ACM Research Wins First Panel-Level Plating Orders and Lifts the Guidance Floor, but Cleaning Declines and Supply Constraints Cloud the Second Half
Second quarter 2026 earnings call, August 7, 2026
ACM Research reported second quarter revenue of $292.9 million, up 36% year over year, and shipments of $281.5 million, up 36.4%. The more important news was commercial. Management disclosed its first orders for horizontal panel-level plating tools, and first-half orders rose 105% year over year. The company raised the low end of its 2026 revenue guidance to $1.125 billion from $1.08 billion and left the high end at $1.175 billion. The new range implies growth of 25% to 30%. The change is a tightening, not a raise. It also comes with admissions about component shortages and deferred deliveries that make the second half harder to model.
Panel-Level Plating Moves From Thesis to Orders
CEO David Wang said ACM received orders from two advanced packaging customers for its panel-level horizontal plating tool, which covers both 510 x 515 millimeter and 310 x 310 millimeter formats. One is a production order from an existing customer in Mainland China. The other is an evaluation system for a new customer elsewhere in Asia. The company's claim is that its horizontal architecture gives it an edge in plating uniformity for next-generation AI packaging. Wang said, "We believe ACM will be among the first companies to deliver horizontal panel-level plating systems to multiple customers across multiple regions."
Management says it saw the shift from wafer-level to panel-level packaging more than five years ago and invested early. Wang positioned ACM to serve both competing panel standards, with the larger format associated with Intel's approach and the smaller with TSMC's. He did not say when the new Asian customer's evaluation would conclude or when a production order might follow, and he did not respond directly when JPMorgan asked about a timeline of six to 12 months. One production order and one evaluation tool do not make a market, but they give investors the first concrete evidence for a growth leg that management has described only as a technology bet.
Order Strength Is Real, but Timing Is Not Clean
First-half orders were up 105% year over year, spread across all product categories with extra weight on newer products. Management did not break out orders by end market. Wang said only that both memory and logic are strong. ACM Shanghai will release its September 30 backlog figure in early October.
The strong orders collide with a tighter supply chain. Needham's Charles Shi noted that third and fourth quarter consensus may need to come down after large beats in the first two quarters, and asked whether revenue timing had shifted. Management did not dispute the premise. Wang said some tools are scheduled for the third and fourth quarters while others "we're waiting to deliver later," and that components are constrained. Lead times that used to be about four months have stretched to six for some parts, mostly Japanese and Korean mechanical components, sliders and robotics. CFO Mark McKechnie added that some of this year's orders cannot be supported this year and will roll into 2027, which he said is "starting to shape up" as a good growth year.
On gross margin, management sounded relaxed. McKechnie kept the 42% to 48% long-term range and said ACM stocked raw materials and that key suppliers prepared parts at the end of last year. Wang said suppliers have delayed shipments but have not raised prices, and ACM has not raised its own prices. Shipments are still expected to grow faster than revenue in 2026.
Cleaning Declines While the SPM Cycle Builds
The weak spot is the core cleaning franchise. Single-wafer cleaning, Tahoe and semi-critical cleaning revenue fell 14.2% to $133.0 million and accounted for 45.4% of sales. Management attributes the decline to timing, because new single-wafer SPM tools appear in shipments first and in revenue in later quarters. ACM shipped a handful of SPM tools in the first half and expects to exceed 20 by year-end. Wang said SPM is about one-third of the total cleaning market, and "we have had very little revenue today for the SPM tool." The rebound therefore depends on customers qualifying first tools and placing repeat orders. Management also said Tahoe has been extended to wet etching and monitor wafer reclaim, and that multiple leading manufacturers have adopted the expanded platform.
Plating and packaging carried the quarter. ECP, furnace and other revenue rose 167.7% to $128.5 million, or 43.9% of sales. Advanced packaging excluding ECP, including services and spares, rose 153.3% to $31.4 million. ACM shipped its 2,000th electroplating chamber, up from 1,500 in 2025. Management credited larger die sizes, higher interconnect layer counts in logic, and higher DRAM stacking in HBM. Furnace contribution grew but remains small.
Track and PECVD Face Year-End Qualification Tests
Management said both newer platforms are on track to reach production qualification by year-end. The PECVD tool, a one-chamber, three-track architecture, is at a second customer after the second unit shipped in the first quarter. The high-throughput Track tool is in customer evaluation. Wang acknowledged that PECVD is "quite competitive" but argued ACM's platform is unique and addresses certain special requirements. These are the products management expects to move from evaluation to commercialization beyond 2026, so year-end qualification outcomes matter more than current revenue contribution. The $4 billion long-term revenue target is unchanged, split about $2.5 billion from China and $1.5 billion from outside it. ACM raised its global serviceable market estimate by $1 billion to about $22 billion, based on Frost & Sullivan data that puts the China market above $50 billion in 2025 and above $80 billion by 2029.
Global Build-Out Funded, With Cash Burn to Match
ACM ended the quarter with $1.36 billion of gross cash and $1.0 billion of net cash, including about $300 million in the U.S. after a $150 million registered direct offering in May. Management described the U.S. cash as a signal to customers that ACM can support production orders. McKechnie said there are no near-term plans to sell more Shanghai shares. The company expects more than 20 tools installed outside Mainland China by year-end, across roughly 10 customers in five countries. Almost a dozen tools went to a packaging house in Singapore in the first half, and another is running at a Singapore foundry. A U.S. demo center in Oregon with multiple tools opens later this year, and the second Lingang building follows, bringing combined capacity to as much as $3 billion in annual output. Korean manufacturing is already supplying tools to the U.S. and is expected to supply Taiwan and Singapore. Management asked for no detail on the Hong Kong listing and said only that the April timeline stands.
The balance sheet is strong, but the cash flow statement is not yet. Operating cash flow was negative $6.4 million, capital expenditure was $65.4 million, and full-year capex is still planned at about $175 million. McKechnie said ACM will "probably burn some cash" this year. Inventory was $783.1 million, including $287.9 million of finished goods that are largely first tools sitting at customer sites for evaluation. That is the working-capital cost of the new-product push, and it means those products must convert to orders.
Margins Slip, Concentration Improves
Gross margin was 46.0%, down from 48.7%, though still above the midpoint of the long-term range. Operating expenses rose 23.9% to $78.5 million, and operating margin of 19.2% was essentially flat against 19.3%. Non-GAAP net income attributable to ACM was $44.5 million, or $0.61 per diluted share, versus $0.55. Tax expense rose to $13.5 million from $1.9 million, and the company expects a 10% to 12% effective rate for the year. R&D was 13.9% of sales in the quarter against a full-year plan of 16% to 18%, which implies a step-up in spending in the second half. McKechnie said the revised opex ranges were simply tightened and not a meaningful change.
Customer concentration improved. In the first half, only one customer exceeded 10% of revenue, at 12.7%, compared with three customers totaling 49.9% a year earlier. Wang declined to discuss exposure to CXMT or any individual customer, so how much of the growth rests on domestic memory expansion remains opaque.