PDF Solutions Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 6, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q2 revenue rose 19% year over year to $61.5 million, while first-half revenue increased 22%, supported by contributions across multiple products and a 45% increase in volume-based revenue.
  • Positive Sentiment: Bookings were strong across the portfolio, including eight-figure contracts for secureWISE and DirectScan and seven-figure Exensio deals; backlog reached $271 million, up 10% sequentially and 16% year over year.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management reaffirmed its goal of 20% full-year 2026 revenue growth and expects continued bookings momentum, expanding opportunities for DirectScan—including mature-node and memory applications—and at least company-wide growth for secureWISE.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Q2 gross margin declined to 73% due partly to unusually high perpetual software licenses in Q1, but management expects a rebound next quarter and remains confident in reaching its long-term 77% gross-margin and 27% operating-margin targets.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Cash increased to $114.9 million following an $81.8 million equity offering and $16.4 million of operating cash flow, although Q3 and Q4 capital expenditures are expected to exceed Q2 levels as PDF invests in eProbe systems and manages rising component costs.
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Earnings Conference Call
PDF Solutions Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good day everyone, welcome to the PDF Solutions, Inc. conference call to discuss its financial results for the second quarter conference call ending Tuesday, June 30th, 2026. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If you have not received a copy of the corresponding press release, it has been posted to the PDF's website at www.pdf.com. Some of the statements that will be made in the course of this conference are forward-looking, including statements regarding PDF's future financial results and performance, growth rates, and demand for its solutions. PDF's actual results could differ materially.

Operator

You should refer to the section entitled "Risk Factors" on pages 16 through 30 on PDF's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2025, and similar disclosures in subsequent SEC filings. The forward-looking statements and risks stated in this conference call are based on information available to PDF today. PDF assumes no obligation to update them. Now I'd like to introduce John Kibarian, PDF's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Adnan Raza, PDF Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Kibarian, please go ahead.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

Thank you for joining us on today's call. If you've not already seen our earnings press release and management report for the second quarter, please go to the investors section of our website where each is then posted. For today's call, I will provide a summary of the past quarter, our perspective on the environment, and outlook for the next quarter and the remainder of the year. The second quarter built on a strong Q1, providing great progress on our objective to position PDF Solutions as the leading commercial data analytics and mission-critical platform for the semiconductor industry. This was visible in the bookings, customer activity, and our product development during the quarter. From a bookings perspective, secureWISE and DirectScan systems led the way with eight-figure contracts for each.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

We achieved a number of seven-figure contracts for Exensio products and services, including with hyperscalers and photonics companies, as the growth in the AI ecosystems continues to be strong. Finally, Cimetrix bookings were at a record high on top of a very strong Q1 as the equipment industry continues to be robust. Overall, across all products, the strong bookings resulted in building backlog while supporting meaningful revenue growth for the first half of the year compared with the previous year. Adnan will provide revenue details in his prepared remarks. During the quarter, we placed three new eProbe e-beam inspection machines with customers. This includes two with new customers, one of which is an evaluation, and the other of which is a five-year subscription. The third is to a new factory for an existing customer as part of a previously signed contract.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

These three machines, along with the machine shipped in Q1, means we are two-thirds of the way to our goal for the year. The new customer is using DirectScan on a more mature process node compared to the other DirectScan customers, and for five years, carrying them well into mass production. We feel this contract is important as it demonstrates the value of DirectScan approach in mature nodes. We believe the large secureWISE booking with an existing customer reaffirms secureWISE's availability in virtually all three-dimensional fabs around the world and for many more years. While it was an eight-figure contract, and the largest in the history of secureWISE that we are aware of, the contract value is a minimum, and both the customer and we anticipate building from this base.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

With this contract in place, we have now refreshed the largest secureWISE contracts, as well as expanded the business to provide secureWISE services to front-end fabs and back-end test and assembly facilities. Our industry thrives from collaboration between suppliers and customers. In the future, more of that collaboration will be AI agent-driven. secureWISE is well-positioned to be a cornerstone of an agentic collaboration across the industry. Selling activity was very high across all aspects of the semiconductor industry, from hyperscalers to equipment vendors. We did see significant activity in our characterization and DirectScan systems as customers look to develop advanced processes and nodes. We anticipate that this activity will result in strong bookings in this category as the year progresses. Overall, it was a strong Q2 and first half of the year, both in terms of our traction with customers and our product development.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

