Ultra Clean Technologies (UCTT) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Record Revenue and Capacity Expansion

Ultra Clean Technologies (UCTT) reported record third-quarter 2026 revenue as demand for etch and deposition systems supporting gate-all-around and high-bandwidth memory accelerated. Management also raised its capacity plans while flagging continued component constraints and higher working-capital requirements.

Key Takeaways

• Q3 2026 revenue reached a record $759 million, up 17.7% sequentially and 48.8% year over year, exceeding the high end of the company’s guidance.
• Non-GAAP gross margin increased 60 basis points sequentially to 17.3%, while operating margin rose to 9.0% from 7.0% in Q2. EPS increased by $0.45 sequentially to $1.15.
• Products revenue grew 19.1% sequentially to $681.9 million, driven primarily by etch and deposition demand supporting gate-all-around and high-bandwidth memory applications.
• For Q4 2026, management expects revenue of $800 million to $860 million and EPS of $1.11 to $1.35 on approximately 48.9 million diluted shares.
• UCT expects to reach approximately $4 billion of production capacity in Q1, with 15% to 20% of additional burst capacity. Expansion beyond $5 billion is expected to require another $80 million to $100 million of investment through 2027 and 2028.
• Management expects 2027 wafer fab equipment spending to exceed $200 billion, based on customer forecasts, fab utilization and critical-component availability.

Key Financial Data

All financial results discussed by management were presented on a non-GAAP basis.

Business and Operating Performance

Semiconductor products accounted for 86% of total revenue, including 52% from foundry and logic and 34% from memory. Services contributed 10%, while non-semiconductor markets represented 4%. UCT’s two largest customers generated 61% of quarterly revenue.

Products growth was led by etch and deposition systems used in gate-all-around and high-bandwidth memory production. Management said AI-related investment is supporting capacity additions across leading-edge foundry, DRAM, next-generation HBM and advanced packaging.

Services benefited from strength across OEM and fab customers. Management expects services revenue to increase incrementally as new U.S. fabs begin ramping, with a larger contribution as wafer starts rise through 2027 and 2028.

UCT continued expanding its manufacturing footprint. A 26,000-square-foot cleanroom expansion in Malaysia came online earlier than expected. Over the next several quarters, the company expects to double capacity in Cebu, Philippines, and add cleanroom capacity in Singapore and the Czech Republic. It also plans to double vertically integrated manufacturing capacity in Malaysia and Thailand next year.

The company secured eight new development program wins across etch, ALD, PVD and lithography applications. A similar number of programs are moving through development and qualification across etch, deposition, lithography and metrology. Management said earlier customer engagement could increase UCT’s content per tool, market share and margins as programs enter high-volume production over the next two to three years.

Management Guidance

For Q4 2026, UCT expects:

• Revenue of $800 million to $860 million, representing 9.4% sequential growth at the midpoint.
• EPS of $1.11 to $1.35.
• Approximately 48.9 million diluted shares.

Management continues to see a path toward a 20% gross margin at $4 billion of annual revenue. The stated drivers include higher volume and utilization, a larger mix of engineered products, increased vertical integration and more production in lower-cost regions. The company cautioned that progress should be gradual and that new capacity phases may create temporary margin headwinds.

UCT expects to reach approximately $4 billion of capacity in Q1 and sees further optimization opportunities through 2027. Moving beyond $5 billion of capacity would require incremental investment of roughly $80 million to $100 million through 2027 and 2028. Management said those investments will be phased according to customer demand and aligned with customers’ long-term road maps.

Risks and Points to Watch

• Supply-chain pressure remains elevated as industry demand grows. Management expects mass flow controller constraints could persist for another one or two quarters.
• Inventory increased by $93.4 million sequentially as UCT preordered critical components and maintained higher safety stock, contributing to negative operating cash flow of $42.3 million.
• Quarterly revenue may not track UCT’s largest customers precisely because of product mix, integration timing, shipping flows, revenue recognition and different fiscal calendars.
• The two largest customers accounted for 61% of revenue, indicating significant customer concentration.
• Product margins can fluctuate with volume, mix, region, material costs and freight. Capacity additions may also temporarily weigh on profitability.
• UCT issued 432,000 shares through its ATM program during Q3 for approximately $34 million in net proceeds. It sold another 2.2 million shares early in Q4, generating $169.1 million in net proceeds, part of which was used to repay the revolving credit facility.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Capacity investment and customer commitments: Management said capacity planning is being conducted through early discussions with key customers, including shared forecasts and long-term demand planning. The company expects the capacity it adds to be utilized by major customers.

