KLA Corporation (KLAC)
NASDAQ: KLAC · Real-Time Price · USD
186.04
+2.07 (1.13%)
Sep 22, 2026, 2:37 PM EDT - Market open
← View all transcripts

46th Annual J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference

May 16, 2018

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

All right. Good morning. Welcome to the second day of J.P. Morgan's 46th Annual Technology Media and Communications Conference. My name is Harlan Sur. I'm the Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment analyst for the firm, and very pleased to have Bren Higgins, who is the Chief Financial Officer of KLA-Tencor, here with us today. Before we get started, just wanted to point out that we did publish two reports on KLA last week. One discusses the market share trends from the recent Gartner Cap Equipment market share from 2017. Let me just throw a few of the statistics out there as it relates to KLA. Obviously, as most of you probably know, KLA is number one equipment supplier in the area of process control.

They are 4x larger than their second-largest competitor in that space and in the core areas that they focus on, things like patterned wafer inspection. KLA's got 80% market share, 7x greater than their second-largest competitor. Bare wafer inspection, they've got 90% share, 10x larger than their nearest competitor. Then in things like, I think we'll talk about mask inspection, they've got 60% market share and 3x larger than their number two competitor. Clear scale, clear market leadership. I think the trends are working in their favor. We'll talk a lot about that today, and I'm sure Bren will talk about that. What I've asked Bren to do is to start us off with some opening remarks, then we'll go ahead and kick off the Q&A. With that, Bren, thank you for joining us this morning.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Thank you, Harlan. Thanks for having us here today. Before I begin, I just want to say that from a safe harbor perspective, all comments are forward-looking statements and are subject to risk, and you can see our SEC filings for a list of those risk factors. It's interesting. It's never really been a better time to be a semiconductor equipment supplier. We're at the third year now in a row of what looks like double-digit growth in the industry. WFE levels this year, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $53 billion, plus or minus $1 billion. Very healthy spending levels by our customers. 70% of that is memory. Memory investment this year has been very strong.

DRAM investment from a shipment perspective for KLA is pretty balanced across the year in terms of half on half, a little stronger flash in the first half of the year versus second half. We see foundry logic shipments start to pick up in a pretty meaningful way, off a relatively low base in the second half of the year. DRAM, obviously, for the industry, up very strong for the year. Flash up, also probably in the 10%-15% range over last year, then foundry logic down this year, would expect that given where the spending levels are and what we expect for next year, that next year will be a growth year for foundry logic. The order trends look pretty good in the second half of the year around those segments.

For the company, we guided 10% or better growth year-over-year, so in the neighborhood of $4.2 billion-$4.3 billion. Very strong revenue levels for the company. Gross margins between 63% and 64%, biased to the upper end of that range. Operating margins in excess of 38.5%, consistent with our public model that we have out there for revenue levels between $3.9 billion and $4.2 billion. The business model humming along very strongly. The structural improvement that we've seen in gross margin looks to be pretty sustainable, both in terms of product positioning, but also execution from the operations and service teams in the organization. Harlan talked about market share, so I won't get into that detail. We provided some context on that in the earnings call a few weeks ago. Certainly, there's some context around pattern inspection, one of our strong markets in the company.

Bare wafer inspection, an inflecting business, we'll probably talk about that a little bit later.

Reticle inspection, driven by EUV development efforts, that's been very good business for us as well. Market share is good. We announced the Orbotech transaction in the quarter. March 19th, we announced that. We're excited about the opportunities that are there. Allows KLA to serve a broader SAM. There's no product overlap. The top 10 customer list is completely different top 10 customer lists for both companies. It's an opportunity to serve what looks like a $2 billion-$3 billion incremental SAM for the company.

