According to reports, semiconductor process control equipment leader KLA Corp (KLAC.US) released its fiscal first-quarter earnings after the U.S. market close on October 28 (early morning Beijing time on October 29). Quarterly revenue reached $4.136 billion, up 28.9% year over year and above the market expectation of $4.04 billion; non-GAAP diluted earnings per share came in at $1.22, beating the expected $1.18. Quarterly net profit was $1.549 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $1.18. With this, KLA Corp (KLAC.US) has now achieved year-over-year revenue growth for 10 consecutive quarters. Following the earnings release, KLA Corp (KLAC.US) rose about 3.2% in after-hours trading. Quarterly operating cash flow was $1.53 billion, free cash flow was $1.34 billion, and the free cash flow margin was 32.3%; shareholder returns for the quarter totaled $1.24 billion, reaching $163.90.
The guidance was the biggest highlight of this earnings report: the company expects December-quarter revenue of $4.7 billion ±$200 million, with the midpoint about 4.8% above the market consensus and implying year-over-year growth of roughly 42.5%; non-GAAP diluted earnings per share guidance is $1.44 ±$0.11, also above expectations. The midpoint of that guidance represents about 14% sequential revenue growth from this quarter, showing the company has strong confidence in the durability of AI-driven demand. CEO Rick Wallace said, "KLA's September-quarter results exceeded the midpoint of guidance across all key metrics, demonstrating the second-half 2026 acceleration we anticipated. Process control, and KLA in particular, remains essential to building the AI ecosystem and is benefiting from multiple ongoing technology inflection points, including an increasing number of advanced-node foundry/logic chip designs, rising device size and value, higher memory complexity and performance requirements, and the growing importance of advanced packaging."
Analysts noted that as the world's largest player by market share in semiconductor process control inspection equipment, KLA Corp (KLAC.US) continues to benefit from the massive buildout of AI compute infrastructure—higher yield requirements for leading-edge chips, capacity expansion in advanced memory such as HBM, and rising penetration of Chiplet advanced packaging all directly drive demand for process control inspection equipment. With both quarterly results and next-quarter guidance beating expectations, this further confirms the strong prosperity of the semiconductor equipment sector in this AI cycle.
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