All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Once again, I'm Matthew Prisco, analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, covering semis and semi cap. Today I'm here with Guy Kizner, CFO of Nova. Thank you for joining us today. Wanted to kick off the conversation today with broader market backdrop. Last quarter you talked about a vision for 2026 WFE growing in the low single digits or low digits year-over-year. Maybe we can start by breaking this outlook down between its parts, first with leading-edge foundry logic. What are you hearing from customers in this market? Are orders flowing through now year to date? And maybe you can speak to the breadth of strength across customers in a moment.
Yeah. It's a good point to start with. First of all, regarding the WFE, usually when we're referring to WFE, it's mainly we're talking about the consensus, right? We're probably reading the same articles that you are reading. Currently the WFE, definitely we see a wide range at this point, and for us, even if you are looking on the mid-range or even the low range of WFE, we definitely see a very strong and healthy environment for the equipment spending. Now, the leading edge is definitely one of the key drivers this year, and it's driven by the fact that we will see capacity additions as all the customers are moving from R&D to pilot lines and to high volume manufacturing.
As you know, for us, having capacity addition, this is the main driver for us of the revenues because most of our portfolio is really driven by capacity additions. This is really the key driver. Now in terms of customer conversations, what we are hearing is that we see a strong demand this year, and we will see a strong demand driven by capacity addition, as I mentioned before. The customers are seeing the demand driven by AI and HPC, and they're adding in order to meet this demand. This is not driven by only one customer or only one region, it's by multiple customers and definitely this is one of the key drivers for the WFE as a whole.
How have orders tracked year- to- date? I mean, customer conversations obviously sound great. Are you seeing that convert yet or are we still waiting on that conversion?
Yeah, definitely. It's not just high-level conversation. It's real orders that are flowing in already and the pipeline is strong. Definitely leading edge is one of the key drivers.
Okay. You had forecast out for $500 million in aggregate gate-all-around revenues from 2024 to 2026. You've had that down for quite some time now. How's that figure trended versus your original thoughts? Any surprises positively or negatively over the last three to six months?
When we originally gave the $500 million, it was back in 2024, and we just really wanted to capture how strong this conversion from FinFET to gate-all-around will be as a big opportunity for us. For us, it's really was an important things to bring to the market. It was driven by three factors. First of all, the intensity on the metrology side. When we moved from FinFET to gate-all-around, the metrology intensity was increasing by more than 30%. The second, the market share gains, the improved positioning that we got with our tools, and the adoption of material metrology.
As you know, when you are moving from FinFET to gate-all-around, it's not just a structure change, it's also introducing much more materials, and then you have much more willingness of customer to qualify material metrology solutions that we are offering. The $500 million definitely was in order to show the opportunity out there. We have a lot of tailwinds for this number driven by both market share gains that we recently announced with the integrated metrology, one of the leading logic gate-all-around player, and important qualifications that we did both with Elipson and Metrion in 2025. Definitely a lot of tailwinds in that space. Currently we do anticipate 2026 will be stronger than 2025. In terms of giving higher number than $500 million, it's too early. We're just in the first quarter. $500 million, this is our working framework.
All right. Perfect. Moving to the DRAM side, maybe you can walk us through what you're seeing in this market today, how are the customer conversations progressing, and then seeing how foundry logic is converting to orders there.
Yeah. DRAM definitely we see also a key driver this year as well. The demand is very high. You can see the pricing of DRAM, you can see the inventory levels. Obviously the main constraint currently on the DRAM side is the capacity on the HBM availability. Even though we are going to see investments this year, significant investments this year, there is still probably will not meet all the demand that there is, that there is. Probably we're just in the beginning of investment cycle for the DRAM side. Also in terms of orders, we do see investments flowing in and orders flowing in for us as well.
Does that commentary change at all when you think HBM versus conventional DRAM? Any differences worth highlighting between those two?
I think in both are working strong. Both HBM and DRAM, standard DRAM is also key drivers there.
All right. On the NAND side, I think last quarter you talked about some signs of improvement there. Can maybe offer some more color based on those customer conversations, how are you thinking about when we can actually start seeing some capacity additions in NAND to drive your business?