Market-leading position, complex systems, service business, so looks a lot like KLA businesses that we think that we can deliver complementary capability over time, but also drive operational improvements and leverage in their business model, and then an additional cash flow stream that we can put to work the way we have historically in terms of the dividend and cash returns. During the quarter, I also talked about 70%-75% through cycle cash flow return to shareholders is our target. Obviously, with the structure of the transaction and the announcements we made around share repurchase, we will be doing a lot more than that over the next 2 years, but certainly, that's our long-term plan. Very good environment. We're pretty pleased with where things are. With that, I'm happy to take any of your questions.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Great. Thanks. Let me start off with the first few questions. Obviously, KLA has, amongst its semi-cap equipment peers, sort of best-in-class gross and operating margins. I think this quarter you're pushing close to that 65% gross margin level and 40% operating margin level. You guys just updated your financial targets, I think it was June of last year. Obviously, revenues are a function of the demand environment. You obviously don't have too much control about that except for maybe product cycles. What has led to the Pretty good expansion in gross and operating margins. Just even over the past few quarters, is it leverage because of the revenue scale? Is it the new products that are carrying higher margins? Help us understand why you're sitting here today on the cusp of sort of mid-60s gross margins, 40% op margins.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Well, certainly, revenue scale is part of it. We look to drive in the company 60%-70% incremental gross margins on revenue growth. We look for drop-through of about 1.5x the revenue growth rate-

in terms of drop-through to operating margins. You have movement around those numbers depending on product development, investment, and so on. We run the company given that expectation, and that's what we try to drive. Certainly, product positioning is a huge factor. Our products are fairly differentiated relative-

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

to our competitors. We have a product introduction cadence that's far ahead of our competitors. We're always introducing new capability to the market. We have a pretty deep understanding about the returns that the tools give to our customers. We try to share that value with them. That establishes sort of baseline pricing for platforms and products that continues in every generation that you introduce. It's very important for us to hold to that and be disciplined about how we think about that. Service has been a nice tailwind to the business in that one good thing about consolidation, maybe more than one good thing, but certainly one good thing about consolidation is that we are able to leverage, in certain regions, the infrastructure in the service business.

You've had leveraging infrastructure, but also inflections around opportunities in our service business that are driven by what is an expansion of in demand that is now driving utilization rates of legacy tools at a higher level. We're seeing that, we're seeing more activity there, and then we're able to leverage the infrastructure that supports it all. Our service business is 75% contract, it's a unique service business relative to some of our peers, I think.

Just given the nature of the equipment and the tools. We do have a high penetration rate or attach rate of contracts to service, that's been good for the business. Product introduction has been pretty good. New products coming out, I think the experience, the engineering discipline, design stability, all those things has been pretty positive relative to historical experiences. These are not simple tools, sometimes you have issues when you introduce them. On a comparative basis versus prior generations of tools, we've had a pretty good experience in terms of getting the tools ramped in manufacturing. I oversee manufacturing operations in the company-

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

so I live this on a daily basis. Getting the tools out, ramping them, getting them installed, and meeting customer commitments has been positive, too. Lots of little things grinding it out over time. As I said earlier, I think that there are opportunities for us to continue to work this, I believe that these improvements in the operating model that we put forward about a little over a year ago are sustainable. I feel pretty good about the trajectory overall. Yes, this quarter looks like it's in that range, potentially as high as 65%. I don't think that's necessarily where we're going to be, but operating at these revenue levels between 63%-64% is a place I feel pretty comfortable, just given the mix expectations of the business going forward.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Great. Let's talk about, you gave us a good overview of how you see the year. Memory, NAND, more first half weighted, DRAM sort of spread first half, second half. I think you talked about foundry and logic getting stronger in the second half of the year. I think you've talked about full year, your shipments in the second half kind of up mid-single digits versus first half. Is that how you feel, confidence level around that?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Yeah. It looks like we continue to see sustainability of what we're seeing, that forecast of mid-single digit, half-to-half growth in shipments is how we see it.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

One of the newer dynamics over the past few years has been the rise of the China domestic manufacturers, right? Both in foundry and logic, also kind of the newer entrants into the memory markets. You have been talking about this. We wrote a report last year that we estimate that for every new greenfield opportunity that comes up in China, there's probably about one to two percentage points higher process control intensity goodness for KLA. Two questions there. How has the China business done for the team just overall in 2017 and here in 2018? Are you seeing the higher process control intensity, which further augments potential growth in China? How do you think about China as we move into 2019?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Yeah, it's exciting times over there. This year, a number of new big projects on the memory side. Increments of foundry capacity along the way, more foundry last year, this year, certainly from a shipment perspective, more memory weighted. You're right. I think given the nature of the immaturity of process and technology in China, there's an opportunity for us in maybe sub-scale fabs or smaller-

fabs for higher levels of intensity in that business in a sustainable way going forward. Today, it's much higher than that, just given the fact that they are ramping these fabs from basically from development into these pilot lines, monitoring processes much more closely before they start to move more aggressively to add wafer starts, which will drive more of the process side of the world. The intensity is stronger. The market share position is also good. I think it's one of those situations where. You tend to move. You want to get something going quickly. You mentioned market share position earlier, the fact that we've got across the waterfront.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

process control, different solutions for our customer, the abilities to connect the data and tie the tool performance together to get time to results up faster, that we're doing very well from a market share perspective there as well. It's strong business for the company. Just from an order perspective, and I'm using orders because the shipments move around a little bit because a lot of these greenfield facilities are brand new.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Right.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

