Good afternoon. For those joining us here in person and on the live webcast, I want to welcome you to Qnity Electronics' Inaugural Investor Day. I'm Nahla Azmy, and I will head investor relations for Qnity with its spin-off on November 1st. We're so grateful for your time and interest, and excited to share the unique story about Qnity: a leading broad pure-play technology solutions provider across the semiconductor value chain. Before I begin, I would like to bring your attention to Slide 3 in this presentation, which notes that we will be discussing forward-looking statements. These statements represent our best view of predictions and expectations for the future, but numerous risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ from those predicted. Additionally, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures can be found in the appendix.
Now, for today's special agenda, we're going to kick things off with Jon Kemp, Qnity's Chief Executive Officer, who will provide an overview of Qnity: our competitive differentiators and the market opportunity. We will then hear from Randy King, Chief Technology and Sustainability Officer, who will provide an overview and a deep dive into how we are leveraging our exceptional innovation capabilities. Jon will come back up to share some insights on the two business segments: Semiconductor Technologies and Interconnect Solutions, which enable us to deliver end-to-end solutions for the world's leading technology players. Jon will turn things over to Matt Harbaugh, our Chief Financial Officer, who will step us through a financial objectives and capital allocation strategy. We'll then take a 10- to 15-minute break and then wrap up with Q&A. Now, it's absolutely my great pleasure to welcome to the stage our CEO, Jon Kemp.
Jon.
Thank you, Nahla. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. For nearly a decade, I've had the privilege of leading the business that is now known as Qnity. During that time, I focused on shaping our portfolio and unlocking our growth potential. As we move forward toward becoming an independent pure-play electronics company focused on solutions for the semiconductor and advanced electronics value chain, our team couldn't be more energized. Although we're still in the early stages of a semiconductor market recovery, our business is performing very well, outperforming the market based on our leadership position in the industry's most advanced technologies. We look forward to building on this growth momentum as we work to create value for our stakeholders.
A little bit about my background: I joined DuPont in 2005 and worked across various strategy, M&A, and business leadership roles, starting in the electronics business back in 2008. I led the integration of DuPont after the landmark merger and have spent a fair amount of time architecting multiple portfolio moves and technology-driven acquisitions. It's a pleasure for me today to introduce you to Qnity. To start, let me walk you through a high-level overview of our investment thesis with a deeper dive to follow. First, we're an established pure-play technology leader for the semiconductor value chain. We're uniquely positioned because of our unparalleled portfolio breadth and depth to solve our customers' most complex and toughest challenges. More than 65% of our portfolio is directly connected to semiconductor applications.
We are intentionally focused at the leading-edge of technology with a resilient, unit-driven portfolio well aligned with the fastest-growing segments of the industry, which gives us a competitive advantage. One of the biggest drivers of our success is deep and lasting customer relationships, and you'll hear a lot about that today. Our portfolio gives us a unique perspective on customer challenges and allows us to develop more holistic solutions from beginning to end. We have a seat at the design table to collaborate and innovate together with world-renowned brands and leaders of next-generation technology at a global scale. What you're going to hear today is Qnity has a strategic path and an operating model to achieve above-market growth and strong profitability, which will ultimately create opportunities for us to deliver strong returns for our investors.
While the key highlights of our investment thesis in mind, let me share more about who we are and what sets Qnity apart. Let's start with the purpose and strategy driving our culture. It all begins with purpose, and ours is simple yet powerful: to make tomorrow's technologies possible. This is more than a statement. It's a rally cry that galvanizes our team. Our employees believe in it. They're motivated by it, and it drives them to bring their best every day. It's our North Star, and it fuels everything that we do. So how do we bring that purpose to life? Through our strategy to be a premier technology solutions provider across the entire semiconductor value chain. We don't just play a role in the supply chain. We help shape it.
We aim to be a trusted solutions and innovation partner, delivering smarter and more integrated solutions to meet the complex challenges ahead. And we're committed to being a best-in-class operator that our customers can rely on for performance, quality, and reliability. Ask any one of our employees, and they'll tell you our goal is simple: to be the partner of choice every time. Take a glance at who we are, our global footprint, and the thousands of employees powering our progress and the impact that we're making across different industries. As I mentioned, we're a pure-play technology leader for the semiconductor value chain, with expected 2025 net sales of roughly $4.6 billion and an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 30%. Those numbers suggest we have an opportunity to both invest in and expand our capabilities and solutions to meet our customers' ever-evolving needs.
As you can see on this Slide, our sales are well-diversified in terms of both geographies and end markets, giving us a strong foundation to capitalize on global growth and technology trends. Both of our business segments work closely together with complementary technologies and shared customer relationships. Often, they deliver integrated solutions that seamlessly support customers across the entirety of the value chain. So with strong financials, a global reach, and tightly integrated solutions, we're built to scale and ready to power what's next. Now that you know who we are, let's transition to talk about what we do and, perhaps more importantly, what makes our approach unique in terms of how we bring solutions to our customers. Slide 11 is evidence of our longstanding leadership in technology, a track record built over decades of innovation, expertise, and impact.
While we will be a newly established public company, Qnity is founded on a heritage of technology and innovation spanning more than 50 years. We've led the industry with breakthrough advancements in areas like chemical mechanical planarization, photolithography, polyimides, and metallization chemistries. What's truly remarkable to me is that culture of innovation hasn't just endured. It's thriving and moving faster than ever before. You may not recognize every product or brand name on this Slide, but what matters is what they represent: the deep, ongoing commitment to technology leadership and innovation that makes Qnity an essential partner to the world's leading semiconductor and advanced electronics players. Now, building on the decades of innovation and leadership, let's look at where we sit in the semiconductor value chain, starting with the semi-equipment manufacturing players on the left and the device OEM, or original equipment manufacturers on the right.
Looking at the center of the Slide, you'll see the integral role we play in nearly every stage of the value chain, from chip fabrication to advanced packaging to printed circuit board builds and finally to assembly solutions and display materials found within devices. Down below, you'll find many of the industry's most prominent players at every stage of the manufacturing process. While not exhaustive, this list includes some of our longest-standing customers with relationships built over decades of collaboration, underscoring our reputation as a partner of choice. When we think about this value chain, as manufacturing and device architectures become more complex, our global reach, deep application expertise, and proven performance give us a distinct competitive advantage. As we get deeper into the details, let's zoom in and take a look inside a device.
This is a closer view of how Qnity's technologies come together to enable performance, precision, and functionality. Whether it is smoothing surfaces, shaping circuits, managing heat, and signal interference, we're involved in hundreds of critical steps, each one essential to enabling the performance and reliability of today's most advanced chips and electronic devices. The next wave of innovation will hinge on advanced materials because it's materials that enable the breakthroughs in performance, efficiency, and design that tomorrow's technologies require. One emerging dynamic that I'm seeing more of is an increasing interest in collaboration across the entire value chain. OEMs are becoming more actively involved in material selection and design decisions. I'm sure everybody saw the news this morning, but that underscores the point, right? Everyone's focused on maximizing the value of their operations because even small gains in quality or yield can create huge value.
When you're working at nearly an atomic level of precision, every detail matters. As you can see, we're a broad and integrated solutions provider, which means we have a unique line of sight across the entire manufacturing and assembly process, helping our customers solve challenges at every stage. We don't shy away from this complexity. In fact, we embrace it. Understanding the critical role advanced materials play in the future of innovation across the semiconductor value chain, now I want to give you a little bit of a perspective on the broader market landscape. As you can see, the electronic materials market and industry is highly specialized, with only a few U.S.-based providers, as well as a handful of diversified non-U.S. suppliers, most of whom treat electronics as a smaller part of a broader business portfolio. That makes our focus and position in this space both rare and strategic.
Qnity stands out for its unique combination: a broad portfolio of offerings, application engineering, and system integration expertise. This powerful combination allows us to not only solve complex customer challenges but also to optimize performance across multiple levels of the value chain. We hold market leadership positions in key areas like chemical mechanical planarization, advanced packaging, and high-value assembly solutions for thermal management and electromagnetic interference, or as we call it, EMI shielding. These are not just technical strengths. They're some of the fastest-growing and highest-value segments in the industry, and we're proud to be leading the way. This is a perfect transition to one of my favorite topics, growth. So let's take a closer look at why we're optimistic about our future growth prospects driven by high-value secular markets and key technology opportunities.
At Qnity, we've anchored around a phrase: "Powering the next leap in electronics." You heard it in the video that was played at the start, and that's for good reason. History shows us that major breakthroughs in technology have always been sparked by a catalyst or a leap that redefines what's possible. Today, we're standing at the edge of the next transformation, driven by two megatrends that have the potential to reshape industries and change the world. So let's dive in. The first is high-performance computing, one of the most significant technology shifts of our time. This transformation is being propelled by the exponential demand for AI, cloud computing, and the explosion of data across industries. The second megatrend is advanced connectivity. This includes technologies like smart devices, edge computing, and autonomous driving systems, all of which are reshaping how we interact with the world around us.
