Aehr Test Systems Guides Revenue to Triple in Fiscal 2027 as New AI Chipmaker Benchmark Beats Package-Level Burn-In
Fourth-quarter and fiscal 2026 earnings call, July 14, 2026
Aehr Test Systems used its fiscal fourth-quarter call to lay out one of the more aggressive growth outlooks in the semiconductor capital equipment space this year, guiding fiscal 2027 revenue to a range of $130 million to $150 million, or 2.6 to 3 times the $50 million booked in fiscal 2026. Non-GAAP pretax margins are expected to land between 18% and 22%. Management was explicit that this range is conservative relative to what it is seeing in customer forecasts. "We believe we're not capacity limited even at the $150 million revenue level," said CEO Gayn Erickson, adding that the company sees room to raise guidance further as orders materialize.
The backlog data underpins the confidence. Bookings in the fiscal fourth quarter hit $60.7 million, up more than 500% from $11.1 million a year earlier, pushing year-end backlog to a record $80.6 million versus $15.2 million at the end of fiscal 2025. Aehr disclosed that it had already booked another $20 million during the transition period into fiscal 2027, putting effective backlog at roughly $100.6 million before any shipments against it. Fourth-quarter revenue of $18.8 million beat the prior-year quarter by 34%, and non-GAAP EPS of $0.11 came in well ahead of Street consensus.
A New AI Processor Customer Moves Faster Than Expected
The most consequential new disclosure was around a benchmark test with an unnamed "top-tier AI processor supplier" of accelerators, CPUs and network processors. Aehr said the wafer-level burn-in results not only exceeded the customer's expectations but, in the customer's own words, were "better than they can get at package-level." That result was strong enough that the customer decided to pull forward wafer-level burn-in consideration to its current high-volume, already-ramping device, rather than wait for its next-generation part as originally scoped, and asked Aehr to evaluate a second device in parallel. The next step is pilot production validation at the customer's semiconductor contract manufacturer in Taiwan. To support this, Aehr signed a new lease to expand its Hsinchu, Taiwan office and add local sales and customer-support headcount.
Management was careful to note that essentially none of this new customer's revenue is baked into the $130 million to $150 million guide. "It's in the noise level," Erickson said, meaning any conversion here would be incremental upside rather than a guidance assumption. That is a meaningful embedded call option for a stock already guiding to near-tripling of revenue.
Diversification Away from Silicon Carbide Is Now Complete
Aehr's revenue mix has shifted dramatically. Two years ago, more than 95% of revenue was tied to silicon carbide for electric vehicles; in fiscal 2026, almost 95% came from outside that market. AI accelerators, CPUs and network processors made up approximately 71% of annual revenue and were the fastest-growing segment, while optical device test and burn-in for data center transceivers and chip-to-chip I/O contributed another 20%. For fiscal 2027, management expects the mix to look similar, with AI around 70%, silicon photonics in the mid-teens to 20% range, and power semiconductors and other applications filling the remainder. Silicon carbide itself is showing early signs of recovery, with Aehr reporting approximately $8 million in new orders in the past month alone, including a direct order from one of the world's largest automotive companies for device qualification.
On the legal front, Aehr disclosed a favorable development in its patent infringement suit against China-based SEMI, which recently reincorporated in Malaysia as NEXUSTEST: the Beijing patent office has upheld two of Aehr's Chinese patents central to the case. Aehr also said it won a competitive silicon carbide customer in Taiwan specifically by beating out NEXUSTEST on technical performance, cost and automotive track record.
Memory Remains Optionality, Not Baseline
Management reiterated that no memory revenue is assumed anywhere in the fiscal 2027 guidance, even at the top end. The company is in active discussions with two to three NAND flash suppliers and two DRAM suppliers on high-bandwidth memory and high-bandwidth flash applications, but Erickson cautioned analysts not to model meaningful memory revenue before fiscal 2028. He offered useful color on why the timeline has been slow-moving despite two years of engagement: the sudden emergence of high-bandwidth flash "broke a lot of things" for at least one major flash customer's existing test roadmap, while new HBM DRAM standards are increasingly built with embedded self-test logic that could favor Aehr's architecture over legacy algorithmic pattern generation testers. "It's given me some additional optimism with respect to our ability to maybe do HBM sooner than we were thinking certainly six months ago," he said, while still asking investors not to build in material memory revenue next year.
Capacity Buildout and Balance Sheet
To support the ramp, Aehr began shipping Sonoma package-level burn-in systems from a contract manufacturer in Southeast Asia, adding capacity for more than 20 additional systems per month independent of its Fremont, California facility. Management estimated theoretical capacity at Fremont alone, if fully staffed to multiple shifts, could support on the order of $100 million a month in wafer-level systems or $20 million a month in Sonoma systems, though Erickson was careful to frame this as illustrative rather than a near-term production plan, given the cyclicality of the business and the risk of over-building fixed cost infrastructure. Component sourcing has gotten tighter in places, with Erickson noting that some Sonoma power supply vendors, who also supply NVIDIA, have raised prices by as much as 40%.
Fourth-quarter non-GAAP gross margin rose to 45% from 35% a year earlier on better utilization and product mix, though full-year gross margin actually declined to 38.5% from 44% given the down year overall. The balance sheet was reinforced by roughly $100 million raised primarily through Aehr's ATM program during fiscal 2026, leaving cash, equivalents and restricted cash at $116.5 million versus $26.5 million a year earlier, against capital expenditures of just $2.1 million, underscoring the company's asset-light model even as it scales toward triple-digit revenue growth.