Qnity Electronics Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 4, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q2 results exceeded expectations: Organic sales rose 22% year over year to $1.4 billion, adjusted EBITDA increased 24%, and adjusted EPS grew 53% to $1.19, reflecting strong operating leverage across both segments.
  • Positive Sentiment: AI-related demand continues to accelerate growth. Semiconductor Technologies organic sales increased 17%, while Interconnect Solutions grew 28%, led by advanced packaging, AI PCBs, thermal management, HBM, and data-center applications.
  • Positive Sentiment: Qnity raised its full-year outlook to $5.55 billion–$5.65 billion in sales, $1.675 billion–$1.725 billion in adjusted EBITDA, $4.40–$4.60 in adjusted EPS, and $600 million–$700 million in adjusted free cash flow.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The company expects third-quarter sales to grow at a low-single-digit sequential rate, with typical consumer-electronics seasonality and a muted fourth-quarter comparison; management is also monitoring customer ramp timing, utilization rates, memory supply chains, and Middle East developments.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management cited approximately $600 million of growth investments since 2022, ongoing capacity expansion, and transformation initiatives that are beginning to improve productivity; logistics optimization is expected to reduce costs by about 10%, with further margin benefits weighted toward the second half of 2027.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Qnity Electronics Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for your continued patience. Your meeting will begin shortly. If you need assistance at any time, please press star zero and a member of our team will be happy to help you. Good morning, and welcome to the Qnity second quarter 2026 conference and webcast call. Currently, all callers have been placed in listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, the call will be open for your questions. I will now turn the call over to Meg Miller, Vice President of Global Communications. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm joined by Jon Kemp, Qnity's Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Goss, Qnity's Interim Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, we issued our earnings release along with a supplemental slide presentation, which can be found on our investor relations website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion will include some forward-looking statements. These statements represent our best view of predictions and expectations for the future, but numerous risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for a discussion of these risks. We'll also be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, and I refer you to our earnings materials for information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measure. Now it's my pleasure to turn it over to Jon.

Speaker 2

Thank you for joining our call this morning. Last quarter, we talked about how the fundamental shift from shrink to stack is becoming the driving force behind technological advancement in the semiconductor industry. Innovation is spanning well beyond transistor shrink to focus on connecting chips in new and innovative ways that will unlock the next frontier of computing. As the stack gets taller and layers multiply, the journey every chip must take lengthens, and materials innovation becomes the hidden hero, quietly powering performance, yield, and reliability. Qnity sits at the center of this trend with one of the broadest portfolios of end-to-end solutions across the stack. On the front end, our suite of CMP pads, cleans, and slurries and lithography materials are essential for patterning and polishing leading-edge chips. In the middle, we provide comprehensive advanced packaging solutions from both business segments to enable next-generation architectures and support chip-to-chip connections.

Speaker 2

Finally, on the back end, our thermal materials move heat across demanding full system workloads like data centers and other AI applications. When you combine the breadth of our portfolio across the semiconductor stack with decades of innovation alongside our customers and a local for local model for manufacturing and technical support, it's clear why Qnity is uniquely positioned for the opportunities ahead. We're aligned with the industry's most groundbreaking technology roadmaps embedded in our customer's next generation platform and able to deliver the materials and solutions they need at scale. As AI high performance computing and advanced connectivity continue to reshape the industry, these advantages position us to create significant long-term value. The best proof of this differentiated position is our performance. Looking at our second quarter results, we delivered our ninth consecutive quarter of strong, profitable organic growth.

Speaker 2

Organic sales increased 22% year over year with another quarter of double-digit growth across both segments. Adjusted operating EBITDA increased 24%, adjusted EPS grew by 53% as we continue to demonstrate our ability to drive strong operating leverage in the business. In Semiconductor Technologies, we grew organic sales 17% year over year, led by AI-driven solutions as our advanced nodes portfolio grew more than 20% during the second quarter. We've seen broad-based improvements in fab utilization across the industry. Advanced logic is now tracking to the mid-80% range, while mainstream logic is in the low 80s. In memory, we continue to see healthy utilization levels with DRAM in the high 80s and NAND in the low 80s. As customers move to increasingly advanced nodes, every wafer requires more layers, more processing complexity, and more packaging steps. All of this translates to more volume and to more Qnity content.

