for us to unveil some of those new models. But, you know, expect us...
Again, I'm not making a short-term or short time frame comment here. But if you think about the next five to 10 years, expect Entegris to continue to be active on the M&A front. Expect us to continue to be a very thoughtful transparent capital allocator. We believe that we can create value by, you know, first reinvesting in our business, so investing in R&D and CapEx is going to be priority number one. Acquisition, a well-calibrated acquisition will be probably the second objective. And then, you know, stay tuned, we'll talk about what we do with any potential excess cash when the time is right. But right now, excess cash will be applied to, you know, to paying down the debt.
That's great. With that, we're out of time. Bertrand, thank you so much for coming to the conference.
Thank you.
Really appreciate it.