Longer-term industry outlook: Management said 2027 wafer fab equipment spending above $200 billion has become more firmly supported by customer discussions. For 2028, the company noted growing visibility but acknowledged that customers have not provided a clear industry spending figure.

Supply-chain execution: UCT said it did not miss a subsystem shipment required by customers during Q3. The company attributed this performance to maintaining capacity one to two quarters ahead of forecast demand, carrying strategic inventory and improving supply-chain visibility.

Co-innovation opportunities: The company is using its Hillsboro center of excellence to engage earlier in customer product development. Management expects successful programs to support share gains and margin expansion when they reach high-volume production.

Inspection and metrology: Management said UCT sees additional subsystem and engineering opportunities in optical inspection and metrology, noting similarities with systems it already supports across major wafer fab equipment customers.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Ultra Clean Technologies Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Tuesday, October 27, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rhonda Bennetto, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Rhonda Bennetto

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me today are James Xiao, CEO; and Mike Keogh, CFO. James with some prepared remarks about the industry and highlight some of the opportunities ahead for UCT. Mike will follow with the financial review, and then we'll open up the call for questions.

Today's call contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. For more information, please refer to the Risk Factors section in our SEC filings. All forward-looking statements are based on estimates, projections and assumptions as of today, and we assume no obligation to update them after this call. Discussion of our financial results will be presented on a non-GAAP basis. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP can be found in today's press release posted on our website.

And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to James. James, please go ahead.

James Xiao

Thank you, Rhonda, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our third quarter 2026 earnings call. With me today is Mike Keogh, who came on board as UCT's Chief Financial Officer in August. This is Mike's first earnings call with us and I will share a few more words about him shortly. This afternoon, I will briefly highlight our third quarter results, share our view of the industry and update you on our UCT 3.0 strategy. Mike will then review our financials and we'll open the call for questions.

I'm very pleased to report that UCT delivered another strong quarter. Revenue from both Products and Service came in ahead of our expectations. Our bottom line also outperformed, reflecting our continued focus on improving profitability. These results highlight healthy demand across our end markets and solid execution by our team around the world. This quarter also proved the effectiveness of our ramp readiness strategy by planning capacity ahead of demands. We execute on the operational agility required to accommodate excessive orders and deliver them on time.

AI demand continued to deliver strong investment across the semiconductor ecosystem. With the world's leading chip makers and equipment companies expanding capacity to support multiyear AI growth. As AI shift from training to everyday use, it is creating demand across the entire chip stack. Leading-edge foundries are adding capacity on new nodes. Memory makers are adding clear room space and fab capacity for DRAM and next-gen HVM. And once packaging is growing rapidly to fulfilled HVM demand.

These are the areas where UCT is the strongest. And as volume and complexity increase, our customers rely even more on our subsystems and engineering expertise. Based on the visibility our customers are sharing with us, we now expect 2027 wafer fab equipment spending to be above $200 billion. That outlook is grounded in what we can see and measure. The signs that influence our decision making, other lens of our customers' forecast, the fab utilization and the availability of critical components across the supply chain. Today, all 3 remain healthy for us.

As our business continues to scale, we are prepared to anticipate and manage the supply chain excursions. Because we've had support by real-time visibility from our internal systems and from our customers, we can identify potential constraints early and address them quickly. So our customers' ramp continue uninterrupted. In the tight supply environment, that reliability is one of the most valuable performance we continue to deliver to our customers.