NAND, even though the pricing is better, and you can see the pricing of NAND as well, and also the profitability of customers improving in that direction, we still don't see capacity additions. It's mainly all the investments are mainly coming from upgrades. As you know, we are not benefiting a lot from upgrades. We need capacity additions. Currently, we anticipate at some point they will need to add capacity additions. Hopefully, it will happen in the second half of 2026 or maybe 2027. Let's see about the timing. This is not, let's say, at this point a key driver for the WFE spend.
Are your customer conversations there though to support? Are they trying to, you know, get you ready from a supplier perspective to be ready for capacity, or is it just not yet?
Not yet.
Okay. Last thing maybe here on this broader market backdrop, China. Despite normalizing from nearly 40% of revenues in 2024, we just still expect it to contribute roughly 30% of revenues in 2026. Still a meaningful part of the business. It seems like messaging around China has improved a bit over the last three months, with expectations for revenue, our last message to be about flat-ish. How have customer conversations evolved over this time, and what are you seeing in terms of visibility there? Maybe just how to think about sustainability of the strength in that region and the competitive landscape over the next few years.
Yeah. China is important, part of our business. I think in the overall WFE, it's an important part, right? China is contributing about 30% of the overall WFE. Participating in this market is very important for us. As I mentioned, it went down to about 33% in 2025. Currently, our conversation with the customer, and we have about six months of lead times there. Our view is that China probably will be next, this year, flattish versus 2025 dollar-wise. Obviously, percentage-wise it will go down. But definitely this is something that will be flattish. We don't see China as a growth market for us in the upcoming years.
Do you think it's sustainable at these levels as we look? 'Cause right now it seems like the WFE conversation is now extending further than it ever has. People talking about 2028 and everything like that. Do you think China spend is sustainable out over that kind of medium-term horizon? Are there any domestic challenges there that could come in and-
I think the demand is there. You know, number one import item in China is microchips, right? They want to build this ecosystem of self-sustained ability to address this market need. In terms of demand is there. About the local competition, we do see, you know, their want to have self-sustained ecosystem that include also the suppliers, both in process and also in the process control. They are not there yet. We don't see them really as tough competition at this point. The assumption that at some point they will bridge the gaps, the technological gaps. From our perspective, we want to continue to invest in R&D to make sure that we have the competitive tools, that we have a good customer relationship, a good service coverage in order to be able to serve the Chinese market going forward as well.
Maybe just to give a baseline to all of that. In 2025, can you offer us a split of how we should think about that 80% of your product revenues that go to the front end? How are those split between these kind of markets as discussed?
Yeah. I would say 75% logic, 25% memory. As I said, NAND was quite muted, so it shifted to DRAM. The split is, China is mainly mature nodes. The majority of our business in China is mature nodes, and we don't have a lot of mature nodes out of China. I would say this is more or less the split.
All right. Perfect. Moving to the front-end share side of things. Last quarter you spoke about the integrated metrology share gains, which you just highlighted. Fairly impressive simply because you have very strong share there already. Can you talk us through what drove that dynamic and what this win includes and how it impacts the sustainability of your success with this product?
Yeah. First of all, integrated metrology, as you mentioned, we are the market leader. We have more than 70% market share in that space. We were the first to market. And as of today, we're the first to choose from our customers to go on the integrated metrology side. In that specific space, we're talking about specific customer who adopted our logic. This is a logic player, leading gate-all-around player in that space. After a long evaluation process against, head to head against the competition, we were selected as a tool of record for the HVM. It's already translated into orders back on the front end and the back end side, and we will see contribution in 2026 and going forward. This is incremental revenues for us.
Maybe shifting to the standalone OCD side. Can you walk us through competitive positioning for your Prism and Metrion offers and how you see adoption trends and share opportunities there moving forward?