Both of these trends require new and innovative materials. They form the strategic foundation of our R&D pipeline and the engine behind our long-term growth. As momentum builds, we're seeing a sharp rise in investment, production, and adoption, all of which creates substantial opportunities for us and for our customers. With these trends as catalysts, the global semiconductor industry is entering a new era of expansion. On Slide 17, we'll take a closer look here at the expected growth ahead and why Qnity is uniquely positioned to grow with it. While there are different forecasts for how the semiconductor industry will evolve over the next few years, most agree on one thing: it's on track to surpass $1 trillion towards the end of the decade. Obviously, we're one specialized company within the total industry, but this momentum is being driven by transformative trends.
Think about how quickly AI is being adopted along with high-performance computing. Then add to that the number of smart connected devices coupled with the rise of electric and autonomous vehicles. I regularly meet with leaders across the industry, and there's a shared excitement and a sense of optimism about the future. All of these trends are happening fast, and they all have one thing in common: they need more chips, more collaboration, and more advanced capabilities to keep up. In the simplest of terms, the industry is shifting towards advanced, higher-performing chips, ones that are more complex to make and require more sophisticated materials. And that's exactly where Qnity shines. Our solutions and expertise help customers meet these demands, making us a key partner in powering the next generation of technology. You've seen the scale of growth expected across the semiconductor industry.
Now let's focus on Qnity's position in some of the most exciting high-growth markets. Each of these markets is powered by multiple growth drivers, creating ongoing opportunities for both investment and innovation. What's exciting to me is that these span a wide range of industries, giving us several strong growth pathways. Over the last six months, most of my conversations with customers have revolved around enabling and capturing growth from advanced nodes, AI, and data center applications. These are also the major drivers fueling our recent performance. While we expect this growth momentum to continue, I'm also excited about additional opportunities in other key areas like factory automation and robotics, as well as autonomous driving, including Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. Our customers are working hard to deliver the next generation of technology, and they need next-generation solutions to help them get there.
And that's where we come in, partnering with them to create products that are faster, smaller, more powerful, yet also more energy-efficient to meet tomorrow's technology requirements. With these high-growth end markets in mind, here's a look at what all of this means for our total addressable market, the scale of the opportunity, and where Qnity is best positioned to grow. Today, more than 2/3 of our portfolio is tied directly to semiconductors, including chip fabrication, advanced packaging, and thermal management. About half of our net sales are driven by chip fabrication, where we are already a key player, especially in key areas like CMP and lithography. This represents a $15 billion market that is expected to grow mid-single digits, and we see plenty of opportunity to improve our position.
One of the fastest-growing areas within the market with a nice growth potential is advanced packaging, where we offer multiple leading solutions. In the printed circuit board space, our focus is on high-value applications like high-density interconnects and flexible circuit solutions. Finally, in assembly and display, we see significant potential in thermal management and EMI shielding, capabilities we added through the Laird acquisition in 2021. Notably, these high-value applications in assembly share similar growth and profitability characteristics as the semiconductor part of our portfolio. When you put all this together, our total addressable market exceeds $30 billion, with growth expected in the mid-single digits. It's a strong foundation for a long-term opportunity. With a large total addressable market and a strong portfolio position, we expect Qnity to consistently outperform the market.
Our expected sales growth begins with underlying market increases of 4%-5%, driven by the increasing demand and ongoing electrification of the modern economy. On top of that, growth is created by the continuous adoption of new technologies like AI and high-performance computing. We believe we can outperform the market by leveraging our competitively advantaged position. Leading-edge technology and increasing process complexity creates a need for more specialized solutions, which expands our total addressable market. Also, these technology transitions create additional content opportunity through more layers and increased material intensity. With the breadth of our portfolio and the strong customer partnership model, we're positioned to create more opportunities for customer wins.
So when you put all this together, the 4%-5% underlying market growth and an expected outperformance of around 200 basis points, our long-term projection is to 6%-7% organic growth range through 2028. Now that we've covered where we're headed, on Slide 21, let's talk about our customer-centric business model and how it's helped us to build such deep, long-lasting relationships and partnerships across the industry. We've worked hard to achieve it, and we're extremely proud to be a longstanding, trusted partner to global semiconductors and advanced electronics OEMs. Here's a snapshot of our customer portfolio with a few stats that highlight the scope and scale and strength of those relationships. First, our top 10 customers account for roughly a third of our total sales, and our top 50 customers account for nearly 60%.
What's truly extraordinary is that our top 10 customers have been with us for an average of 35 years, a testament to the trust that they place in our continued partnership. Across the industry, we have a presence with the leading global companies that represent nearly 80% of the total market. And increasingly, these customers are actively involved in the complete design and material selection process from chips all the way to final assembly. They're looking for capable partners who can help them solve challenges across the entire value chain. One final stat: seven of our top 10 customers already rely on solutions from both of our business segments, Semiconductor Technologies and Interconnect Solutions. So the key takeaway here is this: our leadership position is reflected in both the breadth and depth of our relationships with the world's most innovative companies.
Another key strategic advantage is our ability to support customers at a global scale. We call it our local-for-local approach. This is evidence of our long-term strategy to build a strong network anchored in a local market presence. That means our manufacturing facilities and R&D centers are located close to customers, wherever they operate. This model has a number of unique advantages. One, it enhances customer intimacy. Two, it improves supply chain resiliency. And three, it gives us increased agility to ensure consistent, stable supply. Global supply chains have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, and we believe our globally leveraged network creates an advantage to optimize production, sourcing, and technology from around the world to keep our customers running. We closely collaborate with our suppliers and manufacturing partners to ensure the highest quality and the best technology is available where and when our customers need it.
For example, let me take a moment to talk about our position in China, which represents roughly 30% of our sales, two-thirds of which is anchored in our ICS and displays businesses. Similar to other important geographies in the electronics industry, we've been investing in building out our local-for-local capabilities in China for a long time. About half of our sales there are specified by multinational companies, meaning if supply chains shift, our sales would shift with it. Another 25% is domestic sales for the ICS business in printed circuit boards and assembly materials. The final 25% is domestic mature node semiconductor sales in more difficult-to-displace CMP and lithography applications. More broadly, if I take a step back, we've also established innovation hubs near our top customers in every region to accelerate co-development and speed up product innovation.
With this global footprint and local engagement model, we offer the best of both worlds: close customer collaboration backed by robust global capabilities, giving us the right to win in the market. Now let's go a bit deeper into our collaboration model and customization that creates even more customer value. Quality is absolutely critical in this industry. Controlling the tiniest defects, often measured in parts per trillion, can lead to major savings for our customers. Material quality and performance are directly linked to customers' manufacturing yields, and even small improvements in yield can create outsized value. Just to give you one example, a 1% increase in yield for an advanced node chip can translate into as much as $200 million in value. So when that kind of value is on the line, customers aren't just looking for a supplier.
They need a trusted solutions partner, someone who brings product innovation, process insight, and engineering expertise to help them maximize performance, and that's Qnity. We deliver exceptional quality every time, and we bring innovative solutions that unlock opportunities across the value chain. From here, I want to say a bit more about our world-class operating model, one that enables us to consistently deliver products with industry-leading performance, quality, and reliability. It all starts with a deep understanding of our customer roadmaps, what they're trying to achieve, and where they're headed. Having a seat at the design table is critical. It allows us to collaborate closely, customize solutions, and integrate directly into their manufacturing process. That kind of partnership makes our solutions harder to replace and more valuable over time. On the operations side, we've continuously invested in this local-for-local model, leading to improved speed, quality, and resilience.
From there, we focus on continuous improvement. Most recently, we've been focused on driving greater productivity through lean automation and digital tools to strengthen our performance. Our customers count on us for consistent manufacturing performance because that's what translates into predictable results and higher yields in their own operations. Commercially, our go-to-market strategy is focused on, built on a focused approach to account management and an understanding of customer needs. This allows us to work closely with them to solve their biggest challenges and grow our relationships over time, both in scope and in value. When you put all of this together, our model is laser-focused on delivering the products our customers need with the quality and efficiency they've come to rely on. It's what strengthens our position throughout the product lifecycle and reinforces our right to win.
I want to spend a few minutes talking a little bit more about innovation. So let's talk about our product development process. At Qnity, innovation starts with early customer engagement. We sit side by side with our customers to align roadmap goals, performance targets, and design options. Through multiple iterations and collaborative testing, we work towards securing what we call a process of record, or POR. A POR defines the design specifications and the material selections at the customer level. This often requires every solution to be tailored and a strong understanding of our customer's operating environment, and because this typically happens two to three years before commercialization, it gives us plenty of time to scale and plan for production.
From there, we shift our focus to technical support and commercialization, both in-house and co-located with our customers, to further optimize production capabilities to ensure a smooth scale-up on our end and on their end to maximize yields, performance, and quality. Now, when we consistently deliver this type of performance and partnership, we become more than a supplier. That's how we become a partner of choice, and that's how we keep our seat at the design table. Before I turn things over to Randy, I'll wrap up with how our technology platform is delivering for us. Our innovation engine is at the heart of who we are and what we do. It powers our growth, and it enables our customers' success. Every day, our team is focused on solving some of the industry's most pressing challenges.