Now let's turn to our perspective on the environment. The investment in semiconductors continues to be driven by the unprecedented build-out of AI data centers. The unique element of this cycle is how AI is transforming not just the demand for semiconductors, but also how engineering and production is being executed. While it's debatable where we are in the semiconductor demand cycle, it is clear to me that we are in the very early stages of AI transformation of semiconductor manufacturing and engineering. All participants in the semiconductor supply chain will need to leverage AI agents to be more nimble, innovative, and cost-effective. As the semiconductor industry continues to evolve, opportunities for open dialogue and peer-to-peer learning are more important than ever.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

PDF Solutions CONNECT Conference is designed to bring together members of the community to share insights, discuss challenges, and explore technologies and innovations shaping our industry's future, including recent developments from PDF Solutions. The event will be held October 15th and 16th in San Francisco during SEMICON West Week. Looking towards the second half of the year, we see increased opportunities across the entire product portfolio. With that optimism and our progress in the first half of the year, we reconfirm 20% year-over-year revenue growth for this year. I want to thank all of PDF customers, employees, and contractors for their efforts during the quarter. Now I'll turn the call over to Adnan, who will review the financials and provide his perspective on our results. Adnan?

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone, and good to speak with you all today. We are happy to review the financial results of the second quarter and to bring you up to date on the progress of the business. Please note that all of the financial results we discuss in today's call will be on a non-GAAP basis, and a reconciliation to GAAP financials is provided in the materials on our website. For Q2, our total revenues were $61.5 million, up 19% on a year-over-year basis. For the first half of this year, our revenues grew 22% on a year-over-year basis versus the comparable first half of last year due to contributions from multiple products. We are pleased with the revenue growth we saw compared to last year and remain committed to our long-term revenue growth rate target of 20%.

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

Our platform revenue this quarter were $49.1 million, up 14% versus Q2 of last year and up 24% for the six-month year-to-date period versus comparable period of last year. We benefited this quarter from the DirectScan booking that John talked about, which is with a new non-leading-edge customer. Our ending backlog includes a meaningful amount of revenue left in this contract, which will be recognized over the years to come. Our volume-based revenue increased 45% versus Q2 of last year, driven by strong Gainshare and the strength in Cimetrix runtime licenses. From a bookings perspective, John spoke about the multiple eight-figure and seven-figure deals booked during the quarter, which were across multiple products in the PDF platform. Our business activity with equipment customers was strong, including both secureWISE and Cimetrix.

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

Our total backlog grew to $271 million this quarter, up 10% versus last quarter and up 16% versus Q2 of last year. Based on what we can see in our pipeline, we anticipate strong bookings momentum for the second half of the year and expect to grow our backlog as we exit this year. It is worth noting as a reminder that we do not include potential future Cimetrix runtime licenses or Gainshare revenues in our backlog, and our backlog would be even higher if we included some estimates of these highly probable future amounts. We reported gross margin of 73% for Q2, which was lower versus Q1 of this year, due in part to the higher perpetual software licenses in Q1.

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

We expect our gross margin to increase next quarter towards the higher levels we have seen during the prior quarters, and we have line of sight to our long-term gross margin target model of 77%. Our operating expense for the quarter were up only 5% versus same quarter of last year, mainly to support the increases in our R&D expenses, offset by better management in our SG&A resources. We delivered operating margins of 22%, or about 300 basis points higher than same quarter of last year due to disciplined spend, even with the lower gross margins this quarter. We remain committed to our 27% target operating margin model communicated in December. For EPS, we reported profit of $0.27 for the quarter, which was up 42% versus the same quarter of last year and up 49% for the year-to-date comparable period. Turning to the balance sheet.

