Good afternoon, and thank you for attending JPMorgan's forty ninth Annual Technology Media and Communications Conference. My name is Harlan Sur. I'm the semiconductor and semiconductor capital equipment analyst here for the firm. Very pleased to have the team from KLA here with us today. Rick Wallace, president and chief executive officer, Brent Higgins, executive vice president and chief financial officer.
I've asked Rick to start us off with KLA's view of the wafer equipment, process control and specialty semiconductor equipment spending environment this year, KLA's growth outlook within that, and then we'll go ahead and kick off the Q and A. And so gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. And Rick, let me go ahead and turn it over to you.
Thanks, Harlan, and thank you very much for having us today, and thanks, everyone, for joining. It's an exciting time for the semiconductor industry. I think you all know that. We've seen, after what we thought was a very robust 2020, 2021 is proving to be even stronger, especially as it pertains to the equipment investments going by our customers. So we mentioned in our call in for the March results, we're seeing strengthening throughout this year, and that continues pretty much unabated in terms of overall demand for equipment.
And it's really very broad, which is kind of exciting for us. It comes from all different sectors, all different geographies, and we're seeing a lot of strength, as it pertains to process control. We mentioned in our earnings call that we think our estimates for WFE are in the low twenties in terms of 22% to 24% growth. And KLA's process control business, we think our growth expectations for this calendar year begin with a 3%. So we feel very well positioned to support the market and our customers and outgrow.
Process control is benefiting from a number of factors. Obviously, the increased complexity of semiconductor devices and foundry and logic is one. We're also seeing advances going on in the memory devices, which is leading to higher degree of process intensity. But in addition to that, we have new product offerings and new capabilities that our customers have been proving out since we talked about them originally in 2019 at our Analyst Day, and we're seeing adoption of some of that and with more of that to come. So KLA is very well positioned to support, what is a very robust market.
That's great. And so let me start off with a longer term question. You know, wafer equipment, which includes process control, wafer equipment intensity bottomed in 2013 at 9%. Right? Starting in 2014, which was interesting enough, the first year of three d NAND production ramp and up until last year, WFE intensity increased to 14%.
So another way to look at it is that over the past seven years, wafer equipment spending has grown at an 11% CAGR versus semiconductor industry revenue growth at a 6% CAGR. KLA has grown its revenues at a 12% CAGR over that period of time. So given the complexity challenges, more focus on yield, cost, the need for more installed capacity to support the strong demand trends, I mean, does the team anticipate WFE and process control continuing to outgrow industry revenues? And what are what are gonna be the major drivers?
Sure. I'll take that and let Ren add to it as well, Carlin. I think that, first of all, we as I mentioned, we feel good about where we are positioned right now. I think that that a couple of things that happened since you mentioned, 2014. One is the industry was benefiting, I think, from underinvestment or the our customers were underinvesting relative to ultimately their needs at that time.
And it worked for a little while partly because scale scaling was stalled at that time. The the other thing, of course, is the end demand drivers weren't necessarily playing out at that time in the way that we've seen them go since. So the other thing we track very carefully, and I know you do too, Harlan, is our customer profitability. And and really, that's never been better. So there there are a lot of incentives for them to continue to invest.
With the resumption of scaling and the concerns that our customers have about getting their devices out to the market, we've seen accelerated demand for process control. The other thing that was maybe not anticipated, we didn't necessarily see it coming, frankly, with a large number of starts at advanced design nodes. What the expectations many had for this industry was with every new generation of devices, there might be a driver or two, but there'd be only a handful of designs at the leading edge. That changed, and we're seeing a large number of designs at the leading edge, which has also driven more competitive dynamics in the logicfoundry space. And recently, of course, we know there's a third player coming back and investing more heavily in addition to what the the market leader is doing.
So we're seeing a broadening of demand there. On top of that, of course, we have the secular drivers, which, of course, everybody watching this today is well aware of, but they're all really hitting their stride. I think what COVID nineteen did for the industry and for our customers was it accelerated the digital transformation that had been anticipated. So none of these things were a surprise. What was really a surprise is the rate of adoption that happened during COVID nineteen and the ability of people to recognize some of the savings.
