Jefferies’ Top Crowded Semiconductor Long Positions: Top 10 Stocks

5. KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2024:

Shares Short % Of Outstanding: 1.82%

KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) is a California-based semiconductor manufacturing equipment provider. Its products enable chip manufacturers to etch, inspect, drill, and conduct other chip and printed circuit board manufacturing operations. Since KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) serves the needs of the broader chip manufacturing industry instead of AI-specific needs such as packaging, the shares have been stressed in 2024. The stock is up by a modest 19.6% year to date and it sank by a whopping 19% in October. This was because ASML, the only manufacturer of high-end chip fabrication machines, provided a muted guidance for 2025 which made investors worry that chip manufacturers might not be as aggressive with their capital expenditure as previously expected. Consequently, any improvement in the spending outlook could introduce tailwinds while further US sanctions against China might prove troublesome.

Aristotle Atlantic Partners mentioned KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) in its Q2 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:

“KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) contributed to portfolio performance in the second quarter as the company reported a strong March quarter. The results were driven by better-than-expected performance in patterning and services segments. The company also provided positive commentary on customer orders and increased visibility on growing sequential revenue through the rest of 2024. Commentary surrounding wafer fab equipment (WFE) spending for 2024 shows improving demand, with 2024 at least flat versus 2023 and growing customer spend driven by strong foundry/logic and high bandwidth memory (HBM) demand from accelerating AI-compute infrastructure spend.”