There's infrastructure and other things that go into the timing of delivery. From an order perspective, we booked about in excess of $700 million of indigenous China business in calendar 2017. That number this year looks like it's 600-ish, plus or minus. That number was about $250 million in 2016, quite a ramp. When we looked at it, we've talked about it publicly, that over a multi-year, four or five-year period, we saw business levels of incremental $500 million to $700 million of business in China. That's the experience we're seeing, and it's been pretty encouraging so far.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Great. We'll talk about some of the new products that you guys have been talking about, that we wrote about recently, but let's talk about the Orbotech acquisition. First question for you is, what's been the feedback like from your customers and Orbotech's customers?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Well, the feedback from customers has been generally pretty positive. As I said earlier, there's no customer overlap. I think on both sides, we have a conversation with a customer. They're happy that we spoke to them about it, but they want to make sure that we continue to support them around whatever that we're doing or what Orbotech is doing with them. The feedback has been neutral to positive. The other general feedback overall is that, given the changing complexity and increasing complexity of the roadmaps in those businesses, that more tech is good.

Certainly that from an inspection perspective, some of the capabilities that KLA has, we believe over time is complementary and can augment some of what Orbotech is doing. The feedback has been pretty positive. As I said earlier, I think it's an opportunity, increasing complex roadmaps, an opportunity for us to broaden the SAM, to leverage some of our core competencies to drive operating leverage and then another cash flow pool for us to deploy in a productive way. I think it is a deal for us that we're excited about. We think the structure makes a lot of sense in terms of how we did it. I think that the view of our currency was pretty strong. Ultimately, though, we want the accretion that comes from a cash deal, so we made the commitment to buy back the shares.

We're pretty pleased with the structure and the integration plan so far going forward. We haven't done a lot on that front. On the regulatory front, we've gotten approvals from the U.S., from Germany, from Austria. Israel, we've got an exemption for applying to Israel, and then we've got the usual other jurisdictions, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China ultimately to close, and I would expect China to be last. We targeted the end of the year-

As a close timeframe, nothing new on that front in terms of our expectations. I think everything's still consistent with what we said a month ago.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Great. You brought up a good point, which is, we cover Orbotech, one of the things that was very apparent to us when we picked up coverage on Orbotech was, these guys look kind of very much like the KLA of flat panel and PCB in a sense that, I think people that don't know Orbotech and know that these guys are big in flat panel and printed circuit board actually think that, well, these guys make equipment for manufacturing flat panels and printed circuit board. It's a smaller part of the overall business, but the core part of Orbotech's business is much the same things that you guys do, which is process control, measurement, inspection, process improvement, and so on.

Yes, you're still in the midst of getting this deal done, but are there areas where you feel like the Orbotech team or the KLA team can sort of leverage the core competencies in the area of process control to drive some either top-line synergies or quicker time to market for tools on a go-forward basis?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

I mean, we've been very impressed with what we've seen so far, and you're right. When you look at the tools, they look similar. One thing about what we do at KLA is very high-end capability, and the semiconductor industry, with hundreds of millions of units, enables the industry to afford that high-end capability. There are derivatives of technology and capability that KLA has that would, I think, make sense and help augment some of their positions. Could take time for that to happen. Certainly, it's probably a few product cycles away, and we've got to prove that we can actually design for the market requirements, including cost. Look, when we've considered a transaction like this, to your point, it looks familiar, creates an opportunity for us to leverage what we do well.

