KLA (KLAC) NASDAQ Investor Conference summary

Market outlook and differentiation

• Market expected to stabilize and grow slightly in 2024, with strong gross margins driven by differentiated technology.

• Presence spans multiple segments: wafers, logic, memory, specialty, legacy, wafer-level packaging, PCB, and IC substrates.

• Organizational structure supports growth strategy, with dedicated leadership for electronics, packaging, and semiconductor process control.

• KLA's market share is over four times its nearest competitor, with industry-leading margins and a strong global presence.

• Recent M&A activity (ICOS, SPTS, Orbotech) has strengthened capabilities in process complexity and control intensity.

Key technology and industry drivers

• AI, GPU, and HBM are major drivers of semiconductor demand diversification.

• Semiconductor and capital equipment growth expected to outpace GDP over the next 5–10 years due to pervasive semiconductor use.

• Technology innovation is shifting beyond Moore's Law to include heterogeneous integration, advanced packaging, and new materials.

• Heterogeneous integration at the package level enables higher performance, lower latency, and reduced costs, with 2.5D and 3D packaging architectures proliferating.

• The roadmap for IC substrates is critical, with trends toward shrinking features, more layers, larger packages, and new materials.

Packaging innovation and roadmap

• Advanced packaging is positioned as a major new growth engine, with packaging system revenue CAGR at ~25% from 2019–2024 and a 5x increase in wafer packaging system revenue over two years.

• HBM packaging enables stacking DRAM close to GPUs, with significant area and performance improvements.

• CoWoS and HBM integration are current bottlenecks for GPU capacity, with packaging, not wafer fab, as the limiting factor.

• Packaging segment is growing faster than the overall semiconductor market.

• KLA's advanced packaging revenue is expected to accelerate further in the next 2–3 years, supported by strong product penetration and projects with top semiconductor customers.