Through our UCT 3.0 strategy, we're using the up cycle, not only to expand our capacity but to strengthen our technical capabilities and accelerate our response time. Ramp readiness is driving disciplined growth. NPX is deepening our co-innovation partnership with our customers and digital transformation is improving our operational efficiency and speed. Being ramp-ready is fundamental to our customer first mindset, ensuring we have the capacity and supply chain in place before our customers need them. The 26,000 square feet of clean room space expansion will build out in Malaysia came online earlier than anticipated, which help us to outperform this quarter. And over the next few quarters, we expect to double our Wellman capacity in Cebu, Philippines and to bring additional clean room capacity online in Singapore and the Czech Republic.

We also expect to double our vertical integrated manufacturing capacity in Malaysia and Thailand next year. This helped address the critical component constraints that are limiting the industry today. By producing more of these components in-house, we gain greater control over our supply, improve on-time delivery to our customers and position UCT to capture additional share during this ramp.

Our MPX initiative continued to make solid progress within our growing center of excellence. Recently, we secured 8 new program wins across etch, ALD, PVD, and lithography applications, spanning gas deliveries, thermal and other critical subsystems. A similar number of programs are now moving through development and qualification across etch, deposition, lithography and metrology. Coinnovating earlier with our customers strengthens our position to be qualified as the first supplier and to capture more high-value content per tool. We expect this program to gain momentum as our customers advance through their technology road map and no transactions in the coming years.

And our product road map are fully aligned with our customers. Digital transformation is helping us scale more efficiently. Our initiatives are focused on the processes, which we can make the most impact, starting with the road to fulfill the core of our value chain. We've also launched an integrated planning platform that links demand, supply, inventory and capacity in real time in the tight supply environment, keeping materials moving smoothly between our customers, UCT and our suppliers is critical.

And it is equally important that data has moved just as smoothly to enable the smooth material flow. This platform we launched automates that exchange. So when the customer demand changes, we can pass that signal quickly through our supply chain and respond with speed and agility. We believe UCT has become a more strategically important partner to the world's leading equipment companies in manufacturing, in engineering and in service. Our objective is unchanged: to move fast, stay agile and deliver what matters most to our customers, continuing to execute on those principles will create sustainable long-term value for our shareholders.

Before I hand the call over, I'd like to formally welcome Mike to UCT. He has already made a significant impact, working very closely with our leadership teams, operating discipline, footprint optimization, capacity planning and our digital transformation initiative. We're very glad to have him on the team.

Mike, now over to you for the financial review.

Michael Keogh

Thank you, James, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to join you from my first earnings call as UCT's Chief Financial Officer. I joined UCT because I see a compelling growth opportunity as the semiconductor industry enters what we believe are the early stages of a multiyear growth cycle. This is an exciting inflection point for our industry and UCT's deep technical capabilities and long-standing customer relationships position us well to support the demand we're seeing today and the opportunities ahead. My priorities will center on strengthening execution and disciplined capital allocation. That includes drive cash conversion and building the financial processes and capabilities to support UCT as we scale. With that, let me turn to our quarterly financial results.

In my prepared remarks, I will be referring to non-GAAP numbers only. As James mentioned, the third quarter marked another period of strong performance for UCT, with top and bottom line results above the high end of our guidance. Revenue was $759 million, a record quarter, up 17.7% sequentially and 48.8% year-over-year. Gross margin was 17.3% and up 60 basis points from last quarter and operating margin was 9.0%, up from 7.0% in Q2. EPS was $1.15 and up $0.45 over the prior quarter.

Semiconductor products represented 86% of total revenue, including 52% from foundry and logic and 34% for memory. Services represented 10% of revenue, while non-semiconductor markets accounted for the remaining 4%. Our 2 largest customers contributed 61% of total revenue. Products revenue was $681.9 million, up 19.1% sequentially. The increase in sales was driven primarily by strength in etch and deposition supporting gate all around and high-bandwidth memory, which positions us well for the current wave of node transitions as the industry ramps.

Services revenue was $77.1 million, up 6.7% sequentially on strength across both our OEM and fab customers. Services revenue growth traditionally lags Products as increases are tied to wafer starts. We expect Services revenue to increase incrementally over time as the new U.S. fabs come online in ramp, with a larger contribution as wafer starts to increase throughout 2027 and 2028.

