Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to MKS Instruments S econd Quarter 2022 Conference Call. At this time all participants on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Ryzhik, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm David Ryzhik, Vice President of Investor Relations, and I am joined this morning by John Lee, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Seth H. Bagshaw, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, after market closed, we released our financial results for the second quarter of 2022, which are posted to our website, which we recently changed to mks.com. As a reminder, various remarks about future expectations, plans and prospects for MKS comprise forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in yesterday's press release and in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.
These statements represent the company's expectations only as of today, and should not be relied upon as representing the company's estimates or views as of any date subsequent to today, and the company disclaims any obligation to update these statements. During the call, we will be discussing various financial measures. Unless otherwise noted, all forward-looking financial measures exclude any contribution from Atotech Limited, the acquisition of which is still pending. Also, unless otherwise noted, all income statement-related financial measures will be non-GAAP other than revenue. Please refer to our press release and the presentation materials posted to our website for information regarding our non-GAAP financial results and a reconciliation of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Now, I'll turn the call over to John.
Thanks, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We delivered exceptional results in the second quarter with record revenue of $765 million and strong profitability with net earnings per diluted share of $2.59. Both metrics exceeded the high end of our guidance range as we managed through continued supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures.
These results are a testament to our ability to execute by managing costs and factory efficiency while continuing to invest in our ambitious R&D plans for the future. This performance is also the result of the hard work, dedication, and ingenuity of our employees, as well as the collaboration with our valued supply chain partners and customers who continue to place their trust in MKS. Now I'd like to provide more detail on our second quarter results and my thoughts on current demand trends.
We delivered record revenue from our semiconductor market in the second quarter, increasing 6% sequentially and exceeding our expectations. While there's clearly a lot of focus on the current macro environment, our business levels remain strong in the second quarter. Our operations and engineering teams executed extremely well, navigating industry-wide supply chain constraints to deliver to our customers.
Availability of certain components somewhat improved in the second quarter, but we continue to remain supply constrained in our ability to fully meet customer demand. Our strong performance in the semiconductor market was the result of broad-based success across our portfolio, with record semiconductor revenue for both our vacuum and Photonics Solutions divisions. These results highlight the value of our deep customer relationships and the engineering and development investments we've made to help solve their most complex problems at the most advanced technology nodes.
A good example of the return on our R&D investments is the strong demand for our market-leading RF power supplies, which is a critical enabler of vertical scaling in the semiconductor industry. Our market share gain has been primarily driven by dielectric etch applications for 3D NAND. We are also continuing to gain traction in conductor etch solutions, where we see an attractive market share gain opportunity. In addition, we see increasing opportunities in advanced deposition applications.
For example, we displaced the incumbent for a leading-edge foundry deposition process because of our dual level pulsing capability. As reported by TechInsights, we have taken market share leadership in RF power supplies over the past year, and we continue to see an attractive opportunity for further growth given the continued trend of vertical scaling in semiconductor structures.
We also saw strong demand across our market-leading plasma and reactive gas portfolio, where we delivered record revenue in the quarter. We received significant follow-on orders for our dissolved ozone solutions from a large foundry for wet clean applications. Our customers are increasing their use of our dissolved ozone solutions as an environmentally sustainable alternative to traditional wet clean chemistries. While traditional solutions use toxic chemicals that require careful disposal, our ozone solutions naturally break down to oxygen and water after the cleaning process.
We believe we are well-positioned to benefit not only from leading-edge foundry fab expansions, but also from the semiconductor industry's growing need for green solutions. We also delivered record revenue from the pressure, valves, and analytical control products in our vacuum portfolio, which is yet another proof point of our leadership in critical vacuum subsystems over an unmatched breadth of solutions.
Our solutions play a critical enabling role in the products that our customers provide to the marketplace. Take, for example, our flagship pressure measurement solutions. We were able to measure gas pressure in the chamber with extreme precision, which is critical to quality and yield across deposition and etch applications. Our market-leading Baratron capacitance manometer enables unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy, akin to detecting a millimeter of movement from more than one kilometer away.