Yeah. The situation in optical CD standalone is a little bit different than the integrated metrology. In the integrated metrology, we're the market leader. In the optical CD standalone, we are the third player. We're competing against KLA and Onto Innovation. We're the smallest player, but we're the fastest growing there. As you mentioned, the key contributor to that is the Prism tool. We introduced it I think four or five years ago. The uniqueness of this tool is that it's bringing additional information channel that the competition doesn't have. This information channel is capable of improving the sensitivity of the tool, the robustness of the tool. We're talking about spectral interferometry channel that's capable of measuring and filter the underlayer of the underlayer information.
This is very important, especially for the complex and 3D structures. By that, with this specific application, we're capable of taking market share, especially as part of the gate-all-around transition. Definitely very important positioning for us, and this is why we see why we're growing faster than the competition. The second product that you mentioned, the MMSR, is we replace it with the Velocity. Velocity today replace the MMSR. This is a tool that's working both on precision but also on productivity. This is the fastest OCD tool that you can get. This is specifically important when you have higher sample rates and specific customers. This is the tool to go.
Does this Prism product have a similar catalyst to foundry logic with gate-all-around in memory, whether it's 4F-square in DRAM or higher stacks of NAND? Is there some point where customers will suddenly see competitive product gain more market share?
Totally. You know, every inflection point in the industry, such as you mentioned, 4F-square, 3D DRAM and so forth, it create more complexity on the side, and then you need much more complex application and Prism tool. This is the most advanced optical CD tool that is having traction there.
How do we think about your potential market share gains? Already, you know, the ways into gate-all-around now, what have you seen so far? You know, the Prism tool, you say, coming off a very low share base as gate-all-around becomes more pervasive across a greater number of customers. How do you think about your share potential?
First of all, you know, as you mentioned, every inflection point driving, you know, selection and potentially increasing the market share. Also when you are moving to a different tech node within gate-all-around, it's a huge space, right? It's like you have the full roadmap of 2nm, 18A, 14A, A16, 14A and so forth. With every transition, usually there is a selection process, and then there is opportunity also risk. We are focusing on the opportunities to improve market shares, take specific applications and improve the positioning. Prism, we are also investing a lot at the specific product line in order to bring more innovative capabilities, and by that catching those inflection point that are happening in the industry.
Perfect. On the material metrology side, love to walk through kind of dynamics across the VeraFlex, Elipson, Metrion, maybe starting VeraFlex, the most mature of the offerings here. Where do we stand today on adoption of this tool across customers and fabs? You know, it'd be great if you could kind of touch on tools per fab here and how to think about further penetration moving forward, along with new iterations of the tool or increased functionality that can kind of expand your market opportunities.
VeraFlex, this is the most mature product line that we have in the materials metrology space. We introduced it more than a decade ago, and today it's widely used in the industry. You have almost all the customers are using this tool as reference for the ultra-thin film measurements, materials measurements, and for the composition. Definitely, it's an important product line for us, and there was a process of adopting that, right? More applications, more use cases. Today we have cases where some of the customers using more than eight tools per fab. In terms of what could drive this product line even further. There are a couple of things. First of all, introducing new capabilities, right?
As we did with introducing of Nova Fit, our software solution with machine learning capabilities that we took from the OCD capabilities and deployed on the material metrology side. The Active Charge Compensation that we introduced last year, that's very important for the memory segment, especially for NAND. These components are very important to drive more applications and more use cases for this tool. In addition, what we're also doing is we're extending the throughput of the tool. Every new generation that we bring into the market, we're usually extending the throughput. Once you're increasing the throughput, this is you're having much more traction for the customers to deploy it more in-line and deploy more applications with using this tool.
What's your kind of strategy on pricing? I mean, as you deliver more throughput, as you deliver more functionality, is there shared value between you and the customer? Are you just using that to increase the penetration and keep pricing stable? How do you think about that?
Definitely there is a price sharing with the customers. For example, if we're deploying new generation of product, and we're adding, let's say 10% more throughput, usually it's being shared with the customer. There is a portion of ASP increase, but part of it is being shared with the customer, so he will see more cost of ownership with this tool.
For the Elipson and Metrion, how should we think about, I guess, number one, revenue contribution from these systems today? And maybe where do we stand on adoption of these systems across big five customers?