What you see here is a snapshot of some of our recent innovation pipeline performance, areas where we continue to see attractive opportunities. We apply disciplined managing processes on the highest opportunities, backed by our expertise in material science, application engineering, and those long-standing customer relationships. One of the key factors contributing to our most recent success is a decision that we made back in 2023. While others were pulling back during the downturn, we stayed committed to our innovation investment strategy and doubled down on collaboration opportunities. What resulted was a wave of new wins that began scaling last year and has continued this year, positioning us very well during the early stages of the market recovery. These results reflect more than just simple market dynamics. They're the outcome of disciplined strategy, careful decision-making, and strong execution.
In fact, we've achieved more than 100 customer wins over the past few years, launching dozens of new products that solve very specific customer challenges. Importantly, these solutions span nearly every part of the value chain, and we're committed to continuing that momentum. We're investing in our capabilities and building on the strength of our incredibly talented and accomplished technology and engineering teams. So to share a little bit more about how we're staying at the top of our game in innovation, I'm pleased to introduce our Chief Technology and Sustainability Officer, Randy King.
Well, thank you, Jon. Hello, everyone. I will start with a quick bit about my background. I've spent more than half of my 35-year career in the electronics industry with a strong focus on innovation and engineering strategies that have led to growth.
For nearly 10 years, I've worked closely with Jon, and we worked on developing our innovation pipeline. The technology inflections that we're seeing today in AI and data centers remind me of when Jon and I first started working together during the rapid adoption of smartphones. That was a transformational catalyst in the industry. Looking forward, the next big leap will likely be AI and high-performance computing. These have the potential to improve every facet of our lives, the way we work, communicate, travel, and live. Our innovation engine positions us to drive significant growth. Today, I'm even more excited and energized to lead our science and engineering teams through the next leap ahead. Over the next few minutes, I will walk you through our broad portfolio, how we're differentiated in the market, and why we're well-positioned to continue driving growth into the future.
Now, I know the innovations we're working on can get pretty complicated. Some of them sound like science fiction, but don't worry, I'll keep it simple today. No PhD required, so let's start on Slide 29 with three core pillars of Qnity's innovation engine. These are the attributes that set us apart and drive our ability to deliver meaningful solutions. First, we focus our innovation on key technology inflection points, moments where the potential for advancement is greatest. These are the areas where our broad, integrated portfolio gives us a competitive edge. Second, our portfolio breadth and depth, from front-end fabrication to back-end assembly, our reach is increasingly important as complexity rises and customers seek partners who can deliver across multiple stages of production, and third, our ability to collaborate closely with our customers, starting early in the design process and continuing through development and scale-up.
With that, let's dive in. As Jon mentioned, there are two technology megatrends driving innovation and future growth: high-performance computing and advanced connectivity. To enable and accelerate high-performance computing, the industry is leaning into a key inflection known as More-than-Moore, to push traditional limits and unlock new levels of performance, efficiency, and scalability. Moore's Law is the idea that computing power doubles roughly every two years. But as the pace of Moore's Law slows, the industry is finding new ways to keep advancing. New chip architectures and advanced packaging are unlocking the next frontier for computing power and new pathways to breakthrough capabilities. One area I'm especially excited about is 3D chip stacking. Like layers of a cake, you think about this. This involves many semiconductors on top of each other to create a single, more powerful chip package.
It's a major innovation driver, and we're actually actively partnering with customers to make it happen. Now, let's shift to the second major megatrend: advanced connectivity. This is all about how devices, systems, and infrastructure communicate in real time to create smarter and more responsive environments. Two key technology inflections are heterogeneous integration and miniaturization. Heterogeneous integration means combining different types of components into a single chip package, making devices more powerful and energy efficient. Miniaturization is about shrinking components to create smaller, faster, and more powerful electronic devices. Both of these trends positively impact each of our business segments and are the backbone of our innovation engine and R&D pipeline, and they're shaping the future of technology and Qnity's role in it. Let me show you where Qnity's technology show up in electronic device.
I hope many of you had a chance to stop by our innovation display to see some of these examples up close. This chart is a more detailed version of what Jon showed earlier. What's important here is how our broad range of solutions work together in an integrated way to support a single device. In semiconductor manufacturing, we provide specialized materials and solutions for key steps in the manufacturing process, like CMP and lithography. In simple terms, these materials are used for smoothing the surface of the chip, printing the intricate patterns to make it work, and metallization of the circuits. In printed circuit board production, our portfolio includes metallization products, dry film photoresists, dielectrics, and flexible laminates.
Again, in simple terms, we supply metals that carry electrical signals to the board, special lithographic films that help shape circuits, and flexible laminates that insulate between conductive layers and allow bending for tight spaces. Finally, in assembly and displays, we have solutions such as EMI shielding and thermal management, which are key to maintaining signal integrity and blocking interference from other electronic devices, as well as controlling heat. Now, it's worth noting that creating these devices involves hundreds of complex steps along the manufacturing process, and each step carries a risk of failure. One of the reasons we're selected as a partner of choice is our ability to deliver quality at scale that meets the extreme standards required to achieve high production yields.
Taking a look at the manufacturing cycle, you will see that Qnity delivers leading solutions across nearly every step of the process, from chip fabrication to advanced packaging. The green and tan colors highlight exactly where our business segments play a critical role. This end-to-end process is critical, allowing us to deliver high-performance solutions that optimize efficiency, reduce complexity, and accelerate our innovation across the entire manufacturing process to serve our customers better. As Jon mentioned, our culture of innovation is embedded in every facet of our organization. Let me share what we've been doing, starting with advanced packaging. As I said before, it's a key driver of growth for Qnity and yet another reason we expect above-market growth. Advanced packaging sits at the intersection of our semi and interconnect solution technology roadmaps. It's no longer just about protecting chips.
It's now central to unlocking high performance, greater efficiency, and increased density in electronic devices. Every customer engagement I've had in the past six months has had a focus on advanced packaging. I am genuinely excited about the growth potential and our market leadership position in this space. Thanks to our ability to customize solutions for leading-edge customers, we are well-positioned to capture meaningful opportunities here. A great example is our partnership with a customer to develop a High Bandwidth Memory solution for generative AI. These HBM3 chips, part of the third generation of advanced memory, are known for their speed and energy efficiency. By combining expertise from both sides of our portfolio, CMP for our semi business and metallizations from ICS, we delivered a tailored solution that met the customer's need.
As the memory chip gets taller, we still need to ensure integrity of the structure and precision of the circuits. Not only did we commercialize the solution, but we were able to replicate it with additional HBM3 customers, and we are currently working towards the next generation HBM4. We delivered quickly, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Here's the key takeaway. This example shows how we leverage the full breadth of our portfolio to support next-generation technologies, and it's exactly what's needed to keep pace with AI, big data, and the future of computing. This is a showcase of our R&D investments that directly align with market growth opportunities. These initiatives are closely tied to both customer needs and broader industry roadmaps. A good portion of what we are working on today are products that will commercialize in coming years.
Our technology team spends significant time working side by side with customers on new innovations, understanding their current challenges, aligning with their technology roadmaps, and ultimately developing solutions that enable next-generation technologies. This deep collaboration is what allows us to deliver solutions that truly work and earn our place as a long-term partner. This is not an exhaustive list. It highlights some of the biggest areas of opportunity in terms of investment and growth. The majority of our R&D spend is directed towards the semi businesses. Two areas we're really excited about are CMP and advanced packaging. In chip fabrication, we are focused on helping customers improve yield, quality, and performance, especially with advanced nodes. Our market-leading CMP portfolio includes pads, slurries, and cleans. Our newest pads are designed to improve chip yield at the wafer edges, reducing defects and increasing output.
We have also developed novel cleaning solutions that work at the angstrom level. That's 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. This cleaning solution reduces surface defects as chip features get smaller, which is critical for next-generation nodes. We are also enabling the next generation of powerful, complex chips with advanced packaging materials and high-resolution metallization solutions that support 2.5D and 3D chip structures, key drivers of More-than-Moore's performance. Our innovation pipeline has never been stronger, and we're continuing to invest in these areas to drive future growth. We're proud to be at the forefront of innovation in our industry, and we're proactively positioning our investments to capture current and future opportunities. Now, let me share with you a couple of case studies to show how this innovation comes to life in real-world applications.
A major advancement in our innovation process is how we're integrating data and AI to accelerate customer-driven R&D. We are building powerful predictive models using decades of proprietary experimental data combined with neural networks to accelerate our innovation process. In addition, by applying molecular modeling, we can design targeted formulations and automate data analysis through iterative learning loops. As we gather more data, these models continue to get smarter. Why does it matter? Because speed to commercialization is critical. This approach helps us shorten product development cycles, generate new ideas faster, and improve process efficiency, giving us a real competitive edge in innovation. Here's a great example. We recently focused on improving product yields for advanced nodes in our cleaning business using AI-assisted machine learning. Traditionally, a human might develop around 100 new formulations in a week.