You don't do a deal if you don't think that you can do those kinds of things. We believe that in the long run, I think that there are opportunities. We'll see how that plays out over time. The operating opportunities are nice and certainly part of the value equation, really, you have to believe that you can drive better products and deliver better products to customers ultimately over time to pursue a transaction like this.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

I think one of the things that was interesting to me, because I think maybe some of us in this room also would tend to conclude that once you enter into a definitive agreement to acquire a company, you need to suspend all of your capital return programs. Based off of the last earnings call, you seem to outline a situation where that's actually not the case, right? Maybe you can walk us through, because I think you guys have been in the market, buying back your shares recently, but maybe you can help us understand, what are the windows of opportunity as you work through the Orbotech deal where the team can still be in a position to buy back shares?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Well, first, I'm not a lawyer. Yeah. I'll back up a second and talk. We announced the transaction, it was 60% cash, 40% stock. At the time, we also announced a $2 billion buyback, a $1 billion commitment, and then a $1 billion contingent on closing of the deal. Effectively, $2 billion that we would execute over the next 12 to 18 months or so. Yeah, in a transaction, in the pendency, obviously, you just have to suspend it when you're from a handshake to an announcement. We were in a quiet period timeframe there. Prior to the filing of the S-4, there's a window of opportunity-

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Right

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

where you can buy back some stock, it's a formulaic approach based on previous activity over the previous three months and so on. There's a little bit of activity that's happening this quarter, has been happening. Once you actually get beyond the S-4 filing and the shareholder vote, which we anticipate will be sometime in late July or August, you're not restricted at that point. The shareholders have voted for the deal, you're not restricted in moving forward with your plan. We would expect that When I talked in February about post-tax return, how we were thinking-

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

about shareholder returns and share repurchases, I talked about a construct that was basically somewhere around $200 million, $250 million a quarter, a $1 billion over-

a 12-month timeframe. We're effectively executing that-

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

That's ex Orbotech, right?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

That's ex

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

The Orbotech thing. The point is that when I thought about that, I thought about Orbotech, but I also thought about the fact that independent of Orbotech, what kind of commitments could we make?

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

I wanted to make sure it was consistent. I would expect that we would, subject to market conditions, that we would begin post-shareholder buyback, assuming we're out of a quiet period, or post shareholder vote, assuming we're out of the quiet period, that we would begin to execute to the previous non-Orbotech POR.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Got it. Before I move on to discussions of some of the end market dynamics, do we have any questions in the audience? If you do, please wait for the microphone. Let's talk about some of your end markets. In memory, 3D NAND obviously, spending has been quite strong. We've talked about it, you've talked about it, that in general, the 3D NAND with the very complex kind of deposition and etch structure, is actually well-suited for higher levels of process control intensity, especially around some of your metrology-based products as well as your unpatterned wafer inspection. I think we were assuming to the tune of given a normalized 3D spending environment, an incremental kind of $100 million, $200 million of incremental revenue opportunity for KLA, as 3D continues to kind of move up the stack.

I think a proof point to that is, for example, 70% of the memory spend this year for WFE is memory, and I think that's how you think your business from a profile perspective is going to kind of end up that way as well. Help us understand, with the onset of 3D NAND, is the thesis playing out that it does have higher process control intensity? You are seeing more tool traction there, and if so, what areas and that you guys are seeing some good momentum?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

We have seen a step up in intensity for process control from planar to 3D structures.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

That's been reflected in the numbers that we've been delivering over the last couple of years or so since we started down this road. You're right, there's unique challenges around metrology around the stack itself.

Traditional metrology methods of using E-beam based approaches, you tend to get top and bottom type measurements, but you can't get sidewall angles and other things. That has been an inflection for us. You also have the film stacks. Film measurement of those stacks is also in a metrology inflection. On the bare wafer side, the defectivity control in a 3D NAND process, in a lot of cases has been used in a couple ways. Number 1 is that they will use more unpatterned wafer inspection and run monitor wafers before they actually start to process it, which means they're buying more tools and keeping tools really, really clean.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

That's been positive for us. You also have the wafer flatness metrology, where as you're building the stacks, there are new specifications in the market for wafer flatness. Just think, as you're building a stack and it's taller and taller, if the wafer's not really, really flat, you can have it tip or not align correctly. That's been a positive for us there. All those things collectively have contributed to the 2 points. We've also had a pickup in the wafer segment, the bare wafer segment.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

The wafer manufacturers, and this is in some ways derivative 3D NAND or derivative memory, where they're adding capacity to support the incremental wafer starts, also have to meet these new specifications for flatness and for cleanliness. It doesn't show up in our memory percentages, also exposed to memory or being driven principally by memory. We do think there's some opportunities going forward for us to improve on it. We've talked a lot about new platforms of tools, 1 in inspection, 1 in metrology to improve the intensity of process control, principally because the current methods are destructive and take a long time to get there, where they're cross-sectioning wafers with FIB tools

