All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the 27th annual Needham growth conference. My name is Charles Shi. I'm the Semi-Cap Analyst here. Joining me here is Veeco. I'm thrilled to have Bill Miller, CEO, and John Kiernan, CFO, here on the stage from Veeco. First off, thank you guys for joining us today. I know you have a presentation, and why don't you get started, and then we transition into the fireside chat.
Very good. Good afternoon, everyone. Once again, Bill Miller, CEO. Looking forward to sharing some activity going on at Veeco with you all today. Please take note of our safe harbor statement. I'd like to start with an overview: who is Veeco for those new to the story? Spend a few minutes talking about our growth strategy and our plans to expand our served available market. John will then spend a few minutes talking about our financials and conclude with why own Veeco. In the '90s, Veeco was known as an ion beam equipment company, predominantly selling to the hard disk drive industry. Really great technology, still a very strong position there.
In kind of the 2009 through 2018 timeframe, Veeco was really known as an MOCVD company, and really, was instrumental in enabling the, LED backlit TV market as well as the general lighting market, overall. When I became CEO in 2018, it was, very clear that the MOCVD, LED business had become commoditized, and Veeco needed another strategy to grow the company. And what we did is we very much focused on taking our core technologies, whether that's our laser annealing capability, our ion beam technology we've been developing for decades, and moving it into the front-end semiconductor market. I'll spend some more time talking about, those activities. Today, Veeco has a broad range of products we sell into the semi space, starting on the left at front-end semi with ion beam deposition for EUV mask blanks, laser annealing for, leading-edge logic and now memory annealing, in DRAM.
In the back end, we have a pretty exciting business in advanced packaging with wet processing for flux clean type applications, as well as advanced packaging lithography. If I look at what's new at Veeco, we have ion beam deposition 300 millimeter platform that we've developed, and I'll spend some more time talking about with you here shortly. We also have our next-generation annealing tool called the Nanosecond Annealing tool, where we have that under evaluation as well. Really, those two products driving a lot of incremental growth for Veeco, as you'll see here. Looking at the served available market for Veeco, growing from about $2 billion to nearly $4 billion, and a lot of that growth is primarily in the semiconductor and secondarily in the compound semiconductor market. We see our CAGR of our SAM growing at about 15%.
We see opportunities in advanced, advanced logic, where Veeco has had a strong position in laser annealing. We've now been able to take that technology into memory applications and advanced packaging, and so we support all those markets, and with the industry inflections that we're facing, whether that's gate-all-around, backside power, high bandwidth memory, 3D packaging, we see that we can grow our served available market faster than wafer fab equipment. Clicking into the products a little bit more. As I said, our laser annealing product, we are process tool of record at the three major logic players gate-all-around nodes. And we also are process tool of record at one high bandwidth memory maker, with a goal of placing a second eval tool at a second, leading DRAM player.
We have a new product, the Nanosecond Annealing product, that I will tell you a little bit more about, but we have evaluations at two logic customers today and strong pull from the third logic customer there. I mentioned IBD for EUV mask blanks. Veeco makes the zero defect mask blanks for the EUV industry. So for every 10- 15 ASML scanner ships, the industry needs one of our systems. And so we have a very strong position there. And we have developed the ion beam deposition 300, where we're looking to become the fourth deposition technology in the fab. And we have two evaluations there in memory today. So we can see an opportunity to grow our served available market from about $1 billion today to about $2 billion in 2028.
So clicking into the opportunities in Nanosecond Annealing, if you look at the chart on the left-hand side there, you can see traditional flash lamp technology that we are basically displacing in all of these advanced nodes. As the lines and spaces continue to shrink, traditional lamp-based technology can anneal the dopant, but it actually diffuses the dopant. So with Laser Spike Annealing, we can spike the surface very quickly as we raster the beam across the surface. We can heat it up and cool it down very rapidly. And that activates it without diffusing it, which makes sharper junctions. And our next-generation product, Nanosecond Annealing, we can actually raster the laser much faster, but to a higher temperature.