With our AI tool, we increased that number to over 100,000 and allowed us to achieve a solution 35% faster than the traditional approach, and that's just one example, and I have many more if you got time for me to tell them, but we are excited to bring this differentiated capability to many areas of our business, and we even see more opportunities ahead to drive efficiency and innovation through data science and AI. Next, I have an exciting customer win where we shine a light on another growth area: thermal management solutions for AI-optimized servers. Data centers are under intense workload demands, and OEMs are struggling on how to effectively manage overheating issues. The Qnity team leveraged previous breakthroughs across a deep portfolio of offerings in thermal resistance to create multiple customized solutions.
Leveraging our strong applications engineering capabilities, including modeling and testing protocols, we were able to provide the customer with the needed data package that predicted the performance in this application, giving that customer the confidence that we had provided a solution that met all their requirements. That led to a successful commercialization with a top OEM for AI circuit boards. And we didn't stop there. We replicated the approach with other data center customers as well. This is a great testament of why our partner of choice approach to innovation is so central to our development process. By listening closely and responding quickly with deep applications and engineering expertise, we can deliver real solutions that solve real problems, and that's what sets Qnity apart. My last story punctuates how advanced semiconductor nodes are driving strong growth for our global market-leading CMP business.
Semiconductor production is expected to grow steadily, with advanced nodes growing even faster. As nodes are smaller and more complex, often shifting from flat to 3D architectures, they require significantly more layers to function. For example, a logic chip might have roughly 15 layers, while today's advanced logic chips can be above 30 layers. Each additional layer requires more CMP pads, slurries, and cleans, which dramatically increases demand across the board. Simply put, more layers equals more of our solutions. The shift towards more advanced nodes creates a powerful combination of volume growth and a multiplier effect on the number of planarization steps, creating an ideal condition for our business. This turns into major customer wins like the ones we've seen in our CMP pads business.
We have partnered with top chip makers to develop a new line of high-performance CMP pads for the most advanced manufacturing process currently possible, like 2 nm chips for AI and the move to Angstrom-level precision. This means Qnity isn't just keeping pace with the industry. We're helping shape its future. Let me leave you with three key takeaways. First, we remain focused on innovation that allows us to respond to key technology shifts and deliver value for our customers while delivering growth for Qnity. Second, the breadth and depth of our portfolio gives us a clear competitive edge, enabling us to support customers across the entire value chain. And third, our customer relationships are at the heart of everything we do. Thank you for your time today. I will end with this: the science behind what we do is increasingly complex.
I promised to keep it simple, and I hope I delivered. But if nothing else, just remember, we're solving some of the toughest challenges in advanced electronics, from a complex system down to a single molecule. And with that, I'll turn it over back to Jon.
Terrific. Well done. Well, I'm even more excited now. Thanks, Randy. That was terrific. What you just heard from Randy is a great reminder of how complex the work is behind the scenes and how our team of experienced innovators makes it accessible, actionable, and impactful for us and our customers. Now let's shift gears and talk about how all of this innovation translates into growth and opportunity for each of Qnity's business segments. Let's go to Slide 39. Our products are on full display in the product innovation showcase next door. I hope you had a chance to take a look.
If you didn't get a chance to meet our division president, Sang Ho Kang, who leads our Semiconductor Technologies business, and Chuck Xu, who leads our Interconnect Solutions business during the product presentations, please get an opportunity to say hello. Both Sang Ho and Chuck bring decades of experience in the electronics and semiconductor industries and a strong track record of driving profitable growth. They combine deep technical expertise with global business insight, especially in Asia, where the majority of our business is located. Together, under their leadership, the semi and ICS businesses combine leading-edge innovation and strong customer partnerships to drive profitable growth. They'll join us for the Q&A session today a bit later. Let's take a closer look at each of the segments, starting with Semiconductor Technologies, the business at the heart of the digital revolution.
From smartphones to AI to cloud computing, semiconductors are the invisible force accelerating innovation across every industry, and they rely on our materials to enable what's next. As you heard from Randy, our materials are used in the most advanced semi nodes in the world, and the innovations we're delivering to customers are meeting next-generation demands like speed, reliability, and miniaturization. This segment is mostly aligned to chip fabrication, the front end of the semiconductor value chain. That's our primary focus. But we also support some downstream applications, giving us broader reach across the industry. Here's a snapshot of our business, which is expected to generate about $2.6 billion of net sales this year. It supports a wide range of end markets, including smartphones, data centers, and AI, automotive, and communication infrastructure. It has strong profitability with Adjusted EBITDA margin in the mid 30%.
We've demonstrated strong above-market performance since 2023, powered by the rapid growth of AI applications utilizing the most advanced logic and Hig Bandwidth Memory technologies. Turning to the next Slide, we show significant industry investment trends that point to continued strong demand in this business. These trends reinforce the long-term opportunities we're well positioned to capture. The chart on the left shows global silicon shipments trends going back to 2010 and projected forward to 2028. Wafer starts, which are measured by MSI data, are one of the best indicators of demand for our products. You can see wafer starts have grown steadily with a long-term CAGR in the mid-single digits, demonstrating consistent positive growth. Global fab capacity has steadily expanded to keep pace with that demand, increasingly driven by investments at the leading-edge, which will approach $200 billion or more in coming years.
Now, take a moment to consider Qnity's portfolio. About 90% of it is made up of consumable products that are used with every unit produced. That means our growth is closely tied to our customers' production volumes. As they make more, we sell more. This gives us a stable, repeatable revenue stream and strong upside as production volumes increase. Now, let's talk about our portfolio mix and our increasing shift to leading-edge technologies. This is where the future really starts to take shape. Our position in advanced node technology isn't just strong, it's accelerating. Today, about 35% of our portfolio are tied to advanced nodes, a figure that's grown by nearly 400 basis points over the last five years, and we expect that number to grow closer to 45%-50% of the semi portfolio over the next five years.
What's most exciting is that we're not just participating in the shift to advanced nodes. We're leading it with our customers. Advanced nodes comprise about 30% of the global market today, which means Qnity is outperforming the industry in this space. Over time, our growth and position in this area will lead to consistent above-market growth and while we're doubling down on the future, we're not leaving the past behind. Legacy nodes still power critical applications, and we're committed to supporting them, but make no mistake, like the smartphone transformation, another leap is upon us. The evolution towards more advanced nodes isn't just about technology. It's also about economics. These nodes will drive higher growth, higher margins, and greater value, and they're central to how we're building the next chapter of our business. Looking ahead, our semi business is positioned across the full chip making process.
About half of the business segment comes from CMP materials, which includes pads, cleans, and slurries, critical components in chip fabrication. Another 25% is lithography materials, and the remaining 25% is split roughly equal between OLED materials and high-performance displays and seals used in high-value semiconductor equipment. This leadership is no accident. Our semi products consistently deliver the performance, quality, and reliability that our customers count on, and that's translating into real value. Most of our products are custom built for each customer's unique process technology, not just to work once or even a dozen times. It needs to perform flawlessly thousands of times. We see strong growth potential across our product categories. Some will scale faster than others, but we're well positioned to deliver above-market growth across this entire portfolio. And importantly, we hold market-leading positions in most of these areas, known for our innovation, execution, and customer-first approach.
Ultimately, our customers know they can rely on and count on us, and we deliver. Now that we've covered our semi business, let's turn to our Interconnect Solutions, or ICS business, on Slide 45. This segment is all about enabling the flow of data fast, reliably, and efficiently. Again, our materials are critical to printed circuit boards, flexible circuits, and thermal management. This part of our business is a little bit further downstream in the semiconductor value chain, where different components are brought together. It's also where we're seeing growing and increasing overlap, especially in advanced packaging. Remember, that's the big next step forward in chip innovation as technologies converge and innovation accelerates. On the next Slide, you'll see a snapshot of the ICS business segment, which has similar scale to our semi business.
This year, we expect ICS net sales to be approximately $2 billion, with consistent profitability delivering adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-20% range. One of the exciting things about this business is the shift from what used to be primarily a consumer electronics-oriented business to increasingly a broad number of industrial applications. The industrial applications are higher value and more durable across product life cycles. As demand grows for faster and more reliable interconnects across AI and data centers, automotive, and consumer electronics, our materials are essential to meeting the performance design needs that are enabling today's devices as well as empowering the devices of the future. Looking ahead, we see plenty of additional upside for this segment, driven primarily by the momentum in advanced packaging, high-end printed circuit boards, and high-value thermal management and EMI shielding solutions.
These trends are creating strong tailwinds, and we're in a great position to capture that growth. Let's look at a couple of the key demand drivers behind our ICS segment. We've already talked about the big mega trends, but it's worth underscoring this: the rise of more compute and more connectivity across the industrial economy will create long-term growth. These are not just cyclical tailwinds. They are structural shifts that reshape how data moves, how devices communicate, and how entire industries will operate. To reiterate, in the near term for ICS, much of the momentum is coming from exposure to AI and data center applications. These types of applications require faster signals, better thermal control, like the customer story that Randy talked about earlier, and more reliable interconnects, all areas that play directly into Qnity's strengths. And this is just the beginning.
