Ichor Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Ichor EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -$0.05
• Consensus EPS: $0.09
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.14
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Ichor Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: $232.65 million
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Ichor Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/4/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, February 4, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:30PM ET

Ichor (NASDAQ:ICHR) engages in the design, engineering, and manufacture of fluid delivery subsystems and components for semiconductor capital equipment in the United States and internationally. It primarily offers gas and chemical delivery systems and subsystems that are used in the manufacturing of semiconductor devices. The company's gas delivery subsystems deliver, monitor, and control gases used in semiconductor manufacturing processes, such as etch and deposition; and chemical delivery subsystems blend and dispense the reactive liquid chemistries used in semiconductor manufacturing processes comprising chemical-mechanical planarization, electroplating, and cleaning. In addition, it manufactures precision machined components, weldments, electron beam, laser-welded components, precision vacuum and hydrogen brazing, surface treatment technologies, and other proprietary products. The company primarily markets its products to equipment OEMs in the semiconductor equipment market in Japan. Ichor Holdings, Ltd. was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in Fremont, California.

Ichor Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to I Corps' fourth quarter and fiscal year twenty twenty four earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. If you require operator assistance during the conference, please press 0. As a reminder, this call is being recorded.

[Operator]

I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Claire McAdams, Investor Relations for I Corps. Please go ahead.

[Claire McAdams, Investor Relations at Ichor]

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining today's fourth quarter and fiscal year twenty twenty four conference call. As you read our earnings press release and as you listen to this conference call, please recognize that both contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control and which could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. These risks and uncertainties include those spelled out in our earnings press release, those described in our annual report on Form 10 ks for fiscal year twenty twenty three, and those described in subsequent filings with the SEC.

[Claire McAdams, Investor Relations at Ichor]

You should consider all forward looking statements in light of those and other risks and uncertainties. Additionally, we will be providing certain non GAAP financial measures during this conference call. Our earnings press release and the financial supplement posted to our IR website each provide a reconciliation of these non GAAP financial measures to their most comparable GAAP financial measures. On the call with me today are Jeff Andreesen, our CEO and Greg Swit, our CFO. Jeff will begin with an update on our business and then Greg will provide additional details about our results and guidance.

[Claire McAdams, Investor Relations at Ichor]

After the prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. I'll now turn over the call to Jeff Andresen. Jeff?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Thank you, Claire, and welcome, everyone, to our Q4 earnings call. Thanks for joining us today. On today's call, I will briefly recap our year end results, provide an update on our current outlook and review our progress qualifying our proprietary products. I'll also discuss some of the gross margin headwinds that impacted our Q4 results and our margin expansion strategies ahead for 2025. On the top line, our growth accelerated in Q4 with $233,000,000 in revenue exceeding our expectations going into the quarter.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Revenues were up 10% sequentially after roughly six straight quarters of revenues hovering at the $200,000,000 level. As a result, the year ended modestly stronger than expected with 10% growth in the second half and total revenues of $849,000,000 up 5% from 2023. Customer demand continued to strengthen throughout the fourth quarter, requiring our weekly build rates to ramp significantly to levels that began to require additional resources. We believe this higher level of demand is indicative of a strong year ahead for our primary applications of etch and CVD. With broad based demand strength continuing from both the advanced logic and DRAM markets and the beginning of a recovery in NAND technology investments.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

With Q4 revenues finally indicating the inflection point for more meaningful growth ahead after a prolonged downturn in etch and deposition, we added significant machining resources in Q4 to address the increase in demand for both our build to print and our internally developed machine products. Additionally, in preparation for increasing proprietary content, as we cut these components into our gas panel builds, we are building stocking levels to support our gas panel integration sites. These resources are critical to support not only the top line growth for our business, but also the increasing component content that we can supply internally, an important part of our gross margin expansion story. The gross margin headwinds in Q4 reflect the higher direct labor costs, which were not fully absorbed within the quarter, largely due to a longer than expected training process. We expect the residual impact of these higher labor costs to carry somewhat into the first quarter, but as Greg will discuss in his remarks, the vast majority of the labor and inventory charges that impacted Q4 gross margin were unique to the fourth quarter.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