It's important to underscore that our strategy as a technology enabler in the semiconductor market extends beyond the vacuum chamber, and I'm pleased with the growing traction of our Photonics Solutions Division in lithography, metrology, and inspection applications. In the second quarter, our Photonics Solutions revenue to the semiconductor market reached another record, growing considerably on a year-over-year basis. We saw particular strength in our optical solutions and motion products.
Our precision motion solutions are worth highlighting, as we have seen an acceleration in business levels and design win activity from our semiconductor customers over the past few quarters. In advanced packaging, metrology, and inspection applications, customers are using our motion solutions to enable rapid movement and precise placement of the wafer to within the accuracy of a few atoms, which is critical to process performance and throughput.
As we look to the third quarter, demand trends in our semiconductor market remain strong across our vacuum and photonics portfolios that serve deposition, etch, lithography, metrology, inspection, and wet clean applications. While our demand outlook is healthy, we remain impacted by supply chain constraints, and as such, we expect revenues to be consistent with second quarter levels. In short, we are executing well across our semiconductor business as a leading critical subsystem technology provider.
We believe that nearly every chip manufactured in the world today is made using MKS technology, and we are well-positioned to capitalize on the long-term secular growth in the semiconductor market. We have the number one or number two position in nearly all of our major product categories in the semiconductor market. We intend to grow even further and extend our lead in this space, as we have done for more than 50 years.
Moving to our Advanced Electronics market, revenue in the second quarter declined 6% sequentially. Consistent with our expectations, and as discussed in our Q1 earnings call, industry demand for flexible PCB via drilling has continued to soften as customers have temporarily slowed capacity expansions, due in part to softness in smartphone demand. In addition to the flexible PCB market, we've also seen softness in other applications tied to consumer electronics.
While our Advanced Electronics market is soft right now, we believe this is transitory, and we remain very excited about the long-term secular opportunity for laser-based manufacturing in electronics applications. The same trends that drive our Semiconductor business, miniaturization and complexity, are key drivers for Advanced Electronics as customers demand more processing power, more features, and new form factors for their devices.
We believe our flexible PCB, HDI PCB, and IC substrate via drilling solutions are all well-positioned for the years ahead. In the third quarter, we expect PCB industry demand to remain muted. As such, we expect revenue from our Advanced Electronics market to remain consistent with second quarter levels. Turning to our Specialty Industrial market, revenue grew 1% sequentially, consistent with our expectations. We saw steady demand across industrial, life and health sciences, and research and defense applications.
As a reminder, our Specialty Industrial market provides a more stable revenue stream comprised of a broad array of applications with good margins and cash flow. For the third quarter, we expect revenue from our Specialty Industrial market to remain consistent with second quarter levels. Moving to our pending acquisition of Atotech. We remain very excited and look forward to combining our capabilities in lasers, optics, motion, and process chemistry to drive faster solutions and new innovations for our customers. We expect that our adjacent expertise will uniquely position MKS to optimize the interconnect, which is a significant enabling point of next-generation advanced electronics. As for the status of the transaction, I'm pleased to announce that today, we received unconditional merger approval from China's State Administration for Market Regulation.
The acquisition is anticipated to close on August seventeenth, subject to obtaining the required sanction by the Royal Court of Jersey and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. MKS has a long-standing track record of technology leadership and operational excellence, and we continue to execute well in today's challenging environment, as clearly demonstrated in our second quarter results. While we are closely monitoring the macroeconomic landscape and supply chain impacts on our business, our overall demand environment is healthy, and we are in an outstanding position to continue delivering for our customers. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Seth.
Thank you, John. I will cover second quarter results, then provide additional detail and guidance for the third quarter. Revenue for the second quarter reached a record $765 million, up 3% sequentially and exceeding the high end of our guidance range. Revenue from the semiconductor market reached a record $515 million, up 6% sequentially and up 19% year-over-year, reflecting broad-based demand for our vacuum and photonics solutions. Power solutions delivered another strong quarter, and our plasma reactive gases, pressure, valves, and liquid control product groups, as well as our Photonics Solutions Division, each delivered record revenue in the semiconductor market.