Elipson and Metrion had a fantastic year in 2025. I think we talked about very important milestone that we need to achieve in 2025 a year ago in this conference. We talked about how important the qualification that we're doing. We're happy to see that everything that we're talking about really happened. Elipson was qualified by the leading foundries with the gate-all-around and already being used in high volume manufacturing. A couple of tools of Elipson. For the Metrion, we had a couple of important qualifications. During 2025, we completed two qualifications with two of the leading memory customers and two gate-all-around players. On Elipson side, we already see proliferation of this tool where existing customers already doing the repeat buys of this tool.
For the Metrion, we had a very important qualifications that translate, hopefully will translate to proliferation within 2026 and 2027. It's very important for us, milestone that we're reaching, in 2025.
Are there any ongoing evaluations still we should be contemplating, you know, over the next 12 months we expect some new things to come in and maybe how to think about the timeline and process for these systems to become as ingrained in your customers' process as we've seen with VeraFlex?
The most important part is really to go for the qualification. Once you are doing the qualifications, and usually it's the use case is two or three qualifications. Once the tool is there, you continue working with the customer, deploying more and more application, and by that, increasing the usage of the tool, the utilization of the tool, and then you are having much more attach rate to the customer. This is a process that we are now doing with all those customers that we've been qualifying with. Then gradually we can reach the addressable market that we quantify about $200 million for each of the product lines. It's a process. It takes time. Hopefully, it will be much shorter than what we did with the VeraFlex, but we are on the right track with that.
Great. The advanced packaging market, this is one of the, you know, one of the faster growth areas for Nova recently, reaching, I believe, roughly 20% of product revenues last year. Can you break down the opportunity for Nova here across, you know, dimensional metrology and chemical metrology? What applications are you playing to here within both HBM and Logic, and thoughts on the competitive landscape and kind of what differentiates you guys there?
Advanced packaging was really important market for us. As we talked about it, the fact that, you know, just a few years ago, we had zero exposure to packaging market, and today we have about 20% of this share. Today, what we are selling in the advanced packaging space, so we have on the dimensional side tools that we converted from the front end, including Prism and our integrated metrology, and converted to address different application on the back end. Also, Sentronics portfolio that we acquired back in 2025, at the beginning of 2025, and the WMC platform that we introduced in the middle of 2025 that we see a very good traction of customers and already a couple of customers adopted that as a tool of record.
This is the latest and greatest tool that we have to capture the most advanced application for advanced packaging. In terms of the split between the chemical metrology and the dimensional, I would say it's around two-thirds dimensional and one-third chemical.
Okay. The competitive landscape there and, you know.
The competitive landscape on the chemical side, we're mainly competing with KLA. On the dimensional side, it varies. On the front-end tools that we converted versus the back end, we don't see the traditional optical competitors. We're mainly competing against different metrology solutions that are non-optical. On the Sentronics side, it's much more differentiated market, and we see a lot of small vendors playing in that field.
How should we be thinking about the applicability of your material metrology portfolio to the back end? When can we start to potentially see some traction there?
I think overall in the current environment is that if you have a good solution in the front end, it's just a matter of time until the application and the complication that you will see in the back end will come your way. This was working for us on the dimensional side, and we see first signs of that on the metrology side as well, where we having conversations with the customers to deploy material metrology solution to the advanced packaging. It's too early to call, but I expect we will see something happen in the next 12 months.
When you think about the 60% growth rate for this business in 2025, how much of that do you think is just market lift versus Nova share gains in this area? How do you think about your ability to grow relative to market from here?
The market did grow by 60%. It both. Also the market and the share gains that we took and the traction of our technology in that space. Going forward, we are very optimistic about the advanced packaging. Again, this is also one of the key driver for the WFE that is expected to be a key driver this year as well. We had successful, let's say, qualification and introducing of new platform, as I mentioned, WMC, that we do new positioning with this tool. Definitely on that segment, we're expecting to outperform as well.