If you take a look at the forecasts on the right hand of the page, as AI infrastructure and edge computing start to expand, demand is expected to accelerate across nearly every industrial application and end market over the next four years. With these powerful shifts underway, we're helping our customers to push the boundaries and shape the future of connectivity, enabling faster innovation, smarter systems, and stronger performance in markets that matter most to them. Bringing it all together, our ICS segment is made up of three key areas. About 40% is advanced circuits and packaging. 35% comes from layered thermal and EMI solutions, and about 30% is driven by advanced flex technologies for flexible circuit applications. As devices become thinner, faster, and more connected, ICS ensures that challenges like signal integrity, managing power, and controlling heat keep pace with next-generation requirements.
Just like in our semiconductor manufacturing conversation, here they are becoming increasingly more complex with ever-rising performance and quality standards. Just to deep dive a little bit further, starting on the left, advanced packaging shows up again. If it feels like a theme, that's because it is. It's not just a trend, it's an ongoing transformation, and we're right at the center of it. It's a space where Qnity stands out. As the market grows and designs become more complex, demand is rising for materials that connect and protect, from metallization and dielectrics to shielding and substrates. We're also seeing strong momentum in high-end PCB manufacturing, especially in high-density or HDI interconnects, where our solutions support finer lines, greater intricacy, and miniaturization.
Further downstream, our customers are advancing assembly technologies, and we're supporting them with leading thermal and EMI solutions essential for speed and power demands of AI and high-performance computing. Finally, in advanced flex technologies, our materials shine when circuits need to bend, twist, or be configured into tight spaces, making them ideally suited and essential for smartphones, electric vehicles, smart devices, aerospace, and defense applications. As mentioned earlier, we're also seeing a clear trend and dynamic for this part of our business. OEMs are becoming more and more involved in the design and specification of materials used, and our ability to provide system-level integration and deep expertise across the entire value chain makes us an increasingly valuable partner. This business has momentum, and as a trusted design partner, Qnity is well positioned to lead the next wave of innovation in advanced electronics.
Before I hand it over to Matt, I want to highlight five attributes of our spin-off. Qnity is in a unique position to make a lasting impact for our customers and the industry by bringing together the strengths of our two powerful business segments. The opportunity only grows as we become an independent company. We are confident in our ability to deliver above-market growth, and you'll hear more about that from Matt coming up. Going forward, we'll operate with a sharpened strategic focus, one that is tailored specifically to Qnity's needs. We'll lean into our operating model to accelerate the pace of innovation, reduce complexity, and improve efficiency, strengthening our go-to-market and local-for-local approach. We're also excited to further shape our culture around a clear purpose and strategy, one that's bold, focused, and built for the future.
With greater flexibility to allocate capital where it matters most, we'll maintain a disciplined focus on driving strong returns for our shareholders. I want to reiterate our excitement about what we'll accomplish for our customers as an independent company. We're just as excited about what that can mean for our investors. With that, let me hand it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Matt Harbaugh.
Thanks, Jon. Hello, everyone. Excuse me. I'm thrilled to have recently joined Qnity after more than 30 years in finance, strategy, business development, and operations management, excuse me, across a wide range of world-class companies. I've played a key role in multiple spin-offs throughout my career. I most recently served as the CFO of Vantive, which was the planned spin-off from Baxter Healthcare prior to its sale to Carlyle this time last year.
I also served as the CFO at NuVasive and Mallinckrodt, and I played a critical role in the spin-off of Mallinckrodt from Covidien. It is a privilege to work alongside this highly experienced management team to launch Qnity as a standalone company. As Jon and Randy have already discussed, the electronics industry is expected to continue to grow rapidly. We are uniquely poised to capitalize on that growth through a focus on innovation, productivity, and cost discipline that will continue to drive our strong financial performance. I'll spend the next few minutes providing an overview of our financial profile and how we plan to drive long-term value for our share owners. Moving to Slide 52, let's start with these three key points. First, we are very well positioned to drive sustained performance relative to peers and the market in a rapidly growing industry founded on our strong history of growth.
Second, we are going to drive profitable results through continued innovation, product mix shift, productivity, and portfolio and network cost efficiencies. And lastly, we expect to continue to generate robust free cash flow that will support balanced capital allocation moving forward. Our balance sheet position and cash flow will provide us a lot of optionality in terms of how we create value for shareholders. And I'll say more in a few minutes about how we're thinking about those opportunities. Now, turning to our historical financial highlights, we have established 2023 as the appropriate base year for our financial profile, as it represents a more normalized picture following several years of pandemic-related demand distortions. Since 2023, as you can see, the team has delivered sequential growth on all key financial metrics.
As the broader market continues to recover, we are seeing accelerated demand and outperformance from both our Semiconductor Technologies and our Interconnect Solutions businesses. The key point is that we are very proud of the growth we've delivered over the past few years. With this strong financial foundation, we believe we have a meaningful runway ahead for further expansion across our portfolio in the years to come. I will get into more financial detail with our 2025 pro forma financial estimates on the next Slide. Slide 54, please. Looking first at net sales, as you can see, we expect to achieve $4.6 billion this year, which reflects a 7% organic growth increase year over year. We are benefiting from demand linked to AI adoption and more transitions to advanced nodes.
These trends are driving an increase in content needs and share gains for our highest value applications, specifically chip manufacturing, advanced packaging, and thermal management, which account for roughly two-thirds of our portfolio being tied directly to the semiconductor market. Second, on an adjusted pro forma operating EBITDA basis, which is the background this metric reflects, the carve-out financials from DuPont and management estimates for ongoing stand-up costs on an annualized basis. We expect to deliver $1.4 billion in adjusted EBITDA for 2025, representing 11% year-over-year growth driven by high demand from next-generation innovative products from across our broad portfolio, combined with cost productivity actions. This translates to 100 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin improvement, bringing us to an expected approximate 30% for the year.
Finally, on adjusted free cash flow, this takes into account the annual adjustment related to interest expense associated with our debt obligations and other items upon the spin-off. For 2025, we expect to sustain the level achieved in 2024, generating more than $600 million of adjusted free cash flow. Starting from this strong foundation, we are positioned to deliver continued growth. Now turning to our three-year financial objectives through 2028 on Slide 55, we expect to drive above-market growth with an annualized 6%-7% organic net sales CAGR. Through a continuous focus on optimizing our cost structure, shifting product mix towards higher margin solutions, and driving productivity across the organization, we expect to drive strong profitability with target-adjusted EBITDA growth of 7%-9%.
Importantly, our robust free cash flow generation will enable us to maintain target net debt leverage of less than three times while allocating substantial capital towards organic growth investments, capital returns to share owners, while at the same time allow us to consider opportunistic value-accretive M&A. Let's break down the components for our organic top-line growth. Jon shared earlier in his presentation that we expect to see 4%-5% market growth driven by strong industry trends such as increasing demand for semiconductor chips and growing technology ramps in AI and data centers, among other demand drivers. These trends favor Qnity for our core competitive differentiators, including our portfolio breadth, integrated offerings, and resilient supply chain, not to mention that our business is 90% unit-driven consumables.
With growing content share gains and higher value mix shift, such as semi-fab consumables, advanced packaging, and interconnects and thermal management, we expect to deliver 200 basis points of outperformance due to these underlying strong market fundamentals. That is why we expect 6%-7% annual organic net sales growth through 2028. Turning to our balance sheet on Slide 57, in August, the debt structure for Qnity standalone was successfully completed. We gained the opportunity to upsize our Term Loan B and secured favorable pricing, reflecting strong lender support for our strategy and our business. Importantly, we have the option to use our solid free cash flow to prepay the Term Loan B if desired, managing funds, needs, and interest expenses efficiently. So following the spin, we expect to have $4.1 billion in gross debt. Net debt leverage will be approximately two and a half turns.
With this balance sheet strength, we have the financial flexibility to fuel our continued growth and outperformance. Here is a view into our capital allocation deployment priorities. Our first priority will be free cash flow, which will be organic reinvestment in the business, which includes our CapEx and R&D spend. We expect to allocate 6% of total net sales to CapEx and 7% to R&D. These investments are critical to our business to support ongoing above-market growth. Second, we will return capital to share owners through a dividend payout in the 10% range of adjusted net income. Third, we will continue to pay down debt focused on the Term Loan B and ensure that we remain within our targeted net leverage range of less than three times.
Finally, following the spin, we will pursue tuck-ins and bolt-on acquisitions where we see opportunities to further expand our portfolio footprint or technology roadmap. On Slide 59, we highlight where we will continue to strategically reinvest into the business. In terms of R&D investments, we expect R&D to be about 7% of total net sales. Of that 7%, we expect to allocate 60% to our top 10 programs, which is back on Slide 34, so that you can reference that. These opportunities represent our customer-driven innovation funnel, which consists of the most compelling opportunities that will target commercialization in the coming few years. 30% will be allocated to support existing customers as we continue to focus on directly collaborating with customers to ensure the success of our materials through the piloting, scaling-up, and production phases.
