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| Period | Topic | What was printed |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 10-K. Product scope | Item 1 | Advanced packaging for fan-out panel-level packaging and 3D stacking of HBM. SABRE 3D covers bumps, redistribution layers, TSV filling, and wafer-level bonding. |
| Q4 FY2025. Plating installed base | SABRE 3D | June 2025 slides: largest plating installed base, 6,000 installed plating cells. SABRE 3D advanced-packaging share expected to grow nearly 5 points in calendar 2025 (outlook, not a realized share print). |
| Q4 FY2026. Growth mark | Revenue growth | On track for more than 70% year-over-year advanced packaging revenue growth. No packaging dollar total printed. |
| Q4 FY2026. TSV and plating | Process position | A leader in TSV etch and electroplating. |
| Q4 FY2026. Panel-level tools | Panel-level packaging | Shipping tools for panel-level packaging across multiple geographies. Call: first 310x310 mm panel tool this year. |
| Period | Topic | What was printed |
|---|---|---|
| CY2013-CY2024. Growth vs installed base | Investor Day CAGRs | Installed base 10% CAGR. CSBG revenue 17% CAGR. CSBG excluding Reliant low double digits. Target more than 2x CSBG revenue. |
| CY2025. Chamber installed base | Installed base size | Installed base topped 100,000 chambers. CSBG revenue grew faster than the increase in installed-base units (December 2025 call). |
| Q3 FY2026. First $2B quarter | CSBG milestone | First $2 billion CSBG revenue quarter. Slide print $2.11B. Sequential growth from a large installed base plus spares, upgrades, and services, partly offset by Reliant. |
| FY2026. Support-line growth | 10-K driver | Customer support-related revenue $8.347 billion, up 20.2% versus FY2025, mainly from spares and non-leading-edge equipment. Not a FMP System vs Support restack. |
| Q4 FY2026. Conductor etch base | Etch installed base | Conductor etch installed base more than 40,000 chambers. Akara installed base has been doubling and that trajectory is expected to continue in calendar 2027. |
| Q4 FY2026. Dextro / Equipment Intelligence | Services attach | Preventive-maintenance tasks that Dextro can automate doubled since the start of calendar 2026. Equipment Intelligence and Dextro expanding from NAND into DRAM. Early in a multi-year installed-base rollout. |
| Period | Topic | What was printed |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025. Support mix language | 10-K | Revenue increased on Memory and Foundry equipment spending and on customer support-related revenue for upgrades, spares, and services. No dollar split among those three. |
| Q3 FY2025. Record upgrades | Upgrades | Record upgrade revenues driven by NAND technology conversions, plus DRAM and logic tool repurposing. Signed a new multi-year spares agreement with a large memory customer. |
| Q4 FY2025. Third record upgrade quarter | Upgrades and Reliant | Third consecutive record upgrade quarter, driven by NAND conversions. Spares strength offset by a decline in Reliant systems. NAND upgrade opportunity described as roughly $40 billion over several years (industry spend, not Lam revenue). |
| Investor Day 2025. Upgrade savings | Upgrades (outlook) | Lam upgrades will deliver more than $8 billion in customer savings over the next five years. Not a Lam upgrades revenue figure. |
| FY2026. Spares as growth driver | 10-K | Customer support-related revenue up 20.2% ($1.40 billion). Mainly revenue from spares and non-leading-edge equipment. Still no spares-only dollar line. |
| Q3 FY2026. Utilization | Spares and service | Spares quite strong and service quite strong on very high industry utilization. Reliant flattish with mature-node spending. No component dollars. |
| Q4 FY2026. Record upgrades | Upgrades vs spares | Sequential CSBG increase primarily record upgrade revenue. Spare-part purchases remained consistent with the strong March quarter. Smaller increases in Reliant and services. |
The etch specialist — dominates the critical chip carving process that gets harder with every new node.
Kiyo
Conductor EtchPrecision etching of metal and polysilicon
Flex
Dielectric EtchEtching insulator layers on chips
SABRE
ElectroplatingCopper and metal deposition
ALTUS
Thin Film DepositionAtomic layer deposition (ALD) tools
Coronus
Bevel EtchEdge cleaning for wafer yield improvement
Market Share
#1 in plasma etch (~45%), #2 in deposition after Applied Materials
Competitive Moat
Dominant etch market share; etch complexity increases with each node (more steps = more tools sold)
Key Risk
Similar to AMAT — China restrictions, cyclical capex spending
Etch is the process of carving patterns into chips, and it gets exponentially harder at smaller nodes. As chips shrink, the number of etch steps per wafer explodes — which means Lam sells more tools per fab. AI's demand for advanced chips is a structural tailwind for Lam.
Founded by David K. Lam in Fremont, CA to commercialize plasma-based etch tools; the AutoEtch 480 released in 1982 became the industry's first dry-etch system, displacing wet chemistry.
IPO on NASDAQ; capital funded R&D for the Rainbow polysilicon etch system, which displaced wet chemistry on key transistor-gate steps.
Acquired OnTrak Systems for M, adding chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) tools; the platform later evolved into industry-leading copper barrier-seed deposition.
James Bagley named chairman; reorganized strategy around dielectric and conductor etch leadership, doubling down on the 90nm and 65nm logic ramps.
Acquired Bullen Semiconductor for $30M, adding key etch IP for advanced shallow-trench-isolation processes that became standard on 90nm-and-below logic.
Acquired SEZ Group for M, gaining single-wafer wet-clean tools; Lam Clean platform became standard at every leading-edge fab through 28nm and below.
Closed .4B all-stock acquisition of Novellus Systems, adding metal deposition (PVD/CVD) and wafer-clean lines; created today’s integrated etch+deposition Lam Research.
Announced $10.6B all-stock merger with KLA-Tencor; deal would have created an etch+metrology powerhouse but was abandoned in October 2016 amid antitrust resistance from regulators.
Began shipping ALTUS dielectric atomic layer deposition systems for 3D NAND vertical-channel layers; the equipment became central to every 3D NAND ramp from V-NAND to 232+ layers.
Released Sense.i etch productivity platform with on-board AI for real-time process control; first major equipment line to use machine learning for chamber-matching.
Pulled engineers from Chinese fabs and cut FY2023 revenue guide by $2-2.5B due to October 7 BIS controls; pivoted resources toward HBM-related etch/deposition equipment for memory makers.
Signed strategic technology pact with IBM and SK Hynix to scale dry-resist EUV photoresist for HBM and logic; technology promised lower defectivity and higher throughput than wet resist.
Flagged additional China shipment halts (Hua Hong, others) under December 2 BIS expansion of equipment controls; pivoted to HBM bonding tools and 3D NAND retrofits to offset China loss.
Flagged $700M+ FY revenue risk from China export controls; pivoted aggressively into HBM bonding and 3D NAND tools, with HBM-related equipment up 3x YoY.
Disclosed record HBM-related equipment bookings as TSV/bonding capacity ramped at SK Hynix and Micron; HBM-related revenue topped $1B/quarter for the first time.