Speaker 2

We're seeing that with continued growth at three nanometer, the emerging activity at two nanometer, and increasing engagement around future Angstrom-era technology platforms. That combination of improving utilization and rising content intensity continues to support our confidence in the long-term growth outlook for our semi business. In Interconnect Solutions, our team continues to deliver exceptional results, with 28% organic growth year over year, again led by content and share gains across our key growth platforms of advanced packaging and interconnect, AI PCBs, and thermal management. Collectively, these platforms again grew more than 50% year over year during the second quarter. One of the biggest engineering challenges in next-generation AI system isn't simply building smaller and faster chips. It's enabling those chips to reliably communicate with one another. As architectures become more complex, challenges around signal integrity, power delivery, and heat dissipation become increasingly difficult to solve.

Speaker 2

As we partner with customers to overcome these increasingly complex system-level challenges, we're seeing demand broaden across our portfolio and additional opportunities to increase content throughout the AI ecosystem moving forward. This combination of strong platform growth, expanding content opportunities, and deepening customer engagement reinforces our confidence in the durable long-term growth outlook for our ICS business. As the technology for both shrink and stack accelerates, we advanced our own innovation progress during the quarter, extending our leading technology position from front to back through both new products and broader industry engagements. At the front end, we announced an expansion of our CMP offerings with the launch of Optivision Max polishing pad. Our newest commercial soft polishing pad delivers superior performance in critical CMP steps to enhance surface quality, process stability, and reliability for advanced architectures and nodes.

Speaker 2

We're already seeing adoption across both leading-edge nodes and advanced packaging applications, including emerging AI and HBM-driven architectures. At the same time, we continue to gain traction in next-generation logic, securing multiple POR wins at 16 and 14 during the first half of the year, as we advance towards Angstrom-level nodes. Beyond semi-fab materials in AI PCBs, we are winning new business in pulse plating, a key metalization technology for the most advanced high-layer count printed circuit boards used in AI applications. For customers, pulse plating helps deliver the precise, reliable interconnects required to support higher density designs, stronger signal integrity, and more dependable power delivery in next-generation AI systems. Shifting to back-end assembly materials, thermal management is becoming a critical performance enabler as AI systems push higher power densities across chips, packages, boards, and data center infrastructure.

Speaker 2

We further strengthened our broad thermal portfolio in the first half of the year, which now spans liquid thermal interface materials, phase change materials, thermal pads, gap fillers, and other advanced solutions that help customers move heat more efficiently, improve reliability, and accelerate deployment of next-generation AI systems. These latest materials offerings demonstrate how we're innovating against the industry's most complex technical challenges. Just as importantly, we're backing that innovation with the targeted capital investments required to scale alongside our customers. Over the past several years, we've executed a disciplined, sustained investment in capacity, deployed in step with our customers' technology roadmaps. Since 2022, we've deployed approximately $600 million in growth investments across the business, with a focus on expanding capacity and enabling the next generation of technologies aligned to our local for local operating model.

Speaker 2

Combined with our innovation efforts, these investments position Qnity to support the accelerating demand we continue to see from our customers. It also strengthens our ability to capture long-term growth opportunities across our end markets. Pulling this all together, our innovation isn't happening in isolation. We're pairing technology leadership with disciplined capital investment to expand the capabilities, capacity, and customer proximity required to support the industry's most important roadmaps. That combination is translating into stronger customer engagement today and positioning Qnity to capture the long-term growth we see ahead. Before I turn it over to Mike, I want to touch on the end market trends that we're seeing. As customers allocate capacity to the highest value applications, our portfolio mix continues to evolve.

Speaker 2

Over the past six months, we've seen end market composition shift, driven by the rapid growth in data centers, steady growth in automotive and other industrial markets, and slower growth in consumer electronics. With that said, our consumer electronics portfolio continues to prove resilient with positive growth given our outsized exposure to premium devices and continued content gains. Increasingly, we see AI moving from the cloud into the physical world of devices, vehicles, and machines. If the cloud is where AI learns to think, the physical world is where AI will learn to do. This presents another exciting long-term growth opportunity for Qnity, where we are well positioned across the industry through our existing relationships with both OEMs and the broader fab and foundry landscape. While these chips are often less complex than data center class processors, the market needs dramatically higher quantities of them produced efficiently and reliably.