Finally, 10% of R&D is allocated to breakthrough technology, which are a little bit further out on the horizon and consist of next-generation technologies. This being said, they have the potential for substantial industry disruption. For our future CapEx investments, we expect to allocate 6% of net sales, of which approximately 70% will be allocated to growth and 30% to run and maintain the base business. We will focus our capital investments to further enable global and regional capacity to meet customer needs. We will continue to invest in automation, AI, and digital tools to unlock efficiencies and improve quality and performance across the business. Finally, we will target CapEx investments that drive ongoing supply chain reliability and quality. As discussed, this industry is a fast-growing space, and we believe we are well positioned to be a consolidator given the breadth and depth of our portfolio.
We plan to remain selective and disciplined in our approach to M&A. To that end, I want to touch on a few potential areas of focus that include as follows: advanced packaging and thermal management, both of which align well as key growth areas for us in years to come. Another area we will explore are complementary semi-consumables that would be an attractive addition to our existing solutions portfolio. The third area we would consider is semiconductor equipment components or services. We also have clear strategic and financial criteria that would need to be met in order to act on any M&A transaction. Again, we will continue to remain disciplined, but are very excited about the optionality that our strong balance sheet and cash profile provide.
Turning to Slide 61, looking more broadly at the transition to life as a standalone public company following the November 1 spin, in terms of our near-term transition, we have a few items that will come to fruition post-spin. First, we expect one-time stand-up costs of up to $180 million, which we expect to be split roughly equally within the first two years. Second, the vast majority of the TSAs from a cash perspective will run through year-end 2027. Lastly, we will have ongoing cost-sharing items related to legacy liabilities. Again, with our cash on hand and free cash flow generation profile, we believe we are well equipped to manage these identified costs. Longer term, thinking about operating with excellence, there are a few distinct areas that we are prioritizing. In terms of our operational footprint, we plan to right-size for cost and complexity.
We do not plan to make massive cuts to our footprint or costs right out of the gate, but this will be an ongoing action post-spin. We will continue to focus on automation to drive quality and productivity improvements, and we will streamline processes to drive efficiencies. Lastly, we are going to leverage AI and other digital tools to enhance our operational speed and agility. As a key solution provider in the AI value chain, we understand the transformative potential of this technology, and we intend to fully leverage it within our own operations to increase productivity and drive efficiencies wherever possible. Turning to the next Slide, you can see here that we are leading across all financial metrics when compared to U.S.-based peers and diversified or non-U.S. peers in the industry, specifically net sales growth, Adjusted EBITDA margin, and free cash flow conversion.
As you already heard from Jon and Randy, we hold market-leading positions in CMP, advanced packaging, and high-value assembly solutions for thermal management and EMI shielding. These critical technologies are accelerating growth in advanced nodes, data centers, and AI. They are fast-growing, high-value segments that are fueling industry transformation, and our leadership in them positions us strongly to capture outsized value in the next wave of semiconductor innovation, driving our outlook for sustainable financial growth, so the final main point is this: we are very well positioned today relative to the market and our peer group, and we expect to deliver long-term value creation going forward. Before closing on Slide 63, I want to quickly provide an overview of where we are today in the spin process. As this timeline demonstrates, the entire team has been working incredibly hard to reach this point.
We are very proud of how far we've come since DuPont announced its original intent to spin this business in mid-2024 and its decision to accelerate the separation earlier this year. We remain on track to complete the spin on November 1 and commence trading as a standalone public company with the ticker Q on the New York Stock Exchange on November 3rd. Shortly following the spin, we plan to host a business update call as well. Finally, we look forward to getting out on the road and meeting with many of you in the coming weeks and months and updating you on our future earnings calls with our continued progress. In summary, before turning it back to Jon, I will leave you again with these points that I started with.
First, we are building on a strong history of growth with plenty of runway to continue growing and outpacing the market going forward. Second, we're leveraging operational excellence to accelerate sustainable, profitable growth. Hopefully, you've heard that loud and clear today and that we are outstanding operators, which you can see in our consistent margin performance over time while maintaining the highest level of quality for our customers, and we plan to continue in that tradition going forward, and lastly, we expect to continue to generate robust free cash flow for balanced capital allocation. We will have significant optionality, and we plan to capitalize on that optionality to drive ongoing value accretion to our shareholders. I hope you're as excited about the prospects of Qnity and our future growth outlook. We have a tremendous opportunity ahead, and we are just getting started. Thank you for your time and interest.
With that, I'll turn the stage back over to Jon.
Thank you, Matt. As we wrap up today, I want to thank you for your time and attention this afternoon. I know it's been a long day for many of you. I'm sure you have lots of questions, and we look forward to addressing those in our Q&A session and in our ongoing conversations with many of you in the weeks and months ahead. Hopefully, we've piqued your interest and made you want to take a deeper look at us as an investment opportunity. Let me end by briefly recapping what I said at the outset of the presentation on this Slide here, 66. We believe Qnity represents a compelling investment opportunity. We're a leader in our space.
Following the separation on November 1st, Qnity will be one of the very few pure-play public companies in this field, making us a unique opportunity for anyone who believes in the secular growth trends shaping the semiconductor industry and advanced electronics marketplace. Our unmatched solutions portfolio gives us a strong competitive edge, positioning us for above-market profitable growth in the fastest-growing and highest-value areas. Our deep decades-long customer partnerships give us a true right to win, and we're committed to delivering strong shareholder returns through disciplined capital allocation and robust free cash flow generation. From here, we're going to transition to Q&A after we take a brief break, so please stand, stretch. If you need to drink coffee or refreshments, please do so, and we'll be back in a few moments. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the stage Jon, Matt, Randy, Chuck, and Sang Ho with moderator Nahla.
So welcome back, everybody. We just want to give you a second to have a seat. So you've already, as the moderator or the speaker, wherever you are, said that you've already met Jon, Randy, and Matt. We want to introduce to you our two segment leaders, Sang Ho Kang, where are you, Sang Ho? And our head of Interconnect Solutions, Chuck Xu. For the benefit of everybody in the room and also on the webcast, we'd like you to ask questions as many as you'd like, but if you could wait until you get the microphone, and then please state your name and your firm. And with that, let's just get started. Chris?
Playing by the rules. Chris Parkinson, Wolfe Research. So much of the thesis over the last few years and clearly into the future has had to do with content layering and so on and so forth. Has that thesis generally been playing out in line with your expectations in 2025 as the street kind of looks at your longer-term forecasts? Or is that something that's actually oddly been a little bit slower and you think could actually accelerate 2026, 2027, 2028 in terms of what you're actually hearing from your larger customers?
Yeah, Chris, that's a great question. So when I think about it, obviously, it's been the node transitions. A lot of the enabling technology behind AI and high-performance computing comes down to the availability of advanced nodes and advanced packaging. And then on the circuit board side as well, I would say that's been a little bit constrained by the capacity limitations in advanced packaging and in advanced nodes. So there's a lot more pent-up demand for more growth than what there is actually capacity available to be able to supply. So we think there's opportunity.
That's one of the reasons why I made the comment that we're so confident that our growth momentum will be able to continue, because as you get additional packaging capacity out into the market and you get additional advanced node capacity and there's a bunch of fab investments that are ongoing that are sort of primed to start up in the next couple of years, that will help fuel and enable a lot more of the proliferation of that high-performance computing and AI-enabled demand across the industry. The part of the business that's maybe done a little bit better than we expected is on the ICS side, where our team really in 2023, when customers had available line time, we doubled down with them and we focused specifically on data center applications in the hyperscaler value chains where we knew that that was going to be a big focus.
We had a lot of wins, and that was sort of fortuitous timing because that's the first demand that started to come back. Our ICS segment has really done a little bit better based on that, whereas the semi side has been a little bit constrained because of the capacity available for advanced nodes and packaging.
Bhavesh?
Thank you. Bhavesh, BMO Capital Markets. So you spoke to the amalgamation between semi and ICS platforms a bit as advanced packaging comes into play. Now, if you think about the growth from here, do you think ICS has a faster growth profile versus semis? And then also in terms of the margin profile, pretty big difference in margins between the two segments. Do you see that gap closing up?
Yeah, it's a good question. As we talked about before, we think we have really strong positions across both of our segment portfolios. And I think Matt alluded to in his comments, the margin profiles will continue to be enriched over time by really a combination of volume growth and then mix shift, because we're sort of in a very fortunate position that the highest value, most profitable segments of our business right now also happen to be the fastest growing. And so we'll get some natural benefit of as volumes increase, we'll get some of that operating leverage, we'll get a portfolio mix shift, and then we'll have the benefit of our own investments in ongoing cost productivity. Maybe Chuck, you could share a couple of insights about what you're most excited with in ICS.
Certainly, advanced packaging, as Jon, Randy talk about, with the AI growth, they're thriving a lot of advanced packaging, 2.5D, 3D, and those demand very high performance, high consistency, and high quality materials. And also needs solutions from both Semiconductor Technologies for their front-end solution like CMP and the back-end solution from ICS like circuit materials substrates. And our position from end-to-end offering is really making us a unique partner of choice for our customers and also for our OEM partners like Jon said earlier, who are increasingly active to select and spec in materials. So that's how we are positioning ourselves.
Maybe a quick follow-up on your outperformance metrics. You have 2% as your goal, a five-year goal. Could you talk about how that has trended in the near term, maybe the past year or so, and what your expectations are for the next year there?