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $114.9 million, compared to $31.2 million of prior quarter, and outstanding debt of $67.5 million. During the quarter, we helped Adventus exit their equity stake at a more than 2x return for their investment in PDF shares via a follow-on equity offering, and we're thankful to them for their continued partnership. As part of the equity offering, we sold approximately $1.9 million primary shares and added $81.8 million to our balance sheet. During the quarter, we generated operating cash flow of $16.4 million and utilized $14.1 million towards CapEx, mainly for eProbe tools to meet the demand we're seeing and to order some of the longer lead time items as we look to future shipments. For each of the next two quarters, we expect to spend incrementally higher CapEx than Q2.

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

For the full year, we expect the average quarterly CapEx similar to Q2. The increased CapEx year-over-year is in part due to higher component costs we're seeing to meet the customer demands that John spoke about for the DirectScan systems. Given the strength of our business, we expect to grow our cash balances this year and end the year at higher ending cash balance compared to Q2. While we also bring down our debt balance, we have scheduled payments. Based on the bookings momentum in our deal pipeline discussed earlier, we reaffirm our prior guidance of revenue growth of 20% for full year 2026 compared to the prior full year 2025. With that, let me turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Raza. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star one one on your telephone. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before asking a question. Please wait one moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Clark Wright with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.

Clark Wright
Clark Wright
Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Hi there. Thank you. Roughly a year ago, you noted that the target audience for DirectScan systems was five to 10 customers. Based on the conversations you are having today with prospects, has that group expanded?

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

It's a good question, Clark. Thank you. We do think it's expanding. In my prepared remarks, I mentioned that we saw value for a customer that was developing a more mature node. We do see other customers like them, that are developing more mature nodes. We had been working with them for quite a while. This contract was a significant contract for us. It kicked off in the second quarter, and we do see, besides them, expansion there as well as expansion with other customers. It does increase the aperture. How much broader it is, I don't know, but it's definitely bigger than what we thought.

Clark Wright
Clark Wright
Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Got it. It was great to see the acceleration in backlog growth this quarter. Can you talk about the source of growth and if this is primarily coming from your large existing customers or if there's a broadening across the customer base?

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

Some of it's from the new customers, as I alluded to on that DirectScan contract, which contributed to backlog, as Adnan said in his prepared remarks. Also, usually a good chunk of it is existing customers. As I said, the large eight-figure secureWISE contract was with an existing equipment company, extending out for a number of years, their use of the system at a minimum level with growth on top of that.

Clark Wright
Clark Wright
Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Got it. Last one for Adnan, just could you help me better understand just the component that drove the gross margin contraction this quarter, and if we should think about current levels being the run rate for the rest of the year, or if we should think about expansion, back to more of the 1Q levels?

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

Yeah, absolutely. I think I said this in the prepared remarks, but really Q1 had some perpetual software licenses and that is really what drove the difference for this quarter. I also mentioned in the remarks that for the next quarter, we expect the margins to be reverting back to the levels that we're historically used to. I think more important than anything, if you'll remember, when we raised our gross margin and operating margin targets, we said that we expect this new target to be achieved at a faster pace than what it took us for the last ones. Recall, the last ones took us two years. As long as we're inside of that time window, that remains our goal.

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

The last comment I made on the call in the prepared remarks was that we have a line of sight to the 77% target model. Stay tuned.

Clark Wright
Clark Wright
Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Blair Abernethy with Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Blair Abernethy
Blair Abernethy
Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Hi. Nice quarter, guys.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

Thank you.

Blair Abernethy
Blair Abernethy
Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

John, I'm just wondering, first off on the secureWISE, to get an eight-figure contract there is pretty impressive. How are you thinking about the market opportunity now for secureWISE that you've had it for a year or so and just how big do you think that TAM could be?