Speaker 2

The physical world demands chips that deliver targeted AI inside strict thermal power and size envelopes. This means a fundamental re-architecture of how AI gets built, deployed, and scaled, and progress will depend in large part on materials innovation to make it happen, and that plays directly to Qnity's advantages. Let me now hand it over to Mike to step through our financial results and guidance in more detail.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Jon, and good morning, everyone. We sustained our strong momentum in the second quarter, performing better than our expectations across both segments. We delivered net sales of $1.4 billion, up 22% year-over-year and 9% sequentially. On an organic basis, sales were up 22% versus the same period last year. Adjusted operating EBITDA for the quarter was $431 million, up 24% year-over-year. Adjusted operating EBITDA margin was 30.2%, reflecting our resiliency while continuing to invest for growth. Adjusted EPS for the quarter increased 53% to $1.19. Taking a closer look at each of our business segments, Semiconductor Technologies net sales were $744 million, up approximately 3% sequentially. Organic sales grew 17% year-over-year, driven by continued demand strength, especially for advanced logic and HBM chips. Semi gross margins were steady at approximately 49%, and adjusted operating EBITDA margin was approximately 34%.

Speaker 3

Both down a bit year-over-year and sequentially, in line with our expectations, driven by product mix in the quarter and continued investments to support advanced node growth. ICS delivered another exceptional quarter, with net sales of $685 million, up more than 30% year-over-year and 16% sequentially. Organic sales grew 28%, led by our AI and data center platforms, advanced packaging, AI PCBs, and thermal management. ICS gross margins were approximately 44% and adjusted operating EBITDA margin was approximately 29%, an improvement of 290 basis points year-over-year and roughly flat sequentially. This was driven by sustained operating leverage on higher volumes and favorable mix. We generated adjusted free cash flow of $259 million, reflecting strong operational performance and continued execution against our cash priorities. This performance reinforces the confidence reflected in the higher guidance that we are providing today.

Speaker 3

Capital expenditures totaled $90 million in the quarter and remain on pace with our planned investments to support capacity expansion, transformation initiatives, and future growth. We continue to anticipate elevated CapEx investment for the full year driven by these initiatives. Over the longer term, we expect CapEx to return to the 6% net sales range. We also continue to deliver strong capital returns for shareholders through our quarterly dividend, and during the quarter, we repurchased $25 million worth of shares to partially offset normal equity dilution. We are well-positioned from a liquidity perspective with approximately $960 million in cash and short-term investments at the end of the second quarter. Total debt outstanding is $4 billion, with net debt leverage of approximately 2 times.

Speaker 3

Immediately after quarter end, we successfully repriced our senior secured term loan facility to further enhance our free cash flow profile, resulting in an annualized benefit of approximately $6 million. Looking forward, we are a few months into our multi-year transformation plan and are beginning to see tangible benefits from our efforts, with productivity and throughput improvements creating additional operating flexibility and supporting growth. Let me share just a couple of examples of our program in action. In our Kalrez business, which has seen strong growth in the first half of the year due to accelerated demand for wafer fab equipment, we are executing targeted productivity, capacity release, and automation initiatives. These actions position the business to better convert strong demand into growth. Additionally, to advance our local model, we continue to optimize our distribution footprint through targeted warehouse consolidations that simplify our network, improve service levels, and reduce operating complexity.

Speaker 3

These actions are expected to deliver approximately 10% logistics cost savings while improving warehouse efficiency and operating leverage over time. We also continue to make meaningful progress towards IT independence. We're on track to migrate about two-thirds of our sites to our own systems by the end of this year. Each site migration reduces our reliance on transition services and gives us more direct control to run our business. Overall, we're pleased with the steady progress on the transformation plan and are confident it will unlock operating flexibility and build a stronger, more agile operating model required to support Qnity's next phase of growth. Before I hand it back to John for closing comments, let me walk through our updated guidance. For the third quarter, we expect sequential net sales growth in the low single digits range.

Speaker 3

The strength is broad-based across the same secular drivers we highlighted earlier in the year, namely AI-driven applications, high-performance computing, and advanced connectivity, along with the muted seasonal peak in consumer electronics that typically characterizes our third quarter. As a reminder, the third quarter of 2025 included approximately $40 million of net sales that was accelerated into the third quarter ahead of our pre-spin IT systems go lives, roughly $25 million in Semiconductor Technologies and $15 million in ICS. This created an elevated prior year comparison base that does not recur in 2026, modestly tempering the year-over-year growth in the third quarter for both segments, even as underlying demand continues to remain strong. In Semiconductor Technologies, we expect sequential net sales growth in the low single digits range with an adjusted EBITDA margin profile in the mid-30s.