I think everybody agrees that as we come out of COVID nineteen, work will be forever changed based on the advances of of the technologies. And the one area where there was disinvestment last year, is the one that's probably the most backlog, which is in the automotive electronics. We talked about that in our Investor Day is the increasing digitization of automobiles. We're not talking just about EVs, electric vehicles, but across the supply chain. And, of course, that's an area where investors, our customers stopped investing, and that's an area where there's a lot of making up and catching up.
So we have the secular drivers that we had. We have the overall, catch up that happened, and we think now we're well positioned for WFE to continue to grow. I think you're right. I think about 14% intensity. There might be upward pressure on it.
In our modeling, we don't see it going a lot higher
than that.
And we think process control is probably at about the right place. There's some potential for gains as we outlined in our, twenty nineteen Analyst Day. We still feel confident of what those are. But largely at a run rate that's consistent, maybe slightly improving over time as process control can outgrow overall WFE. KLA is very well positioned competitively.
We've made a lot of investment in new products, and we believe we'll see the benefit of that. We've already seen some of that in share gain over the last two years since our Analyst Day, and we think we're positioned to continue that trend. Brent, anything you want to add? Yes. I think, Harlan, I
think one other thing I would add is, it's got this robust demand environment. We talked about customer profitability in an environment where we have capital intensity rising. So not rising a lot, but it is rising. So I think you've got an overall environment that supports this higher level of investing. Demand is pretty broad, as Rick talked about.
And I think if you even look at the memory side as we look at where we are today, we're coming off a couple of years of pretty disciplined behavior in terms of equipment investment. So we're starting to see that come back here in 2021. I think that continues as we move forward. So overall, across all the segments, with the introduction of EUV, we saw an acceleration really in logic and foundry investment. After a period of time, you talked about twenty fourteen, you can go back, there's a five year period or so there where there was no growth in that part of the market.
So the introduction of EUV, the broadening of demand, all the design start activity has been really good for the business as well.
And we know that you didn't provide out your WFE number for 2022, but the team did say that they expect continued momentum into next year. What reasons can you provide that should address investor fears of some sort of peaking in fundamentals this year or early next year?
Well, if you just look at what we're seeing this year, it continues to be strong and the competitive dynamics are also very strong as well. So we provided context on the year that we thought that the second half would be higher than the first half and we'd see sequential growth each quarter. As you move and think about, okay, where are we in 2022? These dynamics around the logicfoundry investment, I You'll think, see more logic investment, I would expect, as we move into 2022. Some of the well chronicled shortages, I I don't think those could get addressed until you move into '22.
We talked about memory and the the pretty disciplined behavior we've seen so far, and I would expect momentum to continue as well there. And you've got some of the regional investment that's happening both in terms of the activities that are in China, but also what could be coming in other parts of The U. S. And Europe. So when we look at all that, we didn't quantify a specific growth number, but we did feel like there'd be some sustainability in demand as we move into 2022.
And our sales funnel is indicating that and we're certainly managing our supply chain and our capacity to continue to be able to deliver on those types of output levels as we move into next year. So Harlan, one other thing just to add to that is one thing we've always done in the company is looked at the economics of our customers and then thought about the economics of their customers. And in some cases now, we mentioned the proliferation of demand. It's interesting how we have some customers for semiconductors now that were not traditionally they bought their chips, but they realize, you know, if they design their own chips and they run a big data center and it's it's conserving energy because it's more energy efficient, the advanced nodes, they have a very quick ROI on that. So it it becomes a generation of, you know, wealth for them or savings for them to have that capability.
There are a lot of economics that make sense. The auto industry is another one where it's gonna be a competitive disadvantage if you don't have increasing electrical, you know, electric capability in the cars, whether TVs or not, ADAS systems, all those. Those drive consumption of semiconductors. So I think it's a pretty robust and, again, what this digital transformation has done is changed that. I think one area, for example, that was gaining no traction was telehealth.
That's another one where there's been a lot of adoption of capability over the last year for obvious reasons. So there's just more drivers now, and the economics make sense for them. It's not you know, if you go back in history and think about other times where people worried about that is maybe there were many players fighting for the same market share. That's not really what we're seeing right now.