So as we look ahead to 2025, I'll first reflect on the momentum that has been building over the last few quarters in advance of what we expect will be a solid growth year for Ichor within an increasingly positive mix profile emerging for wafer fab equipment demand, principally a higher mix of etch and deposition. You may recall that our visibility for growth and an inflection point in our revenue run rate improved significantly between our Q2 and Q3 earnings calls. While the debate over WFE growth in 2025 intensified, we were talking about the beginning of an upgrade investment cycle for NAND, we were talking about an increase in etch and deposition intensity, boosted in large part by the additional process steps required by advanced logic devices migrating to gate all around architectures. We also talked about how the expected slowdown in WFE spending in China was a favorable mix shift, setting up a strong environment for The U. S.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

OEMs to outperform overall WFE. And while the evolving WFE demand environment did in fact result in lower quarterly build rates for our litho and silicon carbide businesses as we move through 2024, we also talked about how our participation in advanced packaging and high bandwidth memory through our chemical delivery business has largely offset these pockets of weakening demand. As we indicated by webcast in January, we believe this inflection point in our revenues is not a one or two quarter phenomenon. We are investing appropriately for the growth ahead. In fact, demand has continued to strengthen quarter to date and we are very pleased today to be raising the high end of the range of our revenue forecast for Q1.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

As we have gained clarity into the various margin impacts for Q1, we can also increase our gross margin outlook for the quarter and even more importantly for the full year. We expect continued gross margin improvement throughout 2025 given our visibility for continued strong customer demand and increasing content from proprietary components. We believe the company can generate flow through of 25% to 30% or more, enabling us to deliver gross margins in the 15% to 16% range by Q2 and exceeding 16% for 2025, even on modest revenue gains beyond Q1, which brings me to an update on our progress qualifying both our proprietary components for our existing gas panels as well as our next generation gas panel. We have made steady progress in closing additional component qualifications over the past quarter and will be cutting these components into our manufacturing pipeline in Q1. We expect growth in our new products this year will be a key driver for margin expansion for Ichor in 2025.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I'll start with our new component products. We are very pleased to announce today that our high purity valves were qualified at a second customer during Q4 and we are currently progressing through qualification at a third customer. We continue to make progress qualifying our proprietary fittings, which are components used in our weldment business. With our two largest customers already qualified, we are in the final stages of our third qualification. All three of our process tool customers have already qualified our substrates used in our gas panels.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

These are all critical components used in the existing gas panels that we assemble as well as our next generation gas panel. These components will continue to ramp in volume as we cut them into our manufacturing pipeline. Now moving to our next generation gas panel. As discussed last quarter, we delivered more than 50 of our next generation gas panels during 2024. We achieved initial customer or OEM qualifications on four applications last year, and many of the next generation panels that we delivered in 2024 are part of a qualification process with the end device manufacturer, which are continuing into 2025.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

The timing of these qualifications is being worked between our customer and their customer. And in 2025, we expect additional qualifications to follow. We are also now engaged on two additional applications beyond the four we discussed previously. The key takeaway as it relates to our proprietary content strategy is that we expect to supply an increasing proportion of our bill of materials with internally developed products, whether they are passive components that we no longer have to purchase for build to print gas panels, all the way up to our fully proprietary next generation gas panel. While these internally developed and manufactured products have required a meaningful investment by Ichor, most of the incremental R and D investments are behind us and our labor force is now in place to address higher levels of customer demand and accelerate our gross margin expansion strategies as we move through 2025.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

To summarize, our expectations of industry spending dynamics, the mix shifts of investment priorities in the coming year are, on all, very positive for Ichor's business. And regardless of the magnitude of WFE growth expected for 2025, we are confident in our ability to outperform the growth in WFE this year. Likewise, we are confident in our ability to demonstrate strong flow through and deliver continued expansion of our gross margin profile as we enjoy a more robust customer demand environment, while steadily incorporating an increasing share of proprietary products into our production flow. With that, I'll turn it over to Greg to recap our Q4 results and provide further details around our financial outlook.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

Thanks, Jeff. To begin, I would like to emphasize that the P and L metrics discussed today are non GAAP measures. These measures exclude the impact of share based compensation, amortization of acquired intangible assets, non recurring charges and discrete tax items and adjustments. There is a useful financial supplement available in the Investors section of our website that summarizes our GAAP and non GAAP financial results, as well as a summary of the balance sheet and cash flow information for the last several quarters. Fourth quarter revenues were $233,000,000 aligning with the upper end of guidance.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