Speaker 3

For ICS, we expect sequential net sales growth in the mid-single digits range with adjusted EBITDA margins in the high 20s. Overall, we're watching industry supply chain dynamics closely, including memory and other materials, and are working with customers to meet their needs. The modest upward pressure we flagged earlier in the year of approximately $20 million is largely playing out as we expected, and the mitigation playbook we put in place, coupled with our local model, is doing its job. Where isolated input or logistics costs have moved higher, our targeted pricing actions are in place, and we see no near-term risk to supply or output. With our strong first half momentum and improved visibility into the second half, we're raising our full year outlook. Net sales is now expected to be $5.55 billion to $5.65 billion.

Speaker 3

Adjusted operating EBITDA is now expected to be $1.675 billion to $1.725 billion. Adjusted EPS is now expected to be $4.40 to $4.60. Finally, adjusted free cash flow is now expected to be $600 million to $700 million. At the midpoint of our updated guidance, we now expect to deliver 18% net sales growth, over 20% adjusted EBITDA growth, and adjusted EPS growth of 35% for the full year. Lastly, we'll continue investing with the strong customer ramps we're seeing while maintaining the cost discipline that supports our results. John, back to you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mike. Before we open the call to Q&A, I want to provide updates on two critical leadership roles. First, I want to officially welcome Kate Dei Cas, who started yesterday as President of our Semiconductor Technologies business segment. Kate brings more than 25 years of experience in the semiconductor industry and a proven record of driving growth, managing global supply chains, and delivering operational excellence. We're thrilled to welcome her to Qnity. I also want to recognize Sam Ponzo for his leadership through this transition as he returns to his role as Qnity's Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer. On our search for a new Chief Financial Officer, we've been really pleased with the strong candidates we've seen and are in the final stages of our search. I look forward to sharing an update soon. To close out our remarks, I want to briefly recap the highlights from our call.

Speaker 2

Qnity delivered another strong quarter, with broad-based growth across both segments and continued momentum across the secular drivers reshaping our industry. We are benefiting from the powerful combination of both shrink and stack, where more process complexity and more layers are increasing materials intensity across the semiconductor value chain. Our portfolio breadth, customer intimacy, and disciplined investment strategy position us well to capture these opportunities and deliver durable long-term growth. As we look ahead, we remain focused on disciplined execution, enhancing value for customers, and delivering long-term growth for our shareholders. With that, operator, we can now open the call to Q&A.

Operator

If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you need to remove yourself from the queue, press star two. At any time, if you should need operator assistance, press star zero. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. In the interest of time, please limit to one question and one follow-up. We will take our first question from James Schneider with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could maybe comment on how you're seeing sequentials play out, especially into Q4. It seems like even towards the upper end of your guidance, the Q4 sequential would be very muted and potentially even down a little bit sequentially. Just wanted to make sure that I understand what is driving that, is there any pull-in that you're seeing in Q3, or do you expect that you could actually see a little bit of headwind in any of the areas? Maybe just talk about sort of the Q4 implied sequential relative to normal seasonality. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thanks for the question. From our updated guidance perspective, we're really putting in a combination of the first half momentum that we saw, better second half visibility, and including customer ramp timing and industry supply dynamics. At the midpoint of that guidance that we put out today has us at 18% sales growth for the year and over 20% EBITDA growth for the year as well. As far as pacing through the back half of the year, from a third quarter perspective, that does include a seasonal peak around consumer electronics that we typically see, and we expect that to be consistent in the third quarter as well. With that, we do expect Semi to be in the low single digits range with EBITDA margins still in the mid-30s, and then ICS in the mid-single digits range with EBITDA margins in the high 20s.

Speaker 3

As a reminder, as I mentioned on the prepared remarks, we did have a prior year $40 million move between third quarter and fourth quarter that was tied to our pre-system IT go live, but that's just from a year-over-year perspective. At a headline level, order books do remain healthy. Our customer engagement remains really strong, and we're seeing inventory move across the value chain as we've expect. From an overall perspective, though, with a couple of variables we are watching in the back half of the year, ongoing developments in the Middle East, as well as timing on customer ramps and trends and utilization rates that we mentioned in the prepared remarks. To the extent that those items resolve or improve, we would expect we'd have an opportunity to do better. Jim, maybe to offer a little bit of historical context.

Speaker 3

Typically, we'd see a small seasonal peak in the third quarter that's generally tied to consumer electronics. Consumer electronics has been fairly resilient for us this year because of our exposure to premium devices. Nonetheless, we typically would expect a little bit of a sequential deceleration third quarter to fourth quarter from a consumer electronics standpoint, then typically we see customers do a little bit of inventory control in the fourth quarter as well.

