For companies with long-term growth certainty, short-term operational adjustments often present rare "golden opportunities" for forward-looking investors to capture excess returns. Acm Research (Shanghai), Inc. released its first-quarter report for 2026 on the evening of April 27. The data shows the company's revenue for the reporting period was 1.476 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.06%, with net profit attributable to shareholders of 104 million yuan for the period. However, the core value of financial reports has never been the surface numbers, but rather the underlying logic of the company's growth. A closer examination of this report reveals that the long-term positive development trend of Acm Research (Shanghai) remains unchanged.
On the revenue side, Acm Research (Shanghai) achieved revenue of 1.476 billion yuan during the reporting period. The double-digit growth rate demonstrates the company's sustained growth momentum. An analysis of the profit performance can be broken down into operational and non-operational factors.
From an operational perspective, Acm Research (Shanghai)'s products are highly customized. Different product mixes can lead to fluctuations in gross margin. From January to March this year, the company's gross margin was 45.64%, remaining within the 42%-48% range and showing a sequential increase from 44.48% in the previous quarter. Research and development investment continues to increase. In the first quarter, R&D expenditure was approximately 309 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.35%, raising its proportion of total revenue to 20.90%, an increase of 1.59 percentage points. This clearly shows the company is continuously building its long-term core competitiveness. Additionally, the increase in sales expenses has also impacted profit release to some extent. In Q1, sales expenses were 129 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.95%. This indicates the company has further expanded its market development efforts, and the exploration of new markets and customers will lay a solid foundation for future performance growth.
From a non-operational perspective, exchange rate fluctuations during the reporting period led to a sharp increase in foreign exchange losses, turning financial expenses from positive to negative. The financial expenses increased by 74.4535 million yuan year-on-year due to these losses, becoming a significant factor affecting Acm Research (Shanghai)'s profit release for the period.
Through the above analysis of the financial report details, we can still clearly see the underlying drive of Acm Research (Shanghai): the company is building momentum for growth by increasing R&D and accelerating market expansion. Although exchange rate fluctuations have caused short-term volatility, this does not alter its core trend of long-term, stable growth, especially as the semiconductor equipment industry remains in a sustained period of high prosperity.
Furthermore, it was observed that during the Q1 earnings communication conference held on May 14, the company stated that the value of equipment shipments in Q1 was 1.673 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 48.65%. After shipment, this equipment will gradually be converted into revenue following installation, debugging, and process validation at the client's end. Simultaneously, the company's new orders signed in Q1 2026 increased by approximately 65% compared to Q1 2025. This growth reflects both strong customer demand and the company's robust execution capabilities across product platforms.
From an industry perspective, the global semiconductor equipment sector has entered a phase of certain growth supported by three key drivers. First, the explosion in AI computing demand is driving a surge in capacity investment for advanced logic/memory chips in data centers and at the edge. Second, cutting-edge processes like GAA and HBM memory entering mass production are generating a new wave of equipment renewal demand. Third, major global regions are ramping up local wafer fab construction to ensure supply chain security. These three forces combine to create a solid foundation for the industry's long-term upward trajectory.
Industry data provides strong evidence. According to the latest report from SEMI, global semiconductor equipment sales are projected to be $145 billion in 2026 and $156 billion in 2027, representing year-on-year growth of approximately 9% and 7.6% respectively, confirming the persistence of the industry's high prosperity.
On this trajectory of certain growth, Acm Research (Shanghai), having built a diversified product portfolio, is entering a harvest period. With semiconductor cleaning and electroplating equipment as its solid foundation, the company continues to extend into front-end core processes, launching key equipment such as vertical furnace tubes, coater/developer tracks, Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD), and stress-free polishing. It is also expanding into back-end advanced packaging, covering wafer-level and panel-level packaging, and further extending its layout to silicon material substrate manufacturing process equipment. This complete product spectrum covering front-end, back-end, and even material processes can address a global market size of approximately $20 billion, opening vast market space for Acm Research (Shanghai).
