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If You Invested $1000 in KLA 10 Years Ago, This Is How Much You'd Have Now
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How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.
Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in KLA (KLAC - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to KLAC for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
KLA's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at KLA's main business drivers.
San Jose, CA-based KLA Corporation is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of process diagnostics and control (PDC) equipment and yield management solutions required for the fabrication of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) or chips. The company has a comprehensive portfolio of products addressing each major PDC subsegment—photomask (reticle) inspection, wafer inspection/defect review and metrology.
Reticle production is vital to the semiconductor device formation process. Reticles are used to control the precise deposition of materials onto the wafer, which ultimately change its chemical characteristics, imparting specific functionalities to the ICs thus created. Inspection and metrology tools measure the quality of the reticles, helping to improve reticle production yields. As a result of the broader applicability of semiconductors, shrinking form factors and increasing functionalities of individual chips, reticle design and production are growing in importance. Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor were the largest customers in the last three years, accounting for more than 10% of total sales in each year.
KLA’s two main product lines are defect inspection and metrology. The company’s defect inspection tools have very broad application in chip, wafer, reticle, storage, compound semiconductor and MEMS manufacturing. Metrology tools are used to gather critical dimension measurements of the wafer and process dimensions such as film thickness, lithography overlay and surface profiling. The company’s metrology products are used in chip, wafer, reticle and solar device manufacturing. KLA also offers other products and services.
In addition to new tools, KLA also offers a comprehensive portfolio of refurbished tools that upgrade and improve yields of existing equipment under the KT-Certified program. Refurbished tools are currently sold to IC, reticle, substrate, MEMS and data storage manufacturers.
Although KLA is a major player in each of its served markets, it faces competition from other large equipment suppliers such as Applied Materials and Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation.
Bottom Line
Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in KLA a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in May 2012 would be worth $7,655.04, or a gain of 665.50%, as of May 27, 2022, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 207.92% and gold's return of 14.10% over the same time frame.
Going forward, analysts are expecting more upside for KLAC.
KLA reported fiscal third-quarter results wherein earnings & revenues grew on a year-over-year basis. Increased customer demand across each of the major product group drove the top-line. Growing investments across multiple nodes, and rising capital intensity in Foundry & logic contributed well. Increasing customer adoption of metrology applications in leading-edge technology development and capacity monitoring propelled the optical metrology business, which was a positive factor. Further, the EPC group reported strong results for the quarter, driven by strength in automotive, 5G and advanced packaging. Notably, the stock has outperformed the industry on a year-to-date basis. Yet, the impacts of coronavirus pandemic remain concerns. Also, supply chain disruptions are major headwinds. Further, mounting expenses remain negatives for the company.
Shares have gained 6.17% over the past four weeks and there have been 9 higher earnings estimate revisions for fiscal 2022 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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If You Invested $1000 in KLA 10 Years Ago, This Is How Much You'd Have Now
How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.
Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in KLA (KLAC - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to KLAC for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
KLA's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at KLA's main business drivers.
San Jose, CA-based KLA Corporation is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of process diagnostics and control (PDC) equipment and yield management solutions required for the fabrication of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) or chips. The company has a comprehensive portfolio of products addressing each major PDC subsegment—photomask (reticle) inspection, wafer inspection/defect review and metrology.
Reticle production is vital to the semiconductor device formation process. Reticles are used to control the precise deposition of materials onto the wafer, which ultimately change its chemical characteristics, imparting specific functionalities to the ICs thus created. Inspection and metrology tools measure the quality of the reticles, helping to improve reticle production yields. As a result of the broader applicability of semiconductors, shrinking form factors and increasing functionalities of individual chips, reticle design and production are growing in importance. Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor were the largest customers in the last three years, accounting for more than 10% of total sales in each year.
KLA’s two main product lines are defect inspection and metrology. The company’s defect inspection tools have very broad application in chip, wafer, reticle, storage, compound semiconductor and MEMS manufacturing. Metrology tools are used to gather critical dimension measurements of the wafer and process dimensions such as film thickness, lithography overlay and surface profiling. The company’s metrology products are used in chip, wafer, reticle and solar device manufacturing. KLA also offers other products and services.
In addition to new tools, KLA also offers a comprehensive portfolio of refurbished tools that upgrade and improve yields of existing equipment under the KT-Certified program. Refurbished tools are currently sold to IC, reticle, substrate, MEMS and data storage manufacturers.
Although KLA is a major player in each of its served markets, it faces competition from other large equipment suppliers such as Applied Materials and Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation.
Bottom Line
Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in KLA a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in May 2012 would be worth $7,655.04, or a gain of 665.50%, as of May 27, 2022, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 207.92% and gold's return of 14.10% over the same time frame.
Going forward, analysts are expecting more upside for KLAC.
KLA reported fiscal third-quarter results wherein earnings & revenues grew on a year-over-year basis. Increased customer demand across each of the major product group drove the top-line. Growing investments across multiple nodes, and rising capital intensity in Foundry & logic contributed well. Increasing customer adoption of metrology applications in leading-edge technology development and capacity monitoring propelled the optical metrology business, which was a positive factor. Further, the EPC group reported strong results for the quarter, driven by strength in automotive, 5G and advanced packaging. Notably, the stock has outperformed the industry on a year-to-date basis. Yet, the impacts of coronavirus pandemic remain concerns. Also, supply chain disruptions are major headwinds. Further, mounting expenses remain negatives for the company.
Shares have gained 6.17% over the past four weeks and there have been 9 higher earnings estimate revisions for fiscal 2022 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.