Our revenue follows the same underlying demand as our largest customers, but not always quarter-to-quarter. Timing differences can be caused by product mix, where our content is integrated, shipping flows, revenue recognition and fiscal calendars. Historically, averaged as a group, we track in line with our customers and expect to perform in line with WFE growth.

Total gross margin was 17.3%. Products gross margin was 15.9%, up from 15.1% in Q2 and services margin was 30.1%, up from 28.9% in the prior quarter. The improvements were driven by increased volumes and stronger contributions this quarter from our higher-margin product lines. Margins can vary quarter-to-quarter with fluctuations in volume, mix, region, materials and freight.

We continue to see a path to our target of 20% gross margin at $4 billion of revenue, driven by higher volume and utilization, a growing mix of higher value engineered products, increased vertical integration and more production in lower cost regions. These gains will build steadily rather than in large steps, and capacity expansions may be a temporary headwind as each phase comes online.

Operating expense was $62.9 million or 8.3% of revenue compared to $62.5 million or 9.7% of revenue in Q2. Total operating margin was 9.0%, up 200 basis points over Q2. By segment, Products improved to 8.5% from 6.5%, and Services increased to 13.6% from 11.2% in the prior quarter. Our tax rate was 20.0% and EPS was $1.15 on 46.2 million diluted shares.

Operating cash flow was negative $42.3 million, reflecting demand acceleration and the working capital required to ensure timely delivery to our customers. Inventory was $723.3 million, up $93.4 million from prior quarter. During this up cycle, we have been building inventory, including preordering, critical components and maintaining elevated levels of safety stock to help mitigate potential supply chain disruptions and continue to meet or exceed customer delivery expectations.

Through our ATM equity program, we sold 432,000 shares in Q3 at an average price of $80.13, which resulted in approximately $34 million in net proceeds. In the first week of the fourth quarter, we sold an additional 2.2 million shares under the program at an average price of $78.45 and received another $169.1 million in net cash proceeds. We used a portion of these proceeds to pay off the outstanding balance on our revolving credit facility. Currently, we have $193 million remaining of the $400 million ATM program. We ended the quarter with $270.9 million in cash compared with $255.9 million last quarter.

Now let me turn to capacity because this is a very important driver of our growth plan. I'll cover where we are today. We'll come to next and how we manage the risk. During the quarter, we accelerated capacity expansion and now expect to be at approximately $4 billion of capacity in Q1 and see a path to additional capacity and increase utilization through further optimization of our current footprint through 2027.

In addition, we continue to have about 15% to 20% burst capacity to bridge us to our next phase of expansion. Growing to $5-plus billion will require additional capacity beyond our current footprint. We anticipate investing roughly $80 million to $100 million incrementally through 2027 and 2028 to support this expansion. We are in conversations with our customers to help identify strategic locations that align with their long-term road maps. Taken together, our current footprint supports the next phase of growth and we will add capacity for $5 billion and beyond in phases, pacing our investment to customer demand.

Now to our outlook. For the fourth quarter, we expect revenue of $800 million to $860 million, up 9.4% sequentially at the midpoint and expect EPS of $1.11 to $1.35 on approximately 48.9 million diluted shares. In summary, we delivered excellent results on solid execution. We have the capacity in place for our next phase of growth, and we will continue to execute on our UCT 3.0 strategy with the agility and discipline to cycle demands.

And with that, operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Timothy Arcuri with UBS.

Question-and-Answer Session

Timothy Arcuri

So James, you're expanding a lot obviously to support this ramp. And you're also investing lots of money, Mike, you talked about investing another $80 million to $100 million. I'm sure your customers will help you with that. But what sort of assurance is -- I mean, this is a lot of money that you're investing. And so how do you think that this -- on the other side of this, is there some way that you can be part of their preferred program that you ensure that you'll gain share through this? Is there something that you're getting in exchange for investing all this money? I mean, obviously, you want to help them, but is there some other thing you can do to make you even stickier with them and cause you to gain some share?

