On August 7, Acm Research (Shanghai) (688082.SH) released its first-half 2026 financial report. The data shows that the company's revenue for the period reached RMB 3.718 billion, up 13.87% year-on-year, while net profit attributable to shareholders was RMB 989 million, a 42.14% increase. In the second quarter alone, revenue came in at RMB 2.242 billion, up 14.40% year-on-year, with non-GAAP net profit attributable to shareholders reaching RMB 465 million, up 9.08% year-on-year, achieving growth in both revenue and profit. A closer look at this report reveals that Acm Research (Shanghai) is at the starting point of a new phase of high-speed growth — this impressive performance confirms that the company's platform strategy has reached an inflection point, transitioning from planning to execution, and its alpha is poised to resonate with industry beta to drive explosive growth. It also clearly signals to the market that the present is the key window for long-term positioning to share in the company's high-growth dividends.
Platform Strategy Becomes Core Growth Engine, Accelerated Earnings Release Highlights Resilience
Looking through Acm Research (Shanghai)'s financial report, the dual growth in revenue and profit is only the surface; several easily overlooked details highlight the true value of this report. The most notable point is that the company's platform strategy reached a key inflection point during the reporting period, with the financials for the first time validating its success in reducing single-product dependence. According to the company's first-half 2026 earnings call, the first growth curve, led by cleaning equipment, generated RMB 2.259 billion in revenue. The second growth curve, primarily consisting of ECP electroplating equipment, furnace equipment, and other front-end tools, was particularly outstanding, with revenue surging 36.29% year-on-year to RMB 1.102 billion, accounting for 29.63% of total revenue. This explosive growth stems from two driving forces: on the one hand, shipments of ECP electroplating chambers surpassed the 2,000-chamber milestone, marking the official acceleration of this technology into a volume ramp-up phase; on the other hand, new categories such as furnaces have entered a phase of scaled contribution. Meanwhile, the third growth curve — advanced packaging equipment (excluding ECP electroplating) and other back-end tools — saw revenue grow 19.27% year-on-year to RMB 358 million, representing 9.62% of total revenue. This was primarily driven by the surge in demand for accelerators, HBM, and 3D packaging under the AI computing power wave, confirming that the company's forward-looking layout in advanced packaging platforms such as ECP electroplating, Track, and PECVD has begun to yield results.
These business lines together formed the core engine driving Acm Research (Shanghai)'s performance growth during the reporting period, lifting first-half overall revenue by 13.87% year-on-year. The continued rise in the revenue share of non-cleaning equipment marks a successful transformation of Acm Research (Shanghai)'s revenue structure from "reliance solely on cleaning equipment" to "multi-engine driven growth," with the platform strategy having evolved from strategic planning to a core growth driver at the financial level, completing the diversification of its revenue structure. Another highlight of this report is that the structural optimization of the business has made growth more stable. In 2025, due to heavy reliance on cleaning equipment and the timing of revenue recognition, Acm Research (Shanghai)'s quarterly revenue growth fluctuated significantly. In 2026, with the release of platform strategy dividends, new business lines have effectively hedged against cyclical fluctuations of single products, returning revenue to a growth trajectory. First and second quarter revenue growth rates were 13.06% and 14.40% respectively, maintaining double-digit growth for two consecutive quarters with an accelerating trend. Clearly, the pace of earnings release has accelerated notably since 2026 and has become more resilient.
Additionally, another highlight of this report is the balance between "high R&D investment and stable profitability." In the first half of this year, the company's R&D spending reached RMB 663 million, accounting for 17.82% of total revenue, up 1.15 percentage points from the same period in 2025. While maintaining high R&D investment, Acm Research (Shanghai) achieved a second-quarter non-GAAP net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 465 million, a record high for the second quarter, up 9.08% year-on-year, marking an inflection-point recovery in profitability after pressure in the first quarter. This combination of "rising R&D investment and recovering profit margins" confirms Acm Research (Shanghai)'s strategic commitment to long-termism — delivering current profit growth while not cutting back on investment in long-term competitiveness, which is of great significance for the company's sustained development.
Company Alpha and Industry Beta Perfectly Aligned, Doubling of H1 New Orders Validates High-Growth Certainty
Looking at a longer time horizon, Acm Research (Shanghai)'s current high growth is not a temporary pulse but the beginning of a new growth cycle. The industry beta and the company's alpha are currently in a rare window of resonance, giving high certainty to the company's accelerated growth going forward. The company's guidance of full-year 2026 revenue between RMB 8.2 billion and RMB 8.8 billion, representing year-on-year growth of 20.83%-29.68%, is a direct confirmation of this high-certainty growth logic.