Yeah, I think if you think about kind of where the market is today, so typically we would expect the semi market to outperform the interconnect market in most years. This year is a little bit of a reverse of that because the semi market, the market dynamics there have been a little bit lower based primarily on some of the delays and some of the mature node recovery. And the printed circuit board, the interconnect market has done really well. So it's a little bit of reverse where our interconnect business has done really well this year. And this fast growth of the interconnect business has driven our outperformance a little bit higher than normal. We would expect that might normalize over time. But look, we talked about our market, our expectations that the market would kind of do kind of 4%-5% on average.
If the market does better than that, our outperformance would hold and we would do better than that.
Hi there, this is Melissa Weathers from Deutsche Bank. Thank you for the presentation and best of luck in your new phase as a company. I wanted to touch more on your assumption for chip fabrication growth of, I think you said mid-single digits. There are a bunch of different parts of the semis market. I know some parts of the semis market are growing much faster than mid-singles. So if you could help us unpack what are the growth rates within the different moving pieces of the chip industry, we have DRAM and NAND growing at probably different rates than the leading-edge stuff. So any way you can unpack that mid-single digit growth rate would be helpful.
Yeah, I'll maybe start with a high-level comment and then I'll let Sang Ho talk about some of the specifics in the market. So when you think about it, we said obviously that about 35% of our portfolio is dedicated to advanced nodes. I think there was a chart in Randy's presentation that showed we expected if the total is kind of in the mid-single digit range, advanced nodes are growing kind of high single digits and the mature nodes are growing slightly less than kind of the mid-single, kind of at the higher end or the lower end of that mid-single digit range. The other kind of key statistic that I would point out, and then I'll hand it over to Sang Ho, is that our portfolio is really focused mostly on logic. So about 80% of our portfolio is dedicated and aligned to logic chips.
And so a lot of the outperformance is really driven by what's happening in the logic and the advanced logic market. Sang Ho Kang, I'll turn it to you.
Yeah. If I add more color on that demand outlook by end market, by device and by technology node, based on the customer operation rate and the material consumption rate that we monitor periodically, there is some signal that we will see legacy nodes, logic nodes will be recovering, but in the past, they've been struggling pretty severely in the past one and a half years, and they are merely seeing some of the recovery, but it's not really something that very substantially. Those are the legacy nodes and logic in the status, which is a major part of the total global capacity. When you think about the NAND, they don't really see a lot of demand yet. While the High Bandwidth Memory getting a huge demand by the AI booms, NAND has been struggling and they are continuing struggling.
But the good news for the NAND is they actually settled a lot of issue over capacity issue and the excessive inventory by the customer operational adjustment over the past few quarters. So only thing that we have to look at is if the demand is really hitting back. So all those bad news, they actually clear on it. So now back to the advanced logic and advanced memory. When you look at the Gartner's semi revenue data, that AI sector massively done by hyperscalers and investment in the past three years, it was a $75 billion revenue for the AI sector only in 2023. It is growing up to $209 billion this year. It's almost tripled up.
Because of those massive investment by these hyperscalers, these leading-edge DRAMs, mainly high- bandwidth memory, and the leading-edge logic continues to be strong in the past and also over the next few years. So when you look at those market growth spaces, MSI suggests somewhere around 4%-6%, but it is mainly boosted by the leading-edge in DRAM and logic, not necessarily from most of the industrial and automotive those in the legacy node yet. So we're actually waiting for those markets to turn around.
That's super helpful. If I could squeeze one more in. Just because we're not as familiar with the details of past cycles for you guys, could you help us understand how does Qnity perform in an upcycle versus a downcycle in the semis world? Is there any way to think about floors or troughs or flexibility on your manufacturing? Just any way to help think about the downside in a downcycle versus an upcycle?
Sure. And look, these guys have been in the industry for a long time. They've been through multiple cycles. The way I would think about it is you think about kind of the 2019 cycle was mostly a memory-driven cycle, relatively short and shallow. We saw about a 5% volume there, not too much of an operational impact, a relatively modest decline in volumes, lots of levers that we can pull in that type of environment to hold on to profitability and cash flow while we wait for the market to recover. The 2023 downturn following the run-up in 2021 and 2022 was much more severe. That's a severe downturn that probably only happens like once every 30 years. Whereas the 2019 downturn was like 5%, the 2023 downturn was like 15%-20% volume reduction. Obviously, in that environment, we pulled a lot of levers within our control.
We still had kind of industry-leading performance, profitability, and strong cash flow even in that severe of a downturn, which gives us confidence that we've got a good playbook to be resilient in any type of model. And then often during a downturn, that's when you're going to get your innovation breakthroughs and the qualifications that are going to really propel the way on the recovery. And that's the other kind of thing that we have in our playbook is to really kind of position ourselves to outperform, to drive additional outperformance in the next recovery.
You might want to talk just briefly about R&D investment and how we thought about it during the downturn.
Yeah, so usually when we get into a downturn, while there's levers that we're pulling to tighten our belt and manage the cost, usually the last place that we'll trim is the R&D investment. In fact, in 2023, to use the example, what we did is we reallocated the R&D investment. We talked a little bit about we like to have ideally kind of 10% of our portfolio looking at emerging opportunities. During the downturn in 2023, we took that 10% and we redeployed them on near-term customer opportunities to accelerate our ability to outperform the recovery without necessarily sacrificing the innovation investment.
Hi, Rock Hoffman from Bank of America. Thank you for presenting. Jon, you had mentioned that seven of the top 10 customers buy currently from both Semiconductor Technologies and Interconnect Solutions. Just wondering what the sales opportunity might be for those cross-selling to those remaining three customers and if that's being targeted?
Yeah, the way we think about it is that the fact that we have so when I think about our top 10, I said seven out of the top 10. If you broaden it to the top 50, it's about 75% of our customers are buying from both businesses. And we're really proud of that. And that number continues to increase over time because as you start to get into more complex architectures and more complex process technologies, they need solutions from multiple stages of the value chain in order to drive performance in the end devices. The other big thing that we're seeing that we mentioned and it was in the news this morning is that the OEMs are becoming more and more actively involved in the design decisions and the material selection process across every stage.
And this has to do with process complexity, performance, and quality, but it also has to do with some of the trade tensions in the geopolitical environment where the OEMs really are getting more actively involved day to day. So that's creating opportunities for us because they don't want to have to go to dozens of fragmented suppliers. They'd much prefer a handful of very capable, trusted solutions partners to be able to work with, and that's benefiting us over time.
And I would say to get to the core of your question, I think was going from a financial perspective, as we're forecasting or we're predicting the segments, we take into consideration some of this overlap, but we're still forecasting by segment.
Understood. And just as a quick follow-up regarding the three-year financial goals, what happens to diluted earnings leverage is generally we would expect more than 7%-9% EBITDA growth on a 6%-7% top line. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for the question. We haven't even been spun yet, as you know. So we need to kind of get our sea legs a little bit here as we move forward into the future and talk more long term. But I would say what we put out there today we're comfortable with as it relates to what we see right now. But we've got a lot of transition service agreements to get through, which I mentioned from the stage earlier. We've got to take on some costs related to being a publicly traded company, and that's about $95 million. So there's a lot of moving parts, but I would say as we move into future periods, if we have any updates to our thinking, we will take that into consideration. But that's kind of where we're at in time and space now. Anything you'd add?
Yeah, that's good.
Thank you. Edward Yang, Oppenheimer. Jon and team, thanks for the presentation. Can we focus a little bit on the 2026 outlook? Because I think investors are really interested in that. The CAGRs are certainly instructive. Do you expect that CAGR to represent linear type of growth or linear cadence over the next three years? I only ask because SIA is looking for semi revenue growth to be about 10%. And in that type of scenario, do you think Qnity, what sort of growth should Qnity be able to achieve in 2026 relative to that 6.5% CAGR you're outlining?
Yeah, so thanks for the question. So when we think about it, obviously the focus today was to provide kind of a three-year financial outlook. There's a lot of moving parts between now and the end of the year for us to get through. And I would say we'll kind of update you on the thinking specifically for 2026 as we get closer to that. And we're talking more about kind of the specifics for 2026. As it relates to different forecasts on how the semi industry might evolve, what I would say is if we get a strong upcycle recovery, which I think is probably underpinning what a lot of what is in some of the SIA and maybe some other industry forecasts, there's also a lot of divergence across some of the industry forecasts.
But if we get that nice upcycle recovery, we expect Qnity would continue to deliver the market outperformance. So if the market grows faster, we'll grow faster.
If I add more colors for your specific question about the semi revenue growth rate, because when you look at the semi revenue, it is largely driven by the high value chip sales. It's not necessarily about the high utilization rate. We are the material supplier for those in a wafer consumption basis. When you think about, again, Gartner's data, in 2023, total semi revenue was $542 billion. And this year is $759 billion. Among those $210 billion growth, $135 billion was achieved by the AI chip growth. So when it is going to hit the $1 trillion in five years, it's not necessarily that revenue growth CAGR is directly linear to the wafer consumption base business growth rate.
The 90% of our business is really driven by unit-driven consumables. It's really all about unit volumes and wafer starts.
