Date: October 29, 2025 | Source: ASM International (asm.com) / company press release
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Operator: Good afternoon. Welcome, and thank you for joining the ASM International Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call.
Victor Bareño (Head of Investor Relations): Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome, everyone, to our 2025 Q3 earnings call. I'm joined here today by our CEO, Hichem M'Saad; and our CFO, Paul Verhagen. ASM issued its third quarter 2025 results yesterday at 6:00 p.m. With our latest investor presentation, we remind you, as always, that this earnings call may contain information related to ASM's future business and results in addition to historical information.
Hichem M'Saad (President & CEO, prepared remarks per press release): "ASM reported strong quarterly profitability amidst mixed market conditions. Revenue increased 8% year-on-year to €800 million at constant currencies. Revenue was approximately flat at constant currency compared to Q2, landing at the high end of our previous guidance range. The year-on-year growth was primarily driven by a strong performance in our advanced logic/foundry business. Operating margin was robust at 31% following a strong gross margin and tight cost discipline on SG&A expenses, while increasing R&D investment by 10%, reinforcing our commitment to innovation and future readiness. Gross margin held strong at 51.9%, driven by positive mix effects, including sales from China which were lower than in Q2 but still at a relatively high level. Even with less favorable mix effects in Q4, we expect the gross margin for the full year 2025 to be around 51%.
Bookings totaled €637 million, a 7% sequential decline at constant currencies, largely due to a substantial drop in bookings from China, including the impact from recently announced export restrictions, following a strong first half. Order intake in the advanced logic/foundry segment showed strong sequential growth, albeit with very mixed customer dynamics and below prior projections, as already communicated. Demand in the power/analog/wafer markets, including in SiC, continued to be weak. Orders for HBM-related advanced DRAM remained stable at healthy levels. We expect the subdued order trend to bottom out in Q4 at a slightly higher level than Q3. Quarterly orders are projected to pick up again as 2026 progresses. This is expected to be driven by: continued healthy advanced logic/foundry investments, including the start of 1.4nm pilot line investments in the second half of 2026; increasing investments in the DRAM segment; and a gradual recovery in (Si-based) power/analog/wafer segment. Demand in China is expected to normalize, as communicated previously, with a projected double-digit year-on-year decrease in 2026 China revenue.
As shared during our Investor Day on September 23, 2025, we remain confident in our long-term growth trajectory. Recent industry announcements have reinforced expectations that AI will fuel solid growth in the semiconductor markets for many years to come. This will drive above-average growth in the advanced logic/foundry and DRAM markets. These trends align closely with ASM's core strength in ALD and Epi technologies. We are seeing evidence of this through new wins in Epi and ALD dipole and work function related layers in DRAM HBM for nodes expected to ramp in the next couple of years. In our Investor Day, we highlighted the increase of $450-500 million in our served available market with the transition to the 1.4nm gate-all-around technology, and the increase of $400-450 million in DRAM with the move to 4F² technology starting in 2028 (both based on 100k wafer starts per month capacity). We have also stepped up our focus on the advanced packaging (AP) market, leveraging our chemistry and materials expertise and deposition capabilities, with some recent wins in ALD liner for through silicon via (TSV) applications in this segment. Supported by continued leadership in ALD and growing share in leading-edge Epi, we introduced a revenue target of more than €5.7 billion by 2030, implying a CAGR of at least 12% for the next several years."
*Note: Full verbatim call transcript not freely archived (SeekingAlpha/Yahoo- Quartr paywalled); file reconstructed from the official Q3 2025 press release and CEO prepared remarks (Company IR). No numbers fabricated.*
ASMIY (ASM International) — Q3 FY2025 (October 29, 2025). Stock ~-8% on the print day (per WSJ) — strong profitability (rev €800M, +8% cc, at high end of guide; GM 51.9%; adj OM 30.9%) but bookings fell to €637M (-17% YoY, -7% QoQ cc) on a China collapse (export restrictions) and 2026 started slowly per guidance — the guide underwhelmed vs very high AI-driven expectations; stock had rallied hard since January.