That's, I appreciate that insightful. Let's talk about the market leadership that KLA enjoys in process control. You know, the Gartner market share status came out for 2020. Again, strong number one, you know, four and a half times larger shares than your number two competitor. But overall, your share declined very slightly in process control.
However, if we exclude the mask inspection where a key competitor did outperform last year, k if we exclude mask inspection, KLA share across all of the other process control segments combined actually grew by 100 basis points. So first, on the reticle inspection side, what drove the relative underperformance in 2020? More importantly, what gives the team confidence that you could potentially regain share here in 2021? And then secondly, you expected to grow overall process control share this year outside of reticle inspection. What other areas are you expecting to see share gains?
Yeah. Great question. Let me just back up a minute and kind of set the stage and then get to your specific question. In our twenty nineteen Analyst Day, which is, which was in September of that year, you know, we talked about what we thought was going to be ability for KLA to gain share, 250 basis points, I think, over five years was what we had said, which is about, you know, what we thought was a reasonable number with some additional adoption. We're we're ahead of that plan given for even including the situation inside of reticle over that time period because of some of the gains we made during, you know, the first part of that time period.
So overall, our formula is working, which is we collaborate very closely with our customers. We spend a lot of money in innovation to make sure we have unique capabilities that satisfy customer demands, and then we execute quite well against those. That's been our formula for years. That will continue to be. We think that's part of the model, the operating model that we have that allows us to be successful.
There are times when you have a dislocation and where, you know, there's a gap in terms of your product road map or there's a market segment that's being filled that we don't necessarily compete in or or have an offering that is is consistent with the current demand. So I would say in reticle, there were some gains that were made in the prior year, but there was a segment inside of that where we didn't have a particularly strong offering. And we have a new offering coming out that we talked about even at that analyst meeting, our multi beam e beam system for reticle. And that'll be out in you know, we'll see that going to the market now. And Mhmm.
We'll by the end of the year, we'll prove that capability out. So we feel pretty good about where we are relatively speaking in terms of, the reticle market, which, as you know, we've been leaders in for many years. We have a lot of assets inside of that market. But there are always times where we're gonna have you know, we'll have competitive pressure in different segments. In aggregate, though, we feel very good about where we are.
In terms of overall, you know, we mentioned that we think it'll start with a three this year. The optical inspection demand is extraordinary. That's the one where we're getting pressured by many customers because there's so much demand, especially for Gen five, but also for Gen four products. So we're working very hard to keep up with that demand, and we think that'll be a very strong performer in this year. The other areas that are important, you know, we talked about in the past, fair wafer, talked about metrology and and some of the new capabilities that we've also talked about that are coming out this year that haven't really, they were in our 2023 plan originally, and they haven't really started gaining appreciably in terms of, overall share.
Bren, you want to add to that? Yes. I think when we look
at the optical inspection market, it's as Rick said, it's inflecting and we have multiple products there. We talked about Gen five and Gen four, but also our Voyager laser scattering platform. So we expect to see that business outperform the market. Our thin film business continues, film measurement business continues to do well. Rick mentioned on pattern inspection, that with with the incremental investment that you're seeing in memory plus the activities in foundry, which is driven driving wafer output, that's driving that business to perform, I would expect, somewhere in line with the market.
We have new offerings in e beam inspection, and we gained a little bit of share there last year and would expect to see that continue. It's part of a broader strategy in terms of how we drive relevancy and adoption of optical inspection, but the tools are working together in a complementary way. So I think we're pretty well positioned, as Rick said, from a share point of view. And I think in Reticle, in the lower end application where we did see some competitive pressures because of the differentiated solution didn't have as much value given the technology that the customer was running, we are starting to see that shift. And as the use case becomes more technical, we're seeing more adoption there.
So I would expect to see some recovery of that on the reticle requalification side, fab requalification side. So all in all, we feel really good about where we're positioned.
Yeah. I think you're right. I think as we've, you know, followed KLA for many years, there have been periods of time where when there's no innovation, right, for particular segments, it does allow for competitors to kinda step in. Right? May maybe like in mask inspection last year.