This is a strong validation of our consistent strategy of cultivating a broad and complementary portfolio, both organically and through acquisitions, that provides the fundamental building blocks essential for semiconductor manufacturing. Semiconductor customers are increasingly relying on MKS to enable the multi-year product development roadmaps. Moving to our advanced electronics market, revenue in the second quarter was $77 million, a decline of 6% sequentially and 44% year-over-year.
As expected, we saw a continued softness in industry demand for flexible PCB via drilling equipment. We believe the long-term secular trend of the flexible PCB industry remain intact given its growing importance in enabling new form factors and more features in next-generation electronic devices. Therefore, we believe the current softness we are seeing is transitory. We continue to work closely with current and potential customers to drive growth in our HDI PCB via drilling platform.
One of our initial high-volume manufacturing customers has continued to add capacity, while another customer that previously qualified our platform has deployed additional units across other global sites. Our HDI solution remains a strategic opportunity for MKS, and we're excited about the potential cross-selling opportunities the pending acquisition of Atotech brings us as a leading provider of electroplating in the HDI industry.
As we said before, defining trends of miniaturization and complexity that have dominated the semiconductor market for decades are becoming increasingly critical to advanced electronics. We're using the same strategic playbook that made us successful in the semiconductor market to become a foundational solution provider in advanced electronics. We are delivering the key building blocks for next-generation technologies. We look forward to closing the Atotech acquisition, which reflects a transformational step in our long-standing strategy. Turning now to our specialty industrial market.
Revenue was $173 million in the second quarter, growing 1% sequentially, but declining 5% year-over-year. We saw a steady sequential demand across a wide array of applications. Our strategy in specialty industrial is quite simple. We're able to leverage our innovative vacuum and photonics technology designed for semiconductor and advanced electronics applications by applying that technology to a broad array of applications across industrial, life and health sciences, and research and defense. In the second quarter, I am pleased to say we also delivered record revenue in our services business, growing 8% sequentially and 9% year-over-year to surpass a $100 million level for the first time. This success is a result of a strategic decision years ago to operate our worldwide services business as a distinct business unit with a dedicated leadership team and a customer-centric focus.
With an increasing install base and further opportunities to drive new value-added customer solutions, we are well positioned to continue to drive growth in the years ahead. Our second quarter gross margin was 44.2%, exceeding the midpoint of our guidance by 70 basis points. Given well-known inflationary pressures, we are very pleased with how we executed in the quarter. Second quarter operating expenses, which included annual compensation increases, were $154 million, $2 million above the midpoint of our guidance. We continue to prudently manage our cost structure while investing in a number of attractive organic growth opportunities. Second quarter operating margin was 24.1%, exceeding the high end of our guidance range by 70 basis points, reflecting strong execution in a challenging macroeconomic environment and strong operating leverage in our financial model.
Second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $280 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 27.2%. Net interest expense for the second quarter was $6 million, and our tax rate is approximately 18%. Net earnings for the second quarter were $145 million, or $2.59 per diluted share. Exiting the second quarter, we maintained a strong balance sheet and liquidity position with cash and short-term investments at a record of over $1 billion, which positions us well ahead for the pending Atotech acquisition. Our term loan principal balance was $820 million at the end of the second quarter, and we exited the quarter with $246 million net cash balance.
In terms of working capital, days outstanding were 54 days at the end of the second quarter, compared to 59 days in the first quarter. Inventory turns were 2.5x at the end of the second quarter, compared to 2.6x at the end of the first quarter. For the second quarter, operating cash flow was $105 million, and free cash flow was $41 million. Our capital expenditures in the quarter included an approximately $40 million investment to acquire and expand a facility in South Korea. We have a long-standing strategy to provide sales, service, and technical support to the South Korean semiconductor industry, which has significantly increased our direct sales to these local customers. This investment will allow us to expand our capabilities and support our future growth objectives in this region.
Consistent with prior quarters, we had a dividend payment of $12 million, or $0.22 per share. I'll now turn to our third quarter outlook. With business levels remaining robust, we continue to face supply chain constraints. As such, we expect third quarter revenue of $770 million ± $30 million. Based on anticipated product mix and revenue levels, we estimate third quarter gross margin of 44.5% ± 1 percentage point, and we continue to take necessary steps to counteract inflationary impacts on our business.