Specifically, the support from industry beta comes from the convergence of multiple factors. First, the launch of China's WFE supercycle has opened a three-year order visibility window. The global semiconductor equipment industry has entered a supercycle, with UBS forecasting global WFE spending to grow from USD 147 billion in 2026 to USD 247.5 billion by 2028, a compound annual growth rate of nearly 30%. China is the core engine, with Bernstein upgrading its 2026-2028 China WFE forecast to USD 58 billion / USD 67 billion / USD 77 billion. Aggressive capacity expansion by major memory manufacturers in mainland China provides equipment suppliers with a clearly visible order pool of over RMB 100 billion over the next three years. More critically, equipment revenue typically lags orders by about a year, meaning that 2026 capital expenditures will be converted into earnings concentratedly in 2027-2028, and the current period remains in the early-to-mid stage of dividend realization. Second, the slope of localization rate improvement is steep, with order conversion pace significantly faster than expected. According to industry channel checks, in May 2026, Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC) Phase 3 initiated process tenders, with local equipment procurement share exceeding 50% and core process localization rates surpassing 60%; the localization rate for new-generation development platforms is expected to exceed 40%. In the second quarter of 2026, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) launched tenders, planning capacity expansion of 50,000-60,000 wafers per month, corresponding to equipment procurement of USD 5-6 billion, with explicit priority given to local equipment. In 2026, the combined equipment procurement of the two memory giants is expected to reach RMB 55-63 billion, bringing substantial incremental growth for local suppliers. The trend of foundries prioritizing local semiconductor equipment has shifted from "policy-guided" to "order-driven," with earnings realization entering a substantive phase. The release of earnings elasticity marks that semiconductor equipment has moved beyond its "policy alternative" status and has officially become a core procurement category for fab expansion, accelerating the localization rate. This shows that the beta dividend in the current semiconductor equipment cycle is fundamentally different from previous cycles: on the demand side, the global WFE supercycle provides support; on the supply side, equipment localization has shifted from "policy guidance" to "order-driven." The resonance of multiple factors jointly builds the high-prosperity growth logic of this cycle.
More importantly, due to the time lag in equipment revenue recognition, the peak of dividend realization in this cycle is still in 2027-2028, and the current period remains in the early-to-mid stage of the growth cycle, not a short-term pulse. This industry-level dividend is most favorable to platform equipment suppliers with multi-category layout capabilities — they can not only capture the full-category equipment demand from memory expansion but also seize more market share during the rapid climb of localization rates, leveraging mature technology reserves. As a company that has achieved breakthrough progress in platform development, Acm Research (Shanghai) is a core beneficiary of this dividend, with its own alpha attributes further amplifying the growth elasticity of industry beta.
At the company alpha level, Acm Research (Shanghai), having validated its platform inflection point, is set to see a relay of recovery in cleaning equipment and explosive growth across multiple new business categories. Specifically, in cleaning equipment, the high-temperature SPM cleaning product is in a cycle transition phase and serves as ammunition for the next rebound in the cleaning business. Additionally, the Tahoe platform has expanded into wet etching and monitor wafer recycling, and has been adopted by multiple leading logic and memory customers, with the cleaning business expected to maintain its growth trajectory in the second half of the year. On the new business front, 2026 is a major year for revenue recognition from ECP electroplating and furnaces, with their volume ramp-up constituting the core of current growth. Looking ahead to 2027, the subsequent new growth pipeline is not just conceptual groundwork — all products have passed the R&D and shipping stage and entered the certification and first-order phase, with revenue recognition windows naturally falling in 2027, succeeding the 2026 volume ramp-up of ECP electroplating and furnaces. In April this year, the company shipped its second PECVD tool to a leading Chinese logic foundry for final validation. This tool uses silicon carbon nitride (SiCN) thin film deposition technology and features the world's first three-station rotary deposition architecture with independently developed proprietary intellectual property, meeting the demanding process requirements of IC back-end applications and advanced packaging wafer-level bonding. In a June research survey, Acm Research (Shanghai) stated that "PECVD discussions are actively underway with two customers," with second-tool delivery validation expected to materialize gradually from the second half of 2026 into 2027. Meanwhile, vertical furnaces are expanding from LPCVD to oxidation, diffusion, and ALD equipment, with ultra-high-temperature vertical furnaces and High-K ALD furnaces currently undergoing testing and tuning on the company's Lingang pilot R&D line in preparation for industrialization. Management has indicated that the furnace product cycle will support growth in 2026 and beyond. In addition, for the Track segment, the first high-throughput KrF front-end track tool was delivered to a leading Chinese logic foundry in September 2025 and is currently in validation, with production certification expected to be completed by the end of 2026. The horizontal panel-level electroplating platform, the world's first commercial large-panel copper electroplating system, is a strategic product line that the company began laying out five years ago. It has secured a 510×515mm mass production order from an existing customer in mainland China (expected delivery in the first half of 2027) and a 310×310mm evaluation order from a new Asian customer (expected delivery in the fourth quarter of 2026). The company expects to become one of the first suppliers to deliver horizontal panel-level electroplating systems to multiple customers across multiple regions, precisely positioning itself in the next-generation packaging track for AI large chips.
This shows that while cleaning equipment maintains growth and ECP electroplating equipment accelerates its volume ramp-up, 2026 will become the "Big Year" for Acm Research (Shanghai) to introduce new products to the market — an inflection point for new businesses transitioning from technical validation to commercial implementation. PECVD, vertical furnaces, Track, and horizontal panel-level electroplating — four new business lines — will complete the "shipping, certification, first order" sequence in 2026, with 2027 naturally entering the revenue recognition phase, forming a seamless relay to the existing core business. The certainty of this growth path has been validated in advance on the order front. At the company's first-half earnings call on August 14, management clearly stated that new orders in the first half grew 105% year-on-year, covering all product categories, with new categories such as electroplating contributing prominently, directly corroborating the high-growth potential of new business lines and locking in strong certainty for future revenue ramp-up.
The explosive growth in orders and the deepening of the platform strategy are gaining continued recognition from the capital markets. Nomura Orient International Securities initiated coverage on August 10 with an "Overweight" rating, forecasting the company's 2026 net profit to reach RMB 1.910 billion, representing a 36.98% increase over 2025. UBS Securities maintained a "Buy" rating, stating that Acm Research (Shanghai) is a major beneficiary of continued expansion in high-end logic and memory production lines, projecting 30%/37% revenue/earnings compound growth for 2025-2028, with current valuations considered attractive.
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