But then as soon as you have increased complexity or some other, you know, more difficult problems to address, you know, And then customers have to turn to somebody like a KLA that does have a platform that can address their solutions. So as long as there continues to be innovation, I think customers, as far as we can tell from the way that the market share trends have been going, customers do tend to side with KLA because they often have the sort of leading edge of the capabilities that their customers need for those leading edge manufacturing processes. Right? I mean, is that kind of what is a big part of maybe the dynamics of what is happening this year, let's say, as you start to see the share shift back to your, you know, to you in terms of the mask inspection platforms?
Well, the best indicator of that, Harlan, is look at the gross margins, right? And we're seeing our gross margins. It's usually the best indicator of real differentiation in the market. So how are you valued? Are you offering unique value to customers?
Usually, just shows in the gross margins. And I think you can look at the gross margin performance of the company. We segment report to give you some indication of where we are today relative to where we've been. And certainly volume levels are higher, but the gross margin performance of the company, both overall, but also within our semi PC segment has been very strong. And I think that's indicative of the strength of the products in the marketplace.
And then maybe on kind of the overall market environment, as you mentioned, revised your WFE outlook this year to about $75,000,000,000 so that's you know, up kind of 25% year over year. Sort of looking at the different end markets, foundry, logic, DRAM, and NAND, off of that 75,000,000,000 WFE number, What segments are growing the fastest? How would you rank order that?
Well, so foundry logic is growing faster than market. I think that's the best way to think about it. And that's driven by multiple players across really the gamut of leading edge investment, but also in the trailing edge activities. So we would expect that to grow faster than the overall market. The DRAM market is probably performing somewhere around the market in terms of growth after a couple of years of, as I said, pretty disciplined investment.
And I would expect NAND, which is we're a little bit more cautious on, but still expect growth something below the market rate. So I'd rank it that way.
Okay. Great. And then China has been a region with increasing investments in recent years. Your peers have discussed, you know, domestic China spending around 10,000,000,000 in 2020 with further growth this year. What what type of growth does KLA see in China this year?
I would say our opinion is not any different. Well, I would expect it to grow somewhere in line with the overall market, maybe a little bit slower. I guess we'll have to see. There's some new facilities. And so the timing of those facilities in terms of how they're equipped and ultimately come online, infrastructure and so on, in the second half of the year, we'll probably determine whether it's in line with the market or a little bit faster than that, but still continued investment across a number of projects.
We're also seeing some investment there in capability around wafer manufacturing and also mask investment. So in the support industry or parts of the industry, we're also seeing investment there as well.
In the environment where, you know, we've talked to many of your customers both on the leading edge as well as on the mature and specialty technologies, and they're all telling us that, you know, if they place a equipment order today, they're not gonna get it till sometime. And that that those those lead times keep extending up, but they're not gonna get delivery until sometime next year. And so how has the rapid snapback of manufacturing activity post COVID nineteen impacted your systems manufacturing group and lead times? And taking into consideration industry wide supply constraints in semi and semi end markets, we assume that this demand profile is gonna continue to be strong into next year as well. So in addition to how is the manufacturing team responding to the current book of demand, what is KLA doing to increase its internal manufacturing capabilities to support what looks to be maybe another strong growth year next year?
Yes. So it is something that our teams are working on daily. It's not easy and certainly trying to manage across a broad supply chain and a number of products a challenge in this environment. A, the size of the overall demand environment, how quickly we got here. And so our lead times are a little longer than we normally like to see them.
Normally, run the business around five to six months lead time. So we build the forecast and we try to run it there. It's extended out. It's about eight months today. And so we'll be working against that and hopefully working that down as we progress through the year given the guidance that we provided.
If you think about capacity, I take it just simply to people, parts and space. On the people side, we've invested in terms of adding people across our worldwide factory footprint. Our headcount is up probably, at least from authorization or rec perspective, over 30%. Since November. We're adding space in each facility.