James Xiao

Great question, Tim. I think that you see that the whole industry is really looking for a long-term agreement, starting from our customers' customer. And so our customers also look at the supply chain resilience they mentioned in their earnings call. So with that, we actually have very open and constructive discussion with our key customers. And we really kind of try to engage with them early on so that the future forecast are shared and the future demands are really kind of openly discussed. And the future capacity we're going to add are going to be fully utilized by our key customers.

Timothy Arcuri

Yes. I guess just on that point, James. So if I -- Mike, it sounds like you're expanding to more than $5 billion worth of capacity. So that translates to like $330 billion WFE. And I mean, that's much higher than what people think '28 is going to be. So obviously, you must be getting signals from your customers to go out and spend this money, otherwise you wouldn't be doing that. So is that -- like is that an unreasonable sort of estimation of where WFE is going? And it sounds like that capacity is going to be in place to support '28. Is that right?

James Xiao

So just a small correction, Tim. So if you do really kind of proportionately reach our revenue to the WFE. So our $5 billion run rate is approximately to the $250 billion. So that's kind of well in line with even your own broadcast, right? So most of the analysts, I don't think any of the customers gave a clear WFE number beyond '27. But as you can see that most of the analysts gave $250 billion WFE in 2028, and we don't see a reason not to agree with that.

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Charles Shi with Needham.

Yu Shi

Maybe the first question about the supply chain excursion. We heard your largest customer a week ago talk about the supply constraints holding them back a little bit. That did come across as a surprise, at least to me, that would have -- think supply chain excursion, like you said, it will happen, but maybe not to the degree this early. But where exactly you see are the potential supply chain excursions right now?

And specifically, there has been good amount of charters about mass flow controller, MSC shortage. And how are you navigating that? Just from your numbers, your reporting numbers this quarter and your guidance for next quarter, clearly, you don't look like the one holding to customers back, but I want to get your thoughts.

James Xiao

Thank you. I think that this is was broadly discussed in our industry at this moment. As I mentioned, Charles, before when you see the industry grow at more than 10% quarter-to-quarter growth rate, the supply chain will continue to face increasing pressure. So excursion will happen, and it did happen. I think as Mike mentioned, we actually really kind of proactively position ourselves by always having excessive capacity 1 to 2 quarters ahead of the demand forecast we see. And we also build stock to really kind of address the supply chain excursions.

So that operation agility and supply chain resilience help us to manage this excursion better. One thing I can tell you is that we do not miss a single module of subsystems that needed for our customers' quarter. And we also really kind of exceed our forecast by really handle the drop in demand that customers pushed to us during the last 2 quarters. So that should tell how well we manage this supply chain excursion, where we will continue to do so.

Yu Shi

Maybe a follow-up that actually still go back to the MFC shortage. James, any thoughts based on your discussion with the MFC suppliers well, given that you actually don't have an MFC business. So I kind of imagine that the compensation dialogue with the suppliers may be more candid. But what's the latest what you hear from them when they think the supply can be more in balance, more and more matching demand when the supply catches on to the very, very rapidly growing demand for MFC?

James Xiao

Yes. I think that the MFC constraints may continue for a quarter or 2. But we definitely see that in the end of the day, the industry will address that challenge collectively and closely communication with our customers and also with our suppliers will help us to smoothen that challenge and really the collaboration and the partnership matter the most at this moment.

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Krish Sankar with TD Cowen.

Robert Mertens

This is Robert Mertens online on behalf of Krish. Congratulations on the strong quarter and guide. So my first question, you sort of have addressed just on the component shortage side, but maybe going along with that, if you could just expand a bit on what areas you're co-innovating with customers where you think the customized approach adds the most value. Sort of how do you weigh those opportunities against expanding your manufacturing capacity and flexibility? Being able to actually ship with the customers once -- one in addition to making sure that you have a long runway with the product road map?

James Xiao

Great question. I think that we definitely do both, right? So immediate need to really demonstrate our long-term partnership with our customers really fulfill they are a ramp request by really fast fulfill the demand that really kind of increased quarter-by-quarter right now, and we're doing well on that. So in terms of the NPI engagement with our customers, so we did launch the center of excellence on NPI in Hillsborough, leveraging our acquired company called GIS. So the engineering capability and the prototype manufacturing capabilities there give us a really very flexible capability to co-work with customers on their new product development.