Speaker 4

That's helpful. Thank you. Then maybe as a follow-up, you cited some of the headwinds to growth or EBITDA margins in the quarter, and I think they came in a little bit below where we were modeling. I'm just sort of curious, I think you called out specifically mix and investments. Can you maybe unpack those a little bit? I know ICS has lower margins, but I'm curious whether there's any like-to-like mix that was dragging on margins in the quarter. Maybe could you talk a little bit about the prospects for growth margin improvement over the next, say, two to three quarters, in light of some of the pricing actions you mentioned to offset the input cost pressures. Any other color on that would be helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thanks. From a margin perspective in the quarter, as a reminder, we did have some nice product mix take place in the first quarter. Coming off of that into the second quarter, it concluded a combination of that as well as the growth investments that we mentioned. From an example perspective, the timing in any given quarter can have some variability in it from R&D efforts as well as product qualifications, and that can weigh in on any given quarter. Stepping back from a perspective of the first half of the year, semi had margins right around 35% for the first half, and I'd expect that to continue into the back half of the year. From a headwinds perspective, we mentioned the $20 million of costs are really logistics and energy type costs.

Speaker 3

We've seen half of that already come through in the first half and expect the remainder to come through in the back half. Like I said in my prepared remarks, our playbook is working, and I expect we'll be able to offset that throughout the year. There's going to always be a little bit of variability from quarter to quarter, but I think the margin profile is constructive, and I expect that to continue into the back half of the year.

Speaker 2

The only thing I would add there, thanks, Mike, is as we start to see the benefits of some of the transformation program, and I think Mike gave a couple of nice examples from both a plant productivity as well as a kind of a footprint optimization point of view. We're starting to see some of those opportunities kick in. Most of that will be weighted towards the back half of next year, but as we start to see both the increases in volume that help with factory loading as well as some of those transformation programs, there is an opportunity for nice incrementals to increase with both gross and EBITDA margin expansion.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Operator

We'll move next to Melissa Weathers with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hello, thank you for letting me ask a question. I want to touch on the Interconnect Solutions business. You guys had another really nice quarter of sequential growth in that business, it seems like it's growing a lot faster than maybe, I don't know, even from your Analyst Day last September. It seems like you've seen a nice acceleration in that business. Any updated thoughts on how you guys are thinking about the long-term growth profile of that business, given AI and given the shift from shrink to stack?

Speaker 3

Yeah. Thanks, Melissa. It's a great question. Obviously, we're really pleased by the continued strong performance of the ICS segment, 28% organic growth. That growth in the first half of the year that we've seen has really been powered by our three key growth platforms of advanced packaging and interconnects, AI PCBs, and thermal management. I think what's fundamentally different from maybe what we talked about at our Investor Day is the pace with which advanced packaging and thermal has really accelerated due to the adoption of AI-based applications. That's really created this nice trajectory for the ICS business because of how well-positioned we are on the shrink and stack inflection that is necessary as we go forward. What I would say is the business is still fundamentally a consumable-based business that's tied to volume.

Speaker 3

When you think about PCB area volumes or advanced packaging volumes, thermal volumes, I think the broader market is still trying to get the handle around third-party data, and we're working with some of those third parties to try and figure out how to model that a little bit more accurately. I think everybody would like a little bit of help in that area, us included. We're really thrilled with the continued outperformance of both content gains and new application wins that we're seeing broadly across the interconnect segment. Maybe where I would just point into the future a little bit, we're excited by the customer expansions that are taking place, as particularly in advanced packaging, that are adding that capacity to the highest value areas, which give us confidence in the long-term durability of the growth profile of the interconnect business.

Speaker 5

Perfect. Thank you for all that color. Maybe for my second question on the capacity side of things, I know you guys have been working over the last couple of years to add capacity. Clearly things are off to a strong ramp. It seems like the Semiconductor Technologies business, that's starting to ramp too. Industrial semis are getting stronger, and that semi cycle is getting stronger. Are you capacity constrained anywhere? How are you thinking about your ability to supply with both of these businesses growing pretty nicely?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Thanks, Melissa. Look, as we said in our prepared remarks, our strategy has always been anchored in building out that strong local for local model aligned to our customer footprint, we've been steadily adding capacity since the 2022 peak. We took a look at our capacity footprint and where we were constrained in 2022, the last time the semi market peaked, we've been steadily adding incremental capacity in each one of our semi businesses since that point in time. Most of that was kind of highlighted in that $600 million of investment that we pointed to. Given our well-distributed footprint, what I would tell you is that we have existing facilities kind of located in all of the major geographic centers, most of our investments are high return, quick modular capacity expansions that are done in step with our customer technology roadmaps.