And then we're working with suppliers. They're investing and we appreciate the work that our suppliers have done. And we're also investing in some cases in our suppliers to ensure we have the dedicated capacity and flexibility we need. So, we're working our way through it. And I think we're, you know, we we deal with the challenges as they come.
And we also balance it against, you know, our customer readiness requirements. And as those are moving around, competitive dynamics and so on, we don't lose business, as I said on the call, because we can't ship. So we will deliver, where we need to, and we would expect to see, these investments start to add incremental capacity as we move forward over the next, few quarters and positioning the company for to be able to sustain this level as, as we get, you know, beyond 2021.
Now this week at our conference, we've had AMD present, we've had Intel present, you know, AMD is talking about the move to five, already starting early development work on three. Intel obviously is moving you know, getting set to make the move to seven. We had Micron talking about one alpha DRAM. We had, you know, WD talking about the move to big six with Kyokja to a 112 layers. And so on some of these upcoming major technology transitions, I mean, how does the process control intensity change going from foundry five to three or NAND from nine nine x layers to 100 x layers and, you know, DRAM from, you know, one z to one alpha and then to one beta?
How does the process control intensity trend?
Well, Harlan, it kind of fits these transitions, as you know, were all anticipated. I think now we're just facing into them. These were all part of the modeling that we did back at our Analyst Day and and how we thought about process control intensity. You know, the the these problems get more challenging, but, of course, we're expected as an equipment provider to provide more capability. So we we and and, you know, that's the whole game here is it's a deflationary industry in the sense that we gotta keep making this stuff more affordable to do these advanced devices.
That's kinda how we get to process control intensity. Maybe outperform slightly the overall market, but I would say not by a lot. I think that there's a tremendous effort by our customers to manage. And part of our challenge as provider of equipment is to make it, economical for them to do that. So that's part of the value proposition we have.
So we do see process control intensity ticking up slightly, but I wouldn't say we're anticipating, an inflection in that nor would there be, you know, any downward pressure on it because it's just the problems, as you know, are getting more and more challenging. I think our competitive advantage comes in providing these capabilities and continuing to provide more capability, for our for our customers so that they feel like they're getting a lot of value out of that.
Yeah. Exactly. And in terms of being able to provide the right solutions from these for some of these very complex technologies, I mean, let's talk about your Gen five, you know, optical pattern wafer inspection platform. Right? I mean, that business PWI for KLA grew 37% last year.
That's a $1,600,000,000 business according to Gartner. Where where are we in the adoption cycle for Gen five? You know, there's already we get a lot of investor questions on the extendability of the broadband plasma platform, the light source platform, you know, and the extendability of that down to five nanometers and down to three nanometers. It's kind of interesting. Right?
Because we heard the same sort of investor concerns, I don't know, back at the, you know, 16 nanometer notice. How much extendability can KLA continue to drive the leadership in the optical platforms? Right? But so that's where the question lies is, what what is the extendability of the Gen five platform? How early are we or or late are we in the adoption cycle of Gen five and other tools such as, you know, the Voyager platform as well?
Yeah. Sure. It's a great question. Let me just say that I think Gen four is roughly performing similar numbers to Gen five right now. So Gen four continues in in in often in very advanced paths.
So Gen four is far from being, done. And in fact, it has capabilities that'll apply to new transistor, designs in the future. Remember, inspection is not lithography. We don't need to resolve the image in order to detect the defects. What we really need to do is see the contrast and be able to identify anomalies.
And there's two things that are key to that. One is the optical configuration of the system, and that includes the efficiency of the illumination, which we spend an awful lot of energy on, literally, but also there's a lot of design work and to make sure there are enough photons on the wafer. There's the optics associated with it, and then there is the detection. And on top of that, there's the sensor technology, but then the algorithms. So one of the areas that we focused on for years now is what is now called AI or machine learning, but that's been part of our approach.
I was looking at some data in preparation for this discussion. We started in 2013, some of our original, what is now called AI work. Because what we need to do is extract more information out of the signal that's being provided to our customers. So, you know, if this were a baseball game, it's Gen five in the third inning. It's probably closer to that than the later innings.