So we can modify the very top surface of the wafer without heating up the center or the back of the wafer, which are good for applications like backside power delivery or gate -all -around where it's very, very temperature sensitive. Looking at our IBD 300 product, if you look at the picture on the left, this is a typical tungsten deposition of PVD, where the grains are small and randomly oriented. We've demonstrated that we can preferentially deposit low resistance grains and much larger grains, which leads to much lower resistance of the wires, which directly impacts the performance and speed of memory and logic devices. A lot of pull and interest for this product as well.
Looking at artificial intelligence and where we play, last year, we estimate in 2024, we estimate that about 10% of our revenue came from AI type applications, whether that's the GPU, high bandwidth memory, or advanced packaging. And in 2025, we estimate that number to be 20% or more. So this is a real growth opportunity for Veeco. So today, as I said, we are process tool of record with laser annealing and EUV mask blanks. And obviously, we see opportunities in Nanosecond Annealing for incremental gate -all -around applications. High bandwidth memory, we are process tool of record with one DRAM maker. Our plan is to place an eval tool at a second DRAM maker, mid this year, mid 2025. And we have a lot of activity going on in 3D packaging of CoWoS applications with both our predominantly our wet processing, but our lithography business as well.
So this is an exciting area for Veeco. I mentioned here a number of evals as we've been going through this brief talk here. But today we have one eval at advanced node, two nanometer and beyond in logic. And we have two evals in logic for the Nanosecond Annealing product. And that's going quite well. And in the IBD 300, we have two evals at two DRAM memory makers that are progressing quite well. And you can see the estimated revenue that would drive for 100,000 wafer starts per customer per application. So it's an exciting opportunity for the size company that Veeco is. Dipping into the compound semi market area, we see opportunities in GaN power. We have an evaluation system in the field for 300 millimeter GaN on silicon power electronics.
This is an exciting opportunity for us for 2026, and it's progressing quite well. In the photonics space, we see opportunities in micro-LED, as well as space-based and terrestrial solar cell applications for very high performance solar cells. With that, I'll turn it over to John to spend a few minutes talking about the financials.
Thank you, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm just gonna cover a couple of financial slides here. This morning, we did send out a press release, updating our 2024 Q4 and full year outlook. These aren't actual results yet. We will present our actual results at our fourth quarter earnings call in about a month from now, but you'll see here that we updated our revenue guide for the fourth quarter to a guide of $175 million-$185 million, versus the prior guide of $165 million-$185 million, and we updated our non-GAAP EPS from $0.36 to $0.44 from our prior guide of $0.35-$0.45 per share. With that, we updated the year guide as well, so now we're guiding full year revenue in the range of $710 million-$720 million, compared to our prior guide of $700 million-$720 million.
We've updated our non-GAAP EPS as well, to $1.69-$1.76. Let me cover revenue in a little bit more, you know, detail here. You can see the trend of increasing revenue since 2020. This year, another year of revenue growth in 2024, at the midpoint of our guide, about 7% increase at the company level. In the semiconductor space, more than 10% revenue growth in 2024. Bill mentioned earlier this transformation of the company to concentrating and putting our resources and investments in the semiconductor, taking our core technologies and bringing it to semiconductor.
You can see that, since 2020, we've been having about a 30% compound annual growth in our semiconductor business, outperforming WFE over that time period and increasing our revenue percentage coming from the semi market from 37% of revenue in 2020 to over 60% of revenue in 2024. With that, I'll just close up on this last slide before we move into the, you know, Q&A section of why own Veeco. You know, long term, we look at WFE growth as being a strong market with analyst predictions that the overall semi market will be a $1 trillion market somewhere in the 2030 timeframe. We see opportunities for WFE, you know, to continue to grow. We have some, as Bill mentioned, exciting enabling technologies for semiconductor in our laser annealing technology, as well as ion beam technology.
