The primary drivers of wafer fab equipment (WFE) demand are the strength of semiconductor demand and the existing capacity level. Other factors, such as constraints on selling semiconductors to China, the possibility of a recession, inflationary pressures and rising interest rates that impact consumer spending, or the diversion of consumer funds to leisure and/or travel activity affect one or both of the primary factors.
 
Gartner is not very optimistic about semiconductor demand in 2023. Beginning in the fourth quarter, it was seeing overall inventory surplus although there were shortages in some segments. Most of the inventory glut was in memory, a situation it expects will continue through 2023. Memory demand is more dependent on consumer and computing gadgets, which makes it somewhat dependent on consumer purse strings.

Analog demand is also expected to see inventory increases this year because of weakening supply and additional 300mm capacity. Overall, inventories will continue to increase this year, with a corresponding pressure on prices. As a result, worldwide semiconductor revenue will decline 6.5% this year (previous 3.6% decline), followed by a big rebound (16.3% growth) in 2024.  
 
Enterprise demand is expected to hold up better, despite concerns related to the slowing economy because companies generally invest for the long term and place their orders well in advance. Additionally, because of the length of equipment sales cycles, macro concerns usually don’t hurt the outlook immediately. This time too, chances are that equipment demand will pick up before it drops off (at least for some players).
 
Gartner expects both capex and WFE spending to drop 19% in 2023.
 
After three solid years, SEMI expects semiconductor manufacturing equipment revenue to decline 22% in 2023, driven by weakening chip demand and higher inventory of consumer and mobile devices. The 21% rebound in 2024 is attributed to strengthening demand for chips in high performance computing (HPC) and auto. In 2024, Taiwan is expected to be the top spender, followed by Korea, China, Americas, EMEA, Japan and Southeast Asia, in that order.
 
Social distancing and the at-home economy have accelerated digitization, driving up chip demand. And digitization has become a broader trend as companies prioritize their technology investments. Developments in auto, industrial, clean energy, IoT, healthcare, online services and defense segments are positive for long-term semiconductor demand, and in turn, for equipment spending. 
 
A number of countries are moving to onshore semiconductor production as a strategic necessity, which is also a long-term positive for equipment demand. But there are cyclical challenges to those ambitions this year.
 
Despite this underlying strength, macro and geopolitical considerations, including restrictions on trading with China are likely to weigh on stocks like ASML Holding (ASML Quick QuoteASML - Free Report) and Lam Research (LRCX Quick QuoteLRCX - Free Report) .

Industry Description

This industry includes suppliers of manufacturing equipment, services and software for semiconductor wafer fabrication. Wafer fabrication involves the treatment of a silicon wafer to successive layers of conductive and semiconductive material using stencil-like structures called reticles.

After each deposition of material on the surface, the excess material is etched away and the wafer exposed to a light source to implant the design. The back-end process involves cutting up the individual die, packaging for protection/use, attachment of electrical leads and sorting. The industry depends on semiconductor demand, which primarily comes from cloud (growth is decelerating), ecommerce (relative softness), PCs (post-pandemic crash), smartphones (moderating demand), IoT, AI, HPC (strong), automotive and industrial (relatively steady) and comm infrastructure (5G-driven).

Factors Shaping the Industry

• Export regulations remain one of the biggest concerns right now. The increasing polarization between the two largest economies makes this a longer-term concern. Samsung, SK hynix and TSMC have approvals but Gartner expects their China expansion plans to be conservative. Additionally, semi equipment makers generate substantial business from Chinese players, so the separation will be painful. It remains to be seen when fabs coming up at other locations can offset the business lost in China. While the fab construction subsidies in the CHIPS Act are bringing additional capacity to the U.S., and the European Chips Act and countries like China, India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are also have aggressively wooing chipmakers to set up fabs, this is a bad time in the cycle to be building. Because of the huge investment involved, companies generally build capacity only in times of high demand. Otherwise, excess capacity only depresses prices and hurts profits.

 

• Successive rate hikes are gradually bringing down inflation in some industries, while labor market strength keeps a recession at bay. Until the labor market weakens sufficiently, the rate hikes and energy cost inflation will only increase input cost, offsetting the relief from supply chains normalizing. And in case the labor markets soften and we do enter a recession, demand for several end devices that use semiconductors will be hit. Rate hikes also affect other economies, leading to a global slowdown. This hurts semiconductor companies and equipment makers that are usually global players.

 

• Geopolitical tensions continue to simmer all over the world. There is the Ukraine war that is a general negative for the industry, especially for those making equipment using neon and other gases, the bulk of which are produced in the Ukraine and Russia. The threat of nuclear war is an added concern. China removing draconian COVID restrictions is a plus, but its increasing possessiveness about Taiwan is not. This is a big concern for the semiconductor industry in particular, given the amount of production that happens in the region. There is the financial crisis in the UK and several other countries as well as inflation the world over. This kind of upheaval is not conducive to economic growth that can spur semiconductor demand. That said, the increasing use of electronics in communications and defense, and the role of semiconductors in helping companies to pull out of any economic slowdown makes semiconductor demand resilient in the long term.