We expect operating expenses of $155 million, ± $4 million. In the third quarter, net interest expense is expected to be approximately $6 million, and our tax rate is expected to be approximately 18%. Given these assumptions, we expect third quarter net earnings of $2.66 per diluted share, ± $0. 25 . In summary, we're executing well and delivering growth and profitability across a number of attractive market opportunities. Despite macroeconomic inflationary headwinds, our financial performance is very strong, and we believe the pending acquisition of Atotech will provide long-term value creation for our employees, customers, and shareholders. I'd like to now turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. Please stand by. We've compiled a Q&A roster. Please keep in mind, we're asking that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, that is one question and one follow-up. One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Amanda Scarnati from Citi. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning. The first question I have is on the semiconductor side of the business. Lam last night talked about lowering the WFE estimates for 2022 on supply constraints. Can you just talk a little bit about sort of what's happening in your backlog? A re you able to ship more than expected out of the semiconductor market, or are you still seeing supply constraints there?
Hi, Amanda Scarnati. It's John. Thanks for the question. As we said, we still see supply chain constraints, and that is something we factor into our guidance for Q3. Our backlog, we don't really report on it, but it's really been strong. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, the demand is not the problem. We wish we could ship more. I think Lam Research's commentary was just reflective of the reality that all of us have been constrained throughout the year. Demand remains strong, and but we are still constrained.
The other question is on the PCB side of the market. Obviously, there's a lot of consumer constraints, particularly in the mobile and compute markets. W hen do you see these headwinds in the PCB market to abate? Do you think it gets worse before it gets better, or do you think that there's a lot of stability that you're seeing in from your customers?
Well, I think that the PCB market is made up of multiple markets. What's weak right now are some of the consumer electronics, smartphones, notably, and PCs. The PCB market also, s upplies data center type of markets. We believe that smartphones have been a little weak, and that does affect our flexible portion of our market, of our product line. Utilizations have been pretty high in general, because we have many of our tools out there in the field, and they're being used. I think we're just ready for the next CapEx build-out, and this year was a digestion year, as we've seen and we've talked about before. Looking forward, we remain very positive on the long-term trends of the PCB market.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, Amanda.
Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Patrick Ho from Stifel. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much. John, maybe first off on the semiconductor side of things, it's good to hear the continued expansion of that business outlook, and you talked about share wins in areas like RF power. Maybe from a bigger picture perspective what are additional areas within your product portfolio where you're either seeing market expansion or the potential for additional share gains? What are some of the semiconductor areas where those opportunities still exist?
Thanks for the question, Patrick. Well, first off, I think as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we see additional opportunities just in RF power itself. That's one large opportunity. We also see opportunities as the semiconductor industry inflects to more vertical structures, and that drives opportunities in atomic layer deposition, where our ozone products have a lot of potential growth as well. More importantly, we talked about our expansion into world-class optics, addressing the customers in lithography, inspection, and metrology. It's an area where we haven't had as high market share as in our vacuum products. We made multiyear investments in there. We see some great design wins in that area as well. That's another area for growth.
Great. That's helpful. Maybe as a follow-up question for Seth in terms of the supply chain issue, your margins are holding up pretty well given everything that's going on. Are there specific areas where the constraints are really persistent, where those are the biggest challenge, or have you seen improvements in certain areas, whereas in other places they haven't shown improvements yet?
Yeah. Thank you, Patrick. Yeah. I think we, I mean, it's a number of areas, but, the component piece, electronic components is still an area we have the most headwinds we've seen, which has been the case for a number of quarters, obviously. I think that's also true across the industry. Yeah, the good news is the operations team is really leaning into a number of, inventory objectives. I think we're gonna be again, working through all those supply chain things over time. Again, I think it'll take a while to work through all those, but as you can tell in the quarter, we did go above the high end of guidance range on revenue.
M argins were a little bit unexpected, so I really give a lot of high marks to the operational execution within the MKS team here. Again, as John mentioned in the prepared remarks, we still see some headwinds there in supply chain. I think we're over time, I'm sure we'll gain on it like everybody else. We're pretty happy with execution in the quarter for sure.
Great. Thank you again.
Yeah, thanks, Patrick.
Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Joe Quatrochi from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Yeah, thanks for taking the question, and congrats on getting the China approval for the Atotech deal. Maybe one on the semi side. Can you talk about the linearity in terms of component availability you saw during the quarter? I guess what are you embedding in your September quarter guidance from a component perspective relative to the June quarter?
Yeah. It's John. In terms of linearity on component supply, I think that's really not the issue. It's usually whether we have it or not. When we get it's fine. It could be linear or not, but that's not really the cause of concern. It's really the surprises when we think we're gonna get it and we don't, and then it causes a whole slew of running around trying to account for it. Going forward I think it still surprises. I think we have line of sight to many things, because we've worked on it.
But we could have said that last quarter and the quarter before. It has gotten better. There are fewer surprises, but there are still surprises. I think really that's the way I would characterize how the component and supply chain constraints seem to be working over the last several quarters.
Got it. A couple more then. On the Atotech side, can you guys remind us just how should we think about accretion for the deal given the moves that we've seen in interest rates over the last few months?
Yeah. Well, Joe, we're gonna certainly have an analyst day at some point after close. At that point, we'll be very happy to share the financial models of the combined company. I'd like to leave it to Len. One reminder is that the pro forma revenue when combining Atotech's chemistry revenue, the service revenue, our service revenue, MKS will be about 40% recurring revenue. That's really a powerful financial foundation from which we can build in terms of supporting our customers' R&D events or products and projects over any kind of CapEx downturns.
Got it. Thank you.
Thanks, Joe.
Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from James Ricchiuti from Needham & Company. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. Just a question on the specialty industrial business. Yeah, I'm just wondering if you're seeing any change in customer behavior just related to some of the increased macro uncertainty. C ould you characterize the demand that you're seeing in some of the larger verticals in that business?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Jim. W e really haven't seen a lot of change. You can kind of see the numbers. It's been very steady in all the verticals of what we call specialty industrials. There's always give and take, defense is lumpy, but R&D is lumpy. But when you combine it all, Jim, I can't really point to any kind of macro behavior in any of the verticals. It's just been very steady.
Got it. Thanks, John. The follow-up question just relates to advanced electronics. I know we don't talk a whole lot about it, but we continue to see pretty healthy demand in the MLCC business, and I'm wondering, to what extent is that providing support to that part of the business as you go through this cyclical downturn on the flex PCB drilling side?
Yeah. The MLCC market is certainly, strong and supports the many of the electronics products markets that we play in. We're really as the CapEx part of it. It has been pretty, muted as well, as we characterize it, similar to flex. the factories are running our tools with high utilization, but right now, they don't seem to have a need for CapEx expansion. We think that will change next year. Typically, when you have a down year in CapEx investment next year it usually picks up. Now, that's not a promise, but that's what we've seen in the past.
Got it. Thanks, and congratulations on the approval in China.
Thanks, Jim.
Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Krish Sankar from Cowen. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question and, congrats on getting the approval from China on Atotech. First one, John, just a hypothetical question. W hen you look at prior cycles and like obviously, one of your customers, Lam, reported last evening really good numbers, but their inventory has also grown. I'm just wondering if they start seeing a slowdown, would you see that a quarter earlier because they're gonna start using up from their inventory versus you shipping it to them? Is that a way to think about it? Like, you would probably see a one quarter earlier decline in your semi revenues before your semi cap customers see it.
Hi, Krish. Yeah, thanks for the question. We typically are a bit ahead of our OEM customers. That's natural since we supply to them, and they supply to their customers. whether it's a quarter or not, and whether it's in particular product groups or not, it can vary depending on the cycle. We will always probably front run a little bit, so that's fair, we like to think about performing through the cycles. W e outperform through the cycles 200 basis points above WFE, and some of that's market share gains, and some of it is in the markets that we play. We do front run a little bit.
Got it. They're very helpful, John. Then one other question, just in your semiconductor product portfolio, you have a wide range. Obviously, you're also gaining share in the power supply side. I'm curious, like if and when there is a slowdown most investors worry about maybe slowdown in memory, maybe slowdown in mature nodes later on. Which product category of your huge product portfolio in semis will you see that first, or would it be impacted across the board?