And there will be more iterations on it. Remember, Gen five is a platform. It is the generation based on the illumination optics, not based on all the iterations we can do. As more capability comes out, and we're just reviewing some of the work that's going on in AI yesterday, There's more capability that will be available for us as those technologies continue to develop that allow us to squeeze more capability out of this platform. So I don't see a limit to what, can be done.
And then you go to Gen four. It's not like the old days where the old equipment just fades and we go to the next generation. There's existing capabilities in Gen four, and the reason customers adopt them is because it's the most price effective way, to provide the solution. And then you mentioned Voyager. I think that what a lot of, I think for investors, one thing to consider is that KLA's portfolio is maybe one of the biggest strategic advantages that we have.
If you have a point product or you say we're gonna solve this particular problem, the customer is trying to solve all their inspection and measurement needs, and they wanna do it most cost effectively. And we don't tell them how to do it. We show them all the capability, and they they essentially mix and match, whether it's bare wafer, whether it's the laser scanning tool, the Voyager, whether it's Gen four or Gen five or EV, we'll help them do that. So I don't think we're at any risk of Gen five not being able to support our customers for the next several years. I think what you know, and I mentioned this at our Investor Day, it was many of our investors that felt like the optics were out of gas because some of our customers felt like that because they hadn't experienced Gen five.
And we had customers that swore they were gonna go to e beam inspection a few years ago, and now they're the biggest adopters of our Gen five capability because we had to put it in there. We had to run it on wafers. We had to demonstrate that performance. But as long as we can extract the signal and as long as we can process the noise, which is the really, the secret sauce, if you will, is the algorithms, the machine learning, and the AI, that's what gives us continued capability. And the Gen five, the broadband plus platform has the most information of any inspection that's out there.
So laser scanning based inspection filters a lot of that information optically. That's part of how they work. That's a benefit because it's simpler, but it it it's a detriment when it comes to using AI. The VBP has the most raw information, which means the most we can leverage, for that artificial intelligence work that we're doing in machine learning. So I'd say several years, I think, will certainly be you know, I think you have to think of beyond high NA lithography before it really runs out of gas, and I don't know what that's gonna be.
I think high NA comes in You know, I don't know the latest projections, but that's gonna be the dominant technology through the next ten years probably.
And, Harlan, we're making investments in Gen six. So just to keep in mind
that Yeah.
It does take a while here, sometimes to develop these technologies, but but we have the confidence in in the road map to to continue to invest here.
And and the cycle on that, Harlan, just so I understand this, that's impossible. Nobody can make that system. This is our our own people saying, well, we have an idea, but it's gonna be really hard. Hey. We're starting to figure it out.
Hey. Can we have a bunch of money? Because now we're ready to do it. And that takes years, and and Brandon has heard it many times. And it ends up paying off, although it takes years.
So to this point, Gen six is in development, and it has been for three or four years now.
Well, I'm excited. Gen six. I'm excited to see what the architecture is of the new light source. So
They'll be flying cars by then.
We'll wait for you guys to unveil that. Let's turn to the the EPC business. Right? Specialty semi, specifically within the EPC business, electronics packaging and components business. One of the crown jewels or one of the many crown jewels within that is the specialty semiconductor business, right, that's tied to five g electric vehicles, RF, power semiconductors, things like gallium nitride, silicon carbide, the former SPTS business of Orpotech.
First question is, you know, what what type of see in the specialty semiconductor business this year? Because auto guys are adopting more power transistors in their cars. All these five g smartphones are seeing more and more RF content and more MEMS content and so on. So how do we think about, you know, the specialty semiconductor business growth this year? Yeah.
What in your overall sort of, you know, corporate, you know, growth outlook?
Sure. Let me take the first part, then Brent can answer the specifics of the growth. Let me just start by saying there aren't that many times when you acquire a business and you think, oh, this is a good business, and you find out it's a great business.
Mhmm.
That is a great business. And we didn't fully appreciate how great it was until we got to look at the capabilities that that team has, the position they have with their customers, their ability to execute. And on top of that, they're sitting on a market that's explosive in growth right now. So there's just tons of potential. And I think them being part of KLA now allows them allows that SPTS business to access customers that maybe would have been more, reticent to deal with them based on their size before.
