Veeco Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ:VECO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

William Miller: There might be some, but I would say it is probably not a major driver of our business. What would be probably more interesting is, as Hammer becomes more broadly adopted, the view is — the complexity of the head increases, and therefore the number of deposition and X steps increases as well, which hopefully should be a tailwind for equipment demand as Hammer becomes more broadly adopted.

Mark Miller: Okay. Your guidance for this quarter and also last quarter, margins have come up. I’m just wondering about your current backlog. What does the margin profile look like similar to what you’ve been seeing in the last two quarters?

John Kiernan: Yeah. I think, Mark, we’ve been working quite hard on improving our gross margins. That’s been a real focus for the company. And you’re right, we’ve increased our gross margin as the year progressed. We did see some favorable areas in terms of providing that gross margin improvement, and things like, getting better efficiencies, better utilizations, as we think about our manufacturing, our servicing of customers, and we’ve spent quite a bit of effort on that. I’m not going to specifically give a guide going into next year for gross margin. But I would say that, we continue to make progress against our target margins. And we’ll give as much effort next year as we gave this year to improve gross margins going forward.

Mark Miller: Thank you.

William Miller: Thanks Mark.

Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to CEO, Bill Miller, for closing comments.

End of Q&A:

William Miller: Thank you, operator. I do want to thank our customers and shareholders along with the Veeco United team for their continued support as we execute our growth strategy. Goodnight and have a great evening.

Operator: This concludes today’s teleconference. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.