Yeah. Aleksey Yefremov , you're from KeyBanc. Jon, you mentioned that advanced packaging growth is somewhat limited by bottlenecks at your customers. As some of those bottlenecks are resolved, does this imply that your growth rate could be even higher? I believe you're growing 20% this year. Could this be even higher?
Yeah, that's right. We talked about high teens growth in advanced packaging on our second quarter earnings call, and we're really well positioned with all of the key players in that part of the space, so if that capacity gets resolved and it starts to come along and that growth rate continues, that is an opportunity for us to do better, and there's some upside there, sure.
Just to follow up on the same area, advanced packaging, are you selling sort of existing off-the-shelf materials to your customers there, or is this something new and custom?
Yeah, almost everything that we sell is customized by customer, and it's tailored to their specific process technology. So we're working with them to understand. We've got people kind of on site working with them, understanding their engineering process, and then we're tailoring our solutions. We may have kind of a platform technology, but it's going to be tweaked and tailored to the specific process parameters, kind of customer by customer and even within a customer, line by line within a customer. But to give a sense of a little bit of that, Chuck, do you want to talk a little bit about what that looks like for some of our advanced packaging offerings?
Yes. It's really a mix of existing products with some incremental challenges. I think I talked about during the display, and there's a lot of new products. For example, everybody knows TSMC CoWoS. They got a CoWoS-L , the larger format. So you need a new product to meet their demand, and so they are key partners, and we are well positioned to supply current generation and also next generation. Typically for packaging material, those are permanent materials. Typically, it's every two to three years you need a newer generation of materials.
Hi, Arun Viswanathan, RBC Capital Markets. I guess you spoke a lot about growth and volumes and working with your customers. Maybe you could also touch a little bit about price mix in both of the segments. What does that look like? It sounds like there are a lot of customized solutions. So does that add a couple of points in both segments, or maybe not so much? Or maybe you can just comment on that. Thanks.
Yeah, so when you think about pricing for our business, if you just go back and you look at this kind of how it's trended over history, which I think is probably the right way to think about it, typically when we're launching new products and new solutions, we're getting a nice price premium. That's what allows us to be able to maintain the attractive margin profile that the business has. As you get kind of advancing through the product life cycle and those products start to mature, there is a little bit of a price decline. Net net, you typically would expect about a 1% price fade per year in this business, which is pretty remarkable in an electronics business because a lot of electronics businesses have a much higher price fade on an annualized basis.
We typically more than offset that price fade through internal productivity programs in manufacturing and our own operations to be able to sustain the really attractive margin profiles over time and deliver operating leverage. Not a lot of difference between segments on that. They both kind of net out to about the same place.
It was very helpful.
Sorry, I'm over here
It was very helpful to hear your color on the capital allocation. On the M&A front, it seems like you guys, given your scale, already have plenty of size and stature. Would the focus of M&A be more towards sort of niche category leaders or something of larger transformative nature to your business?
Yeah, it's a good question. As we suggested, we think there's an opportunity for us. We'll have the optionality and the financial flexibility to be able to pursue M&A to continue to enhance and build on our portfolio. Areas like thermal management and advanced packaging are some of the areas we talk about. Consolidation within some of the semiconductor consumables or potentially expanding into an area like equipment, components, or services as areas that we would be looking at. We've got a nice pipeline of opportunities. I would say as we kind of get off the ground and get our sea legs under us, as Matt likes to say, I think mostly we'd be looking at sort of smaller size tuck-ins or bolt-on opportunities.
Over time, as we get a little bit further on, we might look at something a little bit larger, but that's kind of where our head is up front. Matt, anything you'd add to that?
No, I would just say we've done two or three acquisitions over the last five years or so, and they've gone very well. The one we talk about the most is Laird, which has gone really, really well for us. So the team has shown an ability to bring into the portfolio, and actually we've had some divestiture activity as well. So I think we're well prepared to bring it in, but it takes two to tango as well, as you know.
Paul Hogan from Fenimore Asset Management. Regarding the 200 basis points growth above the market, so you highlighted TAM expansion, content growth, customer gains. So do you expect that to come in roughly equal parts over the coming years, or are one or two of those a little more heavily weighted?
Yeah, I think that when we think about kind of how the technology inflections play out, the TAM expansion and the content growth are the two big drivers, are slightly higher of the three. So when we think about TAM expansion, a lot of times you'll go from an advancement in the process technology that used to be a step that was provided by more commodity materials and now needs to be provided by formulated or specialty materials. And so it shifts from one category of buy to a much more specialized category or buy, and that creates an expanded opportunity, expands our addressable market. Content is really about node migration, and the CMP Slide that Randy talked about is a great place to see that, where you're going from kind of older generation technologies towards newer generation technologies, you're sort of doubling the number of layers.
With each successive generation of technology in almost any type of device, you're adding more layers, which creates more content, inherently more content. That's why the TAM expansion and the content growth kind of are the outsized components of that, although there still are incremental opportunities for us to do better on share, and we're seeing that as well.
How similar would you peg that to your historical experience? Is it very similar, or do you think we're at a huge inflection point?
So I think the way that on the semiconductor side and on the advanced packaging side, it's accelerating because those process technologies and the material and quality requirements are reaching a point where almost everything now has to be a specialized and custom-built formulation and material. And so we're seeing kind of a dramatic inflection point as you get to 2 nm or things like CoWoS or other advanced packaging, 2.5D and 3D. That is creating a nice inflection of content gain for us.
Jon, I'd just like to add, for the AI data center growth, I think I mentioned to some of you during the show, the computing power is increasing exponentially. There's more heat generated, and therefore there's more need for thermal management, so thermal management is another area we can grow content. Instead of a content per wafer, we can content.
Content per device,
yeah. The data center.
Thank you.
We just have time for two more, unfortunately, but we'll hang around for a few minutes after. So I think one up here and then Mike.
Seth Goldstein from Morningstar. Thanks for taking my question. So to get from 35% of semi sales to advanced nodes to the upper end of your target of 50%, does that assume market share gains, or what are the big drivers behind that?
So I'll comment on that, saying Sang Ho, opine on that as well. I think a lot of that is just, so a lot of that would be assuming that all the fabs that have been announced get built and that they scale up successfully, right? So it's a progression as we go from, say, 5 nm to 3 nm to 2 nm to 18A to 14A to 10A and so forth over the next coming years, as well as progressing on the roadmap for the DRAM and the High B andwidth Memory to 4E and even potentially to 3D stacking on the DRAM side that would create additional content opportunities for us. Anything you'd add there?
Yeah, largely it is right. When you think about those in the chart that Jon shared, it's a 35% today as heading towards 45%, while the total wafer fab capacity may not be moving and shipping those same speed. Right now, globally, there is more than 700 fabs operating, and there is a plan for adding 110 new fabs over the next five years. When you look at those individual fab announcements from those players, less than half is about the legacy node. More than half is about the advanced node. So those advanced nodes in a new operation will be coming online over the next five years. Typically, it takes two to three years. So based upon those groundbreaking times, largely those more than half of those 110 fabs will start operating sometime in 2027, 2028, 2029 timeframe.
Because of that and accelerating capacity expansion, we actually are being well positioned to get all those wafer content together with that wafer growth.
Hi, Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Your business has come together through a series of acquisitions over time. I was hoping that you could speak to where you are in the process of kind of integrating all those pieces together. What lessons have you learned over time about what needs to be a priority when you're integrating, and how do you apply that to future bolt-ons that you're going to bring into the fold?
Yeah, it's a really important question. I've done kind of more than a dozen portfolio transactions over the last five or six years. And what I would say is, by far, the single biggest factor in determining the success is the strong cultural fit and alignment between the two organizations. Fortunately, when we did the DowDuPont integration and we took the $2 billion DuPont electronics business and combined it with the $2 billion Dow electronics business, it had most of the Dow electronics business was the Rohm and Haas electronics business, and it had a very similar philosophy on customer engagement, on technology and innovation focus. So that was a really good combination. It was almost a seamless integration of cultures. The cultures fit together.
Even today, we still have an almost 50/50 split of talent and people across our leadership teams from both heritage organizations because there was such a strong cultural alignment. The Laird acquisition that we did in 2021 was a similar phenomenon. They were an old-established British company that had this long history of customer focus and innovation excellence in application engineering, and so it was a very seamless transition and fit. From a DowDuPont point of view and a Laird point of view, those integrations are essentially fully integrated from an operations and a commercial customer-focused point of view, back office. There's some legacy systems work that will be part of our transition that we'll work through over the next couple of years to streamline that and drive some further efficiencies there.
From a way we go to market and a way we interact with customers, we're fully integrated. We've got the team that has done that, still is with us today. As we think towards the future and additional acquisitions, Matt alluded to this point a little bit earlier, but we're well prepared to identify the right kind of elixir, if you will, that will allow us to successfully integrate future acquisitions.
I think, again, this concludes our session today. We really appreciate you joining us, and if you want to download the Slides and script, stay tuned for our website, ir.qnityelectronics.com, and I look forward, and we all look forward to seeing you in the weeks to come and updating you further. Thank you for joining us.