Speaker 2

Today, the growth is a bit faster than what we were expecting, we're able to kind of quickly adjust and bring capacity online to support the ramps that we're seeing. We're really well prepared, going into what we expect to be long-term growth in 2027 and 2028 from a capacity point of view.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks, Jon.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Chris Parkinson with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you so much. Jon, your media relations team has been quite busy throughout the first and second quarter, you've been launching products or collaborations across EV, HBM, CMP, Nvidia, Clean Room Space in Taiwan. There's so many things to keep track on a weekly basis. May I ask, just when do you think we'll see the vast majority of these benefits? What are you most excited about? Were the vast majority of these announcements that hit our inbox almost on a weekly basis, more or less, were all those basically considered at the time of the spin, or are many of those new? Thank you so much.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Chris. It's a great question. Really what we're trying to do, I would say is what you're seeing is the benefit of being a pure play company and able to construct and tell a story that is specific to our customers and our investor base. I think that the track record of continual innovation progress and partnerships with the technology leaders in the industry has long been part of our strategy over the last several years. It's now just more in the spotlight since the separation and the spin as a pure play company. What I would say, most of them are really on the innovation point, maybe just to underscore that a little bit. Our R&D team has done a phenomenal job of really earning that seat at the design table with the leading technology companies in the industry.

Speaker 2

We've had POR wins across every single line of business, really targeting at the most advanced technologies, kind of from front end of the stack all the way to the back end of the stack. What I'm most excited about is, all of those, they're the fastest growing parts of the market. It's also the highest value parts of the market. That sets up a really favorable growth trajectory for Qnity going forward as we see that steady drumbeat of innovation wins and POR wins and customer partnerships for the fastest growing, most advanced technologies in the industry.

Speaker 6

Got it. Just as a corollary of that question, when you look out two to three years, do you see Qnity's portfolio primarily based, just from a distribution perspective, across logic, mainstream, advanced, versus memory, basically the same way that you were assessing that six, 12, 18 months ago? Is there any difference in how you're evaluating that, what you're hearing from your new shareholder base? I'd love to hear your perspectives on that as well. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's a good question. What we're looking at is our customers are allocating capacity to their highest value applications, our mix also continues to evolve. In terms of device types, what I would tell you is that advanced logic and logic in general continues to be the most significant part of our portfolio at roughly 80%. Memory is about 20%, with HBM and DRAM growing a little bit faster. That's maybe ticked up a couple of percentage points, but it's still kind of roughly in that 80/20, 75/25 mix. From an end market point of view, obviously the rapid growth in data centers has ticked up a little bit. We've seen nice steady growth from several of our industrial markets in automotive, aerospace and defense and telecom infrastructure.

Speaker 2

Consumer electronics is positive growth, but it's growing at a slower pace than some of those other areas. From an end market point of view, data centers up a little bit. Most of the industrial markets are steady and maybe consumer electronics down a little bit. I would come back to the point that I made before. The most important takeaway on this mix from a device mix as well as from an end market mix is our highest growth is aligned to the highest value parts of the market in advanced nodes, advanced packaging interconnects, and thermal materials. Great color. Thank you so much.

Operator

We'll move next to John Roberts with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Hi, this is Saurabh here on for John Roberts. Congratulations on the great results today. I have first question on the advanced packagings. There are multiple roadmap on the architectures there in the advanced packaging, and I would assume each one have different material requirements. How are you positioned to serve these different architectures, and is your content opportunity consistent across these roadmaps?

Speaker 2

Yeah. It's a great question, you're right. There's a wide variety of new advanced packaging architectures that are being worked on by our customer base across the industry. If I take a step back at a thematic level, all of those new architectures fundamentally do two things. They're generally larger format sizes to make, whether it's panel-level packaging or going to increase the size of the overall package, it's tighter geometry. Smaller lines and spaces on a high layer count circuit board or an IC substrate, for example. The good news about both of those trends, whether you're talking about smaller and tighter geometries or larger panel sizes, you're getting into more material complexity and more material intensity. The more material complexity means there's probably fewer players in the market that can provide the solutions necessary to support those technology roadmaps.

Speaker 2

Obviously, the larger format package sizes result in more content for those packaging than what we see today. In terms of the people who are driving that are the same people that we've been working with for the last several years to successfully commercialize the existing advanced packaging format. We have a strong position of incumbency with a proven and trusted relationship on those technologies that give us confidence that as we migrate to additional advanced packaging architectures, we're in a position to capitalize on the benefits of process complexity, more layers, and more materials intensity.