This represents a 10% increase from the previous quarter and a 15% increase year over year. Gross margin declined to 12%, which was lower than our expectations by about 300 basis points. This decline was primarily due to the higher level of direct manufacturing labor costs we added during the quarter to support the higher demand level in the back half of the fourth quarter and the first quarter of twenty twenty five that we were not able to fully absorb within the quarter. Additionally, we experienced higher than anticipated inventory charges associated with our year end physical inventory procedures as well as unfavorable product mix with the majority of the current revenue upside taking place in our built to print gas panel integration business. Operating expenses for Q4 were slightly below forecast at $22,300,000 Net interest expense was $1,700,000 while non GAAP net income tax expense exceeded our forecast at $900,000 The resulting net income per share was $0.08 Now turning to the balance sheet.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

Cash and equivalents at the end of the quarter totaled $109,000,000 an $8,000,000 decrease from Q3. While our Q4 P and L generated over $8,000,000 of positive cash flow, our net investment in working capital during Q4 was $11,000,000 primarily in inventory given the revenue growth inflection in Q4. After $4,400,000 of capital expenditures, free cash flow for the quarter was a use of $6,900,000 DSOs for the quarter were slightly lower than Q3 at thirty four days and inventory turns increased from $3,100,000 to $3,400,000 We reduced debt by $1,900,000 during Q4, bringing our year end balance of total debt outstanding to $129,000,000 down from $250,000,000 a year ago. Our net debt coverage ratio has declined to 1.6 times down from 3.4 times a year ago. Now let us discuss our guidance for the first quarter of twenty twenty five.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

As Jeff mentioned today, we are increasing the high end of our preliminary outlook discussed in early January. With anticipated revenues in the range of $235,000,000 to $255,000,000 we expect gross margin in the range of 14% to 15%. At the midpoint of the range or $245,000,000 in revenue and 14.5% gross margin, this equates to roughly 25% flow through from our Q3 baseline less about $1,500,000 of residual impacts, ramping and training of our incremental machining headcount. Once these incremental cost headwinds are behind us, we anticipate returning to gross margins above 15% by the second quarter and flow through in the 25% to 30% range. Q1 operating expenses are projected to be approximately $23,500,000 reflecting the seasonal impact of payroll taxes resetting, audit fees and other variable compensation costs.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

Given that we expect to remain at similar levels beyond Q1, today we are also lowering our expected OpEx increase for the full year to an anticipated 5% to 7% compared to fiscal twenty twenty four. Net interest expense for Q1 is expected to be approximately $1,600,000 and we expect this level to be relatively consistent through 2025 given recent announcements around a slowing of rate decreases this year. For modeling purposes, net interest expense for 2025 should be approximately $6,000,000 Our expected non GAAP effective tax rate for 2025 is projected to be approximately 12.5. For Q1 specifically, our EPS range of $0.2 to $0.32 reflects our expectation for $34,400,000 in diluted shares outstanding. Operator, we are ready to take questions.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

Please open the line.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now be conducting a Q and A session. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities.

[Operator]

Please proceed.

[Craig Ellis, Director of Research at B Riley Financial]

Yes. Thanks for taking the questions and congratulations on the momentum that you're seeing in the business guys. I'll start with Greg and then move on with one for Jeff. So Greg, if gross margins in calendar twenty twenty five are going to be above 16%, which would be a three thirty basis point increase year on year, can you just help us understand how much of that is a benefit from the new product progress that's being made, valves, gas panels, etcetera, volume versus the absence of some of the headwinds that might have been in play in 2024 like the inventory charges and some of the volume related cost ramp ups?

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

Hi, Craig.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

Okay. So let's see if I could get to all your points there. You asked quite a bit. To get to the we said the 16% by the end of the year for the full year, The headwinds will go away as we said, those will exit Q2, right? So those won't materialize as we get through Q2.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

The internal branded products, right, that's going to continue on the 25% to 30% improvement on the flow through from an incremental standpoint. Then as we get into the second half, as we get stronger, that will benefit as well. So the tailwinds will go away. That will benefit us exiting the headwinds, sorry, tail headwinds Q2. The Israel branded products will continue to benefit through the rest of the year.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

And then as we get through the second half, we expect those to be in the 15% to 16% and stronger in Q4.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

And Craig,

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I would tell you, it's similar to it's Jeff, sorry. Similar to what we've talked about in the past, I'd say, obviously some of the excursions that we have won't repeat. But really the new products are probably the largest driver. And then given that we're seeing volumes up year over year, then we get kind of the leverage of the core, call it the core business excluding some of the new stuff. And so that is how we'll do it.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

And obviously, you'll see these margins accrete as we go through the year because of this and how they layer in.