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Looking at samples in a lab, obviously, that takes time. You're destroying product wafer, not a production solution. We have a new platform that we've got probe tools in the market, that does metrology on the channels, the channel holes, as it drills down through the stack. Also looking at the defect problem of buried defects. That's a challenge too, because it's not the traditional problem that KLA or inspection has solved where you're finding smaller defects. It's not necessarily about the size of the defect, but trying to locate it within the stack itself. It's a different problem, and we've been working on that too. We've got tools engaged with customers. We're working through whether we can solve the problem that solves sort of the broader market situation and that we can ramp and scale into a meaningful segment for us.

We're working on that one. I think the metrology is moving faster than the inspection. None of these products are in the numbers that I've talked about earlier. We hope to see the kind of contribution from the products that you mentioned, $100 million-$200 million type opportunity-

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

For us moving forward as we move into 2019. A lot of efforts here, a lot of investment, and we're encouraged, hopefully, that we'll see something in terms of some new opportunity for us going forward.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Let's talk about the foundry logic business, because this is kind of also the diversity of the business as well, right? Because you just mentioned 3D NAND, memory in general as maybe more metrology kind of heavy, right? Whereas your foundry logic business is definitely more heavy on things like patterned wafer inspection. I think you talked about this year, I would say overall for the industry, foundry and logic are sort of looking kind of flattish. Part of it is in foundry, there's definitely been some reuse from 10 to 7. It was interesting, your opening commentary, that you expect some of the second half pickup in shipments to come from, seems like foundry and logic.

Can you help us understand what are the dynamics that are driving that in a year where it does feel like foundry and logic spending is flattish, but what are some of the inflections that you're seeing towards the back half of this year in that segment?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

You see incremental seven nanometer capacity starting to ship in the second half of the year. There was a lot that was added in 2017. It's been even a digestion phase, been trying to migrate

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

to nanometer, to your point. We would expect that to pick up in the logic foundry space in the second half and continue into 2019. We still expect 10 seven wafer starts across the total combined segment to probably increase 35%-40% in 2018 versus 2017. Still some investment there. Very little beyond that in terms of. There could be some five nanometer investment we might start to see some orders on from a development perspective in the second half of the year, but those will be shipments in 2019. You also have EUV activity, the development activity that's impacting our reticle inspection business

as customers are doing development work on EUV, but also buying our optical pattern Gen5 tool to do print check applications. What print check is basically printing the wafers to validate reticle fidelity. That's been a nice use case for the Gen5 tool. We're seeing some pickup there related to the EUV work that's happening, that's expected to get introduced at least at some limited number of layers and a couple of iterations of seven nanometer into 2019 and beyond. I think the other things that we're doing in the business around, there's a new platform in laser scattering. Multi-patterning has driven unique overlay requirements. We have two technologies that support the overlay business. We had a record year in overlay from an order perspective in 2017, we're now shipping those into 2018.

That's been a nice driver for that business as well.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

I wanted to ask you, just maybe taking a step back, higher level, you talked about the shipment profile, first half, second half. Your lead times typically tend to be a bit longer than some of the other semi cap equipment peers. You're talking about five nanometer foundry, maybe towards the back half of this year.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Orders

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Orders, right? When companies like an Applied or Lam probably are going to see that for another six to nine months. If we talk about order trajectory, order pattern, first half, second half, how do you see that dynamic?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

The orders are up, it gives me a little more confidence in terms of how we look at shipments, which translates into WFE, right?

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Right.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Into 2019, in my view, that I think that generally foundry and logic ought to be up in 2019 versus 2018. 2018 is sort of historic lows, we're operating at pretty low levels this year, I would expect that to increase into next year. Yes, the lead time question, it varies across customers. Some customers are really good about lead time, others just expect us to deliver. Every couple of weeks, we're always moving slots around to make sure we can accommodate our different customer needs. China tends to give more lead time. In general, a lot of that's tied to the facility opening brand new sites, you have to be pretty aligned with them.

