Atomera Q2 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• Atomera reported $158,000 in Q2 revenue and a $6.3 million GAAP net loss, while higher engineering and fabrication costs pushed full-year non-GAAP operating expenses toward the high end of its $18.25 million–$18.75 million guidance range.
• The company reached a key Gate-All-Around milestone with one customer, demonstrating that MST could be deposited in a relevant structure with positive electrical results. Licensing discussions have begun, but a deal is unlikely within the next two months and could take substantially longer if more testing is required.
• Atomera highlighted expanding opportunities in 4F²/3D DRAM, NAND and GaN-on-silicon RF; GaN testing showed substantially improved linearity versus a reference device and generated interest from potential customers. Cash and short-term investments declined to $38.4 million from $41.1 million in the prior quarter.

Atomera NASDAQ: ATOM reported second-quarter revenue of $158,000, primarily from fees for wafer deliveries to its large integrated device manufacturer customer, while management highlighted progress in Gate-All-Around logic, memory, radio-frequency silicon and gallium nitride applications.

The company posted a GAAP net loss of $6.3 million, or $0.17 per share, compared with a $5 million net loss, also $0.17 per share, a year earlier. On a non-GAAP basis, Atomera reported a $5 million loss, compared with $4 million in the prior-year quarter.

Gate-All-Around milestone advances licensing path

President and CEO Scott Bibaud said Atomera cleared a significant milestone with one of two active Gate-All-Around, or GAA, customers. The company is working with two of the four major players it is targeting in the GAA market and remains in discussions with the other two.

Bibaud said the milestone demonstrated that Atomera could deposit its Mears Silicon Technology, or MST, material in a customer-relevant GAA structure and achieve a positive electrical result. He described the work as a meaningful response to manufacturability questions posed by the customer rather than a procedural step.

The next stage would involve the customer licensing Atomera’s technology, installing it in its own fabrication facility and testing it within a proprietary process flow. Bibaud said Atomera and the customer have discussed potential licensing terms, though he cautioned that a deal would not likely occur in the next two months. If results are favorable, discussions could accelerate late this year or later; additional experimental rounds could extend the process by roughly nine months, he said.

“The goal of completing this demonstration is absolutely to lead into license negotiations,” Bibaud said during the question-and-answer session.

Memory opportunity expands from DRAM to NAND

Management said changing demand conditions driven by artificial intelligence have shifted memory manufacturers’ focus toward vertical DRAM architectures, including 4F² and 3D DRAM, rather than planar-periphery improvements alone.

Atomera said it developed a new value proposition for 4F² DRAM in which an MST starting wafer could enable a vertical DRAM access transistor using a fabrication process that management believes could be less expensive than approaches currently being pursued by much of the industry. The company completed a TCAD simulation study supporting the concept, and its results were accepted for presentation at an IEEE conference in September.

Bibaud said the company’s prior work on planar DRAM periphery circuits has also opened a potential market in NAND flash. A major NAND supplier recently indicated that AI-related requirements are increasing the need for planar-periphery performance improvements, according to management.

Atomera previously had not viewed NAND as a serious market for MST. Bibaud said NAND produces more wafers annually than DRAM, although DRAM revenue is higher, and characterized NAND as a potentially significant opportunity because Atomera’s business model is tied to wafer shipments.

GaN-on-silicon RF test results draw customer interest

The company also emphasized new RF performance data for MST-enabled gallium nitride on silicon, or GaN-on-silicon. Bibaud said testing by characterization partner Infosys showed effectively lossless RF performance and strong harmonic-distortion results, which he said produced exceptional linearity.

At a benchmark drive level, the company said linearity was approximately 1,000 times better than a GaN-on-silicon reference, with improvements of two to three orders of magnitude across the power range tested. Management said the results approached the loss and linearity performance of advanced trap-rich RF silicon-on-insulator, or RFSOI, while using a lower-cost silicon substrate.

Atomera presented the findings at the International Microwave Symposium in June. Bibaud said the presentation generated interest that led to work with several new potential customers seeking to evaluate MST-enabled GaN-on-silicon in their own designs.

Management said the results could potentially enable GaN-on-silicon to be used in RF front-end designs traditionally built on RFSOI. Unlike RFSOI, Bibaud said GaN-on-silicon could potentially support fully integrated RF front ends that include switches, low-noise amplifiers and power amplifiers.

Elsewhere, Atomera said its large IDM program continued according to plan, with new device test data arriving as another batch of experiments proceeds. The company also said its trench FET and heterojunction bipolar transistor development programs were advancing in power applications, while RFSOI wafers continued to run with its second joint-development-agreement partner.

Expenses rise as engineering costs increase

GAAP operating expenses totaled $6.9 million in the second quarter, up from $5.2 million a year earlier and $6.2 million in the first quarter. On a non-GAAP basis, operating expenses rose to $5.1 million from $4.8 million sequentially, primarily due to higher general and administrative expense, partly offset by lower research and development expense.

CFO Frank Laurencio said the company is encountering higher costs for outsourced engineering work, tool leases, metrology and device fabrication as semiconductor-industry growth tightens supply. Atomera now expects full-year 2026 non-GAAP operating expenses near the high end of its previously stated $18.25 million to $18.75 million range.

Cash equivalents and short-term investments were $38.4 million as of June 30, down from $41.1 million at March 31. Atomera used $3.9 million of cash in operating activities during the quarter and did not sell shares through its at-the-market program. The company had 39 million shares outstanding at quarter-end.

Management said it had not received an award under a proposed PowerAmerica GaN power-device development program and presumed it was not selected, though Bibaud said the program would have contributed only about $300,000 to Atomera. The company also said it had no new update regarding its relationship with STMicroelectronics, although discussions with business units remain ongoing.

About Atomera (NASDAQ:ATOM)

Atomera Inc is a materials engineering company that develops and licenses advanced thin film technologies for the semiconductor industry. Its flagship offering, Mears Silicon Technology (MST), is designed to enhance transistor performance, improve power efficiency and boost device yields. Atomera's solutions are integrated into existing fabrication processes without major changes to equipment or materials flows, enabling foundries and integrated device manufacturers to adopt the technology with minimal disruption.

At the core of Atomera's business model is the licensing and patent-licensing of MST.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to contact@marketbeat.com.

Continue following MarketBeat

Add MarketBeat as your preferred source on Google to see our latest stories in your feed.

Add As Preferred Source