 

• Semiconductor demand is the primary driver of equipment purchases, although new fabs also play a big role. In fact, many new fabs are expected to come online over the next decade, which is a big positive for long term WFE demand. In the short term however, it’s a concern that memory typically makes up the largest part of WFE spending, because that’s the segment with the inventory glut and the resultant price weakness.

 

• Technology transitions, such as the move toward larger wafer sizes (fab upgrades to 300mm, plus 200mm demand), shrinking nodes (7nm and below), memory chip advancements (increasing layers are adding complexity), denser packaging (MEMS), etc. Materials research, device complexities, the need for greater manufacturing integration and new applications are also important factors. Other inflections will· come from new chip architectures like workload-specific ASICs; next-generation NAND; new materials in gate, contact and interconnect; advanced patterning; and advanced packaging. The increased complexity of building modern chips is good for equipment makers.

Zacks Industry Rank Indicates Near-Term Weakness

The Zacks Semiconductor Equipment -Wafer Fabrication Industry is a stock group within the broader Zacks Computer And Technology Sector. It carries a Zacks Industry Rank #200, which places it in the bottom 20% of nearly 250 Zacks-classified industries.

Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperforms the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. So the group’s Zacks Industry Rank, which is basically the average of the Zacks Rank of all the member stocks, indicates that market conditions are not conductive to growth.

The industry’s positioning in the bottom 50% of Zacks-ranked industries is because the earnings outlook of constituent companies in aggregate has declined substantially over the past year. The industry’s aggregate earnings estimate revision for 2023 represents a 19.5% decline from Apr 2022. The 2024 revision amounts to a 21.6% decline.

Before we present a few stocks that you may want to consider for your portfolio, let’s take a look at the industry’s recent stock-market performance and valuation picture.

Industry Leads on Shareholder Returns

Looking at the Zacks Semiconductor-Wafer fab Equipment industry’s performance over the past year, it appears that the industry has traded at a premium to the S&P 500 since November last year although it has at times traded at a discount to both the index and the broader technology sector prior to that. The industry’s strong performance over the past year despite the weak outlook may be attributed to its long-term prospects and the relative stability that comes from the long sales cycles and contracts. These factors add to its attractiveness in uncertain times. 

So we see that the stocks in this industry have collectively gained 6.6% over the past year, while the S&P 500 Composite lost 8.2% and the Zacks Computer and Technology Sector lost 10.0%.

One-Year Price Performance

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Industry's Current Valuation

On the basis of the forward 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, a commonly used method of valuing semiconductor equipment stocks, we see that the industry is currently trading at a 23.38X multiple, at a 4.1% discount to its high point of 24.37X over the past year. It is, however, trading at a 2.4% premium to the sector’s 22.84X and a 26.5% premium to the S&P 500’s 18.48X.

Over the past year, the industry has traded as high as 24.37X, as low as 14.87X and at a median of 20.17X, as the chart below shows.

Forward 12 Month Price-to-Earnings (P/E) Ratio

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

2 Stocks with Good Longer-term Prospects

With the pandemic in the rearview mirror, it’s understood that the huge boost in semiconductor sales from the operating-from-home economy will not repeat, although the hybrid mode of operation has longer-term positive implications for the semiconductor and allied industries. Semiconductor demand will also be boosted by their expanding application across sectors and production in new geographies.

Equipment demand is more stable than chips, because semiconductor manufacturing equipment is high-value and so, a part of the long-term planning process. That said, geopolitical tensions that disrupt the supply chain and increase cost, and therefore profitability could continue of even worsen.

Given the somewhat mixed prospects, most of the stocks in this industry currently have a #3 (Hold) rating. Below, we are taking a closer look at two of them:

ASML Holding NV (ASML Quick QuoteASML - Free Report) : This is one of the world’s largest suppliers of advanced semiconductor equipment consisting of lithography, metrology and inspection systems for memory and logic chipmakers.

Management has said that while there is continued uncertainty on account of inflation, rising interest rates, risk of recession and geopolitical developments related to export controls, customer optimism for a rebound in the second half, the typically long lead times and the strategic nature of lithography investments add up to continued strength in 2023.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2023 has increased 72 cents (3.7%) from 60 days ago. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2024 has dropped 14 cents (0.6%) during the same period. Despite the fact that geopolitical concerns are considerable for ASML, analysts are highly optimistic. In fact this is the only equipment company that is expected to generate strong double-digit revenue and earnings growth in both 2023 and 2024.

The shares are up 6.9% over the past year.

Lam Research Corporation (LRCX Quick QuoteLRCX - Free Report) : Lam Research is a global supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry. Its primary focus is the memory segment from which it generates 60% of its revenue. The rest is roughly even between foundry and logic. It is highly exposed to China, generating over 30% of revenue from the region.

Lam had a strong 2022, but 2023 is expected to be challenging, as equipment spending is set to plunge in the March quarter due to an inventory correction, particularly in the NAND and DRAM memory segments, to which it is highly exposed. Trade restrictions on China are also an overhang. The rest of the year is likely to be relatively flat and the longer-term outlook is of course excellent. Semiconductor content increases in existing devices and increased application in several markets, rising device complexity and larger die sizes remain long-term positives.

This stock has gained 5.1% over the past year. The Zacks Consensus Estimates for 2023 and 2024 (ending June) is unchanged in the last 60 days, although they were lowered after the company reported December quarter earnings.