Entegris, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENTG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Timothy Arcuri: And then can you talk about competition in China. We keep hearing about these materials companies. I mean they’re not — they don’t seem to be competing with you all that much, but there is a lot of subsidization of the materials supply chain in China. So can you just speak about how competitive you think they’re becoming with you? Do you see them? And if so, where? .

Bertrand Loy: I mean you’re right. I mean we’re seeing a lot of Chinese competitors that on paper would provide similar types of products. But so far, they have not been able to really match the performance of the solutions we develop, and we are hearing that loudly and clearly from our Chinese competitors — Chinese customers. They see the value of using our solutions that helps them improve their device performance that helps them improve their yields and they are sticking to the integral solutions when available. And so again, we are keeping a close eye on what’s happening in China. But so far, we feel very good about our competitive position in China.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Chris Kapsch with Loop Capital Markets.

Christopher Kapsch: Question focused on the new material solutions segment. So I think it was on a pro forma basis, if you will, the revenue you mentioned down 16% year-over-year, 1% sequentially. It sounds as though the key drivers, the softness, the fab utilization rates, the function wafer starts. Just looking for a little more color. Did the Enthone transaction contribute to those variances? I assume weren’t staying as pro forma to reflect the Enthone deal. And then you called out memory. So just wondering if the weakness within this new material solutions segment is skewed towards memory. And within that, is it skewed towards deposition products that were formerly SCEM for 3D NAND architectures? Or is it maybe more a function CMP module and slurries for legacy technology nodes perhaps or is it balanced across those different product segments? .

Bertrand Loy: Yes. So if you look at Material Solutions, you’re correct, they’re down about 15% year-to-date. And I would remind you that this is the division with the greatest exposure to memory, number one. But also remember that this is the division that suffered the greatest impact from the export restrictions to China, enacted in October 2022, right? So when you recast for that, actually, the division is performing in line with our expectations. And for us, in 2023, the focus for the division has been to engage with customers on those new materials and trying to develop those co-optimized solutions across the array of capabilities that we have and Entegris from the film to the polishing solutions all the way to post-CMP cleaning solutions [indiscernible] chemistries.

And I would say that we are very pleased with the quality of those engagements, which have been validating the potential that we see for this division. So again, this year, not particularly exciting for the reasons I was mentioning, exposure to memory, impact of China, but if you look under the hood, a lot of really exciting opportunities in terms of new materials and new slurries, opportunities and ancillary cleaning and etching chemistries.

Christopher Kapsch: Fair enough. Just one follow-up on your comments about the memory market and the sort of push out and the ramp of HVM for 2xx layered architectures. Just given the downdraft in the memory, I’m just wondering if it’s pronounced enough that there’s instances where these advanced memory makers look to accelerate the road map to — because the road map right now goes to 300-plus layers, all the way to 1,000-plus layers. Obviously, that’s disproportionately beneficial to you given the content per wafer. I’m just curious if there’s instances where they look at this sort of soft backdrop as an opportunity to accelerate that transition to advanced nodes? Or is it really they have to crawl at 200 layers before they walk at 300 layers or how is that dynamic playing out? .