Lam Research Q4 2026 Earnings Analysis

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ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown, bringing you the numbers and the narrative from Wall Street's biggest movers. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan. Today we're digging into Lam Research's June quarter, fiscal Q4 2026 — and Jordan, this one's a barnburner.

Before we get into it, quick disclaimer: this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: With that out of the way — Alex, Lam just closed out fiscal 2026 with records stacked on records. Fourth straight quarter of record revenue, highest gross margin in 20 years, record operating margin, record EPS. This is a semiconductor equipment maker riding the AI capex wave about as well as anyone.

ALEX: Let's hit the headline numbers. June quarter revenue came in at $6.72 billion, up 15% sequentially and 30% year-over-year. Gross margin hit 52%, operating margin 38.4%, diluted EPS a record $1.82 — all above the high end of guidance. For the full fiscal year, revenue was $23.2 billion with EPS of $5.82, up 41% from fiscal 2025.

JORDAN: And the guide for September is even bigger — $8.1 billion, plus or minus $400 million. That's more than 20% sequential growth. CEO Tim Archer also raised his calendar 2026 wafer fab equipment spending outlook to the "low $150 billion range," up from the prior $140 billion call.

ALEX: What jumped out to me was NAND. Revenue there literally doubled sequentially. Archer tied that directly to AI — bigger context windows, persistent memory requirements, all of it pushing customers to upgrade their fabs to 200-plus layer NAND architectures.

JORDAN: Right, and this is where the story gets interesting for the long haul. Archer said Lam's served available market — SAM — per wafer in NAND could double again as layer counts climb from 128-layer to 500-plus layer devices. More layers means more etch and deposition steps, and etch and deposition is Lam's bread and butter.

ALEX: They also talked a lot about advanced packaging — TSV etch and electroplating for things like HBM. That segment's growth outlook has basically been revised upward every quarter this year — from 40%, to 50%, now to over 70% year-over-year growth.

JORDAN: And it's not just chasing today's demand. Archer mentioned future AI packages could be nine times the size of a standard reticle — three times larger than today's chips — which is pushing the whole industry toward panel-level packaging instead of traditional wafers. Lam's already shipped panel-format tools into development programs, so they're trying to get ahead of that transition.