So we feel really excited about where that business is and particular because of the trends that it's supporting. We think that KLA has added value to that business, although they were doing great, as they say, on their own.
And in
terms of the specifics, Bren, maybe you can answer some
of those. Yes. Think one of
the things that's also important about that business is you had products that were uniquely designed for those markets. And so they're not addressing those markets with products that serve other parts of the market and that those markets have now inflected. So they're really well positioned from a competitive point of view. We saw about 20% growth in 2020, and I would expect mid teen level growth this year on that business. So it behaves differently than WFE part of the market.
And it's interesting that when we talk about a 15% growth business, diluting the overall growth of the company shows you the strength of what's happening on the WFE side. But still, it's it's and it has a a profitability profile that is is very consistent with KLA's historic, you know, levels, if you will. So, we're we're well positioned there. Five g, particularly around RF, was a big driver last year. We're seeing the power piece driving this year, predominantly, but still continued investments in and then in five gs, but also advanced packaging.
And we've been able to put all that together under EPC, but also other products in other parts of KLA in terms of a channel where we go to customers directly with a channel of offerings or a portfolio of offerings from process to inspection to even the PCB part of the business that is starting to evolve into the package with the market moving towards IC substrates. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for us there. Rick talked about how we engage with customers that we think will create a lot of value for the company moving forward in that part of the business that we now have exposure beyond just WFE, but also to the other areas our customers are investing significantly in to create value and new capability.
Yes. And I definitely wanted to get into advanced packaging. We're running out of time here, but I can tell you that in our discussions with Lisa Su this week at AMD and Pat Gelsinger at Intel, I mean, they spent a lot of time talking about two and a half d and three d packaging and helping know, these architectures helping them to continue to drive performance in their future generation products. And I know you guys have a very strong franchise there. But we do have time for one more question, and I wanna get to it, which is the target model.
You know, you guys are on track to achieve your 2023 financial target model roughly a year ahead of expectations. So I guess the question is, and given all that we've just talked about, cost control, complexity of the manufacturing processes, customers continuing to want to drive faster time to markets. Is 7% to 9% revenue CAGR still the right way to think about top line growth also in terms of gross and operating margins? I mean, do you see upside to the 61%, 62% target that you had for gross margins and 36% operating margins over the next few years?
Well, certainly, we're already there, to your point, maybe two years early. And most of that coming from the strength of the overall WFE industry, which is driving that part of the business. One of the things that we talked about was a base assumption around industry growth, but more importantly, new products that were going to drive incremental intensity and share. Rick talked about that earlier. And we're still waiting for the contributions for those products.
I think those are still to come. So the overall environment and our offerings in the environment has driven our outperformance. And certainly, that's had a nice tailwind effect on the margin profile. That being said, I think with the leverage we've seen overall, I would expect that from the levels we're at, and of course, there's always different assumptions around mix over time and in any given quarter. But I would expect that in terms of our overall drop through model, we talk a lot about incremental operating margins.
So our goal of 40% to 50% incremental operating margins on growth moving forward. And I would expect that we should be able to continue to maintain that. I don't see anything in the business, even though we've outperformed that those targets because of the sheer revenue growth that we've seen over the last couple of years. But I don't expect that we've retrenched from there. So in a normalized growth environment, I would expect that we can continue to see that kind of operating leverage.
And our capital structure and capital deployment strategy is pretty well defined. So that should drive drive nice earnings leverage, you know, at least somewhere in that, you know, to sort of 12 to 15% range on on a revenue growth range that's consistent with what you said. So in general, we're not ready to roll out a new top line through cycle model. But certainly, the dynamics we're seeing in the overall market, strength of semi, rising capital intensity, which means equipment probably grows faster than semi, that baseline growth in the industry still does seem to be even on a go forward basis, despite the last two years to be at a higher level than what we were modeling before.
Rick and Brent, thank you very much for joining us today. 2021 is shaping up to be another strong year for the KLA team, so keep up the solid execution. Thank you.
Thank you, Harlan. Thank you, Harlan. Appreciate it. Yep. Thank you.