This investment strategy for those products go very well with industry inflections for things like gate-all-around and other advances in architecture where we're working to our customers and industry roadmap there. And we see the opportunity. Our SAM has been expanding and our revenue has been expanding quicker than WFE, you know. And we see the opportunity going forward for our SAM opportunities to continue to outperform WFE growth. And we see the ability to continue to execute against this strategy and to give and generate value for our shareholders. I think Charles, with that, we'd go into the Q&A session.
Thanks. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, John. Thanks for giving us a long-term view on Veeco and the fireside chat, maybe a little more shorter term focus but you know a lot at headwinds, tailwinds, pretty mix, and the industry environment. I do think it's important to address those. So the first question, right? I think, thanks for the pre-announcement, but I do wanna ask, since last year, the year before, you guys did provide a preliminary outlook for the new year. Look, this time looks like you did not. Mind if you shed a little bit light on why you choose not to this time?
Sure. I'll start and Bill, feel free to chime in to add on as well. So, Charles, the thinking here is that, if we look back a year or so ago, we had more visibility into a couple of pieces of the business that gave us, you know, the confidence to give out a full year guide. And one area is we were, you know, carrying more than a year of backlog in our data storage business. This is the equipment we sell to the hard disk drive makers. And I would say the visibility this time last year on the China business was stronger as well. I mean, we had a number of projects that we could see in the pipeline, you know, further out in addition to the near-term business that we were booking.
And we don't see that same visibility right now. I think another piece, to a lesser extent, is the fact that as our business transforms more to the leading edge, and then we, Bill talked about this business in the advanced packaging side of it, the lead times are generally less there and you're generally working one to, you know, two quarters of visibility there. So, you know, taking all of those, you know, factors into consideration, we thought it was, you know, prudent, you know, not to give a very specific quantitative guide at this point.
Got it. Maybe I want to ask you about China, right? I think, I mean, to your credit, I do think you were one of the first management teams in the industry to really not try to sound the alarm, but more like you gave the investment community a true picture of what's going on there pretty early in the second half last year, I think. I found that to be incredibly beneficial. Can you tell us what exactly you're seeing, what prompted your action and try to lower everybody's expectation about your China business in 2025?
Yeah. So I'll again, I'll start and Bill can add on here. You know, it was about, you know, that time where we started to see that although current order rate was, you know, strong and business was strong and we expect about 35% of our, you know, business, to come from the China market in 2024, that this, China being about 40% or so of, you know, WFE over a very long term didn't seem sustainable. Number one.
And then number two is that, as I just mentioned, that, although order rate were fine, near-term order rate was fine, these next level of projects, you know, and what was happening in the pipeline 9- 12 months out started to become, you know, not as strong. You know, and you know, sort of working, you know, sort of a bottoms up there and working with our teams in China, it started to look like, you know, an opportunity for moderation in WFE in China. That was our view and, you know, we expressed that view at that time.
Yeah. And the one piece of incremental update you guys provided was shortly after the December 2024 U.S. export control, right? I think you guys said that you're not seeing any meaningful impact. I think you characterize the impact to be limited.
Right.
One of the things we do notice that some of the new product does get onto the EAR, the export control list. How do we square the two different facts that you are not seeing meaningful impact, but at the same time there seems to be some incremental restriction.
Yeah. There's some incremental restrictions that came out from the new regulations, but didn't require any new licensing for our products in China. So, you know, LSA, our laser spike annealing has been one of the larger products for us for sales into China. And we didn't get new requirements for licensing for that, you know, product there. So that's one item. Other item is, as we analyzed at the time, our backlog and our expected, you know, sort of business for companies that were put onto the Entity List, we didn't have any significant or material backlog with those companies.
And so looking out there, we weren't expecting, you know, business for those companies. It's really those two factors that had us come out and say, as we see the regulations that just came out at that time, in the very near term, we didn't see a significant impact to our business.
Got it. Thank you. So now I wanna move on to more of the 2025 overall picture. I understand you said visibility is not as great as last year, but wanna hear from you directionally what do you see for your individual operating segments or product segments, semi compound, semi data storage. I think you touched upon a little bit on that and the scientific. What's the directional trend that you are seeing? There used to be four questions, but I think the second time, let's just ask one question.