[Craig Ellis, Director of Research at B Riley Financial]

That's helpful. Yes. So I would just infer from that that we've got maybe 45% of the benefit on products, 35% on volume and 20% from the absence of some of the headwinds we had last year. That's real helpful guys. And then the second question was for you, Jeff.

[Craig Ellis, Director of Research at B Riley Financial]

It's great to see some confidence in demand being shown by just the build intensity quarter to date and what you're doing with the high end of the range. As you look at calendar twenty five for Ichor and think about the growth in the business, how would you force rank three d NAND and its transition spend versus DRAM and high bandwidth memory versus gate all around and foundry?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I think that's a good question, Craig. I mean, obviously, I think we see foundry logic remaining pretty strong. I think you've heard TSMC's outlook, things like that. We don't see that going backwards. I think with gate all around, I think that might see some increased DRAM.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Our view today is it's going to stay pretty steady and strong. So really maybe the inflection that we're seeing to some degree is really wrapped around some of the NAND increases that we're seeing in the beginning of the year for sure.

[Craig Ellis, Director of Research at B Riley Financial]

Yes. And that would track with some of the things we heard last week too.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Yes.

[Craig Ellis, Director of Research at B Riley Financial]

Okay, guys. That's really helpful. Thank you very much. I'll get back in the queue.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Chin with Stifel. Please proceed.

[Brian Chin, Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

Hi there. Good afternoon. Thanks for letting us ask a few questions. Yes, maybe firstly, in terms of it sounds like you're Jeff, you're talking about at the moment revenue levels kind of staying at sort of the Q1 level maybe through the balance of the year. And so one I wanted to clarify that sort of the impression you're giving because and then kind of secondly, you did pull forward those direct labor costs, which sort of suggests that you expect business maybe even to pick up.

[Brian Chin, Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

And so are you being sort of conservative in terms of that stabilization outlook? And is what you're really doing kind of putting more and higher levels of responsiveness into the business by prepping some of these costs now?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Obviously, I think the way to think about it is demand strengthened in the quarter. We needed to add resources because we see this staying pretty sustained in the first half with a modest, I would say, at this stage, our view of the second half is up modestly. So we're comfortable adding the resources in. I don't think it's the thing that you guys can see is we talk about internal supply, that's a whole another demand driver that I would tell you is outgrowing the rest of the revenue in the company as we start to cut these things in. So that is largely where a lot of these resources needed to get into as we completed some of the qualifications we needed to get in front of inventory builds and some of the demand for that.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

So I don't know if I answered your question entirely, but I think for us we see we're not guiding Q2, but we see it pretty similar today to Q1 with a modest increase in the second half.

[Brian Chin, Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

Got it. So some of that ties into the internal sourcing for some of the qualifications on existing gas panels?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Yes, certainly from a resource perspective, a fair bit of it actually. And in the second half, like we talked about, we see boundary logic pretty strong through the year, DRAM pretty stable through the year. But remember, our litho business has been down. We see that coming back towards the second half. Silicon carbide, for example, has been pretty muted since the first half of twenty twenty four.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

We see that starting to materialize again towards the second half. So there's other things and share gains we've earned this year that will help us in the back half of the year.

[Brian Chin, Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

Okay.

[Brian Chin, Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

And this is a little tricky, but if you did see upside materialize from etch and deposition, and let's say it's on more legacy gas panel designs, how are you thinking about that impact on sort of the sequential gross margin progression through the year? Or do you think some of these some of your other margin initiatives can sort of help to balance that out as well as maybe seeing improvement in machine component business as well?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Yes. What I would tell you is that if our mix goes heavier to gas panels, which I think is your question, if there's more upside to that than some of the other stuff, it would have a bit of a muting on the percentage of gross margin. Having said that, we're starting to get to the stage where we've got kind of we're utilizing our overheads and all that much more efficiently because we do have capacity in place that can support numbers well above this, right from the 2022 timeframe that we were marching towards. So I don't think it will be as big of an issue as we've seen this year because we were still trying to qualify. We hadn't got our internal supply really going too strongly.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

And now as we turn this corner, I'm pretty happy with where we've gotten to on that. So that should help us, call it, add a tailwind to the margin that would offset any of those product mix issues.

[Brian Chin, Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

Okay, great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Charles Cee with Needham and Company. Please proceed.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Charles.

[Operator]

Charles, your line may be on, muted on your end. Right. I think we may have lost Charles here. I'll go on to the next question. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Banker with TD Cowen.

