Atomera Q3 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• Atomera reported no revenue in Q3 2026, with a $6 million GAAP net loss and $34.8 million in cash, equivalents and short-term investments. Management expects about $50,000 in wafer-delivery revenue during Q4.
• The company is now engaged with three of four Gate-All-Around semiconductor developers, with two already running customer silicon through Atomera’s MST deposition process.
• Atomera expanded its memory initiatives into next-generation DRAM and NAND and began a joint development agreement with IQE to develop lower-cost, high-performance gallium nitride-on-silicon wafers for RF and power applications.

Atomera NASDAQ: ATOM reported no revenue for the third quarter of 2026, while management highlighted progress across its Gate-All-Around logic, memory, power, RF and gallium nitride-on-silicon initiatives.

President and CEO Scott Bibaud said the company met a goal it established in February to actively engage the companies developing Gate-All-Around, or GAA, semiconductor technology. Atomera is now engaged with three of the four GAA developers and remains in discussions with the fourth, he said.

“We are now engaged with three of the four Gate-All-Around customers, and we remain in active dialogue with the fourth,” Bibaud said. He added that the engagements range from early evaluations to development demonstrations using customer silicon.

Atomera develops Mears Silicon Technology, or MST, which it says can help control dopant movement during semiconductor manufacturing. Bibaud said two of the company’s GAA customer engagements have progressed to the stage of running customer silicon through Atomera’s MST deposition process, while a third customer is at an earlier evaluation stage.

During the question-and-answer session, Bibaud said Atomera has met the milestones established by its GAA customers so far. Those milestones include physical testing of deposited films in complex structures, assessments of uniformity and durability through later manufacturing steps, and eventually evaluations of dopant diffusion and electrical performance.

Memory Opportunity Expands to DRAM and NAND

Atomera also discussed expanding its memory-market efforts to include both next-generation DRAM and NAND flash applications. Bibaud said the company sees particular opportunity in DRAM designs using a 4F-squared cell architecture, in which a vertical transistor and capacitor arrangement can reduce cell area without requiring finer lithography.

According to Bibaud, Atomera is applying its phosphorus-blocking work from GAA development to help control dopants in vertical transistors for 4F-squared DRAM. He said the company presented its approach in a peer-reviewed paper at the SISPAD conference in September and has discussed the technology with leading memory manufacturers.

The company is also pursuing NAND opportunities tied to the growing number of layers in 3D NAND devices. Bibaud said MST could enable shorter gate lengths in the CMOS die used to control the memory array, potentially helping manufacturers better match the dimensions of bonded logic and memory dies.

Despite the opportunity, Bibaud characterized Atomera’s memory efforts as relatively early stage. He said the company has adjusted its DRAM offerings as industry development activity shifted toward high-bandwidth memory and other next-generation three-dimensional architectures.

IQE Agreement Targets GaN-on-Silicon Manufacturing

A major development during the quarter was Atomera’s joint development agreement with IQE, a supplier of compound semiconductor epitaxy. Under the agreement, IQE will optimize gallium nitride epitaxy grown on MST silicon substrates to develop lower-cost, high-performance RF GaN-on-silicon wafers.

Bibaud said the work has begun and is intended to address both device performance and manufacturing readiness. The agreement covers GaN applications in RF and power markets.

“A JDA like this is what moves us from a lab result to a product,” Bibaud said, adding that IQE could provide a route to high-volume production and sample wafers for foundries, integrated device manufacturers and fabless designers.

In response to an analyst question, Bibaud said the development effort contemplated with IQE is not expected to be a multi-year program. He did not provide a timetable for commercial production.

Atomera also said its large program with a major analog and power manufacturer remains on track. Bibaud said the companies’ engineering teams are conducting wafer runs aimed at incorporating MST into the customer’s next device node. The company is also advancing work on trench FETs, heterojunction bipolar transistors and RF silicon-on-insulator applications.

Prima and Selecta Product Branding

The company introduced two product brands during the quarter. “Prima” will refer to MST blanket-deposition starting wafers, while “Selecta” will refer to MST integrated selectively within a customer’s transistor fabrication process.

Bibaud said Atomera had expanded the number of starting-wafer applications from two a year ago to six, including RF SOI, GaN-on-silicon and memory-related uses. He said Prima offerings may offer a faster route to revenue because customers can trial and qualify starting wafers more readily than technologies integrated into the middle of a device process.

However, management did not provide a timeline for volume production of Prima-based wafers or disclose the number of customers using those products.

Third-Quarter Financial Results and Outlook

Chief Financial Officer Frank Laurencio said Atomera recorded no revenue in the third quarter, compared with $11,000 in the prior-year period and $158,000 in the second quarter of 2026. Recent revenue has come from fees related to wafer deliveries and MSTcad licenses, and Laurencio said wafer-delivery revenue can fluctuate materially between quarters.

• GAAP net loss was $6 million, or $0.15 per share, compared with a $5.6 million loss, or $0.17 per share, a year earlier.
• Non-GAAP net loss was $4.6 million, compared with $4.4 million in the third quarter of 2025.
• GAAP operating expenses were $6.3 million, up from $5.7 million a year earlier and down from $6.9 million in the second quarter.
• Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled $34.8 million at Sept. 30, down from $38.4 million at June 30.
• Operating cash use was $3.2 million during the quarter.

Laurencio said Atomera expects approximately $50,000 of revenue from wafer deliveries in the fourth quarter. The company continues to expect 2026 non-GAAP operating expenses near the high end of its previously stated $18.5 million, plus or minus $250,000, range, citing higher costs for tool leases, metrology and device fabrication.

The CFO also said fourth-quarter operating cash use will increase because Atomera made a roughly $1.4 million payment on Oct. 1 to prepay the lease for a 200-millimeter tool for all of 2027. Atomera did not sell shares through its at-the-market program during the quarter, its second consecutive quarter without such sales, and had 39.1 million shares outstanding at Sept. 30.

About Atomera (NASDAQ:ATOM)

Atomera Incorporated is a semiconductor materials and technology company that develops solutions intended to improve the performance and energy efficiency of integrated circuits. Its core technology, Mears Silicon Technology (MST), is a proprietary semiconductor-materials innovation designed to enhance the characteristics of silicon-based transistors.

MST is engineered as a thin layer within the semiconductor manufacturing process. Atomera states that the technology can help chip manufacturers improve transistor performance, reduce power consumption, and potentially extend the capabilities of existing process technologies without requiring a complete redesign of the underlying manufacturing platform.

The company primarily operates through a licensing and technology-transfer model, working with semiconductor manufacturers and other industry participants to evaluate and integrate MST into their processes and products.

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