Sure. Let me take a shot at that. And when I mess it up, John, you can straighten me out. I would say starting in the semi segment, we just spoke about the China headwinds that we're seeing. In our prepared remarks, we spent some time talking about AI and high performance computing going from about 10% of Veeco's revenue to about 20% of Veeco's revenue driven by gate -all -around two nanometer business, high bandwidth memory continuing to book revenue business in 2025. And a lot of activity that we're seeing in advanced packaging with wet processing, as well as in lithography. And so overall, that's gonna become a much larger piece of Veeco's revenue in 2025. If I move on to compound semi, compound semi is an area we continue to invest.
I would say that will be probably very, very similar next year and that we are seeing opportunities, as I mentioned, in GaN on silicon, 300 millimeter . We have an evaluation system that's progressing quite well with our customer. Their plans are to start pilot build potentially in early 2026. We're working partnering with them to help them make that happen. So that's a lot of activity in 2025, not a lot of revenue in 2025, but still it's very good for the longer term. We also see opportunities in the arsenide/ phosphide space of compound semi, some micro-LED applications, that we are planning to win and compete for. We also see opportunities for some solar applications. One is for space-based.
These Low Earth Orbit satellites, a lot of those satellites going up in space, really driving a lot of demand for these extremely efficient triple junction solar cells of very high efficiency, as well as kind of very large commercial grade terrestrial opportunity for power generation, could potentially drive some business for us in the second half of 2025. In data storage, the third segment, we have basically signaled that we are going to see about a $60 million-$70 million reduction in revenue 2025 over 2024. And that's effectively largely just our service business. Our customers, Seagate, Western Digital, TDK Headway, their utilizations have been down during 2024. Some customers have stated that they're ramping up their capacity and they had shuttered a lot of equipment in their fabs and they're trying to bring it on.
I believe Seagate has said that they are planning to target about 90% utilization by mid-year. We are seeing an increase in our service business as they try to bring their Veeco equipment sets back online, so a lot of spare parts and upgrades, et cetera, happening now, and then I think once they kind of get to the point where they see a path of 90%+ utilization, I would say given the market dynamics, they'll probably prudently look to add capacity. I think both Seagate and Western Digital are on fiscal year ending June, and they'll be starting to plan their following year kind of in the Q2 timeframe.
So we'll have to wait and see at that time kind of how they're playing out their year a nd finally, in the scientific and other space, we typically, kind of generally say this kind of operates at a GDP growth business.
I would say right now we're seeing a bit more lumpiness, positive lumpiness in that we are selling some high priced, high value, molecular beam epitaxy MBE systems, for quantum computing applications, very much research and development 10+ years out into the future.
But a lot of the high power, research labs around the world are buying Veeco equipment so that they can deposit almost all the material, any material on the periodic table they wish. So a lot, it's a very good research tool. We have integration with ALD. And so you'll see some, large, revenues go through the P&L and the scientific and other, and it's going to look lumpy just because they're kind of a small number of high ASP tools. That's kind of the four segments in a nutshell.
Yeah. So maybe I wanna ask one more question before we open the, but still around the trend, directional trend of the business. But I wanna take a different answer about AI, 'cause you mentioned that the variable estimation 10% of the 2024 business revenues on AI, 2025, maybe that number goes up to 20%. That's a pretty good number. Of course, it's a two variable. It's gonna change, right? Depends on where the top line is going to be. But still look, sounds pretty positive. Do you mind if you help us understand what's in that 10% AI revenue? What kind of products in that 10% AI revenue in 2024? What's in 2025? Sounds like some backend, advanced packaging product will see a little bit more traction in 2025, but that's my first impression. I'll leave it to you to give more deeper down.
I would say in 2024, we did have equipment shipments for GPUs for laser annealing and a portion of EUV mask blanks for the logic. I would think in 2025 that will continue, if not grow a bit as maybe China is down and leading edge is up a bit. So we see some maybe potential growth there. In high bandwidth memory, we have been shipping equipment to our one customer who's an HBM DRAM manufacturer. We see that business continuing flat to potentially up a bit in 2025. And as you just alluded to, we are seeing a much more significant increase in the backend advanced packaging, predominantly from our wet processing business. We've been able to win some business with not only a foundry, but a number of OSATs as well. So it's a big driver for our business.