[Operator]

Please proceed.

[Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I told them first one, Jeff, last quarter you were very bullish on NAND recovering. Very curious how to think about your NAND shipments in December versus September?

[Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

How do you think about it in March versus December and the cadence of the rest of the year?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I would tell you that, well, one is it wasn't a huge part of our revenue. Obviously, we're starting off a pretty low

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

and it's

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

growing, but it was a pretty healthy uptick in the fourth quarter, a reasonably similar level into the first quarter, which I would expect would probably continue into the second quarter today. I would tell you that visibility for us now is probably gone from three months really strong to four, maybe five. So that's kind of how I would call it at this stage given our visibility.

[Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Got it. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then when I look at your European semi cap customers, obviously, you have two large ones, one is the Littoral, one is the Epi.

[Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Kind of curious on the Epi customer in Europe, How are you seeing the revenues trend? Because I remember that was one of the fastest growing. Do you think they could be a third largest or a 10 person plus customer this year or do you think it's still small?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I think they're not going to crest 10%. I would tell you that they've done a terrific job. We've expanded our share beyond epi, which has helped us kind of grow market share in that particular customer. And so, but I don't think it will press, but we do see it growing nicely in 2025 from 2024.

[Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Got you. And then just one final question for Greg. I think the question came up earlier. I was just trying to figure out, can you just say last year to this year, what is exactly how many basis points improvement in gross margin is coming from the proprietary gas panels?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

That's given up a lot of information. Let's just say it's a pretty large component of the gross margin accretion. Obviously, volume helps us year over year and just not having some of these excursions that we incurred in 2024. So but I would say it's probably one of the largest of our accretion activities that we have year over year.

[Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Got you.

[Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

All

[Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

right. Thanks for that. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Dick.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

You bet.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tom Diffely with D. A. Davidson. Please proceed.

[Tom Diffely, Director Of Institutional Research at D.A. Davidson Companies]

Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for a few questions. So, Jeff, most people now expect the WFE market to grow kind of mid single digits this year. Your large OEM customers, because they're more etching depth related or growing above that. At this point, can you say whether or not you believe you'll grow faster than your OEM customers?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I would say, there obviously, we think that as you indicated is going to outgrow total WFE and I think as we look at our customers based on what you guys see, I won't talk specifically other than some of the analysts' estimates is that they will outgrow it And we think we can outgrow that just a bit more.

[Tom Diffely, Director Of Institutional Research at D.A. Davidson Companies]

Yes. Okay. That's helpful.

[Tom Diffely, Director Of Institutional Research at D.A. Davidson Companies]

And then when people are talking about the NAND market and how NAND is recovering this year and that's great news, but you maybe put into perspective where NAND is versus the other markets, and how you maybe over the next couple of years, there's quite a bit more growth than just this year left in NAND?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Yes. I mean like I guess when we look at what we're doing as a company, we're kind of seeing it go from five ish percent of our revenue to about 7% of our revenue, which is actually sizable as our revenue grows too. But it's still not getting to the size of what we think DRAM will be and certainly not found in logic. But we think for the last couple of years, we've been memory has been about 25% DRAM and AND. We see that getting larger this year as a percentage of our revenue certainly.

[Tom Diffely, Director Of Institutional Research at D.A. Davidson Companies]

And then maybe a quick one for Greg as well. When you look at the cost that you've layered in, the extra employees you've layered in, capacity over the last couple of months, and right now you have revenue maybe going up to $2.55 in the first quarter. What is the revenue capabilities of your current infrastructure?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

So

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

of our

[Tom Diffely, Director Of Institutional Research at D.A. Davidson Companies]

Like how much revenue yes, just with your current installed base of both employees and fiscal footprint, how much revenue could you process at this point without meaningful additions?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Yes, from a facility point of view, clean rooms all at capacity is well north of 400, right? And today we try and mirror our headcount being added as close to the demand profile. What you guys see is external revenue. We have a view of what we're cutting in components and stuff that adds to that. But we're still, I would say, well below that 400 plus capacity.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

So it's really people dependent. Right now, I would say, once we add the bulk of the resources that we're seeing in Q1 and if we have a modest back half, it will be very little incremental people we can probably do it with overtime and things like that.

[Tom Diffely, Director Of Institutional Research at D.A. Davidson Companies]

All right. Maybe one last quick question. Do you have any components that you've processed flying around in space right now?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Yes, of course. We do. Obviously, we have some business with SpaceX. And so most of what we build for them goes up and doesn't come back.

