Semiconductor equipment giant Applied Materials late Thursday beat expectations for its fiscal first quarter, but offered mixed guidance for the current quarter. AMAT stock slid in extended trading.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company earned an adjusted $2.38 a share on sales of $7.17 billion in the quarter ended Jan. 26. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected earnings of $2.28 a share on revenue of $7.15 billion. On a year-over-year basis, Applied Materials earnings rose 12% while sales increased 7%.
For the current quarter, Applied Materials forecast adjusted earnings of $2.30 a share on revenue of $7.1 billion. That's based on the midpoint of its guidance. Wall Street was modeling earnings of $2.29 a share on sales of $7.21 billion for the fiscal second quarter. In the same quarter last year, Applied Materials earned an adjusted $2.09 a share on sales of $6.65 billion.
Applied Materials said its fiscal Q2 outlook includes the estimated impact of recently announced U.S. export regulations.
"For the second fiscal quarter, we are encouraged by the trends supporting continued customer investments to enable leading-edge technology inflections, while also taking into account export control-related headwinds," Chief Financial Officer Brice Hill said in a news release.
Applied Materials is enabling major device architecture inflections such as the need for energy-efficient artificial intelligence computing, Chief Executive Gary Dickerson said in a statement.
AMAT Stock Retreats After Report
In after-hours trading on the stock market today, AMAT stock fell more than 5% to 173.50. During the regular session Thursday, AMAT stock rose 1.9% to close at 184.27.
In its fiscal first quarter, foundry and logic chip gear accounted for 68% of Applied Material's semiconductor system revenue. The next largest share, 28%, was for dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips. Flash memory contributed the remaining 4%.
Other semiconductor equipment stocks moving on earnings news Thursday included Advanced Energy Industries, MKS Instruments and Nova.
Advanced Energy surged 11.1% to 123.49, while Nova popped 9.6% to 269 after posting better-than-expected results. But MKS tumbled 6.6% to 103.84 after its fourth-quarter report.
Applied Materials ranks seventh out of 27 stocks in IBD's semiconductor equipment industry group, according to IBD Stock Checkup. AMAT stock has an IBD Composite Rating of 55 out of 99.
Meanwhile, Nova ranks first in the group with a Composite Rating of 97.
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