Tying this all together, you spoke about the low double-digit percent WFE growth. You've talked about strong double-digit percent AI growth in 2026 and then a vision for Nova outgrow the market. Can you talk about how you're thinking about the expected magnitude of outperformance this year and, you know, what visibility and lead times look like overall?
First of all, you know, overall, in the last 20 years, we were able to outperform the WFE, and we believe that this year we're on our way to do it as well. We have the right drivers to do so. We talked about some of them during this conversation. I think when you're looking at the market and it is driven by capacity addition and the most complex applications, usually when the customer is investing in that space, it's going our way in terms of, you know, especially areas where we are competing with. We're viewing 2026 as another outperformance, year of outperformance. The magnitude is too early to call. Again, we're just in the beginning of 2026 in the first quarter.
In terms of lead time, this is one of the reason why it's too early to call is because usually our lead times is between four to five months, three to four months, which we're getting frameworks from the customers. Obviously, our lead times is longer than that. This is why we're getting forecasts from the customer, control tables and so forth. But what they are saying is that everything can shift. The only framework that we have is three to four months. Therefore, it's too early to talk about, you know, how significant the outperformance will be this year.
All right. If I was to assume that 26% growth at 20%+ for the year, which doesn't seem too unreasonable based on your market growth assumptions, if supply second half product revenues grow roughly 30% half over half and result in, you know, revenues setting a fairly meaningful record high. The question here, how is Nova positioned to deliver revenues closer to $300 million in Q1 ? Supply perspective, manufacturing, logistics, or from a different perspective, actually, you know, the instruments out the door delivered and sold, how do you think about that capacity maybe going into next year as well?
Supply chain is a very critical part of the business that we're doing, and we're focusing a lot in order to make sure that we're agile enough, right? We were growing 30% in 2024, 30% in 2025. We're always investing in the infrastructure in order to make sure that we have the capabilities to serve the market. We did a lot of things in 2025. We're announcing about new clean rooms that we and expansions that we did. We are quite set to meet the demand that go in our way. This is not only our capacity capabilities, it's also to make sure that we have the whole supply chain, our vendors and our suppliers are capable of addressing that.
Currently, we're totally on track.
Perfect. I guess quickly, the financial leverage of double growth, how do you think about that from a gross margin, from an OpEx, just rolling through all these, the SG&A growth that we had, what does that mean for bottom line?
I think, in terms of the gross margin, we believe that this is more or less, you know, reflects the business dynamics. We expect to be in the same range where we've been in 2025. In terms of the OpEx, this is our strategy all along, to use the top line growth in order to reinvest in R&D. We're investing more than 15% in R&D, and we believe that this is what's driving our success on the top line. We want to make sure, and as we've talked about the fact that there are many opportunities out there within inflection points with the roadmap ideas that we're adding. We're going to reinvest the growth on the top line and use it on the R&D side.
On the SG&A, there could be some, let's say, saving on operational leverage, but more or less the operating margin is within the range that we saw in 2025.
Perfect. Maybe lastly, but just so you know, M&A, which I believe remains a primary focus for Nova today. You know, this one, the company is well-positioned for following the convertible note raise at the end of last year. Can you remind us what the strategic focus is here? What are the key metrics you look to when considering an acquisition, and what are the primary target areas that you view as most attractive for the company today?
We have three criteria when we are looking at M&As. It needs to fit our financial model, and it dictates what kind of gross margin it's bringing, what kind of operating margins and so forth. It needs to be accretive up to 12 months after acquisition on an EPS basis, and we need to identify clear synergies. When we're talking about synergies, it's not some G&A saving. It's maybe on the top line or technological synergies. Once the company meets those criteria, all the three boxes, this is the company that we want to go after. Again, we're not a software or cyber company that you have, you know, thousands of opportunities out there. We do have a list. We have a dedicated team that, you know, this is their job.
I can tell you that this is on top of our priority list to execute, and we believe that we will, you know, we have the right war chest, and we have a very good track record of succeeding doing so. We definitely hopefully will be able to successfully execute on that front as well.
One follow-up on that. I believe we're out of time. Thank you so much, Guy. Great.
Thank you.