Speaker 7

Thank you. Great color. I just have one more question. You talked about mainstream doing well in the low 80s utilization. In terms of end market, what is driving that mainstream improvement from your last quarter, and what do you expect in the next quarter? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah. On mainstream logic, we're seeing kind of steady improvement so far this year, consistent with our expectations and what we talked about at the end of the first quarter. I would think from an end market, we're seeing what I would say the data center and the industrial demand is doing better. That's what's driving the utilization increase, and that's what we're hearing from our customer. It's really being driven by data center, automotive, and some of those industrial end markets. We expect to see kind of sequential steady improvement there. Obviously, we are watching the impacts of the memory markets, and I think it may be a little bit of we may not see quite as much utilization improvement in mainstream logic as we would otherwise, given some of the supply chain dynamics. Nonetheless, I think that we see continued steady progress there.

Speaker 2

What I'm most excited about from mainstream logic is the broader participation in physical AI, where we see demand moving from cloud to the edge and going to devices, vehicles, and machines. I think a lot of that physical AI creates a lot more opportunities for broader participation from both the OEMs as well as the different fab and foundry partners. Qnity is well-positioned in the broader industry landscape, no matter where the chips are coming from.

Operator

We'll move next to Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Good morning, and nice results. Jon, you indicated that advanced nodes grew over 20% in the second quarter. I recall, at the Investor Day, your expectation was a steady growth around 7% for advanced nodes. I'm just curious as to how should we think about the near term, what's your visibility there? Can we expect this 20% growth in advanced nodes to continue? What's your outlook there?

Speaker 2

Good question, Frank. I think, broadly, we're really pleased obviously by the performance in our semi segment. We're really well-positioned in the advanced nodes across both logic and memory. I think what we're seeing this year that's a little bit new and different is a lot of broad-based participation from all of the market technology leaders. It's been a long time since we saw the most advanced nodes successfully commercialized across all of the logic leaders and across all of the memory leaders. Typically when we're working on R&D programs, two or three years out for the most advanced technology platforms, we're hopeful that they will all commercialize when planned, but you don't actually know that until they actually scale it up. What we're seeing this year is a successful scale-up, particularly around, whether it's HBM3, HBM4 on the memory side.

Speaker 2

Obviously, three nanometer has gone really well, and we're seeing really strong pull for two nanometer and 18A. We're really excited by that. Some of the increased support that we have the customers as they scale up those next generation platforms, we alluded to that on the call. Look, I don't think we're in a position to maybe provide color on what the advanced node growth rate is going to be every quarter. What I can tell you is that, we talked about at our Investor Day, migrating towards getting to be that 45%-50% of our portfolio would be driven by advanced nodes. At the track record and the pace that we're on, we'll probably get there early. I think we're kind of exiting here the first half of the year, kind of right at 40%.

Speaker 8

Excellent. Thank you so much. I'm just curious if you could provide your latest take on what you expect MSI growth to be for the broader industry here in 2026.

Speaker 2

Yeah, thanks. Good question. Our latest view, and we continue to watch it closely, is that our MSI is expected to be in the high single digits for 2026. Additionally, PCB growth, which is another metric we watch, it's kind of in the mid to high single digits for the year.

Speaker 8

Thank you so much.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Operator

We'll move next to Bhavesh Lodaya with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Speaker 9

Hi, good morning, John and Mike. Congrats on the solid results. Maybe the first one on, just a follow-up to the previous question and discussions. If I look at semi stack, looking at the volume growth of 18%, it continues to be significantly ahead of traditional metrics like MSI, also meaningfully higher versus the last quarter. Is it just more CMP steps? Are you seeing more share gains, business wins? Maybe if you could break out the outperformance. And then broadly, do you consider MSI as an accurate metric to track your performance going ahead?

Speaker 2

Yeah, Bhavesh, good question. Look, we're a consumables business, so we're always going to be somewhat correlated to wafer volumes or to some volume metric across the stack. At this point, as we've continued to say, MSI continues to be the best indicator of overall wafer volume. I think what we're seeing right now is with the success that we're seeing from our customers in advanced nodes, building on the answer to the last question, it's pushing our content outperformance even higher because we're seeing more customers successfully commercialize their most advanced technology. Obviously that's where we're seeing the most content gains, is in the most advanced technology. In an environment where all of our customers are successful with their most advanced technology, that's what's pushing our content outperformance considerably above that MSI benchmark.