[Tom Diffely, Director Of Institutional Research at D.A. Davidson Companies]

All right. Thank you, guys.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

You bet. Thanks for asking.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Christian Schwab with Craig Hallum Group. Please proceed.

[Christian Schwab, Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC]

Great. Thanks. I just most of my questions have been answered. I just have a question on gross margins for clarity. Did you guys talk about gross margins being greater than 16% as you exited the year?

[Christian Schwab, Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC]

Or did you say that gross margin would be greater than sixteen twenty five? I don't know if I heard that right.

[Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer at Ichor]

I think we've kind of well, so exiting the year on a run rate north of 16%, Christian, and then full year at that 16%.

[Christian Schwab, Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC]

Full year at 16%. And then what do you think optimal gross margins with increased proprietary products are as maybe as we look to '26 if let's say WFE goes up again, how good could gross margins get?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

What I would tell you is that our model today is 2019 to 2020. And I think in general, the direction we're getting in communications is that '26 will be a stronger year than '25 from a growth perspective. But I would certainly think given where we're at, cutting in certainly our passive products are really making good progress. Even with those, I think we can get pretty close to that in 2026, if the quarterly run rates kind of get up and up over maybe 300 at least, because we need to have that to absorb some of our infrastructure.

[Christian Schwab, Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC]

Great. No other questions. Thank you.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

You bet, Christian.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Edward Yang with Oppenheimer. Please proceed.

[Edward Yang, Stock Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Hi, Jeff. Hi, Greg. Thanks for taking my question. Just on your new products progress, the gas panel deliveries that you had in 2024, I think you had specified at 50. Was that consistent with your expectation?

[Edward Yang, Stock Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

I think last quarter you're targeting something around 55%.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Yes, I said more than 50%. So yes, it was pretty much aligned. You always get a few movements here and there, but we came in just about where we thought we would be. And so we and most of these evaluations are active device customers now. And so at that stage, our customers are managing that process.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

And unfortunately, we haven't had any close yet, but we're optimistic that those will happen in the early part of twenty twenty five, certainly in the first half.

[Edward Yang, Stock Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay. So were these all still for qualifying or did you have any commercial shipments?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I would say that as we're shipping to their customer evaluations, we would call them commercial shipments. I mean, they're designed, they're putting them on a tool. Maybe the first half of those or less or something were probably what you would call kind of evaluations at our customers that are putting them onto their tools for the first time. But once they make it to a customer, we kind of treat them like a commercial shipment. And I would tell you that the that is a much smaller component of our internally supplied components.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

That's a bigger number. So we're still in the early innings of the fully integrated new gas box.

[Edward Yang, Stock Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Got it. And you commented on this in the January presentation, but do you still see no incremental impact from the export controls? And do you have any preliminary thoughts on tariffs?

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

Yes. I was glad to see them delayed for thirty days on tariffs. The rules were just to be clear, the rules were very to me ambiguous. Most of Mexico is where we would have felt that we have very little that we procure out of China anymore. So any inbound tariffs from China are de minimis for us.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

It's mostly around Mexico. Most of what we build there comes from The U. S. We were not very clear yet on what that is going to be. Having said that, I don't know where that will end up.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I'm sure the rules will start to get more clarified. But it certainly that moves into our cost plus gas box business, it gets passed forward. Okay. And then the other question was the China export. I think all that's been baked into our visibility that we have.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

There's been no other downtake. Obviously, some customers have talked about the overall impact of their business, which has already been incorporated in any outlook we've provided.

[Edward Yang, Stock Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Thanks a lot.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

All right.

[Operator]

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to pass the call back over to Jeff Anderson for closing remarks.

[Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO at Ichor]

I I want to thank you for joining us on our call this afternoon. I'd like to thank our employees, suppliers, customers and investors for their ongoing dedication and support. We look forward to our next quarterly update in early May or our Q1 earnings call. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to Claire directly if you'd like to follow-up with us. Operator, that concludes our call.

Participants

Executives

• Claire McAdams, Investor Relations
• Jeffrey Andreson, Executive Director & CEO
• Greg Swyt, Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

• Craig Ellis, Director of Research at B Riley Financial
• Brian Chin, Director at Stifel Financial Corp
• Krish Sankar, Managing Director at TD Cowen
• Tom Diffely, Director Of Institutional Research at D.A. Davidson Companies
• Christian Schwab, Senior Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC
• Edward Yang, Stock Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.