For Acm Research, 2026 will be a crucial year for the accelerated volume ramp-up of multiple new product platforms. In March this year, the company officially launched its new "Acm Core Platform" product portfolio architecture at Semicon China, dividing its products into eight independent series corresponding to key semiconductor manufacturing process steps. This architecture more comprehensively showcases the company's industry-leading multi-product platform capabilities and its long-term strategic layout for the global market. Significant scale advantages and market position will ensure the company's products continue to reap the growth benefits brought by the industry's high prosperity.
Concurrently, several of Acm Research (Shanghai)'s new products are poised for launch, serving as new engines driving the company's sustained high growth. Among them, the company's self-developed high-temperature single-wafer SPM solution demonstrates excellent particle control performance, achieving a control level below 15 particles under the 15-nanometer particle standard, significantly outperforming current mainstream market solutions. Furthermore, unlike other traditional solutions that require periodic DI water cleaning of the chamber and surrounding environment to remove high-temperature SPM gas residues, Acm Research's unique nozzle design effectively avoids related contamination issues, enabling stable operation without periodic DI water cleaning. This not only significantly improves equipment uptime but also further enhances cleaning capability for particles at 13 nanometers and below. This ultra-fine particle removal capability is particularly critical for yield control in the manufacturing of advanced devices like GAA logic and HBM memory.
Meanwhile, the atmospheric pressure oxidation furnace and LPCVD furnace tube in the vertical furnace tube equipment product line have been successfully introduced into several Chinese integrated circuit wafer fabs, passing validation and achieving mass production, with order volume continuing to grow. In more advanced deposition technologies, the company is focusing on developing various Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) vertical furnace tubes capable of achieving precise film control and good step coverage, which have successively entered the customer validation stage. Some processes have completed small-batch validation and are undergoing final optimization testing. Additionally, the company's Plasma Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition (PEALD) furnace tube has entered a customer production line and passed preliminary validation, laying the groundwork for subsequent mass production.
Furthermore, the coater/developer track equipment developed by Acm Research (Shanghai) has entered the customer validation stage, with partial process results obtained. The film thickness for the coating process meets customer requirements, and the critical dimension (CD) for development is close to the process target. The newly developed high-throughput KrF process track equipment was successfully delivered to a leading Chinese logic wafer fab in September 2025. This equipment has a capacity exceeding 300 wafers per hour and is expected to enter the mass production validation stage in 2026.
On April 27, the company announced the official shipment of its first Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) silicon carbonitride (SiCN) equipment. This equipment is the world's first self-developed system featuring a three-station rotating deposition architecture. Its capabilities support the key back-end metal interconnect process for 55-nanometer and below high-end IC manufacturing. It has already been validated to meet process specifications at the Acm Research (Shanghai) Lingang Laboratory and has now been shipped to the client for final validation.
Regarding its global strategic layout, in April this year, the company issued a preliminary announcement regarding its plan for an H-share listing and trading on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. This planned Hong Kong listing is an important decision based on the company's long-term development strategy and global layout, aiming to further broaden international capital channels, enhance the company's global brand influence, and provide a more powerful platform support for overseas business expansion and international operations.
Therefore, Acm Research (Shanghai), with its diversified product portfolio accelerating volume ramp-up during an industry period of high prosperity, possesses strong certainty for sustained high growth, leading many institutions to view its future development favorably. Among them, UBS stated that Acm Research (Shanghai) is a primary beneficiary of the continued expansion of high-end logic and memory production lines. Based on the company's unchanged revenue operation target guidance for 2026 (8.2 to 8.8 billion yuan), UBS expects Acm Research (Shanghai) to achieve a revenue/earnings CAGR of 30%/37% from 2025 to 2028. It considers the current valuation attractive, maintains a "Buy" rating, and sets a target price of 195.00 RMB per share.
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