Speaker 2

I would say in addition to that, we are seeing some nice incremental share gains. The fastest part of growth in our semiconductor portfolio is really our CMP portfolio of pads, cleans, and slurries. That's where we're seeing the most content gains, that's also where we're seeing some incremental share gains, particularly on the cleans and slurries side. The lithography business continues to do really well, right? We talk a lot about EUV. For our portfolio, EUV is important, not so much in the photoresist layer, there's a lot of ancillary layers around the photoresist that are really important.

Speaker 2

Our R&D team and business team has done a great job partnering with customers on how do they get the most out of their EUV investment by working on the layers around the photoresist to make that as efficient and as effective as possible.

Speaker 9

Thank you. We have seen some M&A activity in your sub-sector recently. Now, clearly, you have a lot going on around internal organic growth investments and initiatives. Would love to hear updated thoughts on capital allocation around M&A, especially in light of your balance sheet coming in much better now versus where you separated.

Speaker 2

Yeah, thanks for the question. We continue to execute against our capital allocation framework. As you just mentioned, our first priority is always going to be organic reinvestment in the business, because that is certainly the highest and best return for our dollars. That's going to always be focused on not only just CapEx, R&D and making sure the R&D team is fully focused and funded where we need to go. Beyond that, from an inorganic perspective, we certainly are continuing to watch the market. As we've said before, our priority is going to be from a kind of bolt-on and tuck-in perspective. That's going to be focused in not only areas that are adjacent to where we play now, really focused in areas like high growth, like advanced packaging and thermal management. We're focused on that.

Speaker 2

We have an active pipeline and a very disciplined process that we're following, and obviously it's a dynamic market, but it's something that we continue to watch consistently.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Operator

Once again for your questions, that is star one on your telephone keypad. We'll move next to Edward Ying with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Speaker 10

Hi, John. Congrats on the quarter and continued great execution since the spin. First question, and thank you for the end market commentary, could you just remind us on your margin profile across your data center business versus auto and electronics?

Speaker 2

Yeah. From an end market perspective on our margin profile, obviously total company, we focus and have a blended margin around 30% that we continue to focus on. From a mix of semi versus ICS, semi is consistently in the mid-30s, and they did that again in the second quarter here. From an ICS perspective, we used to think about ICS kind of in the mid-20s, and we've seen them continually to drive towards the high 20s, and we believe they're structurally in the high 20% range from an EBITDA margin profile. I think that's where we stand halfway through the year. I expect that profile to be consistent and continue through the back half of the year. We do expect to see a kind of a

Speaker 3

A mix where ICS's growth and margin profile will continue to outpace the semi business for the back part of the year.

Speaker 2

Just qualitatively, obviously, we don't provide specifics on margin profile by end markets, but you can think the proxy for that would be where is the most advanced technology going, and what does that architecture look like by end market? Obviously, data center used to be more broadly in line with the rest of the industrial economy. I would say the AI-led transformation has improved the most advanced content. AI data centers would have a very strong margin profile, really driven by the amount of advanced technology content that's in those. A lot of the other industrial markets across aerospace and defense and automotive are going to have kind of a more balanced mix. Premium consumer devices is also a somewhat more balanced mix as well, with maybe the lowest margin profile on the consumer electronics and relative to some of the other key end markets.

Speaker 2

What we like about that is the fact that some of the industrial markets are the fastest growing parts of the portfolio is another positive trajectory on driving value going forward.

Speaker 10

Great. Can you give us an early view into 2027 growth? Your long-term model was for 7% growth, but you grew 10% last year, guiding for 18% growth this year. WFE companies are looking for growth rates to be stable at very high levels for next year. What do you see?

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's probably a little too early to speculate on 2027, but the important thing that we think about and the takeaway for me is we continue to see this broad-based demand that John mentioned earlier, an investment across the same secular drivers that we're seeing this year, and that's across the AI-driven applications, high-performance computing, and advanced connectivity. The thing I'm excited to see is the continued evolution of the customer roadmaps that we've been covering even on today's call. Customers have put a lot of steel on the ground, and we expect that that will drive the capacity coming online as we move forward and all things trending forward in that direction. We're well-positioned to capitalize on that expected growth from a broad portfolio perspective, but also kind of the front end to the back end of our collective business.

Speaker 3

All of those things together, I think 2027 is stacking up nicely.

Speaker 10

Thank you.

Operator

Once more for your questions, that is star 1. We'll pause a moment to allow any further questions to queue. It does appear that there are no further questions at this time. This does conclude the call and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day.

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