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

Yeah. When we acquired it, our thesis was that they had really only monetized the equipment vendors. They fundamentally installed at all the front-end fabs, then charged the equipment vendors for access. You saw last year we did, and it came out at our user conference, a large contract with Intel that standardized on secureWISE. They spoke at our user conference that they would make secureWISE available to any equipment vendor that wanted to have remote access at Intel. They continue to talk about that at their events with equipment vendors about the importance of getting remote connectivity and superior support. They provide a minimal level through that contract, then if the customer wants to transmit lots of data, the equipment vendor wants to transmit lots of data and provide more AI-driven solutions, then they direct the equipment vendor to us.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

This has been a great way to us to convince every equipment vendor remote access is possible, because Intel's made that possible. With this contract we signed this last quarter, took a very significant customer of ours on the equipment side and commit across all 300 mm fabs for a number of years. That communicates to the equipment industry and secureWISE will be available at any front-end fab that you're going to. Intel also, as well as other customers, started making it available in the back-end test and assembly. If you look at what we've done, we've started to demonstrate that there is a secureWISE application with the fabs themselves, right? That was in the Intel contract for their own internal use.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

There is, of course, an expanding capability at the equipment vendors because we're demonstrating that it is becoming a standard that you can count on in most places. We're extending it into the back end because the production is getting more complex. We think, as I said in my prepared remarks, ultimately, more and more of that activity on the secureWISE network will just be agents. It won't necessarily be humans. Already, the majority of the revenue comes from data transmission across the network, which is really a key part of the AI pipeline. How much bigger? We think it can grow at least at the company growth rate over these next few years, at least at that level.

Blair Abernethy
Blair Abernethy
Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay, great. Just turning over to the DFI, just maybe talk about the pipeline there, how it's shifted, and there's an eval you said in one of the machines that was shipped this quarter.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

Yeah.

Blair Abernethy
Blair Abernethy
Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

How are you thinking about the ramp there in terms of getting to contracted revenue?

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

I think we've had a very good dialogue with that customer. We know what kinds of things they want to see the machine do. They selected the machine because they thought it had some very unique capability. This is getting us into the memory market, which is an important step. Expansion into the more mature nodes, expansion to memory. We'll look at geographic expansion as we get further through this year, early next year. How quickly it converts, I think these things typically take close to a year to convert, so I'm not going to go and speculate on when it will convert, or if it will convert. We do see this as an important beachhead for us.

Blair Abernethy
Blair Abernethy
Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay, in terms of your CapEx, Adnan, I didn't catch all of that. Did you say that you sort of felt that the run rate we're seeing for Q2 is going to be the average for the year? Is that?

Adnan Raza
Adnan Raza
CFO at PDF Solutions

Let me clarify that. Two comments, two parts. One, that we expect for Q3 and Q4 the CapEx to incrementally be higher compared to where it was for Q2. When you look at the whole year CapEx and just look at an average quarterly amount, the math would say it's similar to where we were in Q2 of this year. Net spending a little bit more. I think the key thing to take away is, look, with the strength of bookings, with the strength in the business, even with this CapEx, we're looking to grow cash from the levels of Q2. That's something we feel good about.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's star one one to ask the question. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Ben Taxdahl
Ben Taxdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Hey, guys, it's Ben. It's Ben Taxdahl on for Christian here.

Operator

Okay.

Ben Taxdahl
Ben Taxdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

A lot of my questions were answered, but just one on the eProbe is, we're on target to hit six this year it seems like.

Ben Taxdahl
Ben Taxdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

What's the visibility looking like into 2027, and could we ship another six or how can I think about that?

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

Well, we are having dialogues with customers about that now, Ben. I don't know that we're ready to go and communicate what we think 2027 would look like. We have been working with our supply chain, to both optimize time that it takes to bring things out so we have more flexibility. Capacity we feel pretty good about. We think that they're able to build at a level higher than this. We feel like we're not limited from a capacity standpoint yet. A little bit on supply. The biggest issue's just been around timeline and supply chain. As we alluded to, costs, particularly around the computing element of the solution, keep going up on the computing side, so we're doing some things there around how we drive our cost to be a little bit more effective given where memory prices are going and other things like that.

John Kibarian
John Kibarian
President and CEO at PDF Solutions

Hopefully by later this year, we'll be able to communicate our targets for 2027 in terms of what we think production will be. There's potential that we could produce more if we needed to. For sure, there's the leverage there.

Ben Taxdahl
Ben Taxdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Perfect. That's all I got. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's star one one to ask the question. At this time, there are no more questions. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the program. Thank you for joining us on today's call. You may now disconnect.

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