And also our lithography, advanced packaging lithography business, was pretty soft in 2024. And from these lower levels, we are seeing some growth in the CoWoS-type applications, as well as in mobile applications as well. So I'd say overall everything is heading positive, but clearly the backend advanced packaging is growing. I don't know, John, any.
No, I think you've covered all the pieces there. And I would echo what you said about, you know, strength in the packaging side is individually the larger driver there.
All right. Yes, please.
I'm not sure if acquisitions have been part of your strategy, but if so, what types of things are you guys looking for?
Sorry, let me repeat the question so that folks on the webcast can take note, so this question's about your M&A strategy. What kind of targets you may still be looking at and how do you think about M&A overall?
I would say we think we have a very robust portfolio of technologies today. And, our strategy for the last five years has been to exploit our laser annealing and ion beam technology into front end semi. We will look at technology tuck-ins along the way. But they have to be very tightly aligned to our strategy of growth in semi or compound semi market. So, we're not gonna change the company's strategic direction just for an opportunity to grow the business.
Any other questions? Yes.
Can you just comment a little more on compound semi drivers, whether, you know, GaN and silicon carbide could be having issues this year? But what, you know, what's driving in the next five years of compound semi? Do you see that you guys keeping up with sort of what GaN overall is doing? Silicon carbide generally is probably a better long-term outlook.
Yeah, so this question's about GaN and silicon carbide specifically, and what's your outlook? Maybe let's, let's say next five years, and maybe, maybe provide a little bit of color on what you see maybe last year, this year as well, I think.
Sure. I would say, in the GaN on silicon space, we have a 200 millimeter, now a 300 millimeter product. We see the SAM for GaN on silicon, the served available market, growing from about $100 million in 2024 to about, I believe, $300 million in 2028. And we see, we see opportunities. Most of those opportunities were probably going to be at 300 millimeter GaN power, probably starting with low voltage applications and moving more towards mid voltage applications over that, over that timeframe. Then you asked a question regarding silicon carbide. We did put out a press release today that we've decided to streamline our silicon carbide operations and allocate the investments we were making there into front -end semi where we think we can have a better return on investment.
That being said, we made that decision really because we weren't really meeting our market expectations because our product was delayed getting to market. And we're also seeing some short-term headwinds in the EV space from the customers we were going after. So we're reducing our investments there. And I guess the other area is in photonics where in arsenide phosphide, as I said, we see opportunities in the future in micro-LED, as well as in, as I said, solar-based applications here in the 2025, 2026 timeframe. And John, I'm not sure I completely remember our SAM growth in photonics.
Excuse me, Bill, I don't either. I don't have that off the top of my head.
Okay. Well, it's on, it's in our investor materials.
Yes. Talking about the NSA tool, so $450 million SAM in 2028, how much of that is the new application processes like Gate-All-Around and backside versus maybe is it incremental abilities where, you know, some processes on annealing that LSA is serving? That's also, you know, is it incremental performance of getting some existing customers maybe over the hump to not process that?
Yes. So this question's about NSA, the SAM, is it incremental to the LSA SAM or is there any overlap between the two numbers?
It's, today, it's largely incremental. The two evaluation systems we have in logic, customers are looking at new applications, where they're maybe adding incremental annealing steps for gate-all-around. So we have in LSA gate-all-around steps customers are considering, can they improve the performance with an incremental step? They're also looking at it for backside power where we don't believe LSA would be the right application for LSA. That being said, there are potentially some amount of overlap, where in certain, say, contact applications, but I would say it's probably 80-20 incremental, 70-30 incremental. But I think as we get through the evaluation process and see how our customers are integrating the NSA, we'll probably have a better update in the future. That's our current view though.
All right. No more questions. We can wrap it up. Bill, John, thank you so much for being with us today.