And by utilizing that, as I mentioned in an announcement, we are able to really successfully engage on 8 NPI programs with customers, tried over different product lines at the customer side. What it does is really fully aligned with customers' future product road map. We'll see those products most likely get further on the next node NPI, the customer is going to commercialize in the next 2 to 3 years, and we'll have a meaningful margin expansion and share gain when we have that into the high-volume production mode.

At the same time, I think we also continue to engage with customers, getting into their design phase, so changing our integration mode from build to print to build to SAP. That will further improve our stickiness and technology collaboration with our customers and improve our share and margins.

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of [ Edward Young ] with Oppenheimer.

Unknown Analyst

My question is also on supply chain. And congrats on your execution there. Understanding that UCT is delivering on time, the delays in other suppliers' components prevent customers from completing systems? And would that ultimately affect you? Just want to better understand that.

Michael Keogh

Yes. Thanks for the question. Is your question related to our suppliers and whether they're going to any subsystems that may impact our ability to ship?

Unknown Analyst

No, I'm saying if there are competitors or others in the ecosystem that might have these excursions even if you're executing, are there -- when they're going into the NAND system, would that -- with the excursions elsewhere, could that affect UCT?

Michael Keogh

Yes. So right now, we're not seeing that. As James mentioned earlier, we did not -- we were not gated by anything last quarter. We didn't miss the shipment. There continues to be a lot of pressure in the supply chain, and we do have to look out for that. And we've been thoughtful about where that may come from with our -- as we're seeing increasing revenue, we have been buying ahead and ensure that we have our strategic supply map.

I think we have to continue to stay diligent for it. We're -- when we looked at our Q4. We've taken some of that into account, but where we think that risk may come from. But right now, I still feel like we're pretty well positioned for that and that's not going to play into our ability to ship.

Unknown Analyst

Okay. And my follow-up question is on your large debt customer recently announcing an expansion into optical inspection. Are you seeing any opportunities opening up for new subsystem or engineering opportunities for -- and are you engaged in supporting any of these new platforms?

James Xiao

Ed, as you know that we actually have all the major WFE customers as our existing customers. So we are familiar with the optical inspection systems and also the lithography systems. If you break down into the subsystem level, there are a lot of similarities. And so therefore, yes, we'll have new opportunity as we customer for the optical inspection and metrology.

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum.

Unknown Analyst

This is [ Ben Taxon ] on for Christian. A lot of my questions have been answered, but I got one last for you. And this call, very positive commentary in last call. This call almost maybe even seen as more positive compared to last call. So how -- I guess are you guys thinking about it like that as well in the environment going forward? And then kind of tie into that, specifically, what has the conversations been like with customers kind of over this last quarter and how have they evolved? And has it been extended out? I mean, you guys -- it seems like you have some capacity pull forward and such. So can you just articulate that a bit?

James Xiao

Yes. I think that the sentiment does not change that much. I think it's just that we execute pretty well. Maybe that makes a little bit different, right, in terms of the results and the outlook. On the customer side, I think that the -- you'll hear them saying that it's the 2027 is solid, above $200 billion. That's really more confirmed compared to a wider range a quarter ago. I think '27 is more solid. It's probably one thing we can say now.

And the second thing is that we start to hear from -- you can also hear from the earnings call that '28 is more or less booked as well. So you see different numbers. But what I see is really what the analyst community are selling out the $250 billion above. I don't hear any of the customer gave that number yet.

Unknown Analyst

So, yes, you're not hearing customers. But at '28 is coming to life a little bit more.

James Xiao

And also, I think that you also hear the news that there is a new factory announcement like CMC's Dallas fab and the tariff acts become more concrete.

Operator

Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to hand it back to James Xiao for closing remarks.

James Xiao

Well that concludes our Q3 '26 earnings call. Thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you all in the next quarter.

Operator

Thank you, presenters. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.