Yeah, I think it's really gonna be something that impacts us across the board. We are, our strategy is to be a very broad portfolio supplier and enabler in the semiconductor market. S o every one of our products goes into all types of chip making, memory, foundry, legacy, types of chips as well. I t's a little more complex too because as we grow our Photonics Solutions Division, addressing lithography, metrology, and inspection, as you know, the dynamics there are a little different than the vacuum types of customers.
Those tend to be much longer lead items, and so you have a little less volatility there than the vacuum components. It's a mix, but we probably see all of them all together up and down, in terms of our breadth of our portfolio.
Yeah. Thanks a lot, John.
Thanks, Krish.
Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Paretosh Misra from Berenberg.
Thanks, and good morning, guys. A question on photonics. What sort of trends are you seeing in that market, as it relates to your semiconductor business? In other words, how's the dollar spending on photonics trending versus the WFE? Do you expect that to outperform WFE and maybe by how much?
Thanks for the question, Paretosh, as I said, the Photonics customers of ours are the lithography, metrology, and inspection customers. Just by the nature of those tools and the long lead items of the critical subsystems of those tools there is certainly less volatility there. With respect to your question of are they spending more or less than vacuum? I think that's pretty difficult to say, certainly our major customers there are leaders, but so are the major customers that we have in vacuum. They are all pulling for the products, I would say that for sure. They're all saying they don't see a ny kind of pushouts or anything, at least in the foreseeable future.
Thanks, John. I was wondering if you could provide some more color on your power business as to what sort of growth rate you saw in Q1 and Q2.
I think I would say this. We continue to be very pleased with the market share gains that we're seeing in power. We probably don't wanna break out by quarter for one product group, but 'cause it can be lumpy too, as you can imagine, Paretosh. Overall, year-over-year, we're really, really pleased with how that group is performing.
Fair enough. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Paretosh.
Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Mark Miller from The Benchmark Company. Your line is now open.
Congrats on your record quarter and the Atotech closure.
Mark Miller from The Benchmark Company, your line is now open.
Congrats on your record quarter and the Atotech closure, that acquisition. I'm just wondering, can you provide any estimates on the impact of component availability either on your margins and/or sales? If they were at normal levels, what would you expect to see?
Yeah. Hey, Mark, it's Seth. Thanks for the question. Yeah, we don't provide a lot of detail 'cause a lot of moving pieces, obviously. But what I'll kind of say, if we went back to these similar volumes. The big impact for us is obviously supply chain headwinds, inflationary pressure. Like everybody else experiencing. If you went back to kind of our margins a year ago at roughly these volumes, it gives you a good sense of kind of the impact overall for MKS, b oth supply chain headwinds as well as inflationary pressure.
Now, we've got a long-standing track record of working on profit and cash recovery activities. Mentioned in prior calls we saw this coming early and we've leaned into it, and we've done a number of activities that take a little while to roll through the P&L, but our goal is to get back up to those historical margins. It'll take a little while for sure because you have large backlog and some of the things take a while to execute.
There is a long list of things we're working on and have been working on to get us back up to those historical levels. That's kind of our goal for sure, both intermediate and long term and just driving that, those efforts going forward.
Your inventories have been trending up over the last year. Is that just tracking your backlog?
Yeah, I would say it's more on the, as mentioned in our remarks, w e are seeing obviously supply chain challenges, so we've leaned into a few areas. A couple of things are kind of at a high level. One is we've thoughtfully looked at long lead time parts and have gone out there and secured those. So that'll be a strategic investment, if you will, long term. Probably the biggest portion of the growth has been the fact that, again, you can't bring in every part you need to complete a finished good. So you bring in what you can because it's available, and we have the flexibility in our balance sheet and capabilities to kind of make that type of investment, that type of l ong-term decision.
That's probably the bigger driver in some of the growth in the inventory. It's really not quite bringing in all of the parts to complete a finished good. Now, as the supply chain again, starts to normalize over time, that should normalize the inventory levels back in historical , if you will. It's really fundamentally an impact on the supply chain we're addressing in that fashion.
Thank you.
Yep. Thanks Mark.
Thank you. I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to David Ryzhik for closing remarks.
All right. Thank you for joining us today and for your interest in MKS. Operator, you may close the call, please.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.