Generally, yes, we do get more lead time, and we're starting to see that, and that does give me some confidence, given the order profile, let's say the December quarter, more in the second half of the year, that the shipment profile in the first half will be stronger for the foundry logic segments.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

In general, just given your visibility, you've got obviously very close partnerships with all of the major semiconductor suppliers around the world. You combine that with better visibility, longer lead times. What's your sort of rough sense about how 2019 is going to shake out?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

We're in May. I mean, right now, I told our employees this at the last all-hands meeting. Look, I'm planning for things. I know there's some questions in the market. I talked about foundry logic, my views.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Right

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

What happens on the memory front. There are a number of projects in Vertical NAND that are lining up in the first part of the year from a number of customers. I believe that there's sustainability and investments that are happening there. DRAM, there are a lot of questions in the market over the long run, given how much they're spending this year after a period of lighter investment.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

That's right.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

I am operating on the assumption that we're at these business levels that we're at now and telling the employees that there are no breaks coming. We have to continue to scale the company and be able to. We're in this $1 billion to $1 billion one type business level, and I think we're going to be there for a while. That's generally how I'm looking at it right now.

I wouldn't say I have a lot more visibility than that, given where we are in 2018.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Great. Okay. Do we have any questions from the audience? Let's talk about the financials. I talked about the sort of premium profitability profile. You guys put up a chart not that long ago, and I think this is partly what's responsible, for example, in a year where 70% of the spending mix is memory, which has not been sort of your ideal mix, right? Yet the team is still growing its top line 10%. A big part of it has got to be the product cycles and the new tools that you've rolled out. You've talked about the Gen5 wafer inspection platform and the most recent generation of Gen4. We'll talk about EUV reticle inspection in a second here. You've got a lot more new programs teed up, 2018, 2019, which will hopefully continue to drive the revenue growth.

How do we think about the OpEx spend required to fund these R&D initiatives? Can the team still drive a track record of driving leverage on the OpEx as long as revenues are growing?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

It's something that is fundamental to how we run the company. I talked about our drop-through expectations. We are driving a number of new programs. We have ramped OpEx as revenue has ramped. We also see a number of opportunities out there. The product pipeline is exciting. There's certainly things like EUV that don't happen very often. There are a number of products. You mentioned reticle inspection, new platforms supporting this fundamental technology change for the industry that's having an impact on cost. I talked about some of the opportunities.

In vertical NAND and the metrology products. We're investing in these things. Ultimately, we have this expectation about drop-through that we have to manage, and that works both directions. It's fundamental to how we budget in the company. I'm comfortable that the way we have provided this guidance, and as people model the company, that's how they ought to assume our performance will move going forward. Gross margins move around based on mix. I have products in the company that are very above the company average, have products that are below.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Right.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

It always, on a quarter-to-quarter basis, can have some variability there. That's usually what leads to any variability you see in my performance or our model performance over the course of a year. In terms of from a broader perspective, kind of guidance I gave, 63%, 64%, shooting for incrementals of 60%-70%, that's how we're going to run the business and try to drive one and a half the revenue growth rate to the bottom line.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Let's talk really quickly about the new EUV reticle inspection platform. We wrote a report about that last week. You guys talked about it briefly on the last earnings call. Your reticle business doubled in 2017. I think a big part of that was EUV. As we move to the five nanometer node, you guys are working on a new E-beam mask inspection tool. Can you give us an update on that? Maybe what are the key differentiators for the team, and when are we going to start to see this tool out in the market?

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Yeah. It's E-beam reticle, and it's a platform to inspect reticles and to leverage the die-to-database franchise where you're inspecting against design database for reticle qualification. One thing about reticles, you have to have 100% defect detection, it's a very high-end inspection application because otherwise you print those defects on every wafer. Supporting EUV pre with EUV reticles, pre-pellicle, there are inspection steps where you need the resolution-

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

of an E-beam tool. Post-pellicle, there are other-

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Yep

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

challenges as well. We have a tool that it's frankly the founding business of the company, reticle inspection.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

That's right.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

There's a lot of history and legacy in this business, IP in this business. It's a new technology for reticle inspection, but we're working on it with the idea that we'd be putting a tool into the marketplace sometime probably towards the end of next year. Obviously, it'll be like anything else. It'll take some time before it ramps up into what a volume production, it's critical to EUV deployment in a high volume production environment. It's a market we've always served and supported, so we're encouraged by the progress we're making and hope that by sometime in late 2019, we'll have a product in the market.

Harlan Sur
Head of U.S. Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment, J.P. Morgan

Great. Thank you very much, Bren. Appreciate having you here today.

Bren Higgins
EVP and CFO, KLA

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.